The Report of the Professions Joint Working Party (1978) raises a number of questions. The first of these springs from the composition of the Working Party. Five of the organizations are overtly in business to train and certify practitioners of psychotherapy along psychodynamic lines, but though the Report speaks collectively of ‘seven organizations representing practitioners of psychotherapy’ neither the British Association for Behaviour Psychotherapy nor the Royal College of Psychiatrists can be categorized in the same way. Each of these organizations raises issues of a different order.

Medical audit is currently the subject of much discussion, but the breadth and intensity of the debate should not obscure the idea of medical audit as ‘basically a process of self-education’ (Shaw, 1980a). The requirements for audit have been summarized as information, resources and willingness to participate (Shaw, 1980b). I have attempted to devise a simple scheme for self-audit in a general psychiatric setting. The acquisition of appropriate information within the resources of ordinary clinical practice was my aim.

The Association for Research in Nervous and Mental Disease will hold its annual meeting on 5 and 6 December, 1980 at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in New York City. The meeting will be devoted to the ‘Genetics of Neurological and Psychiatric Disorders’. Information: Secretary-Treasurer of the ARNMD, Bernard Cohen, Mount Sinai School of Medicine, l Gustave Levy Place, NY 10029, USA.