ABSTRACT
One day early in 1966 I met the physician Sir John Ellis, for whom I had acted as houseman at the London Hospital, in the corridor. He asked me what I wanted to do. I already had a job arranged in the Physiology Department of the University of Aberdeen in the autumn of that year. I said I was interested in psychiatry, but had six months to spare. He contacted his friend Sir Aubrey Lewis and at short notice I was appointed by Gerald Russell and Michael Gelder to work on the professorial unit under Sir Aubrey in the six months before he retired. It turned out to be a most educational experience for a bewildered psychiatric tyro.
