Neuropharmacology

Edited by Harold A. Abramson. Transactions of the Second Conference. (Sponsored by the Josiah Macy, Jnr. Foundation, New York, 1956. Pp. 328. $4.25.)

Lysergic Acid Diethylamide and Mescaline in Experimental Psychiatry. Edited by L. Cholden. (New York and London: Grune and Stratton, 1956. Pp. 85.)

Studies in Topectomy. Edited by N. D. C. Lewis, Carney Landis and H. E. King. (New York and London: Grune and Stratton, 1956. Pp. 248.)

The first two books are records of conferences on experimental psychiatry, which has become a flourishing field of research, especially in America. The study of so-called model psychoses produced by certain drugs is of interest to everybody concerned with mental illness. However, the relationship of those psychoses to schizophrenia is uncertain. It is worth remembering that dreams have for a long time been regarded as transient psychoses. The abnormal mental phenomena produced by drugs have much in common with dream phenomena.

Neuropharmacology is a faithful record of five symposia, while the second book contains twelve contributions to a panel discussion held at an Annual Meeting of the American Psychiatric Association. Aldous Huxley reminded the audience that many years ago Weir Mitchell and Havelock Ellis had published accounts of their experiences under mescaline. He pointed out that the reports of those earlier observers were quite impersonal compared with those of recent experimental subjects. Sandison of Worcester (England) reported on the use of lysergic acid intoxication as a means of producing a regressive state for the purpose of psychotherapy.

Studies in Topectomy is a report of the effects of the excision of certain areas of the cerebral cortex on schizophrenia. The incidence of improvement was relatively higher in the so-called pseudoneurotic schizophrenics and those with recent symptoms than in the chronic and deteriorated cases, but on the whole the results were unimpressive.