WITH fragmentation of medicine into specialties, with increasing reliance on laboratories, and with increasing knowledge of the science of medicine, the "art" or medicine as practiced within the doctor-patient relationship has lost some of its status among scientists as a healing agent. The effect of the doctor-patient relationship on the progress of illness is difficult to measure, and therefore easy to ignore in academic settings that concentrate on the accumulation and teaching of objective data.1 Many doctors in community practices, however, and many more patients are convinced that the art of medicine contributes significantly to the effectiveness of medical care. They consider it necessary to emphasize its significance in the teaching of physicians and to study its effects.
Psychiatry's concern with human personality in all gradations of health and disease, and its relatively heavy reliance on subjective