Psychiatric Meeting

Psychiatrics or psychiatry: the recognition and treatment of diseases of the mind.

Some 150 eminent U. S. and European psychiatrists last week helped dedicate the New York State Psychiatric Institute & Hospital, part of Manhattan's Columbia-Presbyterian medical center. The visitors repaid their hosts by describing recent psychiatrical studies, conclusions, viz:

Hallucinations among the insane are not the result of physical changes in the brain, but the result of profound changes in the viewpoint of the patient, who tries to rationalize his own mental condition.-- Dr. Henri Claude, University of Paris.

Lawyers in framing punitive statutes based them on the medical knowledge of the period in which they were framed. Medical men are constantly revising their theories and opinions and "since the law cannot change with the same flexibility, doctors must first agree among themselves and then explain themselves to the lawyers," if they want to correct and cure incorrigibles.--Dr. David Kennedy Henderson, University of Glasgow.

Undoubtedly, the mating of two persons with marked similar talent in music, art or politics will produce offspring endowed with the same talent. But, "clanbred talent" tends to produce experts with a decided lack of understanding of things outside their own sphere. Such progeny are likely to be dull and stupid, cherishing rigid forms and traditions. Genius, on the other hand, results from the crossing of dissimilar high mental traits resulting in a complicated psychological structure in which the components of two strongly opposing germ plasms remain in polar tension throughout life. This tension exerts a driving force and produces that instability of temperament, emotional pressure and restive impulsiveness which are the earmarks of genius.--Dr. Ernest Kretschmer, University of Marburg.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.