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Introductory Remarks. Sydney G. Margolin. Pp. 563-564.
General Concepts of Adrenocortical Function in Relation to the Response to Stress. Frank L. Engel. Pp. 565-573.
Relation of Adrenocortical Activity and Adaptive Behavior. I. Arthur Mirsky, Robert Miller, and Marvin Stein. Pp. 574-588.
Psychic Effects of ACTH and Cortisone. Paul Gookler and Joseph Schein. Pp. 589-613.
Psychological Responses to ACTH and Cortisone: A Preliminary Theoretical Formulation. Henry M. Fox and Sanford Gifford. Pp. 614-631.
This entire number is devoted to a panel discussion at the tenth annual meeting of the American Psychosomatic Society in Atlantic City, New Jersey, on April 19, 1953. Dr. Sydney G. Margolin introduces the subject with a brief account of how the adrenal glands first became clinically important a century ago.
Dr. Frank L. Engel discusses the nature of the stimulus for secretion of ACTH, the mechanisms of pituitary-adrenal stimulation, and the response of the adrenal cortex to stress.
Mirsky and his co-workers describe experiments on the effects of ACTH on the behavior of animals conditioned to respond in various ways to frightening stimuli. This abstracter feels that the authors have mistranslated the psychoanalytic meaning of 'trauma' and 'defense'. The conditioning of the animal is not analogous to the traumas described in psychoanalysis; a monkey's avoidance of a painful stimulus by an appropriate gesture is not a defense in the psychoanalytic sense. The attempt to translate the experiment into psychoanalytic terms, calling the learned response of the monkey a 'truly neurotic symptom', is specious. To call this type of defense a neurophysiological model for defense in the psychoanalytic sense would be more accurate. It is therefore incorrect to conclude that 'The data suggest that adrenocortical hypersecretion may influence the organism in such a manner as either to decrease the effectiveness of an anxiety-producing situation or to eliminate a poorly integra