Is this the same Paul Garner?
Psychotherapy: experience as a medical student
http://europepmc.org/backend/ptpmcrender.fcgi?accid=PMC1504610&blobtype=pdf
People should read this imo. Amongst the pretentious narrative are a deferential belief in psychosomatic illness, a strong dilineation between the mind and body and claim the pyschotherapy has never hurt anyone along with a discussion of transference and some strange "examples" of psychosomatic illness. It's frankly bizarre.
I believe this is indeed the Paul A Garner from Liverpool. Reading it I just assumed it was him because it mentions University College Hospital at a time he was a student and UCL. It was written in 1981 and says its a junior doctor for 15 months.
There is a blurb at the bottom of the first page that seems to reference another Paul Garner, and the author describes himself as a surgical house surgeon (which I did not know he was).
However, it shows under PA Garner's research in ResearchGate, references working at Ninewells (which is on his ORCID Employment history). ResearchGate pinged some similar articles, all to the BMJ "personal papers". Only one was available but PA Garner wrote several to the bmj personal papers from 81-85.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/304886557_Personal_View
This is definitely Paul A Garner, he was in Papa New Guinea at the same time, and even starts another paper in the same way he does this one. This account confirms he wrote the original personal paper as he describes it verbatim as a "psychology scheme" over 18-months at UCH. Naturally, the reference to transference has returned.
What struck me was how important and core this experience was to him, especially given in the context of his role now. He says he had no training in tropical disease and then quickly goes on to say...
a background in tropical diseases was less important than an ability to understand the patient and the culture. Curiously, I found myself using experiences from the psychotherapy scheme for medical students at University College Hospital, London.
He later says it was the single most important part of his undergrad curriculum. PA Garner writes in a strikingly similar style in more frequent work when referencing Papa New Guinea.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1113759/
I think this all sheds light on why in the papers on Tropical Disease, Paul is on non-stop about evidence based medicine, but why psychotherapy and psychosomatism are a blind spot to him,
In his own words,
health professionals to ask fundamental questions about the care we provide and of our responsibility to examine evidence using scientific methods.
Something he has not done.
Practitioners work in good faith, but if they implement practices or policies that are ineffective they waste resources and may harm people.
Something he risked with his BBC appearance because he was too blind to the lack of scientific method in his own anecdote.