The main contention of this paper is that any pre-clinical course in psychology should ground the medical student in the principles of medical psychology and that a pre-clinical course in normal psychology is useless, irrelevant, and even potentially detrimental.

Medical psychology 'is a body of psychological knowledge based originally on the study of the neuroses, but extended later to include psychotic, characterological and asocial manifestations. From this body of knowledge methods of clinical diagnosis, prognosis and treatment have been simultaneously evolved and conclusions reached which constitute theories of mental structure and function. The most elaborate of these theoretical systems goes by the name of psycho-analytical "meta psychology". Further, this body of knowledge has been subjected to the test of application to so-called "normal" structure and function, and in