GUIDE TO INTERVIEWING AND CLINICAL PERSONALITY STUDY

TLDR

Human psychobiology, central to adaptive behavior, underlies all medicine, and the interview is the primary psychiatric procedure. The goal of psychiatric training is to equip physicians to engage the psychobiologic unit, learn the patient’s chief complaint, and acquire interviewing skills through experience, reflection, and discussion. Psychiatric interviewing is taught by experiential learning, reflective discussion, and targeted inquiry to identify the noxious agent, with aims evolving after the initial assessment.

Abstract

<h3>LEARNING ABOUT THE PATIENT'S ATTITUDES</h3> Human psychobiology, which is concerned with the integrated adaptive behavior of the human being, is of major importance in all fields of medicine. It is a fundamental purpose of psychiatric instruction and training to help the physician learn how to deal with the psychobiologic unit—the person—in action. The primary technical psychiatric procedure is the interview between the physician and the patient. The aims and methods of psychiatric interviewing can be learned thoroughly only by experience, reflection and discussion with teachers, but a somewhat detailed discussion of the matter is offered here for preliminary guidance. The universal aim of the physician at the beginning of the first interview with the patient in any case is to learn about the presenting problem, or chief complaint. Thereafter, aims diverge somewhat. One line of inquiry tries to answer the questions, "What noxious agent causes this patient to be ill;