One of the fascinations of psychiatry is that it is amenable to many different approaches. In seeking to account for mental disorder, for example, it is pos sible to explore the meaning and significance of symptoms in the psychody namic sense, to examine the social determinants of illness, or to adopt an es sentially biological viewpoint in investigating links between physiological and psychological dysfunction .. As a clinical discipline it may be practiced in the community, in the specialized clinic or hospital, or shoulder-to-shoulder with other medical practitioners in the general...