. . . THE PASTORAL FALLACY

Abstract

The pastoral fallacy is a creation of a section of the profession, and probably arises as a reaction, by those no longer able to keep abreast, to the technical complexities of modern medicine. Its proponents emphasize the distinction between the patient and his disease, and claim to treat the whole man, and to regard the patient as a peryon. They stress the frequency and educational importance of the more trivial disorders and their interrelation with emotional factors. There is an implication that much of the elaboration of modern investigation and treatment could be dispensed with, if doctors were trained to acquire wisdom rather than to accumulate technical knowledge. Pervaded by an excessive belief in a unique therapeutic relation between doctor and patient, they aim to substitute a pastoral role for technical care, which is assumed to be necessarily impersonal or even inhumane. . . . The essential superficiality, and indeed dishonesty, of this attitude is revealed when one of its advocates is faced with illness in himself or in his family. The call then is not for the wise father figure, but for the man who knows most about so-and-so.