Alastair Macdonald is Professor of Old Age Psychiatry at Guy's, King's and St Thomas's Schools of Medicine, Dentistry and Biomedical Sciences in London, UK. Forced to teach psychopathology to psychiatric trainees at the Maudsley in 1980, he found he quite liked it, and has carried on teaching it, in groups and individually, ever since.

Owen Box is Specialist Registrar in Old Age Pyschiatry on the GKT/South Thames East Specialist Training Scheme in the UK. His interest in psychopathology reconciles his interest in neuroscience, the philosophy of mind, and the bizarre in general.

Franrer is Consultant in General Adult Psychiatry in the Brent, Kensington, Chelsea and Westminster NHS Trust in London, UK. She has always been interested in the ways in which patients describe and make sense of their abnormal experiences, particularly psychotic phenomena, the core of serious mental illness.