A human nurse nurses through a clinical process of "I-Thou, I-It, all-at-once to comfort." {112}
"I-Thou" is a coming to know the other and the self in relation, intuitively.
"I-It" is an authentic analyzing, synthesizing, and interpreting of the
"I-Thou" relation through reflection.
The "all-at-once" symbolizes the multifarious multiplicities of extremes (incommensurables, criticals, nonconsequentials, contradictions, and inconsistencies) as metaphorically representative of what exists in the nurse's world.
"Comfort" is a state valued by a nurse as an aim in which a person is free to be and become, controlling and planning his own destiny, in accordance with his potential at a particular time in a particular situation.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Josephine G. Paterson, "A Perspective on Teaching Nursing: How Concepts Become," in A Conceptual Approach to the Teaching of Nursing in Baccalaureate Programs, a report of a project directed by Rose M. Herrera (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America, School of Nursing, 1973), pp. 17-27.
[2] American Nurses' Association, Division on Psychiatric-Mental Health Nursing, Statement on Psychiatric Nursing Practice (New York: American Nurses' Association, 1967), p. IV.
[3] Plutarch, "Contentment," in Gateway to the Great Books, Vol. 10, Philosophical Essays (Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1963), p. 265.
[4] Viktor E. Frankl, From Death-Camp to Existentialism (Boston: Beacon Press, 1961), p. 103.