Skip to primary content

Patients | Aug 24 2003

I’ve been told that social workers work with clients, while psychologists work with patients. This is true even when the two types of service providers provide the same type of service.

I have a web design friend who, having learned this from me, now refers to his clients, behind their backs, as patients.

On the subject of patients, here’s a beloved quote from Roland Barthes’ A Lover’s Discourse:

There are moments when a patient needs to be told that the breakdown, fear of which is wrecking his life, has already occurred. Similarly, it seems, for the lover’s anxiety: it is the fear of mourning which had already occurred, at the very origin of love, from the moment when I was first “ravished.” Someone would have to be able to tell me: “Don’t be anxious any more—you’ve already lost him/her.”

The parting contained in the greeting.