The author uses an anthropological perspective to consider how certain social conditions of training institutes, through the stresses they evoke, render trainees susceptible to the instruction of seniors. And depending on that which seniors advocate - ‘inclusive’ or ‘closed’ therapeutic adherence - trainees will be influenced in that direction as practitioners. In this sense the internalization of clinical perspectives is facilitated by certain exacting conditions of psychotherapeutic training which generate this anxiety. This argument exposes for those desiring clinical reform two sites at which it might be profitably directed: at the social conditions of the training institute which arouse susceptibilities, or else at the instruction, which, by capitalizing on such susceptibilities, inculcates particular clinical values and perspectives. He concludes that if changes are to be brought to such perspectives then it is the social conditions of the training institute that need to be altered.