ABSTRACT
It was Talcott Parsons and Bernard Barber who suggested to Robert K. Merton that he might consider recruiting me to join the team of young sociologists he had assembled at Columbia University’s Bureau of Applied Social Research to conduct a prolonged study of the education and socialization of medical students. The project was organized around the question “To what degree and through what processes does the medical school shape the professional self of the student, so that he comes to ‘think, feel, and act like a doctor?’” 1 In the light of what was then my unusual prior experience of doing intensive sociological field research in a medical setting, Parsons and Barber thought I would have something special to contribute to this study, and that I would find it of considerable interest.
