There are almost as many explanations for psychiatric disorders as there are patients with them. Each explanation is intriguing, some of them are systematic, all of them have intellectually powerful champions. Yet their very multitude is a scandal. It provokes the professionally debilitating challenge: Why does every psychiatric explanation satisfy some people and not others? Recently this question has received a simple answer. We cannot satisfactorily explain that which we lack the skill to describe. To develop the fundamental skill a student must see many patients under the direction of an...