Photic stimulation, the exposure of the human eye to repetitive flashes of light, has been employed in recent years in three ways; as a diagnostic, as a therapeutic, and as a research method. In each case, its use has opened new frontiers of inquiry into the borderlands of neurology and psychology.

This paper presents certain observations which stem from the testing of exploratory hypotheses with regard to an expected relationship between photic stimulation and imagery, alpha rhythm, critical flicker frequency (CFF), personality test data, overt reactions, and after-images in three major diagnostic groups: schizophrenics, organic brain damage (paretics and others), and normal individuals (no history of brain damage or emotional disorder).

Since this is a report of exploratory work, no attempt has been made to apply rigorous statistical tests nor to arrive at final conclusions. The aim is rather to stimulate further research which may employ more adequate instruments, larger groups, or different conceptual schemes.

Hurler's disease is a condition characterized essentially by mental defect, chondro-osteodystrophy, hepatosplenomegaly and corneal opacities. The complex was first noted in 1900, by John Thomson of Edinburgh who, recognizing that he was dealing with a new disease, named it after his first patient “Johnny McL—'s Disease.” Subsequent descriptions were those of Hunter (1917) and Gertrud Hurler (1919).

The frequency with which new drugs become available to the psychiatrist emphasizes the need for quantitative evaluation of their therapeutic effect. Comparable statements, scales of measurement and base-lines are required (Ref. 1–6).

Haloperidol is a comparatively new tranquillizing drug synthesized by Janssen et al. (1959). It is chemically unrelated to other drugs acting on the nervous system. It is a substituted butyrophenone whose formula is 4-fluro-4(1-[4-hydroxy-4-(4-chloro)-phenyl-piperidino]) butyrophenone.

The presenile psychoses have been the subject of intensive study in recent years. Both Alzheimer's and Pick's disease can now be regarded as well-defined clinico-pathological conditions. However, there occur cases with dementia developing in middle age or in early senium which do not fit into any of the established clinical types. A small group of cases characterized by dementia, extra-pyramidal symptoms and involvement of the spinal cord has been described by Jakob (1920) and Creutzfeldt (1920) independently. Similar cases have since been reported by Meyer (1929), Davison (1932), Jansen and Monrad-Krohn (1938), Davison and Rabiner (1940), and most recently by Jervis, Burdum and O'Neill (1942). McMenemy (1940), in a review of dementia in middle age, stated that the number of cases of that type reported in the literature did not exceed 14. Though all of them had the syndrome mentioned above in common, they varied considerably in respect of the leading symptoms. While in some the clinical picture was dominated by dementia associated with a variety of psychotic features, in others the extrapyramidal and in a few the spinal symptoms were predominant. Nothing definite is known about the etiology of that condition, though the hypothesis has been expressed that it may represent an atypical form of encephalitis. Josephy (1936) suggested that it might be a deficiency disease. No agreement has been reached on a suitable terminology. Jakob's original description of the condition as spastic pseudosclerosis has been found to be misleading. K. Wilson (1940) proposed to call it “cortico-striato-spinal degeneration.” Davison and Rabiner (1940) speak of “diffuse encephalomyelopathy.” Other authors advocated the provisional term Jakob-Creutzfeldt disease. In view of the scanty knowledge of the symptomatology and pathology of the disease, this term seems at present to be the most acceptable.

The hæmoclastic crisis is the name given by Widal and his col laborators to the vasculo-sanguinary crisis which occurs following the ingestion of milk by patients with hepatic disease and in certain anaphylactic conditions, and was originally described as a test for liver inefficiency. Its occurrence has also been noted in certain cases of psychoses and epilepsy.

In recent discussions of the subject by Curran and Mallinson (1) and by Kinberg (2), emphasis has very properly been laid on the inextricable confusion that at present prevails in the use of the term “Psychopathic Personality.” Very many attempts have been made, for instance by Henderson, Cleckley, Cheney, Levine, Bullard and others (1), to characterize a syndrome. The characteristics of the syndrome have been seen in the make-up of the personality and its social relationships. But every authority disagrees with every other, and if there is any feature in common in all the definitions that have been provided, it is a lasting, but otherwise unspecified, incapacity to build up satisfactory social relationships. The confusion has gone so far that Kinberg has suggested that the term should be dropped altogether, particularly as it promotes a fatalistic attitude in the clinician and does not dispose to enthusiasm in therapy.

