Abstract

ON THEPSYCHIATRY: STUDENT’S FIRST JOEL ELKES,A NOTE YEAR M.D.It is trite to say that education is mutual education; those who teach know how much the student can be the teacher. The student mirrors the present and senses the future. He has a habit of opening academic parcels and looking at what’s inside. He may lose this habit as he grinds through the scholastic mill; but at the beginning, at any rate, enthusiasm and skepticism are his good companions. The green shoots of curiosity always press afresh. Curiosity demands a sense of order; order satisfied leads to a looking for more facts, connections and discrepancies. Anyone who has engaged a group of first-year students in discussion will know the particular feeling, and the joy. Such unrest cures are highly recommended to teachers. As he meets psychiatry, the student is prepared for yet another specialty. In this he is wrong. Psychiatry cannot compartmentalize: it deals in patterns and not pieces, in people and not organ systems. In making contact with the subject the student brings to it his most important piece of portable equipment, namely himself. In his skull he carries a vast and fascinating laboratory, of which he may