Electrodermal lability in anxiety disorders

Twenty-eight anxiety patients, aged below 50 years, were diagnosed according to DSM-III-R criteria (panic disorder with and without agoraphobia, generalised anxiety disorder, and anxiety disorder not otherwise specified). The patients were characterised by high levels of state and trait anxiety and neuroticism, compared with the controls. However, there were no differences between patients and controls in electrodermal habituation rate, non-specific activity, or skin resistance level. When the patients were divided into electrodermally labile and stable subjects, significant differences were found between patients and controls in both electrodermal activity and Eysenck's personality dimensions. The labile patients were more introverted and attained higher psychoticism scores than either the stable patients or controls. Duration of anxiety symptoms removed the difference found in extroversion, but not in any other variable. The results are discussed in relation to the utility of electrodermal measurements in validation of diagnostic entities. It is concluded, that from the psychophysiological point of view, anxiety disorders may be examined within a dimensional framework.     

Amnesic effects of diazepam: "Drug dependence" explained by state-dependent learning

An experimental study on 12 healthy volunteers showed that an amnesic effect of a therapeutic dose of diazepam (10 mg 3 times a day) may be explained by a theory of state-dependent learning. Asymmetric state-dependence was demonstrated by visually as well as verbally learned material, but in the latter case there was also evidence of an anticonsolidating effect upon learning. The findings are related to drug dependence, and it is suggested that therapeutic gains obtained during long-term diazepam treatment may not transfer to the no-drug state.     

A SACRAMENTAL JOURNEY TO THE BEATIFIC VISION: THE INTELLECTUALISM OF PIERRE ROUSSELOT1

This essay traces the intellectualist position of Pierre Rousselot (1878–1915) as he developed it in reaction to neo‐Thomist scholasticism, and argues that at the heart of Rousselot's approach lay a sacramental ontology. Rousselot's 1908 dissertations on St. Thomas's intellectualism and on love in the Middle Ages are best understood in the context of the 1907 condemnations of Modernism. Rousselot questioned the firmly entrenched rationalist approach of the neo‐Thomist revival. While continuing in the Thomist intellectualist tradition, he argued for a chastened epistemology in which the intellect aimed beyond discursive knowledge at union with God. The implication, for Rousselot, was that in its current condition, the human intellect could arrive at knowledge only in an indirect fashion. Accepting Thomas's view of the unity between love of desire and love of friendship, Rousselot emphasized the continuity between nature and the supernatural. Furthermore, his insistence that rational judgements of credibility were powerless without corresponding ‘eyes of faith’ implied a sacramental view of the natural order as pointing to the supernatural end of the beatific vision. His moderated intellectualism, with its implied sacramental ontology, would prove an attractive paradigm for the later movement of nouvelle théologie.