Three hypotheses are abstracted from Laing's writings on the interrelationships between self-consciousness, anxiety, and self-evaluation. Indicators of self-consciousness are obtained from an open-ended instrument which requires the respondent to provide twenty answers to the question (asked of himself): ‘Who am I ?’ Statements indicative of self-consciousness are those on which the respondent inserts a self-reference into the statement made about himself and are distinguished from statements in which no explicit self-reference is found. The data indicate that the mark of the self-conscious person is anxiety and that anxiety is largely restricted to those statements devoid of self-consciousness. The structure of a system likely to produce this configuration is considered by drawing upon Kierkegaard's conjectures on the joint emergence of consciousness and anxiety. Equating self-consciousness with ‘reflection’, it is suggested that while reflection brings about anxiety in a system as a whole, the act of reflection deters the emergence of anxiety at the particular points within the system upon which it is deployed. Thus the function of reflection is two-fold, creating anxiety at the same time (but not at the same place) as anxiety is reduced.

Among 18 patients receiving prophylactic, long-term lithium treatment for manic-depressive psychosis, a high incidence of increased thirst and frequency of micturition (60–70 per cent) was noted on direct questioning. Symptoms arose at varying times after the start of lithium therapy; in no patient did symptoms antedate the use of the drug.

Plasma levels of antidiuretic hormone were found, on average, to be higher than in normal control subjects for a given level of plasma osmolality, although the scatter of results was wide. It is suggested that elevation of antidiuretic hormone occurs as a compensatory mechanism for the polyuria which is a common feature of long-term lithium treatment. The more florid form of nephrogenic diabetes insipidus occasionally seen in lithium takers seems likely to be due to a different mechanism from the more common mild polyuria.

During the Arab-Israeli war of 1973 measures had to be taken by the kibbutz civilian population in Israel to cope with the stresses of war. The measures adopted, and the specific characteristics of an organized cohesive group, appear to have succeeded in reducing the severity of the reactions to stress and in lowering the incidence of psychiatric casualties among children and adult members of the kibbutzim.

In the present study dermatoglyphic features were studied in schizophrenics with and without positive family history of schizophrenia. It was found that the difference between normals and schizophrenics was further exaggerated in those schizophrenics with a positive family history for schizophrenia. The implications of the findings and the need for further work are highlighted.

Evidence suggests that anomalies of functional organization in the brain may be present in some psychiatric disorders and that EEG differences between psychiatric patients and appropriate control groups may depend on them. It is therefore of practical importance to develop further ways of examining the association between the EEG and such organization. The change in inter-hemisphere coherence (a measure of EEG synchronicity) in the alpha frequency band when carrying out a task is shown to discriminate a group of 11 right from 11 left preferent normal individuals. Since right and left preference is associated with differences in cerebral functional organization, the coherence measure may be a useful way of studying this feature of psychiatric illness.

A behavioural technique is described suitable for the treatment of patients with high levels of guilt who attempt to relieve their depression by risk-taking activities which reflect their individual wishes and fears, or who suffer anxiety due to unacceptable past behaviour. It is recommended as an alternative brief method of treatment to psychoanalysis and is based on the application of behaviour therapy to a patient's psychopathology. Three case histories are described to illustrate the principles of the technique.

Nineteen volunteers completed a Moos Menstrual Distress Questionnaire daily for a period exceeding one menstrual cycle. The data were analysed, using a least mean square method of fitting sine waves. The fact that the results obtained on this group are essentially those found by other workers looking at the menstrual cycle suggests that this may be a useful method for assessing menstrual distress.

Estimation of lithium in 24 samples of serum and saliva show that there is a very high correlation between the lithium levels in serum and saliva (r= +0·88). The ratio found in our patients is very similar to that reported from North America. Estimation of lithium in saliva at different periods of time show there is a good degree of stability for saliva lithium levels. Thus saliva can be used as a substitute for serum for lithium monitoring. The practical advantages of this are discussed.

The birth records of 78 subjects born to psychotic parents and 72 subjects born to normal parents were studied.

No significant differences in the rates of pregnancy and birth complications (PBCs) were found between the offspring of psychotic parents and normal control parents. There were no differences between offspring born to psychotic mothers compared to psychotic fathers. Neither the onset of the parent's illness, nor the mother's age at delivery, nor the sex of the offspring seemed to influence the rate of PBCs. The offspring of chronic schizophrenic mothers and manic-depressive fathers had lower PBC rates than the offspring of parents of other diagnostic categories. The parents of these two groups, which were of a limited size, did not differ on any variable of significance, excepting the time of their first psychiatric hospital admission.

One hundred and nine out of one hundred and twenty-two cases of endogenous depression were followed-up after their index diagnosis 3–13 years earlier. No recurrence occurred in 28 cases. Forty-two cases turned out to be bipolar and 21 remained unipolar. Manic episodes outnumbered the depressive ones. The change of polarity from depression to mania occurred within three years after the initial depression, though in others the shift occurred between three years and twelve years. The number of episodes of depression before the onset of mania varied from 1 to 3. While the onset of depression before the age of 40 years predisposed to recurrences, there was risk of chronicity in those patients who developed the illness after 40.

Eye movements while watching an oscillating pendulum were recorded in 24 chronic schizophrenics and 24 matched normal controls. As others have reported previously, abnormal tracking movements were significantly commoner in the schizophrenics. However, in a series of experiments with normal subjects it was found that conditions designed to distract attention, or to produce declining arousal and attention, produced abnormal tracking movements indistinguishable from those observed in schizophrenics. As chronic schizophrenics are known to perform badly on a variety of psychomotor tasks and there is evidence that this is due to impaired attention or heightened distractibility, it seems likely that these same factors are responsible for their poor eye-tracking performance.