This paper offers some personal experiences and views of the training needs of specialist psychotherapy posts within the National Health Service, with some consideration of the needs of non-specialist trainees hoping to learn psychotherapy skills. There are many levels on which one can consider psychotherapy training needs, a most important one being to identify what techniques should be learned, in what depth, and over what period of time.

The role of the College library has hitherto not been defined. This is perhaps to be explained by the fact that, prior to our translation to 17 Belgrave Square, there has never been a library in the sense of a room or rooms exclusively given over to its use. An equal, if not more serious handicap, was the lack of the services of a professional librarian. Now these difficulties have been overcome. We have an elegant, well-appointed room in which to do our job and the work of our newly-appointed librarian, Mrs Susan Floate, cannot be too highly praised.

Members of the College will know that in the 1980–81 Parliamentary Session the Social Services Committee, chaired by Mrs Renée Short, examined the problem of achieving for hospital medical staff a proper balance between the number of doctors in training and the number in the career grades. In February 1982 the Government published its response to that Report as a White Paper, and stated its intent of seeking early discussion with the responsible bodies, which include the College, to promote action.

The psychology and psychiatry of the nuclear arms race have been discussed in three main ways. One approach has looked at the possible psychological consequences for the surviving population of a nuclear war. These studies, which have covered a wide range of catastrophes, including the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs, Nazi concentration camps, as well as natural disasters such as floods and cyclones, all point in the same direction. When half or more of a person's social and physical environment are destroyed the effects on the human psyche are devastating. The phrase ‘the survivor syndrome’ has been used to describe the state of psychological shock and disablement which results in those that are left behind by the dead. Its effects outlive the physical sequelae of such disasters and are matched in longevity only by the slowly developing cancers which manifest themselves two or more decades after a thermonuclear explosion. These studies make the scouting-for-boys and cricketing atmosphere evoked by the British Government pamphlet ‘Protect and Survive’, or the recent Civil Defence exercise, Square Leg, seem remote from the likely psychological reality of a post-nuclear attack world.

The locking up of psychiatric patients has become a delicate issue, and raises more than questions of consent and of civil liberties. Up to about 20 years ago it was very formally regulated. No patient could be secluded without the authority in writing of the medical superintendent or the responsible consultant, and the hours of starting and finishing seclusion had to be recorded in a special book. Woe betide any nurse or junior doctor who was found to have shut up a patient without higher authority or without record. One of the duties of a ward doctor in a psychiatric hospital was to do surprise checks on single rooms to see if someone was locked in unofficially. This and the other rules with the force of law had been established because of many abuses earlier uncovered.

The need for clear communication in medicine is often stressed, but of all aspects of medical communication probably the least attention is given to that between doctors themselves. The structure of the NHS and the mode of referral from general practitioners (GPs) to specialists mean that the quality of communication between GP and specialist has a strong influence on the way patients are managed and the standard of the care provided. Although it might seem preferable that contact between doctors should be on a face to face basis, this is often not possible. By far the most common mode of communication between GP and specialist is the letter.

In November 1980, two men, Mackenny and Pinfold, were convicted at the Old Bailey on several counts of murder which were of a particularly callous and brutal nature. They were sentenced to life imprisonment. In the preceding December (1979) another man, Childs, had pleaded guilty to all the murders with which Mackenny and Pinfold had been charged, and which he alleged had been carried out with them together. He turned Queen's evidence, and it was his testimony that was crucial and central to the Prosecution's case against Mackenny and Pinfold.

About 200 people gathered at King's College, Cambridge. 26–28 March, for a joint Conference on Education and Training in Psychiatry and aspects of Recruitment, sponsored by the Associations of University Teachers of Psychiatry, and of Psychiatrists in Training (AUTP and APIT) and the Royal College of Psychiatrists—a follow-on to the famous Oxford conference of 1970 (Russell and Walton). The sun shone, the daffodils glowed against the smooth green lawns, the Cam drifted beneath weeping willows, and everyone was in high spirits for the first discussion.

The development of more rotational training schemes in psychiatry for registrars and senior registrars is introducing more trainees to mental handicap. Generally, however, mental handicap is not regarded by the trainees as the most interesting or highly-prized assignment; because of the nature of the patients, the long-stay hospitals involved and unfamiliarity with its problems, mental handicap lacks the appeal of some other subspecialties in psychiatry.