The difficulty in calculating the incidence and prevalence of transsexualism is obvious. Those figures which can be arrived at are always minimal values, and a group of persons with transsexual symptomatology, which are most difficult to assess, will always elude the calculations.

There is a widespread belief among clinicians that trifluoperazine (Tr) is more effective than chlorpromazine (Ch) in activating retarded schizophrenic patients. We examined the effect of these two drugs on the motor activity of three groups of inactive patients: A, very inactive; B, moderately inactive and C, mildly inactive. All these patients were under 60, with at least 10 years duration of illness. We excluded those with subnormality or physical illness and those who had a leucotomy. They were all sufficiently inactive to fall below the mid-point on the Venables scale (Venables, 1957), so that an increase in activity constituted an improvement. The same supervisors and raters were used throughout and attempts were made to maintain the work environment as constant as possible. The raters did not have access to their earlier scores.

Over the past thirty years the emphasis on low intelligence as a major causal factor in criminality has decreased considerably. When intelligence tests were less refined, early in this century, authors considered a depressed intelligence score as an important determinant in delinquency. Improved psychometrics, with their culturally non-biased test items, have since proved that individuals from deprived upbringing and adverse social learning situations do relatively poorly on verbal items. Woodward (1955) pointed out that both in this country and in the United States the delinquent is only 8 I.Q. points behind the normal population. Opinions amongst psychologists have gradually but radically changed, and it is for this reason that research workers now look elsewhere for causal factors in the subnormal offender rather than attributing his delinquencies to low intelligence.

The use of metronidazole as an adjunct to treatment in alcoholism was first reported by Taylor (1964). Her study of 52 alcoholics led Taylor to suggest three effects of metronidazole in alcoholism—a reduction of craving for alcohol, a psychic aversion to alcohol, and in some cases an antabuse-like response.

Personality structure has been linked with cancer, heart disease, and duodenal ulceration. Eysenck (1965) hypothesized that the association of personality with these diseases is the result of an association between the genetic factors influencing personality predisposition and disease susceptibility. As briefly discussed by the present author elsewhere (Segraves, 1970), Eysenck's hypothesis seems tenable, since both these personality dimensions and these diseases have been shown to have hereditary components and to be related to bodily habitus in analogous ways.

This paper presents some of the more important results of a factor analysis of the mental state ratings made as part of the United States–United Kingdom Diagnostic Project's cross-national study. The project was organized in order to help account for the large differences between the two countries in the admission rates for schizophrenia and for the affective disorders (see Kramer, 1969, and Zubin, 1969). The major results of the study have been reported by Cooper, Kendell et al. (1969), Gurland et al. (1969), Cooper (1970), and Cooper, Kendell, Gurland et al. (1972).

Sexual jealousy is both an attitude of mind and an emotional state: the latter resulting from a blending of emotions aroused by an affront to the instincts of mating, self-assertion and acquisition. Sexual jealousy is of particular interest to the psychiatrist, since in its morbid manifestations it destroys marital harmony (Gillard, 1896) and may lead to homicide or suicide (Mowat, 1966). Sexual jealousy may be regarded as a normal reaction but it is abnormal when: (a) the jealous person is haunted by what the ‘man in the street’ would recognize as a groundless conviction that his or her sexual partner has been, or will be, unfaithful; or (b) jealousy engendered by actual infidelity is of such intensity as to render the person dangerously aggressive. Examples of the second category are Ruth Ellis, who shot dead her unfaithful lover; and Pilar Garcia-Compte, who killed her husband after he had refused to break with his mistress.

Flupenthixol is the latest addition to the thioxanthene series (Møller Nielsen, 1967). Clinical investigations have shown that it is principally indicated in conditions of prolonged psychosis without severe anxiety (Gross and Kaltenbäck, 1965; Knutsen, 1965, Noreik and Rimestad, 1965; Gottfries, 1967). An antidepressant effect and an effect on neurosis have also been reported, (Ravn and Rud, 1965; Sonne, 1966), and there have been tests with the preparation as a depot-neuroleptic (Enerheim et al., 1970).

