A Rejoinder to Merton M. Gill

Abstract

I find it rather difficult to respond to Gill’s commentary inasmuch as we seem to be speaking different languages and to have different goals regarding the subject under discussion. This is illustrated in his comment about the belching woman in which he wonders whether her response to the behavior therapy included an element of feeling ridiculed and whether she gave up the overt manifestation of the illness to avoid such a feeling. Such questions are irrelevant. They would be relevant had she objected, but she did not. His questions indicate an intellectual view of the treatment and leave out the practical aspects of need for rapid results in the case of third-party payers for relatively indigent patients.