ABSTRACT
After Passover I had an avalanche of people in my clinic. It is as if they held themselves healthy during the holidays and then they needed me again to give them a health booster. I sometimes think that I, myself, am the cause of this excessive load of patients. It may be my need to be needed which probably creates or encourages this dependency. For a long time I have had the feeling that I work harder than my colleagues. I then calm myself down by saying that I offer more comfort, more understanding, to the people I serve, which explains why they search me out more than the others. This, I guess, is a thing to be proud of, and not to be blamed for. But when I am overworked I curse myself and come down excessively hard on myself! Yesterday I had an insight that there is another aspect of one’s personality that may encourage visits: voyeurism. Being in such intimacy with the persons one treats, one has the opportunity to witness a whole spectrum of family dramas: marital disharmony, unemployment, disease, disability, and personal defeats or successes. Sometimes I feel that I do not need to watch soap operas on TV, since the dramas unfold right in front of me in nearly every patient that comes to see me, even for the more trivial complaints such as backache or urinary tract infection.
