Psychiatry might be seen as a three dimensional space, with two of its dimensions caricatured in the title. Of the first, ‘phenomenology’ stands for scientific rigour, the medical view favouring diagnosis based on analytical activity, followed by construction of syndromes from individual symptoms/measures. The ‘price of beans’ stands for materials; the economics of care in the post Griffiths era, value for money, hospital closures, massive reorganisation and the negative implications for service users.