Learning to Delay Satisfaction

Abstract

In nursing situations it is not always possible to grant patients full expression of all their wants or wishes and still meet the requirements of a treatment plan outlined by a professional team. It is often necessary to aid the patient in delaying his expected satisfactions, in varying his goals in the light of the reality of his medical problem. In order to know how patients can best be aided to learn to delay satisfaction of their wants, and to correlate this learning with the first psychological task, namely, learning to count on others for help when it is needed, as discussed in Chapter Eight, it is necessary to look at the period of personality formation most closely connected with the original learning of delay. The purpose of this chapter is to identify relationships between early childhood experiences with toilet training and personality formation and between cultural ways of interfering with wishes and wants and the carry-over in feelings that often operates in a medical problem. When nurses are faced with the task of helping a patient to delay his wants and wishes, and feelings of satisfaction connected with them, they need to understand these relationships to practice nursing intelligently.