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you. Relax, and while helping a patient, be prayerful.
And whenever you find that there is some difficulty that you cannot cope with, there is some problem that you cannot tackle, don't be afraid. Tell the patient to wait and to let you pray first. Kneel down on the ground, close your eyes, and go into deep prayer and ask for help... and the help will always be coming.
Don't feel embarrassed -- because that is the tendency of the human ego: to at least pretend to others that you know, that you are capable of everything. And the tendency is particularly more emphatic before a patient, because the doctor is always afraid that if the patient becomes aware that he is hesitant, then he will lose prestige. Throw prestige to the dogs!
Let the patient feel that you also are a human being. Let him feel that you are not far away, but close, just standing by his side, trembling as much as he... and that will give warmth to him.
That's where Freud missed. He was very cold. He would not show his real face to the patients -- in fact he would hide behind a curtain, with the patient lying on the couch. And whenever you make somebody lie down, you make him feel helpless.
... always be face to face, and sometimes be shoulder to shoulder. Touch the patient, and let him touch you. Allow him to feel that you are human also -- working hard to help, but with darkness there. Let him feel your heart. Don't impose knowledge, rather let him feel your love. Love is therapeutic, knowledge never.
Freud used to sit at the back of the patient with a screen between him and the patient. He would not allow the patient to see anything passing on his face. He was just like a statue -- dead and cold, far far away. That was a trick to pretend that he knew, to pretend that he was certain -- to pretend that the patient was to be helped and he was the helper, and that there was a vast distance, unbridgeable ....
That has to be completely dropped from psychoanalysis. Come closer. The difference between the patient and the doctor, the healer and the healed, is only of degrees. Come close... hold his hand. Let him feel your warmth... let because he will feel
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