There has been relatively little work in psychology and psychiatry in which use has been made of the pupillary reaction to light and darkness; most of the work that has been done has been connected with the relatively slow reactions found in schizophrenia. This neglect is difficult to understand in view of the fact that this reaction and the autonomic innervation determining it are relatively well understood and do not present the same experimental and theoretical difficulties as the psychogalvanic reflex which is very much more widely used (Martin, 1960). In the present study, which forms part of a larger series, an attempt was made to investigate the influence of drugs on the reactivity of the pupil to changes in light stimulation.

The history of mediaeval medicine shows clearly that the decline of a science takes place whenever the tendency to theorize overruns the desire to observe and measure. Psychiatry with its shorter medical history has suffered from this tendency until fairly recent times. Even now, it is possible to estimate the efficiency of a nation's psychiatric progress by comparing the amount of factual research with the emphasis placed on unproven theoretical concepts in clinical practice.

Culture in its anthropological sense has been described as “a configuration of learned behaviour and results of behaviour whose component elements are shared and transmitted by members of a particular society” (Linton, 1936); in other words, a way of life. It has long been understood that more than one type of culture may be found in any one society. All societies are stratified and in an industrial society people of different levels have different ways of life. These are subcultures.

There are, in the main, two principal methods of biological research into the problem of causation of schizophrenia. In the first, or direct method, studies are made of the body fluids and of the metabolism of schizophrenics in the hope of turning up some toxic factor or error of metabolism. Such studies are currently under way in a number of centres and, although many claims as to positive findings have been made, none of these has as yet been substantiated and the majority have actually been refuted by subsequent analysis. These studies have been directed by two main hypotheses of the causation of the illness described in a previous communication (14). Now it is clear that one great difficulty entailed in using this approach is that our basic knowledge of neuro-chemistry and neuropharmacology is still extremely limited. The very complexity of the neurochemical processes of the brain would seem to offer a large number of possible loci of metabolic disturbance, any of which might be responsible for the onset of schizophrenia. Thus, we can say that the probable results of all such investigations at present will be purely negative, i.e. we will discover that the given metabolism of injected adrenaline, serotonin, etc., is normal in the illness. Thus, the second, or indirect, method becomes increasingly important. This consists of two parts. The first is implied merely by the general statement that the advance of neurochemistry and neuropharmacology may disclose other areas of function in which specific hypotheses of the causation of the illness may be constructed. The second consists of a detailed study of the precise mode of action of known psychotomimetic agents. Knowledge of the mode of action of mescaline and LSD-25 in detail would pinpoint areas for research in the metabolism of schizophrenics. Unfortunately, however, very little seems to be known at present of the mode of action of these drugs. Most of the work that has been done has been carried out on LSD-25 (see e.g. the annotated bibliography put out by Sandoz Inc., Hanover, New Jersey, 1958). However, the important field of the structure-activity relationships (SAR) of mescaline seems to have been strangely neglected. The research programme here would include the synthesis of a number of analogues of mescaline according to systematic principles to determine the role the details of its molecular structure play in the mode of action. These analogues would be subjected to a number of tests—psychopharmacological, neurophysiological and neurochemical—comparison between the results of which would give important information not only of the SAR of mescaline but also of the details of its mode of action and the interrelationships between behavioural, neurophysiological and neurochemical factors involved that would help us explain the former effects in terms of the latter, which reduction is the main aim of biological science. The present paper reviews the little that is known at present about the SAR of mescaline and then reports some new studies in the psychopharmacology of this field.

The phenomena of “spirit-communication” in mediumistic trance, of “spirit-possession” and of “demonopathy” are closely related, and known to both East and West. Clinical psychiatrists, however, have taken little interest in them, with the exception of some French and a few Spanish authors. These conditions nevertheless do present themselves to the psychiatrist in many countries and it is misconceived to think that they are to be found only in outlandish cultures, the preserve of the field worker in ethnology. It is true that M. J. Herskovits (1951, 1958) has argued that certain kinds of behaviour categorized in terms of culture-bound concepts cannot be applied to other societies, so that African and Afro-American spirit possession, for example, cannot be compared with apparently similar “psychopathological seizures” in the West. No doubt such behaviour receives different cultural definitions according to their respective backgrounds, but this does not exclude the possibility of a specific psychological mechanism being common to them all.

