Gripers and Whiners

Berman talks about a nosology he developed for complainers after many years of listening to patients. The most frequent types are gripers and whiners. Gripers gripe to blow off steam in impossible situations. Teachers, nurses, police officers, firefighters, soldiers all gripe. To not do so would be to vociferously deny the difficulty of their jobs. But a griper has no intention of quitting; if people offer gripers a way out, they look at them with incredulity. Whiners, on the other hand, whine because they quite believe that their situation is unfair to them personally, and they want someone to let them off the hook, to do the dirty work for them. Here, he remarks on unfortunate trends for physicians to go from being gripers to being whiners.