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At the end of his paper Dr. Head states he has entered a plea for regarding the psychoneuroses as a disturbance of functions common both to the nervous system and the mind.
All through the paper which deals with the subject under the headings of control, repression, defective adaptation, and regression, he makes the attempt
to correlate physiological with psychological mechanisms. In regard to control he states that the development of the higher centres in the brain has resulted in a positive exercise of inhibiting energy over the reactions of those lower in the neural hierarchy. In the evolution of its functions the nervous system gains an ever increasing control over the reaction to painful and disagreeable stimuli.
On the psychical side the reactions civilized man must bring under control are those founded upon the primitive instincts, the most powerful being the pleasure of sexual gratification, and the urgent desire to avoid pain and discomfort. They are controlled by the discriminative and logical aspects of the mind, analogous to the control of the thalamus by the cortex.
In discussing repression he points out the evil effects which may be produced, and emphasises Freud's dictum that forgetting is not a negative procedure but a positive act.
In speaking of defective adaptation he draws a parallel between physiological and psychological adaptations, and points out how a failure of physical health may lead to a corresponding failure of adaptation on the psychical side, ending in what he calls an 'exhaustion' psychoeurosis. This term seems to suggest some idea of an actual quantitative loss of energy (libido) secondary to physical exhaustion. No doubt this is so in exhaustive physical diseases, but in uncomplicated psychoneuroses there is nothing to show an actual loss; it is being used in other directions such as the production of symptoms.
When he comes to the question of regression he states that the term is capable of a far wider significance than that giv