Illness: A mechanism for coping with failure

Illness represents one way of coping with failure and the physician plays a unique role as the sole authority granting legitimation for the sick role. For people of limited means or incomplete knowledge of and access to other medical alternatives, the neighborhood clinic, when it is free and accessible, may serve as the major locus for obtaining legitimation of illness. Such a situation places a special burden on the physician particularly in a social context in which feelings of failure could be widespread in the population. Helping people cope with failure is a stable function of medical institutions and is likely to persist in the face of possible changes in the structure of the professional role. It probably has a good deal of generality to many societies.