The factors investigated here pertain to the life styles and academic experiences of the subjects as studied in two classes of a medical school. Idiosyncratic or unconscious motivation was not studied. The students who subsequently entered psychiatric residency training fell into two distinct groups. Group I found in psychiatry a continuation of their philosophical, psychological, and humanitarian intellectual ideals which they felt was absent in their other preclinical studies. Often they found preclinical medicine boring or distasteful. But even in their clinical psychiatric experience they were more interested in intellectual psychology than in the therapeutic goals. Group II had a much more pragmatic and broadly humanitarian outlook. Their ideal was the treating and healing physician, and half of this group found its way to other fields of medicine. In a medical school where general practice is out of fashion, many turn to psychiatry. Their interest is more therapeutic and they will probably be more eclectic in their approach.