The therapeutic optimism which accompanied widespread introduction of milieu therapy has now been tempered, but there is still little doubt that it makes a substantial contribution to the treatment of the chronic schizophrenic. Much the same has been said about drug treatment. However, Hordern and Hamilton (1963) suggested that the results obtained with phenothiazines were no better than the findings of those pioneers who introduced moral therapy over a century ago. They further claimed that reports of a beneficial drug effect came from those places where resources were most meagre. If their view is correct it may mean that drugs and certain environmental factors have a therapeutic action in common on chronic mental hospital patients. These chronic patients, who are in large part schizophrenics, usually show the symptom of volitional defect more prominently than any other single symptom. It is possible therefore that both moral therapy and drugs may be acting primarily on this symptom. The present experiments aimed at examining this proposition.