Family-Counseling Role of the Physician.

Today's physician mast appreciate that his role as a family life counselor entails more than the imparting of the bare details of anatomy and physiology. He must help people to reach an under- standing of the emotional and physical facets of human growth, and to comprehend the many forces that form an adult's responsiveness to his needs in relation to those of others. When a physician serves as a family counselor, be has two advantages: He is accepted as one considered to be familiar with the complexities of human relations, and patients come as supplicants seeking help. The physician must himself, however, have met certain requisites before be is able to counsel well on the subject of sex. He must first divest himself of his own anxieties, guilt, and fears so that his personal unresolved attitudes do not impinge on his patient' problems. He must be able to identify himself as a sexual being, and be able to deal with issues of sexuality as be would with any other medical troubles, within the bounds of his knowledge and emotional security. The physician must be prepared to discuss and advise upon many medically oriented sexual issues that include masturbation, homosexuality, venereal disease, premarital as well as extramarital sexual experiences, sexuality as it pertains to his geriatric patients, conception control) the problems of the infertile couple, and expression of viewpoints about some of the sociologic problems related to reproduction. The physician-counselor must be aware that other elements and professions within a community are helpful in the area of family life education. Accordingly, physicians must extend the recognition of mutual interdependence that exists not only in the relations of individuals to one another but also as it exists between such individuals and that portion of society in which they find themselves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]