In a 1978 article in the New England Journal of Medicine, Massachusetts General Hospital psychiatrist James E. Groves categorized the patients “whom most physicians dread”: “Dependent clingers” escalate from normal requests for reassurance to “repeated, perfervid, incarcerating cries for explanation, affection, analgesics, sedatives and all forms of attention imaginable.” They may have severe, even life-threatening disorders, or they may have no discernible illness at all. “Entitled demanders” use “intimidation, devaluation and guilt-induction to place the doctor in the role of the inexhaustible supply depot.” They may even try to control the doctor by withholding payment or threatening to sue. “Manipulative...