A new series of patients with personality disorders has provided an opportunity to extend to both sexes an earlier finding that personality disordered women tend to be mixed handed. Eighty-one subjects completed Annett's handedness questionnaire. The frequency of mixed hand preference in both sexes was similar to that found in the previous study, though deviations from consistent preference were small and dependent on the method used to classify handedness. The hysterical, antisocial and explosive personality types were particularly likely to have mixed handedness. These associations were reflected in small but significant trends among several psychometric variables.

The main reason why I have dared to accept our Council's invitation to deliver this lecture is that it gives me the opportunity to pay tribute to Dr. Blake Marsh with whom I had the privilege of working in the Mental Deficiency Section of the Association.

Coercion in psychiatric practice appears to be increasing. Is this in patients' best interest? Is it good medical practice?

It was first suggested that disordered proprioception was a core feature of schizophrenia by Sandor Rado in 1953. Using a recently designed proprioceptive event-related potential paradigm based on a change of load, we studied 12 unmedicated male out-patients with schizophrenia and 24 controls. In the patients, the early contralateral parietal activity was delayed and later central activity had increased amplitude, but gating was unaffected. The results could be understood within the ‘deficiency of corollary discharge’ model of schizophrenia but not within the ‘filtering’ theory. Further studies, including psychiatric controls, are necessary to verify the specificity of the abnormality.

In the April, 1952 issue of this journal, Osmond and Smythies (47) suggested that schizophrenia might be caused by a defect in adrenaline metabolism. They called this hypothetical adrenaline derivative “M-substance” because they endowed it with mescaline-like psychotomimetic qualities but with an effective potency nearer that of adrenaline or even the hugely powerful LSD-25. They showed that mescaline and adrenaline were sufficiently alike chemically for such an intermediate to be at least imaginable. In addition, they emphasized that the mescaline experience and the more acute and dramatic forms of schizophrenia have many similarities. They hoped that researchers would hunt diligently for our M-substance.

Reactions produced by experience fall into two great groups. The larger group consists of the reactions of those individuals whose mental mechanisms are accurately attuned to the demands of life; the smaller group is composed of the reactions of those unfortunates who are unable to adjust or adapt their mental processes to the ever-increasing complexities of civilization. The individuals forming the former group are called normal. Kræpelin termed the mal-adjustments of those in the latter group the “biogenic psychoses.”

The problem of long-stay patients in mental hospitals is assuming increasing importance. At present, in most large mental hospitals the long-stay patients occupy 80 to 90 per cent. of the beds. The investigation by Freyhan (1955) suggested that although the new methods of treatment of the last 30 years have greatly increased the speed of recovery in the case with the good prognosis, they have not altered the outlook for the deteriorating case. This is in general confirmed by May (1956). Now these patients may have a yet longer stay because of the increased life span.

As far as published records show, Europeans used proverbs for evaluating mental processes some years before they were similarly used in America. In 1906, Finckh (20) published his research concerning the use of proverbs in intelligence testing, which is still cited most frequently in Germany and considered the foundational research in this field. In 1907, Bühler (13) published his extended article dealing with the problems of studying the thinking process. He pointed out the value of proverbs because they were interesting while at the same time demanding all the psychic energy of the subject. In 1920, Achilles (1) used familiar and not so familiar proverbs in memory studies, testing children, adults and “insane patients”. In 1923, Piaget (39) referred to the use of proverbs for the study of thinking. Also in 1923, Ziehen (53) described the use of proverbs for testing the mentally gifted; both normal and clinical cases. In 1927, Bronner (11) reported a proverbs test being used in the United States. Thurstone's test consisted of two sets of 20 proverbs each.

When one compares the present state of psychiatric research with that of neurological research, one finds, in the former, an astonishing confusion of contradictory viewpoints. This confusion would, I believe, be resolved if research workers in psychiatry embodied in their creed certain of the principles which Hughlings Jackson unceasingly laboured to establish.

The common ground between neurology and psychiatry is regrettably slight, but in either field there have been men who sought to bring about a rapprochement between them by evolving broad conceptions of the structure of mind. For example, Hughlings Jackson's concept of “levels” and Freud's description of the mind in terms of Ego, Super-Ego and Id are both essentially attempts to define and classify the intellectual and behavioural functions of the brain, so as to form a coherent basis for the study of the interactions and disorders of these functions.

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.

While abilities and attitudes are frequently subjected to measurement, motivation has largely escaped the attention of experimental psychologists and psycho-metrists. Attempts to use subjective and interpretive techniques have not met with any notable success, and it would seem that this whole area represents one of the most neglected fields of psychology, in spite of its obvious major importance both from the fundamental and from the applied points of view. We would argue that the objective measurement of motivation or drive in human beings is an essential requirement for clinical psychology, and we would further suggest that such objective measurement can only be accomplished in terms of some theoretical system in which drive has a recognized place and mode of interaction with measurable variables. It has been suggested by Eysenck and Maxwell (1961) that only the Hullian system provides such an account, and some evidence is to hand (Kimble, 1950; Wasserman, 1951; Claridge, 1960; Eysenck and Maxwell, 1961) to reinforce the view that deductions can be made from this system which will generate testable hypotheses relating to the measurement of motivation.

Suicide rates are generally elevated after episodes of non-fatal self-harm, especially among older adults. Evidence suggests that non-fatal and fatal self-harm are more closely related in older than in younger adults. Older people who have self-harmed need specialist assessment followed by good short-term and long-term evidence-based care.

Problem The following is a report of the differential relationships observed between retrospective reports of eight childhood experiences and self-derogation (SD) scores for adult subjects in five age groupings. Variability in the relationships between particular experiences and SD among the different age-groupings was to be expected for any of several reasons: social role-related variability in the evaluative significance of particular attributes (Kaplan, 1970); generational differences in evaluative standards; variability in interaction effects between earlier experiences and later circumstances associated with particular ages; etc.