ABSTRACT
Newly trained nurses and doctors feel competent when their patients trust them with their complaints. They can find out what a patient like Pamela’s mother would prefer, and respond rapidly. Everyone is satisfied. The professional feels competent, and the patient feels taken care of. Similarly if children tell their parents about what is up, the parents are helped to be competent in their
care taking. In this chapter we will look at what sort of developmental processes facilitate this open and honest presentation of discomforts. We usually assume that all patients are ready to present their discomforts, if only doctors had more time for consultations, were better listeners or there were a better staffing level of nurses on the ward. In the next two chapters we will see why this analysis of the communication dilemmas for health professionals, and for parents and children, is an oversimplification. I return to understanding Pamela’s illness behaviour in the subsequent chapters. In the meantime this chapter explores the necessary prerequisites for trusting intimate partnerships, in which no part expects to be made use of unnecessarily, founded on the key elements from the preceding chapters. This is associated with self-protective strategies with the characteristics of balanced type B attachment strategies when their attachment behaviour systems are mobilised.