Studies of birth order of male alcoholics, reviewed by Chen and Cobb (1960), Sampson (1965), and Barry, Barry, and Blane (1969), generally showed more last-born than first-born cases. This difference was found in samples of more than 500 cases hospitalized in Denmark (Martensen-Larsen, 1957); Austria (Navratil, 1959); Canada (de Lint, 1964b), and Norway (Steén, 1966). Most samples in the United States have shown the same trend but with smaller numbers of cases, so that the difference was short of statistical significance. Ambiguous results have been obtained from the few studies of birth order of female alcoholics, generally based on small samples. The present paper reports on the birth-order distributions of a relatively large sample of male and female out-patient alcoholics in the United States.

Many years ago Eugen Bleuler postulated a correlation between alcoholic hallucinosis and schizophrenia. In his textbook, he stated his belief that ‘alcholic hallucinosis could … be a mere syndrome of schizophrenia induced by alcohol (1)’.

Repertory grid testing (Kelly, 1955; Slater, 1965) of psychiatric patients, using people of significance in the patient's life as elements and eliciting the patient's own constructs has been employed in the clinical setting to demonstrate aspects of psychopathology (Ryle, 1967; Ryle, 1969), to measure change with treatment (Ryle and Lunghi, 1969; Rowe, 1971a) and to assess how far a therapist could predict a patient's responses (Rowe, 1971b). However, no systematic examination has been reported so far into the characteristic features of the construct systems of neurotic as opposed to normal subjects, although some apparent equivalences between grid features and psychological or psychopathological formulations such as identification or splitting have been described. While repertory grid testing remains an essentially ideographic exercise, it is important to identify features characteristic of neurosis if the method is to have more than a descriptive function in the investigation of patients. As a contribution to this we have tested with an identical method a series of students consulting with neurotic problems and a control sample of new students tested on arrival at the University.

An analysis of the general results of a drug monitor in a psychiatric unit have been reported previously (Gardiner and Hall, 1971). One of the principal findings of that analysis was that the propensity for ‘untoward events' increased as the number of drugs that a patient received increased. The definition of ‘untoward event’ was that given by Finney (1965)—a‘n event is a particular untoward happening experienced by a patient, undesirable either generally or in the context of his disease. The term is not to be limited either to recognised side-effects of a drug or to incidents that are in some sense unexpected’. This paper takes this particular aspect of the investigation further in an attempt to describe the prescribing practice and to discover any particular drug or combination of drugs that was associated with a high frequency of ‘untoward events'.

In a review of the 1967 group psychotherapy literature, MacLennan and Levy (1968) record that nearly 300 papers were published in that one year. Unfortunately, this proliferation does not reflect any great increase in the knowledge of group psychotherapy processes. There are plenty of original ideas, but these are almost totally unsupported by systematic theory and research. Where theoretical ideas have been used, they have been lifted from the sphere of individual psychotherapy and applied unmodified to group psychotherapy. The research has largely been concerned with determining such things as the most efficient group structure; who talks to whom about what; and what grammatical forms are used.

Alcoholism is associated with a high family incidence of both alcoholism and affective disorder (1). First degree male relatives of alcoholic probands have a 50 per cent lifetime expectancy for alcoholism, while first degree female relatives have a 50 per cent lifetime expectancy for affective disorder (1). Children of alcoholic parents raised with that parent show no higher, and perhaps less, alcoholism than children of alcoholic parents raised separately (2). This paper looks at the influence of parental alcoholism or affective disorder on the characteristics of alcoholism in probands, their progeny and siblings.

Hypomania can be considered as a defence against anxiety, a reaction to the patient's perception of his environment. Perception of the environment in a particular way can ensure the maintenance of a depression (Rowe, 1970). If hypomania is a defence, the cessation of the hypomanic state should mean that the patient then perceives his environment differently.

Bannister and Fransella (1966) described a clinical test based on the theory and methods of Kelly (1955). This test has since been widely used in clinical practice, usually as a test of schizophrenic thought disorder, and has also been used in several studies attempting to define the schizophrenic condition more exactly (e.g. Bannister and Salmon, 1966; McPherson and Buckley, 1970; McPherson, 1969). The test was developed from the previous work of Bannister (1960, 1962) with schizophrenics and other psychiatric patients.