Catamnestic surveys on somato-psychosocial development in childhood and adolescence of patients with unipolar depressive and bipolar manic-depressive psychoses

The somatic and psychosocial development of 80 subjects with manifest affective-phasic psychoses is studied retrospectively and compared with that of an identically sized control group consisting of neuropsychiatrically healthy subjects. Statistically significant differences were found particularly in the answers to questions dealing with social situation and social adaptability. Achievement at school and vocational qualifications were lower among the parents of the patients than among those of the healthy subjects. Characteristic features of the patients' childhood and adolescence were transient depression, often for no apparent cause, and maladaption, and vocational wishes were fulfilled less often than among the controls. The patients experienced greater difficulty in settling in to a new group due to their contact difficulties.     

Acoustically evoked brain stem potential in Wilson disease

By 48 patients with Wilson's disease the brainstem acoustic evoked potentials were stated. There were 35 pathological findings (73%), 13 were normal (27%). The waves, determined by the middle and upper brainstem (Pons and Mesencephalon) showed most of all pathological changes. Those patients with forms of Wilson's disease called Pseudoskelerose and Pseudoparkinson showed the most pathological findings. But one could watch these findings by about 30% of patients in preclinical stage. This method can possibly be used for early detection of disorders of brainstem functions and in the same way it can be used for control of treatment by patients in preclinical stage.     

Reflections on the idea of personal fate and its psychopathology: Helene Deutsch's "Hysterical Fate Neurosis" revisited

The idea of a psychopathology of fate or what had come to be called a fate neurosis has failed to retain any established place in the structure of psychoanalytic thought. The clinical observations and theoretical formulations, to which the idea of a fate neurosis answered, have been subsumed in the course of things by more fundamental and systematic conceptualizations. A review of Helene Deutsch's (1930) paper, "Hysterical Fate Neurosis," is therefore bound to be largely an excursion into an area of intellectual history. However, such history never fails to shed light on certain ongoing clinical and theoretical problems that may have lost too much to current developments in psychoanalytic thought. It is with this historical purpose that the present study of Deutsch's classic paper on a fate neurosis is undertaken.     

On tests for correlated proportions in the presence of incomplete data

This paper proposes test statistics based on the likelihood ratio principle for testing equality of proportions in correlated data with additional incomplete samples. Powers of these tests are compared through Monte Carlo simulation with those of tests proposed recently by Ekbohm (based on an unbiased estimator) and Campbell (based on a Pearson-Chi-squared type statistic). Even though tests based on the maximum likelihood principle are theoretically expected to be superior to others, at least asymptotically, results from our simulations show that the gain in power could only be slight.     

Smoking and pain--a method of limits and sensory decision theory analysis

The effects of tobacco smoking on responses to electrical stimulation were studied according to a Method of Limits (ML) threshold analysis and a Sensory Decision Theory (SDT) analysis. For the ML procedure, Detection Threshold (DT), Pain Threshold (PT) and Tolerance Level (TL) measures were obtained. For the SDT procedure, nonparametric estimates of capacity to discriminate between stimulus intensities (P(A)) and response criterion (B) were calculated. There was no main effect of tobacco smoking on responses to electrical stimulation. Males had consistently higher ML thresholds than females in both the NS and S condition. Males also tended to increase in DT and PT after smoking. From a comparison between the effects of smoking on ML and SDT measures it was suggested that PT is related mainly to sensory factors and TL to response factors.