A survey is provided of the various attempts which have been advanced to classify psychotropic drugs. The unsatisfactory nature of the schemata and the underlying reasons for this are discussed. The possible use of ‘facet analysis’ to develop a classificatory system is suggested.

Two double-blind experiments are reported in which different doses of diphenylhydantoin were compared with placebo. Drug effects on tests, psychophysiological measures, and self-ratings of mood were studied in normal subjects and related to plasma levels of the drug and psychasthenic personality traits. Significant sedative effects were obtained in some self-rating variables. The combined effect in the objective psychological tests was significantly correlated (rank) to the plasma level in the higher dose experiment.

Material with pleasurable affective connotations has been found to be better recalled to a significant extent than material with unpleasant connotations in healthy volunteer subjects. Age, neuroticism and extraversion, but not sex, have proved to be associated with the variability which different subjects show in this regard. The implications of these results are discussed in relation to various theoretical constructs which seek to explain the interaction between personality variables and cognitive performance.

Eleven psychiatric patients with Klinefelter's syndrome are described and compared with nine patients in whom psychiatric illness was associated with hypogonadism due to causes other than chromosomal abnormality. The possible role of endocrine factors in the psychopathology of Klinefelter's syndrome is discussed in the light of the clinical and physical findings.

During a psychiatric survey in Sarawak, subjects demonstrating latah were examined separately, both clinically and with a questionnaire. Latah occurred only in females, mainly Malays, occasionally Ibans, and never Chinese. Fifty latah subjects were examined, seven were firmly diagnosed as being mentally ill, and another 13 demonstrated mild psychiatric disorders. Dream content indicated an overt sexual component.

The study aims to determine (1) the extent to which parental social class influences the incidence of early parent death; (2) the effect of parental social class on the outcome of early parent death, in terms of vulnerability to adult mental illness; (3) whether early parent death affects the age of terminating full-time education; and (4) whether early bereaved subjects lag behind their non-bereaved contemporaries in social class status. The study shows that parental social class does influence the outcome of early parent death and that early bereaved subjects do lag behind in social class status.

Two adjacent areas of Greater London are compared to determine their respective use of psychiatric beds of different types. The one-day census is shown accurately to reflect average bed use in any year. The areas and hospitals involved employed different community and social work policies. A difference emerges in the use of long stay beds. A community-based social work service appears to make little impact on the use of short stay beds, and appears less successful than a hospital-related service in preventing hospital chronicity. Community social work services may identify psychogeriatric patients requiring hospital admission.

Patterns of child guidance referral and of juvenile delinquency in a metropolitan borough were examined in relation to neighbourhood and school. The two sets of rates showed similar trends among 20 electoral wards, both being related to socioeconomic indices. They also varied widely among the 100 schools in the borough, being higher for schools of low privilege in the educational system. The school rates appeared to vary independently of neighbourhood effects.

What sort of animal is a ‘research unit’ supposed to be? At one extreme it can see itself as a collection of workers each pursuing his own bent, and who just happen to lodge in the same building. The opposite would be a unit dedicated to rigidly programmed research.