In their evidence to the recent Royal Commission on the Law Relating to Mental Illness and Mental Deficiency the R.M.P.A. stated the problem of the psychopath in terms of delinquent or otherwise anti-social behaviour. After eliminating cases where such behaviour resulted from well-recognized forms of mental illness or defect, from psychoneurosis or organic disease or injury, their Memorandum went on to say that there remained a group of patients “whose daily behaviour shows a want of social responsibility and of consideration for others, of prudence and foresight and of ability to act in their own best interests. Their persistent anti-social mode of conduct may include inefficiency and lack of interest in any form of occupation; pathological lying, swindling and slandering; alcoholism and drug addiction, sexual offences, and violent actions with little motivation and an entire absence of self-restraint, which may go as far as homicide. Punishment, or the threat of punishment, influences their behaviour only momentarily and its more lasting effect is to intensify their vindictiveness and anti-social attitude.”

In this paper we have tried to demonstrate some of the ways in which social selection operates in the ascertainment of dull and subnormal children. In England backward children, by the terms of the Education Act of 1944, may be referred by their teachers for medical examination and “ascertained” as educationally subnormal, thereby qualifying for special educational treatment. Alternatively, they may be classed as mental defectives (or now, severely subnormal) and excluded from the schools altogether.

In a previous paper in this series Eysenck, Holland and Trouton (1957) showed that the seen after-effects resulting from stimulation by means of a rotating spiral were increased very little by a stimulant drug and decreased significantly by a depressant drug. At that time there was little evidence that these aftereffects were in fact correlated, as the theory demanded, with extraversion and introversion. Since then two separate experiments dealing with normal and neurotic subjects respectively produced very strong evidence in favour of this hypothesis (Eysenck, 1960), and it seemed desirable to repeat the experiment in order to discover whether the failure of the stimulant drug in the first experiment to produce very positive results was merely a chance effect or was in fact a genuine failure of the theory.

Figural after-effects are the observable results of a hypothetical process of satiation or inhibition which accompanies and follows the passage of neural currents consequent upon stimulation. Most of the work in this field has been on figural after-effects affecting contours. In this work an inspection figure is fixated for a fairly lengthy period of time; this is then withdrawn and two test figures are substituted. One of these test figures falls within the same area as the inspection figure while the other is well removed from this area. Differences in size between the two figures which are objectively equal are usually observed and are supposed to be a consequence of satiation set up by the inspection figure (McEwen, 1958).

This paper deals with some effects of family and culture on intelligence, as studied in a sample of 50 young adults who had been ascertained as educationally subnormal at school.

Surgical removal of the temporal lobe is becoming an established therapeutic procedure in the treatment of focal epilepsy arising in one or other of the temporal lobes and good results in the control of otherwise intractable seizures have been widely reported (e.g. Falconer et al., 5; Picaza and Guma, 18). Indeed, with increasing experience of anterior temporal lobectomy and delineation of the indications for operation, even greater success may be anticipated (Hill, 9; Rasmussen and Jasper, 19).

Medical research is simpler and generally more productive when it becomes possible to use models. This experimental method is available to psychiatrists who find that certain chemicals called hallucinogens (13) produce in subjects experiences which resemble those described by patients who now have schizophrenia or by those who have recovered. Lewin (19), Kluver (18) and Stockings (31) suggested many years ago that these compounds could be used in this way. However, the differences between these model experiences and schizophrenia rather than their similarities impressed many leading psychiatrists. Thus Bleuler (4) as late as 1956 maintained that lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD-25) produced a toxic delirium and therefore this experience had little to offer to the students of schizophrenia. The fallacy of this argument was discussed by Osmond (23) who with Smythies (24) stressed many points of similarity between schizophrenia and the mescaline experience. The consensus today of research psychiatrists such as Rinkel (26, 27, 28, 29), Hoch (10, 11) and others is that the similarities are adequate, provided generalizations remain within the limits imposed by the data.

In the previous paper we have given a brief discussion of the reasons why figural after-effects are of interest in the study of personality and why stimulant and depressant drugs would be expected to have certain effects upon them (Eysenck and Easterbrook, 1960a). In this paper we describe an experiment using kinaesthetic figural after-effects rather than visual ones. By and large results with kinaesthetic figural after-effects have been more clear-cut and definite in relating these after-effects to personality; several studies have shown extraverts to have greater figural after-effects than introverts (Eysenck, 1957). Furthermore there is at least one study demonstrating that stimulant and depressant drugs have the predicted results upon kinaesthetic figural aftereffects (Poser, 1958). The reasons for this may be that whereas for visual experiments it is difficult to check on the subject's ability to maintain fixation, nothing comparable is required in experiments on kinaesthetic figural aftereffects. Furthermore any departure from instruction on the part of the subject can easily be checked by the experimenter. For these reasons kinaesthetic tests have very definite advantages over visual ones.

