Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease. CLIX, 1974: The Use of Feedback Electroencephalography to Assess Levels of Attention and Motivated Interests in Paranoid and Nonparanoid Schizophrenics. Thomas J. McLaughlin; Leonard Solomon; Robert Harrison. Pp. 422-432.

The interest of this paper lies in its attempt to verify psychological and psychoanalytic hypotheses with the aid of more objective neurophysiological data. It

is based on work which has shown that EEG response to visual stimulation can be used as an index of the emotional significance of perceptual stimuli. The hypotheses to be tested were: 1, the Freudian position that the regressing schizophrenic has withdrawn his interest from the environment; 2, the position of Shapiro and others that the paranoid is attentively vigilant to the environment; and 3, the view that the paranoid experiences a need for power. Methodology and technique are described in great detail. The results appear consistent with Freud's statement that the regressing schizophrenic has withdrawn his libido from the environment. In the basic discussion dealing with the issue of primary and secondary process thinking, the authors seem to infer that primary process ideation (fantasies, intrusive thoughts, and hallucinations) compete with the perceptual input to capture the attentional cathexis. While such a premise has been a classical one and continues to conform to logic, it leaves a much more complex area of understanding these phenomena still to be explored.