Gelineau (1880) introduced the term “narcolepsy” and suggested that it constituted a disease sui generis. A careful perusal of the literature, however, shows that the condition had been described previously. Precedence has been claimed for Bright, Thomas Willis and even for Galen! At any rate, Notkin and Jelliffe (1934) were able to unearth 270 cases of narcolepsy and allied conditions in a literature survey covering the years 1813–1931.

Cattell's basic strategy in personality research has been first to establish personality factors for each of three major types of measurement, rating (Life-Record), questionnaire (Self-Rating), and objective tests, then to compare factors from one realm with factors from another (7). A factor in any one realm is established in the first place by being replicated. As Cattell says (4, p. 291): “… a functionally unitary trait or process should nevertheless not be considered established by a pattern in a single factor analytic research, but must reappear consistently and persistently in independently rotated studies.”

It was Bleuler (1917) who introduced the conception of “schizophrenia” as a mental illness and described its characteristics. Since 1957 was the centenary of Bleuler's birth the attention of psychiatrists has been focused on the various problems and difficulties still confronting us today regarding the diagnostic, aetiological and therapeutic aspects of this disease.

The present investigation deals with the effects of two lengths of exposure time in neurotic and schizophrenic subjects, and with the relations between these effects and measures of extraversion, neuroticism and rigidity. A consideration of previous work, discussed in the following paragraphs, led to three main predictions concerning varying exposure times.

The investigation described in this paper had two aims. The first of these was to determine the effects of E.C.T. on psychomotor slowness. As has been reported elsewhere (Shapiro and Nelson, 1955), psychiatric patients of the major diagnostic categories have been found to be slower than normal subjects on psychomotor tests. In addition it has been found that such slowness is correlated with subjective estimates by psychiatrists of degree of illness. As E.C.T. is given in order to improve the clinical condition of depressed patients, it was of interest to ascertain the effect of E.C.T. upon slowness.

Psychotic patients with periodically changing symptoms offer particular opportunities for psychosomatic and metabolic studies. Following the classical work of Gjessing (1932, 1935, 1939, 1953) other authors (Ashby, 1952; Rowntree and Kay, 1952; Smith, 1954; Gunne and Gemzell, 1956; Crammer, 1957) have studied metabolic changes in periodic catatonia. Cycles of behaviour and metabolism in psychiatric patients and in patients with “periodic disease” have been reviewed by Richter (1957) who also reported on interesting experiments aimed at the induction of periodic cycles of behaviour in rats.

Despite the widespread use of chlorpromazine in psychiatric treatment during recent years and the voluminous literature on its use, there is still considerable difficulty in forecasting which patients are likely to benefit.

It is clearly advantageous to the personality theorist to know which of his measures covary and to what extent. The results of factor analyses can be useful in summarizing some of the patterns of covariation and classifying response measures. An indefinitely large number of sets of factors may equally well describe the same set of data, however, and, before any choice of one particular set of factors, dimensions, principal components, etc., can be considered as revealing basic intervening variables or constructs in a personality theory, independent evidence must be provided. It is the purpose of this paper to reveal some of the pitfalls in making such a choice by showing how concentration on one set of factors obtained by analysing a multivariate scatter can lead to a serious loss of information when applied to the analysis of group differences in the same set of data and can suggest interpretations which are at odds with the full evidence.

Psychiatrists and clinical psychologists can be classified into the Big-Endians who believe in classification and the Little-Endians who do not. Each side has its derogatory stereotype of the other. According to the Little-Endians, Big-Endians are tough-minded, cold, impersonal monsters who think about the human personality in terms which are static and rigidly structural rather than fluid and dynamic. Contrary to Swift, they love people in general and hate Tom, Dick and Harry. In the field of mental health, they believe in illnesses rather than in people and believe that these illnesses all have an as yet unknown physical cause. They are reactionaries.

Tumours of the corpus callosum (C.c.) are known to be a difficult diagnostic problem. Intellectual and mental disturbances and rapid deterioration in the course of the illness have been observed in most of these cases and are considered by many authors to indicate an involvement of this body (Lévy-Valensi, 1910; Mingazzini, 1922; Ironside and Guttmacher, 1929; Alpers and Grant, 1931; Voris and Adson, 1935; Schlesinger, 1951, Bremer et al., 1956). However, a similar picture may also occur in tumours of other sites; moreover, tumours of the C.c. tend to infiltrate the hemispheres, particularly the cingulum and the frontal lobes, and this might well account for the mental picture. A sign which seems to be more specific for damage of the C.c. is dyspraxia restricted to the left limbs in right-handed persons. Although this dyspraxia has been reported only in a small minority of cases concerned, it has not been observed in lesions other than those of the C.c.

The purpose of the present study was to evaluate the effects of hypophysectomy, the surgical removal of the pituitary gland, on the intellectual functioning of the individuals undergoing this particular form of surgery.

