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Attempting to report the transactions of the four day set of meetings conducted by the Collegium Internationale Neuro-Psychopharmacologicum, this book includes about 150 different contributions, some of which are full scale papers replete with illustrations and bibliography while others are merely one page discussions. More than half the book is occupied by papers devoted to one general subject, “The Mode of Action of Psychotropic Drugs and its Implication for the Pathophysiology of Psychotic Disturbances.” The second part consists of a collection of individual contributions organized around no central theme. While a number of Americans contribute, more than half the contributors are European. England, Germany and Switzerland are best represented and there are contributions too from Italy, Spain, Portugal, France, Japan, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Yugoslavia, as well as Canada, Denmark, Austria and Holland. Most of the contributions are written in English though there is a fairly large number in German and a few in French. There are no translations.
This is a peculiar book to review in a psychoanalytic journal. In the first place most psychoanalysts do not use the new psychopharma-ceuticals. Those who use them do so with a good deal of guilt and some shame. Few psychoanalysts have taken the trouble to learn how the drugs operate so that they can use them properly. Fortunately, more and more psychoanalysts are beginning to realize that this is an attitude improper for a physician. The analyst can use the newer drugs to bring people into analysis who are not otherwise accessible; to hold people in analysis who because of suicidal tendencies or psychotic relapse, might otherwise have to be hospitalized or at least give up analysis; and finally, and most important, to study psychic function as it is influenced by these drugs. However, proper use of these medications requires careful and systematic study and, for one who is inexperienced in their use, guidance. Therefore