When Critical Issues in Psychiatry was conceived, there were several sub- jects I considered to be of crucial importance in a series devoted to residents and clinicians in psychiatry, as well as to other mental health professionals. Of prominence was the pressing need for an in-depth and scholarly exam- ination of the interface between medicine and psychiatry. I had been amazed to find that not a single book, to my mind, adequately addressed the psy- chological symptoms and manifestations of both common and rare medical illness. It seemed to me that there was a need for a work which would...