ABSTRACT
In 1962 b.c.—that is, before Caplan—I finished my residency in child psychiatry and began my first job, as psychiatrist in charge of two inpatient wards of what was then the only children’s psychiatric hospital providing long-term in-patient care for severely disturbed children and adolescents in the Province of Ontario. During my training, I had never been exposed to residential treatment, and I approached my new job wondering whether my newfound charges had much in common with the constricted and primarily neurotic children that I had treated during my residency. Nor was I convinced that the play therapy and family therapy that were the major weapons in my therapeutic arsenal during my training would have much relevance to this radically different group of patients who, at times, seemed to have more in common with wild animals than with the only other child psychiatric patients I had ever known. Right from the start I was very much aware that something very different was expected of me. But what?
