This sylvan game - creative writing and GP wellbeing.
In Sebastian Faulks' novel, Human Traces, which explores the profession of psychiatry in its infancy, one of the ill and wealthy patients, who has retreated to an Austrian sanitarian, explains to his doctor that his sadness stems from the fact that 'at the age of 55 I have essentially ceased to be of interest to myself'. The doctor smiles, and says: 'I suppose you still have your painting... presumably that provides some consolation'. The patient responds with ferocity: 'I did not turn to art for consolation... I turned to it in the hope that I could use it to push back experience. I hoped that I could use it to reset reality'.
Department of English, La Trobe University, Melbourne, Victoria. s.bradleysmith@latrobe.edu.au
Susan
S
Bradley Smith
D004502:Education, Medical, Continuing; D005194:Family Practice / Q000193:education*; D006801:Humans; D007588:Job Satisfaction; D010817:Physician-Patient Relations; D010820:Physicians / Q000523:psychology*; D014956:Writing