Psychiatric Education and Progress

This little volume contains the Salmon Lectures of the New York Academy of Medicine given the fall of 1955. It represents the crystallization and summary of the reflections of a perceptive and thoughtful psychiatrist and teacher. Whitehorn points out that just as physicians generally see as their goal the "conquering" and wiping out of disease, so every medical specialist should be "dedicated to spoiling his field of expertness by such a radical resolution of the uncertainties in his field as to make a high degree of expertness in certain areas less necessary than before." He emphasizes the point that the pressures increasing graduate training in psychiatry have been directed mostly at taking care of the mentally ill person but not in developing new ideas or even new educational principles. A refreshing breath of skepticism about the completeness of the determinism of human behavior characterizes Whitehorn's philosophy throughout the book. He