Illness provides doctors with their livelihood, identity and opportunities for distinction. Illness inflicts on patients anxiety and suffering. But doctors need patients just as patients need doctors. The book is about the experiences of sick people, and doctors are also under scrutiny here - their power-seeking strategies, their private lives and anxieties. The author was a surgeon before he became a psychiatrist, and he wants to show a way forward for doctors to make their relationships with their patients 'a joint venture between patient and healer in which the doctor serves as the guide'.