Pathological left-handedness revisited: dichotic listening in children with left vs right congenital hemiplegia.

Thirty-one children with right (n = 18) and left (n = 13) congenital hemiplegia were compared for incidence of hand- and foot-preference, eye-dominance, and familial sinistrality. In addition, they were tested with dichotic listening for correct reports of consonant-vowel syllables. The two groups of children were closely matched on IQ and sensory functioning. Children with mental retardation, or epileptic seizures were not included. The results showed that 89% of the left hemisphere impaired (LHI) children were left-handed, all of them preferred the left foot, and 72% were left eye-dominant. In the right hemisphere impaired (RHI) group, everyone (100%) preferred the right hand and foot, and 62% were right eye dominant. The dichotic listening results showed a significant right ear advantage (REA) in the RHI-group, and a significant left ear advantage (LEA) in the LHI-group. The results are discussed in the framework of pathological handedness and shifts in hemisphere control of language in children with early brain injury. It is argued that the homogeneous samples, except for the site of lesion, provides an interesting possibility to compare cognitive effects of left and right hemisphere impairment in children.     

Pathological gambling

According to DSM-III criteria, pathological gambling is now recognised as a mental illness. Epidemiological data suggest that the incidence of this disorder in the general population varies from 0.5% to 1%. However, until recently, psychiatrists and clinical psychologists have tended to neglect the problem because of a lack of understanding of its aetiology and management. This paper describes pathological gambling and presents an overview of current psychiatric treatments. It concludes that behavioural interventions are the most effective treatments for compulsive gamblers.     

Pathological jealousy

Five women with excessive and irrational jealousy of their spouses have long defied my therapeutic efforts and have prompted me to explore the sources and the ramifications of conjugal jealousy. This paper presents my experiences and the formulations that have emerged from them.     

Institutionalism revisited

The sociological background to clinical studies of the effects of large single-specialty psychiatric hospitals on their long-term residents is briefly discussed. The review emphasises the continuities in structure and function between complex organisations of many kinds irrespective of their geographical situation. The aims, methods and results of a study of three mental hospitals during an 8-year period in the 1960s are reviewed with a view to their relevance for the institutions of the 1990s. It is concluded that the concept of institutionalism, in both its narrow and its broader sense, remains highly relevant to present day problems and that lessons learned 30 years ago have yet to be fully applied.     

Neurotropism revisited

The purpose of this study is to re-examine the probable directive effect of the distal stump of a severed peripheral nerve on regenerating axons. Forssman postulated the existence of such a directive influence and Cajal interpreted it as chemotactic in nature. This view was subsequently refuted by Weiss and Taylor. In our study the proximal stumps of transected rodent sciatic nerve were inserted into the single inlet end of a Y-shaped autogenous inferior vena cava graft. Into one limb of the double outlet end, namely the common iliac nerve bifurcation, the distal stump of the same sciatic nerve was inserted, while the counter limb was ligated in one group, left open in the second group, inserted with a segment of autogenous tendon in the third, and grafted with a segment of autogenous nerve in the fourth group. Both outlets were left unoccupied in yet another group as the control. The vena cava conduit was prepared so that a 1.5 cm gap existed between the proximal stumps of the sciatic nerve and the distal sciatic nerve stumps and the tendon grafts respectively. The grafted sciatic nerves were explored and biopsied after 12 weeks. The direction of nerve tissue regeneration in each group was analyzed histologically. Predilection of the regenerating nerve fibers toward the distal stumps was observed in each of the test groups. These results indicate the existence of a guiding influence at the distal stump toward the regeneration nerve fibers.     

Stupor revisited

Stupor is a neglected syndrome. This may be due to its low incidence, intrinsic complexity and good response to ECT. Paucity of clinical material has not allowed for adequate statistical and scientific analysis and therefore its phenomenology and neurophysiology remain unclear. Important questions are whether: (1) stupor constitutes a stable form of behavior amounting to a “symptom complex”; (2) it represents a preprogramed or vestigial behavior which may be triggered off by severe noxae, whether psychogenic or organic; (3) personality and underlying cause play a modulating role and; (4) organic and functional stupors share similar underlying mechanisms or, alternatively, refer to unrelated clinical states.An evolutionary view should integrate neurological and organic stupors and justify the use of the “freezing” or cataleptic response to stress in animals as a research model. This should in turn suggest pharmacological predictions of interest for the management of human stupor.     

Schizotaxia revisited

A conjectured neural integrative defect (schizotaxia), due to a dominant schizogene completely penetrant for a parametric aberration in synaptic signal selectivity (hypokrisia), gives rise under ordinary social learning regimens to schizotypy, a personality showing ambivalence, aversive drift, dereism, autism, and cognitive slippage. Given unfavorable polygenic potentiators (eg, introversion, hypohedonia, and anxiety) and adverse life experiences (eg, childhood trauma or adult misfortune), around 10% develop schizophrenia. That schizophrenia is basically a neurologic disorder does not contradict whatever is known about its psychodynamics, nor preclude efficacy for psychotherapy or other psychosocial interventions. Research should concentrate on soft neurology and psychophysiology as indicators, being closer in the causal chain to the schizogene than psychometric, social, or high-level cognitive processes. Taxometric statistics are appropriate to testing a major locus model not simplistically formulated.     

Inscape revisited

Abstract

This article is concerned with the way in which things come to me sometimes, the way in which images arise. In particular it is concerned with imaginal perspectives on image-making processes and, in seeking such perspectives, draws on the literature of poetry and psychology. This includes a discussion of the work and ideas of Gerard Manley Hopkins, who is generally credited with inventing the word inscape, a word which may be understood to describe an approach to process. Consideration is given to Jungs ideas about active imagination and to writing by Yeats from the same era. The final part of the article presents recent explorations into art-making processes involving frequent photography of emerging images, and concludes that such exercises designed to attune us to the close observation of emerging images may help to inform our practice.