Affect and Its Control in the Medical Intern

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Abstract
The modes of affective involvement with patients and mechanisms of control over involvements were studied among forty-six interns in two urban hospitals in Tennessee. Two general types of involvement were found: one based upon aspects of the illness itself, and the other upon personalities of the patients. A universalized concern appeared to be the type of emotional involvement preferred and supported by the system, though deviations were made with impunity. Normative, instrumental, and situational controls limited extreme affective involvements with patients in certain age categories. Explicit proscription limited the expression of positive and negative feelings toward the patients as persons through the caliber of treatment provided them, but this type of control was frequently ineffective.

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