Two Wheels on Dry Land

“To find health should be the object of the doctor. Anyone can find disease.” — A.T. Still, the founder of Osteopathy

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Change Your Mind Change Your Life

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Photograph by John Diamond, M.D.

Many years ago, when I was the chief psychiatrist in a hospital, my task every morning was to examine and diagnose the patients admitted the previous day. They were then seen by the head psychologist, with whom I would confer over lunch.

I will never forget what he said to me one day. He complimented me on how brilliant my diagnoses were: “You can smell a delusion, you can ferret out a hallucination, but” — and this has always stuck in my mind — “did you know that this woman grew prize camellias? Did you know that this man played the piano?” “No,” I replied, a little bemused, “I wasn’t trained to find the good things.”

But from then I started to, and ever since I have looked for the good things. What the patient can do, not what he can’t. His deficiencies and his weaknesses are so obvious, but his strengths, tragically, are deeply hidden: that is what makes him a patient, a sufferer. For it is his strength alone that will alleviate his suffering.

Photograph by John Diamond, M.D.

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