This chapter will discuss the visit of the patient to the doctor. Since
this is not a book on medical practice there will be no reference to
strictly medical procedures. Attention will be directed to those events
that affect the doctor-patient relationship. The focus will be on first visits
-- the first professional meeting of the doctor and patient, or the first
visit of a regular patient with a new complaint.

Excitement is a common feature of patients as they anticipate a visit
to the doctor. At best the visit is an adventure; at the worst it is a boat
ride across the River Styx with the physician as a white-coated Charon.
At either of these extremes, and in between, the mental preparations for
the office visit are imaginative, important, and exciting.

The patient who is to visit either a new doctor for the first time or
his regular doctor with a new complaint will primarily wonder about
what the doctor will say and how he will act. The patient's imagination
will be full of possibilities which anticipate the course of the office inter-
view.

One function of the imagination is the preparation for future events
by symbolically (mentally) wrestling with potential happenings before
they take place. It is a means of getting ready for future events. In this
sense the previsit imagination is an extension of thinking, an adjustment
in advance. Through advance mental preparation the individual prepares
a variety of responses which will be ready for any one of the several
events which are conceived as likely or possible.

In the matter of health the patient is likely to imagine three obvious
categories of findings: the best, the worst, and somewhere in between.

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