Personality and the Frontal Lobes

By Asenath Petrie. (Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1952. Pp. 188. 21 s.)

Psychosurgical Problems. Ed. by Fred A. Mettler. (Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1952. Pp. 357. 42 s.)

The effects of leucotomy on symptoms and on the personality are of great theoretical interest to the psycho-analyst, distasteful though this treatment must be to him. Mrs. Petrie reports on psychological investigations carried out in twenty-seven neurotic patients before and after operation. They were cases of long-standing anxiety states and obsessional neurosis. The methods employed were those of "objective personality measurements' developed by Eysenck. Mrs. Petrie found that, as the result of the operation, the factor 'neuroticism' had decreased and that this change was more marked after the limited operation. As a reduction of that factor seems to go parallel with a decrease in neurotic symptoms, these methods may show a way of measuring the seriousness of the latter. However, it is doubtful whether they can be of help in other than surgical treatments. 'Neuroticism' is supposed to measure an innate predisposition which can be expected to be altered by an operation on the brain but hardly by psychological treatment. In her investigations into the intellectual aspects of personality Mrs. Petrie made some interesting observations. She found that after extensive operation a change in the use of language took place; the patients appeared to neglect the standards they had previously set themselves with regard to exactitude in verbal expression. She suggests that this change in the use of language can be described in terms of super-ego function, and she regards the frontal lobes as the areas of the brain concerned with that aspect of the personality. The super-ego is, of course, not the only part of the personality that is affected by that treatment; ego and id functions suffer as well,, and the super-ego changes can be understood only if changes in the other areas of the