The clinical case method in teaching comprehensive approaches to illness behavior.

Over the years, those of us who have attempted to teach medical students, residents, specialists, and general practitioners comprehensive approaches to the patient and his symptom have increasingly despaired that didactic methods, with their oftentimes inherent moralisms, fail in conveying the message and frequently lose the student in a morass of technical jargon derived from the several conceptual languages we attempt to familiarize them with. On the basis of our researches, we have attempted to synthesize bridging languages between the conceptual and methodological approaches of biology, sociology, and psychology by using such formulations as the illness-onset situation; behavioral patterns and personality styles—the emotions and defenses modifying these in reaction to conflict; the interview method; the patient-physician relationship; phases of illness—premorbid states, acute, convalescent, and rehabilitative; the intensive care unit syndrome; reactions to illness—acute and chronic; delirium and altered states of conscious-