The historical accounts of religious stigmatization occurring during the past 750 years have been surveyed, with more detailed attention being given to late nineteenth- and twentieth-century medical investigations of some well-known cases. A case showing some features of religious stigmatization is described. The possible relationship of the phenomena of religious stigmatization to disease and psychophysiological processes in the subject is examined.

I only met Sir Aubrey Lewis on one occasion and that was in passing. Most of what little I know of his career is derived from the admirable biographical account which Professor Michael Shepherd provided in his Adolf Meyer Lecture delivered to the American Psychiatric Association in 1976 (Shepherd, 1977). But that little is reassuring. Aubrey Lewis clearly took a catholic view of the scope of the field of psychiatry, for at the age of 25 he was combining the study of psychological medicine with anthropological research among the Australian Aborigines! I cannot myself claim this kind of many-sided expertise and, knowing little or nothing about the language or theory or practice of psychiatry, I foresee a problem of communication which calls for the establishment of a frame of discourse.

This paper analyses the influence of medical professional organization on the formation of attitudes and policies towards narcotics in England. Restrictions on sale were one corollary, and the extension of medical control helped delineate a hypodermic morphine problem and disease theories of ‘inebriety’. In the period 1916–26 the Home Office attempted to impose a penal and nonprofessional policy. The 1926 Rolleston Report marked a compromise between medical professionalism and public policy.

The attitude to mental illness in early Jewish thought and the contributions of some modern Jewish workers to psychiatry are summarized. The possible associations of mental illness among Jews are discussed.

A series of in-patients, a series of out-patients and a series of women from a general population sample, all aged under 65, and all living in the same area of south-east London, were examined using the ninth edition of the Present State Examination (PSE). An ‘index of definition’ (ID), based on number, type and severity of PSE symptoms, was constructed in order to define a threshold point above which sufficient information was available to allow classification into one of the functional psychoses or neuroses. The index specified 8 levels of definition of disorder; the threshold point for a ‘case’ lying between levels 4 and 5. The identification of ‘cases’ by this means in the general population series was highly concordant with global clinical judgement.

When the 3 series were compared, the in-patient series contained the most definite cases, the out-patient series was intermediate, and the general population series was characterized mainly by below-threshold conditions.

Disorders above the threshold point were classified using the CATEGO program. The clinical severity of the depressive disorders and anxiety states identified in this way in the 3 series was compared on the basis of symptom and syndrome profiles and PSE scores. As expected, the inpatients had the most severe, and the general population ‘cases’ the least severe disorders.

It is suggested that the PSE-ID-CATEGO techniques can be used to help standardize certain aspects of case-finding and case-description in both referred and non-referred populations and thereby make the results of surveys more comparable.

The clinical and neuropathological features are reported of 10 patients who had suffered, usually for several years, from the after effects of an acute or sub-acute necrotizing encephalitis of the limbic grey matter and of the adjacent temporal lobes. Emphasis is laid on the memory disturbance and on the behavioural and emotional aberrations that tended to occur and that are in some ways reminiscent of the Klüver–Bucy syndrome.

Brown and his colleagues have presented evidence for the social origins of depression from results of 2 community surveys in Camberwell. This paper examines critically their methodology, conceptualization of variables, mode of argument and statistical techniques. Log-linear analysis of their published data fails to substantiate their differentiation of risk variables into vulnerability factors and provoking agents.

Interpersonal relationships pose problems additional to those arising from social behaviour. If there is to be a science of interpersonal relationships, it must rest on a firm descriptive base. It is suggested that the following categories of dimensions are likely to prove useful: the content of the interactions within the relationship; their diversity; their qualities; their relative frequency and patterning; the nature of their reciprocity v. complementarity; and the intimacy, interpersonal congruency and commitment between the participants. A science of relationships will also require principles concerned with their dynamics. Three likely categories are those concerned with social constraints, with learning, and with positive and negative feedback. Principles concerned with learning will require an adequate categorization of the resources used in interpersonal interactions. The specification of these principles depends on the adequacy of the descriptive base.

The study reports a comparison of 10 definitions of schizophrenia (Feighner's, Taylor's, Schneider's, Langfeldt's, Spitzer's, Carpenter's, Astrachan's, 2 from Forrest & Hay and Catego) in respect of their reliability, concordance and prediction of outcome. Some (including Feighner's) proved too strict, and others (including Schneider's) were weak predictors of clinical and social state. Four definitions (Spitzer's, Langfeldt's, Carpenter's and Catego) emerged as relatively effective and these also had a somewhat more satisfactory mutual concordance.

Results of the investigation of a sample of size N = 200, half of whom live in the vicinity of a main airport, are reported. Three health indicators were examined: (1) annoyance reactions measured with a scale which did not include symptoms; (2) a symptom score, obtained with a screening instrument which identifies possible psychiatric cases; and (3) confirmed psychiatric cases identified with a traditional diagnosis after an interview by a psychiatrist. Noise was undoubtedly associated with annoyance. An association between noise and psychiatric measures was only present in a subgroup of respondents of high education. There was a marked association between annoyance and psychiatric measures. An attempt was made to clarify the nature of this relationship. Hypersensitivity to noise was associated with a high frequency of psychiatric symptoms and should be considered among the high risk factors for psychiatric illness.

Many of the criticisms of our work made by Tennant & Bebbington in the current edition of this journal touch on issues which have already been discussed in our recent book Social Origins of Depression. We do not think that any of their points pose significant threats to our aetiological model of depression. We welcome this opportunity to clarify their questions about our data, and to use their re-analysis of our material as a basis for a wider discussion of certain general aspects of the statistical analysis and interpretation of data and the pitfalls which await the unwary.

It has been proposed that schizophrenia is a prostaglandin-deficiency disease and also that it is a disease of prostaglandin excess. New evidence is reviewed which suggests that ‘classic’ schizophrenia is due to a specific deficiency of prostaglandin E1 while certain toxic and vitamindeficiency psychoses may be due to a broader spectrum of prostaglandin deficiency. There is also good evidence that a particular schizophrenic subgroup, which includes catatonic schizophrenia but may not be confined to it, is associated with an excess of prostaglandins. Part of the explanation may be that prostaglandin E1 has a ‘bell-shaped’ dose-response curve with high concentrations having effects similar to those of prostaglandin deficiency.