ABSTRACT
I gravitated into psychiatry after a lengthy career in oncology, having begun in 1964 as one of the first oncologists in New Jersey. My patients’ suffering was ever present. I witnessed it with as much empathy as I could expend without getting mired in it. The concepts of transference and countertransference, as well as “burnout,” were as yet unknown to me. What has become evident to me over the past 20 years is the paradox that medical advances have produced increasingly innovative suffering. What has transpired is that there is greater chronicity to diseases than there was 20 years ago as a result of new discoveries in cellular dynamics and pharmacology. So-called “cures” and long-term palliative survivals have ensued and these, in turn, have led to a host of new problems and, we might say, new kinds of suffering.
