A questionnaire distributed to the 1,033 medical students who matched
into postgraduate year 1 psychiatric positions in 1982 and 1983 obtained
data on personal characteristics, career plans before entering medical
school, future career plans, attitudes toward personal psychotherapy, and
plans for psychotherapy or psychoanalysis during residency. The results for
the 579 residents (56%) who responded are reported. The authors explore
differences and similarities between respondents who planned to go into
general or child psychiatry as they began general psychiatric residency
training. They found two clusters of prospective child psychiatrists: one
psychoanalytically oriented and the other eclectically oriented. The
authors discuss the implications of this clustering.
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