An outline of postgraduate training in general psychiatry in the U.K. is given, together with brief details of how this training is organized and supervised. Four postal surveys of senior psychiatrists who recently completed training have revealed much dissatisfaction with standards of supervised experience, particularly special forms of psychotherapy, addiction, work in the community, mental handicap, forensic psychiatry, research, psychogeriatrics, work with long stay patients, child psychiatry and epidemiology. Those who gained most of their experience at University Hospitals and the Institute of Psychiatry have expressed higher levels of satisfaction than those who had spent most of their training period in peripheral psychiatric hospitals. The former group performed better in the membership examination of the Royal College of Psychiatrists. There are indications that the inspection and approval visits of the Royal College of Psychiatrists and of the Joint Committee of Higher Psychiatric Training are beginning to raise the general level of training.