ABSTRACT
The shoemaker is seen because there are shoes to repair; the doctor because a broken leg must be set; and the psychiatrist because people have problems. In fact, an applicant's "ticket of admission" to psychotherapy is his problem, and these problems are very important to applicants. Derived from Talcott Parsons' theory of action, the major divisions are biosocial problems, inner emotional problems, and social problems, for these refer to the basic analytic systems which describe individual action. Applicants who complained of difficulties associated with the level of their emotional energy were classed as having cathectic problems. Performance problems are those described above as major social role problems. This chapter shows that the classification of problems just attempted leads to a sociology of presenting problems. There is, therefore, a sociology of the process of applying to a psychiatric clinic, for the matching between patient and clinic cannot be magically accidental.
