The psychiatric tutors in the South West Thames Region recently got it into their heads that as no one had ever taught them anything about how to teach it was high time they explored the possibilities. This idea, backed by Professor Dick, the Postgraduate Dean, roughly coincided with the appointment of John Heron as Assistant Director of Medical Education to the Postgraduate Federation. He has been known for years, while working at Surrey University, as an advanced educationalist alarmingly inclined to the use of encounter group methods. Undaunted, the tutors sent out a reconnaissance party, then digested a provisional programme in the form of a contract which talked of facilitative and cognitive learning, the need to study the relationship between teacher and taught, to forego the idea that teachers are born and not made, to accept that techniques of teaching do not take you far unless the relationships are right, and hence the need for group experience and some personal disclosure.