"The frequent tendency to use the demands of medical training or practice to justify one's absence or unavailability is a reflection of a significant emotional issue for many physicians, especially men - marked discomfort with closeness and even more marked reluctance to acknowledge this discomfort or deal openly with it. Such tendencies are particularly prominent among those who have compulsive personalities, in which difficulty with the management of strong feelings, both positive and negative, is a central feature."
Many physicians become incapable of expressing love and nurturance - "the legacy of life-long constriction so characteristic of compulsive personalities.
... perfectionism, a susceptibility to self-doubt and guilt feelings, a chronic sense of emotional impoverishment, difficulties managing dependency and aggression, and a limited capacity for emotional expressiveness. ... lead to rigid, emotionally flat, automatonlike styles of relating that are adaptive in medicine but maladaptive in one's personal relationships. The language of feelings may be entirely alien, especially for the male physician.
... physicians actually prefer work to family life ... postponement is not so much delay as avoidance - avoidance of intimacy and marital involvement. Work becomes an effective defense against intimacy."
Gabbard GO, Menninger RW. The psychology of postponement in the medical marriage. JAMA 1989; 261(16): 2378-81.
See also: http://healthyhealers.blogspot.ca/2012/06/substitute-gratifications.html
and: http://www.johnlovas.com/2013/01/shine-light-of-awareness-embrace-process.html
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| Photo: Tran Cao Bao Long www.dpreview.com |
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