he necessary result and to a large extent also a cause of the
rapid growth of knowledge and technic has brought with it many
advantages, but also some special difficulties, among them (a) the
impossibility any longer of any single practitioner, unaided, to study
and treat a patient as well as he can be studied and treated by a
co-ordinated group whose special analytical studies in single domains
are adequately synthesized by a competent integrator, and (b) in the
absence of such group work, the tendency to one-sided study, partial
diagnosis, and incomplete and unsatisfactory therapy. Through the rise
of specialism, it is true, psychiatry itself has arisen and the
psychiatrist, like the skilled integrating internist, is interested in
the synthesis of the findings in all domains, for only through such
synthetic studies, such integration of the functional activities of the
whole organism, is it possible to gain a global view of the patient as a
person, to make a complete somatic, psychic, and social diagnosis, and
to plan a regimen for him that will ensure the best adjustment possible
of his internal and external relationships.[7]

Working in a diagnostic group myself as an integrating internist, I have
been much helped by the reports of personality studies made by skilful
psychiatrists; these are linked with the special reports on the several
bodily domains (cardiovascular, respiratory, haemic, dental, digestive,
urogenital, locomotor, neural, metabolic, and endocrine) in order
finally to arrive at an adequately co-ordinated and (subordinated) total
diagnosis from which the clues for an appropriate therapeutic regimen
can safely be drawn. If group practice is to grow and be successful in
this country, as I think likely, groups must see to it that psychiatry,
as well as the other medical and surgical specialties, is properly
represented in their make-up.[8] From now on, too, general practitioners
should, as Southard emphasized, be urged to be at least as familiar
with the general principles and methods of the psychiatrist as they are
with those of the gynecologist, the dermatologist, and the
paediatrist.[9] Well organized group-diagnosis and general will then help
to counteract the inhibiting influence of earlier isolated specialism
upon the appreciation of psychiatry.

This enumeration of some of the causes of the ignorance and apathy
(existent hitherto) in the general profession regarding psychiatry may
perhaps suffice