The main purpose of this paper is to report our experience in developing a psychiatric in-patient unit for adolescent boys. The Unit is known as Beech House and contains 16 beds and has been operating since January, 1959. It is a non-statutory ward and is the first treatment unit of this kind attached to a large provincial mental hospital such as St. Augustine's. Its catchment area is limited to the South-East Metropolitan region which comprises Kent and part of East Sussex. Only exceptionally are cases from outside these two counties accepted into the unit.

Despite the good results reported in recent years in many cases of chronic schizophrenia following the use of tranquillizing drugs, there remains in mental hospitals a group of chronic and often deteriorated patients who have shown a strong resistance to all forms of treatment. In many such cases disturbances of behaviour are modified and sometimes controlled by such drugs as chlorpromazine and reserpine. Nevertheless, the overall situation is far from satisfactory and the search for more effective drugs continues.

There has recently been a good deal of concern expressed in the Press, both of Nigeria and Ghana, over the high incidence of psychiatric disturbance among West African students in the United Kingdom. Whether the incidence of such disturbances is in fact greater among Africans than among other foreign students in the British Isles is not known; nor has it been determined whether the African student abroad is more prone to illness than his counterpart studying at home. Relevant to the latter question, it is clear that a high proportion of the cases seen in the psychiatric clinics both at Aro Hospital, Abeokuta and at the University College Hospital, Ibadan, are students, teachers and other “brain workers” who have never left Nigeria.

The frequency of suicide differs between communities, countries, and historical periods. Though, in individuals, personal crises and peculiarities of personality structure are important in the causation of suicide, the differences in frequency referred to above are related to differing religious and social attitudes toward suicide and particularly to the degree of the individual's integration into a stable social group. This last influence, it has been suggested, is chiefly responsible for the difference between the suicidal tendencies of urban and rural areas.

Several workers have demonstrated a relationship between anxiety and critical flicker frequency (CFF); among these are Krugman (1947), Goldstone (1955) and Friedl (1954). Unfortunately the trait of anxiety is not unidimensional, being a compound of neuroticism and introversion, so that these data might indicate a lower threshold of CFF for neurotics, or for introverts, or for both. The second of these interpretations has been tentatively adopted (Eysenck, 1957), in spite of some questionnaire evidence to the effect that thresholds are lower for extraverts (Washburn et al., 1930; Madlung, 1935; Simonson and Brozek, 1952). The main reason for not considering this additional evidence too convincing lies in the curious nature of the measures used to determine extraversion-introversion; these seem to compound introversion and neuroticism, as pointed out elsewhere (Eysenck, 1960). However, when we take into account the rather strong evidence regarding drug effects (Simonson and Brozek, 1952; Landis, 1954), which tends to show that stimulant drugs raise the threshold, while depressant drugs lower it, as well as the fact that brain injury tends to lower the threshold (Enzer et al., 1944; Halstead, 1947; Landis, 1949; Werner and Thuma, 1942), then the case against this tentative hypothesis becomes rather strong. It may be that the attempt to relate CFF to only one dimension of personality was mistaken, and that CFF is related to both neuroticism and extraversion, in the sense that low thresholds characterize the more neurotic and the more extraverted person. This hypothesis would certainly account for all the available facts better than the original hypothesis.

In several recent experiments involving motor performance (1), learning (7), immediate recall (2), expressive movement (5) and confidence in performance (3), significant relationships with a questionnaire measure of rigidity have been obtained. In view of the fact that despite a considerable amount of work no general trait of rigidity has hitherto been recognized, it was decided to clarify the reasons for the above results. Two steps are undertaken. The first step, published separately, is concerned with a systematic analysis of the experimental variables which yielded significant correlations with rigidity. In a series of investigations, the attempt is made to discover the experimental conditions necessary for a significant interaction of rigidity with test responses to occur.

The value of phenothiazine derivatives in psychiatric practice is well established, but in spite of their undoubted usefulness in certain psychiatric disorders none has proved entirely acceptable. The introduction of a new derivative that is reported to be less toxic than earlier phenothiazine derivatives and highly active in small doses merits investigation and trial.