STUDIES of the human family have abounded in the past decade. Many aspects of family life have been and are being examined and investigated by a number of professional disciplines in different family research and training oriented centers throughout the country and world. During six years of working as a psychiatric caseworker on a milieu-oriented inpatient service in a university psychiatric hospital, I have become very interested in the evolution of my professional role from a primarily service-oriented one to a role which has, as its main focus, teaching and supervision. More specifically, I am talking about the teaching of first-year residents in psychiatry about families of hospitalized emotionally ill patients. I have spent considerable time looking at the questions, "what to teach" and "how to teach it," and have come to feel of primary importance, before these questions can be answered, are