For some years my colleagues and I have been teaching counselling skills to undergraduate medical students and to postgraduate trainees in medicine, social work, nursing, clinical psychology and occupational therapy. We started teaching these skills to postgraduates (particularly family planning clinic doctors and nurses) at the request of the Family Planning Training committee of the West Midlands Regional Health Authority. At first we concentrated on teaching simple psychosexual counselling skills but latterly, as a result of consumer demand, we have extended the number of topics. We have also begun to apply the lessons we have learnt in postgraduate teaching to the teaching of medical undergraduates.