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Within the small compass of this monograph, the author, who is Chief Psychologist and Director of Psychological Research at the Worcester State Hospital, has presented findings from the special studies of schizophrenia carried on there. Fused with these are the author's wide knowledge of the field based on some twenty years of experimental work and of the other studies which have been made, so that a valuable over-all picture is given.
Dr. Shakow makes his attack on the problem by using results obtained from psychometric and experimental measures which were concerned with general intelligence, apperception, conation, motor learning, and sensory techniques. He discusses his findings in the light of the researches of other scientists and finds that in many cases his conclusions corroborate theirs. However, some old problems, he views from new angles. The author finds, as have many others, that schizophrenic subjects are significantly below normal subjects in mental age, but that in vocabulary scores there is little difference. This discrepancy between mental age and vocabulary has long been used as a measure of deterioration, but he shows that numerous other factors must be taken into account and that an uncritical use of this divergence is not justified.
A disturbance in the normal balance of apperception is shown both by the Kent-Rosanoff Association Test, and the Rorschach. The former showed a predominating number of individual and unusual responses and this was indicated in the Rorschach by fewer popular responses more of that type of response termed “poor original.” These results Shakow views as indications of the isolation of the schizophrenic,—that he is responsive to his environment in only a superficial way. This poor adaptiveness is likewise shown in other tests such as that of motor learning when the situation is new. The conclusion is made that “the flow of energy into the environment is restricted unless in some way the environment is made personal.”
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