General Principles

Abstract

As indicated in the preceding chapter the authors — clinical psychiatrists in public service with an interest in depth psychology, one holding also a degree in general psychology, the other in chemistry — entered the field of epidemiology late and almost fortuitously. From their own thinking, from the pressure of circumstantial necessities, from experience and from growing acquaintance with the literature and practitioners of their new discipline certain considerations have emerged that have guided their work throughout and thus appropriately may be presented here, as they hold for all the several studies that follow. A few seem to possess general validity over and above the special circumstances under which our work in Iran was performed, and these we shall try to articulate at the beginning.