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I BEGAN MY PSYCHIATRIC TRAINING in 1954. One of the first weekly staff conferences given by the chief of my department dealt with the sexual nature of infant behavior and its subsequent effects on character formation. During the question period, I innocently asked how we knew, since infants could not speak to us, that their behavior was indeed sexual. I was not prepared for the tirade that followed, nor do I remember all that was said, but I do vividly recall that it was frequently punctuated by the suggestion that if I could not accept the truth of the basic principles of psychoanalytic theory I knew where the door was, and was free to use it. In this way I was rather rudely introduced to the idea that perhaps all was not well in the field in which I had chosen to spend my professional life.
As you can see, I did not take the implied suggestion that perhaps surgery or internal medicine might benefit more from my