Sublime

It is much more productive to see aggression or depression, arrogance or passivity as learned behaviors: Somewhere along the line, the patient came to believe that he or she could survive only if he or she was tough, invisible, or absent, or that it was safer to give up.

But, as the neuroscientist Jean Decety at the University of Chicago has shown, desensitization to our own or to other people’s pain tends to lead to an overall blunting of emotional sensitivity.

Engaging in a collaborative model of shared decision-making allows patients to feel in control of the healing process and their therapeutic decisions.

Nenna Joiner

shrink diagnosed her with emotional detachment disorder, which seemed like a stretch to Greta, who preferred to think of it as “poise” on a bad day, “grace” on a good one, and, when she was feeling full of herself, “serenity.”

A teacher of students with special needs, Sara had observed that the children she worked with seemed better able to navigate their lives the more they knew about their family’s history.

Charon recommends asking patients to tell the story behind each scar on their bodies.

For people with intellectual disabilities, Trent writes, the means of care—segregated or inclusive classrooms, institutions or group home residences—has so often been collapsed to become the unquestioned end in itself, because the larger assumption remains unexamined.