THE PEDIATRICIAN AND THE PSYCHIATRIST
RANDOLPH K. BYERS M.D.
OVER THE PAST DECADES psychiatrists have bemoaned the hostile or neglectful attitude of pediatricians toward psychiatric contributions to medical science. In large measure pediatricians defend their prejudices on the basis that medical advance has been made by the scientific method of objective observation in controlled situations, and that much of psychiatric literature has not adhered to such standards.
From the pediatric point of view psychiatric literature has displayed three major weaknesses. These are exemplified, first, by the anecdotal papers, in which individual cases illustrative of a point may be quoted as of generic value. Secondly, there are the authoritarian papers, in which a psychiatrist considers some such subject as reading difficulty or bed wetting by classification and discussion without the benefit of any objective data.
