No abstract

No abstract

averages of a randomly selected group of students attending the university during the same period of time.The obsessive-compulsive neurotics did much better academically than did the random sample of the total student population with this difference statistically significant at better than the 1% level of confidence. The intelligence of these two groups was compared without finding significant difference between them. Comparison of the academic performance of the other experimental groups with the total student sample did not reveal any significant differences in scholastic achievement.With the exception of the obsessive-compulsive group the findings tend to confirm the generalization derived from laboratory experiments that intellectual performance seems to be little affected by certain types psychopathology. The personality characteristics of the obsessive-compulsive individual appear to be syntonic with intellectual achievement of an academic type and the findings are thus compatible with clinical observation. The subjective complaints of impaired intellectual functioning by members of the other groups are not borne out by objective measurement of their academic accomplishments. Theories are presented relating to sparing of some ego functions in emotional illness t o explain these findings but their relative lack of usefulness points out the need for further objective study of the ways in which ego functions are affected by psychopathology. REFERENCES 1. FEY, E. T. The performance of young schizophrenics and young normals in the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test. J . consult. Psychol., 1951, 15, 311-319. 2. GI~EENFIELD, N. S. Some cognitive aspects of a personality dimension; neurosis and problemsolving behavior. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Univ. of California, 1953. 3. GREENFIELD, N. S. Neurosis and problem-solving behavior.The present study was undertaken to answer the following questions relative to the observable behavior of lobotomized patients. Is there a significant variability over a prolonged period of time in the severity of the mental illnesses of hospitalized lobotomized patients who receive no therapy other than routine custodial care? When fluctuation is evidenced in the psychiatric status of a patient, to what personality components may we attribute this fluctuation? Do those lobotomized patients 'It is with a great deal of appreciation that acknowledgement is made of the authors' fruitful discussions with Dr. Maurice Lorr of the Veterans Administration and Dr. James P. O'Connor of the Catholic University of America concerning this project. It is also wit.h a great deal of appreciation that acknowledgments are made to the Friends of Psychiatric Research, Inc., and the Women's Auxiliary of Spring Grove State Hospital, Inc., for their financial and volunteer assistance. A final note of appreciation is due to Dr. Isadore TueTk, Superintendent of Spring Grove State Hospital, for his encouragement and interest in this project.

Ever since Hobbes wrote "From St. Andrew the mind runneth to St. Peter and from St. Peter to Stone," psycKologists and philosophers concerned with the nature of the mind have been trying to describe the nature of the associations that are so evident in human verbal behavior. Locke tried to picture the structure of the human mind by describing relations between associations. He attributed associations to the more or less accidental contingencies of perceptual qualities in the real world. By so doing, Locke became responsible for a major tradition in the theory of both thought and perception.Almost all of the theoretical attempts to deal with association stem from Locke. For experimental psychologists interested in learning, however, the most important theoretical contributions come from the so-called secondary laws of association, introduced by Thomas Brown and David Hartley. Associations themselves are supposed to arise by contiguity, similarity, etc., but they occur in the strengths and distributions that they do because of their frequency, vividness, and so on. It is experimental treatment of the secondary principles that has led to most of the stable empirical generalizations

No abstract