Psychiatry Education To-Day

The enormous demand for individual psychoanalytic treatment in private practice, which is peculiar to American society, has created special problems of postgraduate psychiatric education in the United States. Many able young doctors are attracted to psychoanalysis by its high prestige and considerable financial rewards. As the result, there is a tendency on the part of some trainees to neglect the clinical, diagnostic and other aspects not relevant to private psychoanalytical practice. The author, who is a leading psychoanalyst and teacher of psychiatry in the Harvard Medical School, warns against such a limited approach to psychiatric training. He insists on comprehensive training in all aspects of psychiatry and stresses the importance of clinical observation. Coming from a psychoanalyst, this book should act as a corrective against narrow specialisation, which economic factors peculiar to the United States have tended to favour.