PSYCHOPATHOLOGY

Abstract

suicidal impulses. There is also a similarity between the fatal accidents and those in which only a part of the body is destroyed. We may be able to see precisely how the accident serves to punish the individual for guilty acts or wishes. In those cases which are not fatal, however, this punishment serves not only as the price of atonement but as a permission for further indulgences in the same guilty acts or phantasies. The guilty act stimulates the conscience to demand of the ego a price. In some instances this price is a (selfinflicted) death penalty. In other instances, however, it seems to be less severe. One may note the principle of periodic payment for the continued indulgence in forbiddden erotic or aggressive tendencies in many neurotic patients, and melancholia is often forestalled or deferred by various obsessive and compulsive techniques. There are certain individuals who seem to fall victim to successive disasters with an uncanny regularity. C. S. R. [14] Pituitary disturbances in behaviour problems.-MATTHEW MOLITcH and S. POLIAKOFF. Amer. Jour. Orthopsychiat., 1936, 6, 125. NINETY-SEVEN boys with pituitary dysfunction in a State Home were studied and are reported from the standpoint of diagnosis, mental level, school achievement, behaviour, personality, and treatment. Those with such dysfunction were found to be brighter than the control group but the school attendance and achievement were the same in both. They were found, too, to be unstable, immature and suggestible. More personality deviations were found than in the controls. Within the Institution the 'pituitary' boys were found to be above average in school progress but below in conduct and adjustment. The offences causing commitment to the Home consisted essentially of stealing and truancy. Positive correlations were found between height and mental level. Five boys with hypopituitary dysfunction were treated with growth hormone with subsequent increase in height and improvement in secondary sexual development. C. S. R. [15] Mental changes following head trauma in children.-ABRAM BLAIU. Arch. Neurol. and Psychiat., 1936, 35, 723. THE cases of 22 children showing mental changes following head injury arc reported. The conditions are classified and designated as posttraumafic acute psychosis, chronic behaviour disorder, epilepsy with secondary deterioration, and defect conditions and secondary intellectual deterioration. The acute psychosis was observed in six children. The onset occurred immediately after the patient recovered consciousness and the symptomatology consisted of a demonstration of unrestrained instinctual, emotional and