The discovery of chlorpromazine in the Rhône-Poulenc-Spécia laboratories in France, and the subsequent early clinical studies which were carried out in that country, for example in 1952 by Hamon et al. (5) and in 1953 by Delay and Deniker (1), eventually resulted in the enthusiastic and widespread application of this compound in the field of clinical psychiatry. Chemists and pharmacologists, in many countries, have been actively engaged during the ensuing years in the search for new compounds which might prove to be more potent therapeutic agents than chlorpromazine in the treatment of mental illness. One of the tangible manifestations of their labours is the present crop of “tranquillizers” which are being extensively used in the treatment of neurosis and psychosis. Whereas opinion may be divided with regard to the real or specific value of any one of these new drugs, few would disagree with the contention that none of them is ideal. Despite the considerable number and variety of phenothiazine derivatives and other new substances which have been developed as a result of extensive research, chlorpromazine has retained much of its original therapeutic reputation, in open competition with its rivals, down the years, and is still probably the most widely used tranquillizer today. This would seem to imply that no outstanding advance has been made since the early days of the new biochemical era in psychiatry. Valuable knowledge may have been obtained as a result of the application of scientific theory and empirical methods in this field, but in terms of effective therapeutic agents the results have been meagre, with the accent on quantity rather than quality. Nevertheless, a continued search is justifiable, and any new compound which holds forth promise must be put to a clinical test if final success is to be assured and if valuable therapeutic potential is not to be summarily dismissed or heedlessly cast aside.

In the course of time the term “porencephaly” has come to mean a condition characterized by any large circumscribed defect in the substance of the brain. Because of the unmyelinated state of the centrum semiovale in early life traumatic, vascular, anoxic or infective processes are likely to lead to a much more massive resorption of the tissues than occurs in the adult. Parts of the wall of the hemisphere may be converted into a semi-translucent membrane separating the lateral ventricle from the sub-arachnoid space. This thin sheet of neuroglial tissue usually represents the residual stretched out molecular layer of the cortex, and is a finding common to many varieties of infantile and foetal encephalomalacia (Wolf and Cowan, 1956).

My first duty is to thank you for having elected me President of this Section. I am conscious that this is one of the greatest honours which can come to a psychiatrist and I shall do my very best, within my limitations, to prove worthy of it. It is customary for the presidential address to deal with a topical problem of common concern, and one on which the President can speak with authority based on personal experience. I have chosen to talk about the teaching of psychiatry. I have called my address “Reflections” in order to make it clear that I cannot offer you more than some personal observations on a subject on which I feel deeply.

Measurement of the residual abilities in patients suffering from senile dementia is difficult to carry out with the present techniques which, having been standardized on younger people, tend to miss many of the characteristics of mental decline through ageing.

The experiment to be reported in this paper stems from previous work on the block design rotation effect (Shapiro, 2, 3, 4; Yates, 9, 10; Williams, Lubin et al., 7). As is well known, the block design test in its various forms: Kohs, Wechsler and Goldstein Scheerer, requires the subject to reproduce, with one-inch multi-coloured cubes, a series of abstract designs. It has been reported by a number of observers that subjects sometimes leave their reproductions in a rotated position, although otherwise the designs have been correctly reproduced.

Psychoticism, neuroticism, and extraversion are the dimensions of personality resulting from the statistical analysis of a number of psychological tests. Those working in this field state that the “isolation of three main dimensions—neuroticism, psychoticism, extraversion—may be said to have been accomplished at a reasonably high level of confidence” (Eysenck, 1952, p. 293). It has been stated also that these dimensions are relatively independent of one another and all independent of intelligence. In developing the dimensional picture of personality, tests which discriminated between a group of neurotic patients and a group of normals were found to inter-correlate positively and to generate a factor of neuroticism. Similarly tests were developed which distinguished between psychotic patients and normals, and between extraverts and introverts. To the writers' knowledge however there is no study available which applies the tests for all four dimensions to the same group of people. The four orthogonal dimensions should be identifiable, and would confirm the dimensional theory.

It is interesting to reflect that it is 70 years since Charcot delivered his lectures on Hysteria at the Salpêtriére, 60 years since Freud and Breuer published their Studies in Hysteria and 50 years almost to the day that Pierre Janet was invited to lecture on the same subject at Harvard University. In that period—from Charcot to Janet—almost everything was said that could be said of this disease. So much so that we have entered into a sort of post-Galenic period in which all subsequent authors repeat—more briefly and less accurately—all that was said with such brilliance by this eminent triumvirate. What may be said that is new, really fresh? What researches of importance have been carried out in recent years that must today be reported, what up-to-date views on aetiology and treatment? It is humbling to admit that there are precious few. True there have been many contributions to other branches of psychiatry but it seems to me that the situation of the hysterical patient today is very much as it was when his grandparents and great-grandparents submitted themselves to the awesome scrutiny of a full neuro-psychiatric investigation.

Gjessing has taken a leading part in the clinical investigation of mental illness during the past twenty-five years. We believe it would be in accordance with his wishes that, in presenting a profile to mark the occasion of his seventieth birthday, we should choose to describe Gjessing's research interests and scientific achievements rather than his personal qualities.

Hydroxyzine hydrochloride (Atarax, UCB 4492) is a tranquillizer which has attracted much interest in the United States, where it has undergone a series of clinical trials with encouraging results. In order to test the claims of American investigators a trial of hydroxyzine was made on a group of psychotic and psychoneurotic patients in a large mental hospital. The effectiveness of hydroxyzine in controlling the tobacco habit was also tested by using volunteer nurses at the hospital. Their observations provided useful information on the subjective action and side effects of the drug. A small number of young children attending a local child guidance clinic were also included in the clinical trial.