Response by Lawrence S. Cubie

It is not possible to summarize and answer these discussions fully. To do this would take more time and space than is available. Therefore I will touch on only those points which are of special interest to me.

I feel encouraged by the fact that of the eight discussants, four tend on the whole to support changes such as those which I suggest, in each case with some helpful and thoughtful reservations. Three are strongly opposed to these recommendations, although even these find many issues on which they agree with me. One discussant is so balanced that I cannot in fairness say that he is pro or con. This is a higher level of agreement than would have existed even a few years ago. Some disagreements seem to be natural reactions to my over-emphatic mode of expression. Some disagreements are based on a misunderstanding either of the reason why I recommend a change, or of its precise nature. To unravel this would require my restating their position, restating my own, indicating the discrepancy and then correcting it. I fear that four sentences of correction for each misunderstanding are too many. Let me therefore be more general.

My suggestions are in two parts: one has to do with the sequence of training and the other with the question whether the time has come for the medical profession to take over responsibility for training a new subdiscipline, i.e., for training non-medical behavioral scientists for psychodiagnosis and psychotherapy, with a special form of licensure for practice. I have argued in favor of this development for a long time, although I had started from the opposite conviction. I wonder if it is significant that this whole issue receives far less attention from

the discussants than does my more recent suggestion that the sequence of training should be reversed. Many ancient arguments are not even mentioned; such as the fear that the nonmedical psychodiagnostician and psychotherapist might overlook an organic process. Can it be that the temper of the t