Here surely is the scriptural authority for the existence of forensic psychiatry, even though one interpretation of the text could be that medical care is a fate literally worse than death. In fact, however, forensic psychiatry grew up largely from the efforts of lawyers to use medical expertise to save their clients from the execution of a death sentence, and their efforts antedate the historic trial of Hadfield by many years, indeed centuries.

Interest in the application of hypnosis to clinical psychiatry has increased recently in this country. In the 1950s it had been recommended (Subcommittee of the Psychological Medicine Group, 1955) that experience of the techniques of hypnosis should be available to all medical undergraduates and to postgraduate trainees in certain specialties, including psychiatry. Such a training would lead to an awareness of the practical use and limitations of hypnosis, and would also allow an informed and rational decision to be made about its employment in the practice of medicine. Despite this recommendation, a review twenty years later (Scott, 1978) showed that teaching of hypnosis was a rare feature of medical training.

Faced with recruitment difficulties, financial stringency, changing public needs and important advances in clinical and academic psychiatry, the time is ripe for a re-evaluation of the education and training of psychiatrists and factors influencing recruitment to psychiatry. The Conference, held in Cambridge in March, providing a forum for the discussion of such issues involving the Royal College of Psychiatrists, the AUTP and APIT, was an imaginative concept which deserved widespread support within the specialty. However, the breadth of the conception meant that for some organizers and participants it was a conference on training, and for others it was mainly concerned with recruitment.

The Working Party appointed to review the form, content and value of the MRCPsych examination is about to discharge its awesome brief. Professor Cawley, the Chairman, presented a preliminary report to the Education Committee on 14 September 1982. It is expected that the final Report will be submitted to the Court of Electors sometime in 1983. The recommendations will be implemented only after the current cohort of candidates has been allowed to complete their examination under the old regulations.