Do our patients have loves, hates, hopes, fears, passions, fantasies, beliefs, hobbies, sports? A steady reader of the Journal would have no hint that they ever had. Consequently, if the new Editor wonders what improvements he might contribute, I suggest a more suitable name, the British Mausoleum of Psychiatry, unless there be changes in the Journal far more radical than in name.

Dr Williams (Reference Williams2004) urges him to bring back the case report instead of monotonously publishing academic research, the gains that offers to clinical practice being ‘doubtful’, he says. Doubtful is the wrong word – the research is in volumes; the gains in practice are few and seldom visible. Meanwhile, a statistical analysis of 20 different ways of scratching one's bum is more likely to be published in the Journal than an interesting case report.

Certainly bring back case reports, but also bring back the human being centre stage – the patients; families; psychiatrists; nurses; art, movement, group, and other psychological therapists; the whole therapeutic community, and people's lives. After all, why not? What else is the day-to-day practice of psychiatry about?