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These are the first two volumes of a new journal whose editor is the director of the psychiatric hospital at Nocera Inferiore, near Salerno, Italy. He is not only the publisher, but also the 'proprietor, editor, and responsible director' of this journal, and in addition, is the sole author of its articles and the numerous book reviews. He uses the terms 'cerebration' and 'psychism' (which he introduced in 1913) even in the title of the journal. However, since he feels some doubt concerning the originality of this terminology, he says, 'In reality I cannot assert apodictically to be the first student to introduce these terms in scientific use; therefore I should be very glad if other men of learning, more competent than I, could give me the necessary information in this respect'. (As a matter of fact, he also introduces a third term, 'psychions' [organic psychic unities]—let the reader guess what they may be!) By 'cerebration' he means general cortical activity; by 'psychism', 'the specific activities of the brain's inferior and superior anatomic regions', that is to say of the prosencephalon and mesencephalon.
Whoever expects to hear something about psychology as related to these particular anatomical structures will be very much disappointed, for Levi Bianchini writes only of psychological mechanisms, and gives to his inquiries the above-mentioned terminologies only because, according to him, the psychological phenomena are bound to these regions.
The chief and most extensive article deals with epileptic neurosis, or psychogenic epilepsy. In it Bianchini seeks to demonstrate that the basis of the anatomic, physiologic and symptomatic monogenetic syndrome, such as psychogenic epilepsy, hysteric seizure, and other forms of spasm, is based on a mesencephalic constitution over a genotypic or phenotypic disposition of the brain stem and of its particular pathoclitic orientation.
Bianchini declares that he adheres closely to psychoanalysis, but not at all in an orthod