Response to ‘The Flight of the Wild Goose: The Psychiatrist as a Leader’

I was impressed by the poetic quality of Dr Janice Wilson's discourse on leadership [1] in which she cites flying geese formations of leaders. Sadly, her thoughts about our future as psychiatrists and leaders remind me more of cooked goose or formations of dead ducks.

Thanks to the passive ineptitude of our leaders typified by the era of Harry Bailey, we were led like lemmings over a precipice of public loss of confidence, ridicule and humiliation.

Now our ‘leaders’ would lead psychiatrists in the direction of ‘supervising’ consultants. In other words, abrogate direct clinical work with patients, leaving it to psychologists, social workers and others. This will constitute the greatest betrayal of our psychiatric profession, because as sure as goose liver pate we will no longer have a profession after the ‘medical’ component is treated by ‘neurologists et alii’ and the psychological component by the other disciplines, ever ready to devour the remaining carcass of psychiatry.

Passivity and masochism within our leaders seems to be part of our territory. I know of no other medical discipline which has been so dismembered of its constituent parts. Should our leaders propel us in the direction of self-destruction, let us be honest with our medical graduates and start training directly as neurologists.

I suggest a new flying formation needs retake the skies, namely a triangular formation of eagles with the base in the front recapturing the lost domains, namely drug and alcohol, eating disorders, behavioural disturbances, cultural and social problems and others, and the apex of the triangle at the rear relegated to the abdicators (the geese).