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This is a remarkably concise and clear exposition of three studies on the relationship between electric shock and the diencephalon: 1, interpretation of the electric convulsion; 2, electric shock and affects; 3, electric shock and consciousness (used throughout in the sense of vigilance). The author, professor of psychiatry at the Faculté de Médecine de Paris, classifies the psychotherapeutic action of shock under two headings: 1, regulation of the affects whose disorders are fundamental in the affective psychoses, which he calls 'thymic' psychoses and divides into (a) hyperthymias, characterized by stimulation of affects, euphoric in mania, painful in melancholia (manic depressive psychosis); (b) hypothymias, characterized by decrease of affects, as in schizophrenia; 2, regulation of consciousness in confusional and oneiric states. At this point there is sketched a particularly clear classification and short description of psychoses.
What is the mechanism of psycho-instinctual transformations brought about by electric shock? Data on man from clinicians and neuro-surgeons, and on animals through decerebration experiments, concerning the psychophysiological rôle of the diencephalon (a neuro-endocrine crossroad) verify the hypothesis expounded by J. Camus in 1912 on the existence in the diencephalon (more precisely in the hypothalamus) of a regulatory apparatus of the instincts, affects and consciousness. Besides causing coma and convulsion, shock acts on the diencephalon.
The action of shock is sedative in hyperthymias which seem to be connected with excitation of the diencephalon (ninety percent success in melancholia, less success in mania). It is stimulating in hypothymias which seem to be due to a depression of the diencephalon (in these casés, however, insulin shock works better than electric shock), thirty percent success. In confusional and dream states, electric shock is very effective (eighty-five percent success).
The author carefully stresses the limi