Ladies and Gentlemen,—I have to acknowledge with grateful appreciation the honour you have done me in electing me to the Presidency of this Section.

I recall that my immediate predecessor, in his learned address from this chair, deplored the slow progress of psychiatry in the last half century. He stressed the necessity for intensive research in many directions. As I listened to him I felt that there was one supreme need in psychiatry, and that need was the co-ordination of biological and psychological views. As it seems to me, we have an increasing volume of research proceeding on these two lines, yet the lines never seem to meet. The psychologists pour out an incessant stream of literature, equalled only by the joint efforts of histologists, biochemists, neurologists and the rest. But what psychopathologist would bring himself to refer to Alzheimer cells, or what biochemist could make mention of an Œdipus complex? Yet in some of our patients—perhaps in most, if not in' all—such factors co-exist. I venture to express the hope that during this session our discussions may elaborate the leitmotif of synergic ietiology.