Wim Ritzerfeld wrote:
>I'm aware of the fact that conductors are sometimes addressed
>as 'maestro'. To me this is not the same as addressing a medical
>doctor as 'doctor' as this only refers to his academic title and
>to most people 'doctor' is emotionally neutral anyway.
Really? I believe that the term 'doctor' applied to medical doctors
does not refer to the academic degree and is ANYTHING but emotionally
neutral for many people. Several years ago I placed a phone call to a
doctor that ran a clinic for sleep disorders in order to tell her
about the Feldenkrais Method, which, based on my own experience and
on the reports of my students, I knew to be helpful for people having
difficulty sleeping. The person who answered the phone asked whether
I was a doctor. I don't think that I was clever enough to reply
'yes', but if I had been I'm sure that she would have considered me
to be lying, since my degree is Ph.D. rather than M.D. With regard to
the emotional association with the term 'doctor', many times I have
heard clients repeat what their doctors have told them rather than
telling me their own experience of themselves. Just as with teachers
in the classical music world, doctors are often "put on pedestals
where they don't belong and everything they say has this wonderful
ring of Truth to it that us lowly mortals are unable to grasp."
Respectfully,
John Link
http://www.mp3.com/JohnLinkFeldenkrais
http://www.mp3.com/JohnLinkVocalQuintet
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