PEDIATRICS Vol. 55 No. 6 June 1975, pp. 801
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EMPATHY AND REPRESSION

Kenneth Vaux 1

1 Ethics of Medicine and the Spirit of Western Culture

Today's physician and scientist, indeed any human, faced with a malnourished child or a young adult dying from leukemia cannot accept [a] verdict of resignation . . . Consider the following: the delicate decisions requiring a balancing of needs against limited resources, decisions of triage and priority; decisions to impede, accelerate or merely attend a patient in the dying process.

In these cases the ability to understand the conflicting values of hope and resignation is necessary to avoid two unfortunate responses. On the one hand there is empathy that can foster debilitating guilt; the biologist Gilbert Hardin has pointed up in recent papers the destructiveness of thoughtless benevolence. On the other hand there is that systematic repression that slowly renders one an automation without conscience. Those forced to render decisions in medicine must delicately transact the tension between hope and resignation.