It did not take me long to find that I belonged to the ‘marginal’ section of Norwegian society. Both as foreigner and psychiatrist I seemed to be a threat. Nevertheless it is from society's marginal groups that healers have often come (Miller, 1987) and so I continue to work with a necessary and natural cultural naivety and therapeutic optimism! I present here an overview and critique of the services provided for children in Oslo from the privileged position of a migrant. The high staffing levels and the profile of child and adolescent psychiatry appear to have exaggerated the ‘psychologising’ of problems and a search for therapy. These have the potential to inflame both interprofessional conflicts and interdisciplinary conflicts because of the emphasis on therapeutic skills to the relative exclusion of a relevant knowledge base.