ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on experiences gained in a post-graduate training scheme for general practitioners in the psychological aspects of their work. While general practitioners are being abjured to be honest and to expose themselves to the full blast of the family relationships that their patients bring, their psychiatric advisers defend themselves with psychiatric routine and cant. Taking for granted that what the seminar will have to work with are the personal resources of the reporting doctor and the assortment of other personalities present with their particular affinities and scotomata, the patient who is being discussed. The distinction between what is an essential concern of the seminar and what is a private matter for the doctor has been referred to by Dr. Michael Balint as the difference between the ‘public’ and the ‘private’ transference. As Balint has pointed out, a person who learns to ski is not the same after the acquisition of this new skill as he was before.
