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Oh, Fine, You're Right. I'm Passive-Aggressive
By BENEDICT CAREY, The New York Times, November 16, 2004
The marriage seemed to come loose at the seams, one stitch at a time, often during the evening hour between work and dinner. She would be preparing the meal, while he kept her company in the sun room next to kitchen, usually reading the paper. At times the two would provoke each other, as couples do - about money, about holiday plans - but those exchanges often flared out quickly when he would say, simply, "O.K., you're right," and turn back to the news.
"Looking back, instead of getting angry, I was doing this as a dismissive way of shutting down the conversation," said Peter G. Hill, 48, a doctor in Massachusetts who has recently separated from his wife. Even reading the paper at that hour was his way of adamantly relaxing, in defiance of whatever it was she thought he should be doing.
"It takes two to break up, but I have been accused of being passive-aggressive, and there it is," he said.
Everyone knows what it looks like. The friend who perpetually arrives late. The co-worker who neglects to return e-mail messages. The very words: "Nothing. I'm just thinking."
Yet while "passive-aggressive" has become a workhorse phrase in marriage counseling and an all-purpose label for almost any difficult character, it is a controversial concept in psychiatry.
( Read More... )
Smart or Misguided? The Proactive Doctor
ESSAY
By BARRON H. LERNER, M.D., The New York Times, November 16, 2004
Not so long ago, patients went to doctors only when something was bothering them. But then came the rise of preventive medicine - the idea that it was the job of the physician to search for diseases and treat them before they caused symptoms.
Recent studies have pushed this view further, suggesting it is necessary to decrease blood pressure and cholesterol to levels well below those previously considered normal.
But must I, as a doctor, always be proactive with my patients? How did medicine go from providing physical relief to a search mission for potential harms? And is it ever acceptable for my patients to tell me that we should just leave well enough alone?
The impetus for seeking out early disease came from public health. When health officials dealing with tuberculosis in the early 1900's began to trace the contacts of sick people, they were able to find many early cases of the disease. On average, these patients with early diagnoses did better.
( Read More... (I just read his book Contagion and Confinement: Controlling Tuberculosis Along Skid Row - Excellent!) )
A CONVERSATION WITH MARTHA MCCLINTOCK: The Chemistry (Literally) of Social Interaction
By CLAUDIA DREIFUS, The New York Times, November 16, 2004
CHICAGO - For much of her career, Dr. Martha McClintock, the experimental psychologist, has been stunning the scientific world with research on how social interactions affect biology in humans and animals.
The director of the University of Chicago's Institute for Mind and Biology, Dr. McClintock tends to investigate matters that are at once important and obvious.
In 1971 she published her first scientific paper - a study showing that women living together in a Wellesley College dormitory tended to menstruate at the same time. The idea grew out of her own undergraduate observations. Dr. McClintock, 57, has demonstrated chemical communication between humans in laboratory experiments, again in influencing menstrual cycles. Whether pheromones play a role in human life outside the lab remains unknown. In animals pheromones affect the whole panoply of behavior - mating, aggression and fear.
In other work with colleagues, she has proved that rats that fear change have shorter lives than their more flexible counterparts, and that social isolation can also affect the longevity of rodents.
"I've focused my work on downward causation, the idea that the social and psychological world changes the fundamental mechanisms of biology, and vice versa," Dr. McClintock said on a recent afternoon at her offices at the University of Chicago. "I've tried to situate biology in a rich social and psychological context and make it simple."
( Read Interview )
By BENEDICT CAREY, The New York Times, November 16, 2004
The marriage seemed to come loose at the seams, one stitch at a time, often during the evening hour between work and dinner. She would be preparing the meal, while he kept her company in the sun room next to kitchen, usually reading the paper. At times the two would provoke each other, as couples do - about money, about holiday plans - but those exchanges often flared out quickly when he would say, simply, "O.K., you're right," and turn back to the news.
"Looking back, instead of getting angry, I was doing this as a dismissive way of shutting down the conversation," said Peter G. Hill, 48, a doctor in Massachusetts who has recently separated from his wife. Even reading the paper at that hour was his way of adamantly relaxing, in defiance of whatever it was she thought he should be doing.
"It takes two to break up, but I have been accused of being passive-aggressive, and there it is," he said.
Everyone knows what it looks like. The friend who perpetually arrives late. The co-worker who neglects to return e-mail messages. The very words: "Nothing. I'm just thinking."
Yet while "passive-aggressive" has become a workhorse phrase in marriage counseling and an all-purpose label for almost any difficult character, it is a controversial concept in psychiatry.
( Read More... )
Smart or Misguided? The Proactive Doctor
ESSAY
By BARRON H. LERNER, M.D., The New York Times, November 16, 2004
Not so long ago, patients went to doctors only when something was bothering them. But then came the rise of preventive medicine - the idea that it was the job of the physician to search for diseases and treat them before they caused symptoms.
Recent studies have pushed this view further, suggesting it is necessary to decrease blood pressure and cholesterol to levels well below those previously considered normal.
But must I, as a doctor, always be proactive with my patients? How did medicine go from providing physical relief to a search mission for potential harms? And is it ever acceptable for my patients to tell me that we should just leave well enough alone?
The impetus for seeking out early disease came from public health. When health officials dealing with tuberculosis in the early 1900's began to trace the contacts of sick people, they were able to find many early cases of the disease. On average, these patients with early diagnoses did better.
( Read More... (I just read his book Contagion and Confinement: Controlling Tuberculosis Along Skid Row - Excellent!) )
A CONVERSATION WITH MARTHA MCCLINTOCK: The Chemistry (Literally) of Social Interaction
By CLAUDIA DREIFUS, The New York Times, November 16, 2004
CHICAGO - For much of her career, Dr. Martha McClintock, the experimental psychologist, has been stunning the scientific world with research on how social interactions affect biology in humans and animals.
The director of the University of Chicago's Institute for Mind and Biology, Dr. McClintock tends to investigate matters that are at once important and obvious.
In 1971 she published her first scientific paper - a study showing that women living together in a Wellesley College dormitory tended to menstruate at the same time. The idea grew out of her own undergraduate observations. Dr. McClintock, 57, has demonstrated chemical communication between humans in laboratory experiments, again in influencing menstrual cycles. Whether pheromones play a role in human life outside the lab remains unknown. In animals pheromones affect the whole panoply of behavior - mating, aggression and fear.
In other work with colleagues, she has proved that rats that fear change have shorter lives than their more flexible counterparts, and that social isolation can also affect the longevity of rodents.
"I've focused my work on downward causation, the idea that the social and psychological world changes the fundamental mechanisms of biology, and vice versa," Dr. McClintock said on a recent afternoon at her offices at the University of Chicago. "I've tried to situate biology in a rich social and psychological context and make it simple."
( Read Interview )
