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Parts of this symposium are of considerable interest to psycho-analysts. It starts with the description of rumination, i.e. regurgitation in infants, which is described as a psychosomatic syndrome. Careful observations of four infants suggested that a disordered relationship between parents and baby played an important part in the etiology of the syndrome. The infants which displayed the syndrome are thought to have the capacity to compensate for frustration with substitute visceral gratification. Another chapter is concerned with an infant who was born with an atresia of the oesophagus. She was fed through a gastric fistula. The mouth was in this case not used for the intake of food. This rare experiment of nature is being studied by a team of psycho-analytical trained workers. They found the mouth's rôle as source of gratification greatly reduced. This had a marked effect on autoerotic behaviour in general. Another study is concerned with the problem of unconscious versus conscious affects within and without the psycho-analytic situation. Their relationship to defence mechanisms and methodological difficulties of the study of affects with the help of tests is discussed. The rest of the volume deals with experimental studies with neurophysiological methods.