ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses some of the difficulties, and the reasons for the difficulties, in the transition from student to practitioner, with special reference to the acquisition of professional skill in and understanding of the relation of a sick person to his medical adviser. The so-called 'normal psychology', which takes no account of the influence of pain, anxiety, guilt, and grief on human behaviour, need not for long detain the medical student in Ms preparation to deal with people and their problems in real-life situations. The task of medical education is to develop fully the capacity both for clinical synthesis and for mechanistic analysis. A sample survey might be made one, two, and five years after leaving medical school, asking what comments general practitioners would like to make on the curriculum of their training. Psycho-pathology, the study of the problems; the application of knowledge to the sufferings of the individual is a part of psychiatry.
