Prognostic Conceptions of the Resident Psychiatrist

In recent years there has been increasing recognition by contemporary psychiatry of the urgent need to define its role in the face of burgeoning service demands in the hospital, university, community, and armed forces. One major effect of this role recognition has been the close scrutiny given to the training of resident psychiatrists by the American Psychiatric Association²³and by the Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry.¹² Implicit in the description of “the resident’s feelings of hopelessness, insufficiency, and anxiety in the face of seemingly insurmountable therapeutic problems”²⁴is a clear recognition of the problems faced by the beginning resident as he enters a specialty where his previous training (medical school, internship) has not been as intensive as in other areas of medicine. In addition, the resident must now face diagnostic, prognostic, and therapeutic variables of an order not as yet