In this paper a series of twenty-six cases of schizophrenia are analysed. This study has been confined very largely to a consideration of their feelings of unreality, hallucinations and disorders of imagery, as it was found that the particular method used was most applicable to these features of the total symptomatology. Such a selection from the whole range of schizophrenic activity might appear arbitrary since there is, of course, an essential unity in all psychic happenings, as, amongst others, Mignard (1), Berze (2) and Kronfeld (3) have pointed out. Nevertheless, Mignard himself says that affect, will, knowledge and memory are involved in every single psychic act. C. Schneider (4) also has demonstrated that schizophrenic characteristics show the same easily recognizable form in all their deviations from the normal psyche.

The incidence of schizophrenia among admissions to mental hospitals has been variously estimated at from 12% to 16%. These statistics ignore the pre-psychotic states and all those schizoids who have, in these modern times, been assisted to exteriorize or readjust themselves without the invocation of the Lunacy Laws.

The studies here reported are concerned with the application of some of the techniques of measurement to problems of mental health. They constitute the preliminary steps in a programme of research that envisages: (i) the possibility of assisting mental diagnosis by means of objective experimentation, the purpose of which is to isolate variables in personality that are significant in their relationships to degrees of mental stability; (ii) the functional interpretation of these variables; (iii) the employment of any quantitative criteria that can be thus established, in demonstrating the influence of therapeutic and positive mental hygiene programmes.

Miss Simmins and Dr. Stephenson in their recent articles in this Journal have given some account of the “g” and “p” factors of the Spearman school, studied in relation to psychiatry. The part of the present writer in the research was to find some means of assessing factors in the field of conation and volition. The research consisted of two parts, a first tentative experiment carried out at Horton Mental Hospital in 1930–31 and a final experiment in 1932 at the Maudsley Hospital, Bethlem Royal Hospital and at Horton, by the courtesy of Dr. E. Mapother, Dr. Porter Phillips and Dr. Nicol, to verify the results of the first experiment and to secure more finely-graded results. The cases were carefully selected by the psychiatrists concerned, and the writer is greatly indebted to them for their generous assistance, particularly in the matter of supplying detailed estimates of personality traits.

By “perseveration” is intended the lag or persistence (“inertia”) of a mental process. That is, perseveration refers to process-lag as a function of the individual. It is probably best studied in terms of the effect of its presence on another immediately subsequent process. It is indirectly manifested in the realm of mental content, and the effect is usually appreciated as “interference”, “inhibition” or “carry-over”, which are symptoms of its presence.

Commencing with Lankes's well-known study, “Perseveration”, in 1914, a number of commendable experimental investigations (cf. Jones, Bernstein, Pinard, etc.) have contributed to the demonstration of the existence of a general functional “factor”, common to all cognitive activity at least, to which the name “perseveration” has been applied. The main reason for thus designating the factor seems to have been that it manifests itself under conditions where the influence of one mental operation persists and interferes with efficiency in a totally different task. In several studies an attempt has been made to relate this factor as a function making for individual differences to differences in personality features as judged by the observation of behaviour.

So far the attempts to relate measurements of perseveration empirically to types of personality, whether in the normal or the psycho-pathological field, have not given rise to such coherent results as might lead to any comprehensive general hypothesis.

This is an investigation to ascertain the ultimate fate of certified patients who have been discharged from a mental hospital as “recovered” or “relieved”.

Early investigators differed widely in their estimations of the bromine content of normal blood (1, 2), and it was not until the development of a refined technique by Bernhardt and Ucko (3) that it was generally recognized that blood bromine varied around 1 mgrm. %. These authors gave a range of 1.0 to 1.6 mgrm. %. Their studies, however, were not extensive. During 1931–3 Zondek and Bier (4, 5, 6) published the results of a series of investigations into the bromine content of the blood of normal and psychotic patients. From a study of 150 mentally normal patients they considered that blood bromine usually varied between 0.8 and 1.0 mgrm. %, a range later extended to 0.731.10 mgrm. % as a result of further study. In a large number of psychotics examined by them, values lying within these limits were found with the notable exception that 85%-90% of 60 cases of endogenous manic-depressive psychoses gave figures 40% to 60% below their normal levels (Zondek, 1933) (6). These low figures appeared only to be associated with this psychosis, although of the 16 cases of schizophrenia examined by them, 5 gave figures lower than the normal. They stated that in these 5 cases the mental picture was characterized by more or less marked depression, and they considered the possibility of their ultimately turning out to be manic-depressive in character. In a later paper, three examples are cited of low blood bromine associated with organic brain disease, and thought to be due to interference with a bromine-regulating centre in the brain. The low values found in manic-depressive psychoses were shown to be independent of the phase, and it was stated that values in general were not subject to seasonal variations, to menstrual fluctuations, or to alterations due to variable salt intake.