ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a different portrait of medicine—one of physicians, and of clinical decisionmaking, in groups. It examines the influence of group psychology and group logic of choice itself in medicine. The chapter explores emotional investments in the group and their consequences for decision-making and medical action. It introduces “group dynamics” not as another new subject to vie for time in the already densely crowded curriculum of medical education but as an ordinary, inexpugnable fact intrinsic to all medical subjects in which groups are involved in thinking and acting together. Medical as well as nonmedical decisionmakers must examine their own individual and group emotional investments and cultural meanings in order to diminish the distortion these invariably impose on the best laid plans. Subjective involvements tend to remain an unanalyzed case within the case and they profoundly influence the kind of work the group undertakes.
