ABSTRACT
My work in gynaecology, family planning and specialist psychosexual clinics creates an involvement between doctor and patient which is relatively unusual in orthodox medicine. In the latter two clinic settings the patients are rarely ‘ill’ in the conventional sense. Often they come with a particular choice that they have made or wish to make-to decide whether or not to have an abortion, to use contraception, to be able to have intercourse. They may wish to confine the doctor whom they see to a narrow technical role of someone who will provide them with an appropriate service. This may be all that they require, in which case the doctor can confine herself to the physical doctor role. Other cases need treatment on a deeper psychotherapeutic level and the doctor must be alert to her change of role for these patients.