The fact that intellectual effort is accompanied by an increase of muscular tonus was demonstrated by one of us in 1921 (1), the method employed being the registration, by means of a highly magnifying optical lever system, of slight displacement of a relaxed limb. It was found that those muscles which were in a state of postural tension increased in tonus during intellectual work, whilst the fully relaxed antagonists remained unaffected.

In the course of a study of families containing children of primary school age, we have collected detailed social and medical histories of the parents. In earlier papers (Ryle and Hamilton, 1962; Hamilton et al., 1962) based upon part of the population studied here, we have confirmed the reliability of the Cornell Medical Index (C.M.I.) as an indicator of neurosis. The aim of the present paper is to investigate whether social factors within a relatively homogeneous, largely working-class population, are related to neuroticism. While differences in the rate of neurosis between the social classes have often been described, interpretations of these differences are difficult because they may be due not only to variations in the rate of illness but also to differences in the mode of presentation, in symptomatology or in attitudes to medical treatment or to research enquiry. On the other hand, in studying a population such as ours, with small social class differences, the range of social factors available for measurement is reduced.

In one of the outer suburbs of Sydney, along the jagged Pacific coastline, there is a high cliff known as “The Gap” which is notorious for the frequency with which it attracts, often fatally, the person with suicidal intent. Recently a young man entered a Sydney taxi-cab and asked to be driven to an address in the street which leads to this particular area. Having settled comfortably in the front seat he announced cheerfully to the driver, “Well, this is certainly going to be my last ride!” To his apparent surprise and annoyance, his cab promptly deposited him at the nearest police-station, from where he was removed, under considerable protest, to a psychiatric hospital for observation.

Psychiatric research has long been hampered by lack of sophisticated measures of clinical events. The semantic differential is therefore a welcome new tool in the psychiatric kitbag. It was developed by Osgood and his associates (1957), and can essentially be regarded as a limited association technique which readily taps aspects of meaning and attitude. It is adaptable to a great variety of problems, while remaining easy to give and score. Provided one wishes to measure meaning or attitude, and can link one's hypotheses tightly to the outcome of scores on certain concepts and scales, the technique can be extremely valuable. In order to contrast psychiatric disorders one can build up different patterns of meaning for each disorder on concepts crucial to the theories being tested. We can thus obtain a kind of semantic geography for a small region of function which aids our understanding of the disorder in question.

Definite conclusions about the origin of schizophrenia concerning hereditary as well as psychosocial factors can be obtained when different forms of schizophrenia are investigated separately.

Clinical data on 30 Korean patients of the authors with Gilles de la Tourettes's syndrome are described, as well as data on seven other Korean cases from the literature. The overall characteristics and EEG findings were similar to those of Western patients, but there were fewer obsessive-compulsive behaviour problems, and family histories were less often positive.

In a group of British-born primiparous women, admission of a separation experience from parents in childhood was found to be associated with unmarried status, teenage pregnancy, having had psychiatric treatment, housing problems and a high score on a ‘Malaise’ inventory. Within the separated group the unmarried and teenage status were associated only with separations occurring in the context of a disrupted childhood, but were not related to the age of the separations. The Malaise score, however, was raised both for disrupted separations and for those occurring below the age of 5. It is noted that the factors associated with the separation in the mothers are those which have been found to be more common in the mothers of children with behaviour disorders.

The development of the non-invasive technique of computerised tomography (CT) in the mid-1970s revolutionised the clinician's ability to visualise brain structures in vivo. The main use of the CT scan was to exclude intracranial mass lesions such as cerebral tumours and haematomas. This remains its principal application in neurology and neurosurgery, but in psychiatry additional features such as cerebral infarctions, regional cerebral atrophy, ventricular enlargement and white-matter changes have provoked interest. This review outlines the technique of CT scanning, discusses its use in the differential diagnosis of dementia of the Alzheimer type (DAT), and comments on the relative contributions of cortical atrophy and ventricular enlargement to the clinical picture of DAT.

In a double-blind trial 600 μg. of thyrotrophin-releasing hormone (TRH) was compared with placebo given daily for four days to two groups of ten patients. There was no significant difference between the antidepressant effects of TRH and placebo.