BRAIN MECHANISMS AND PSYCHOTHERAPY

The vigorous experimental work in neurophysiology and neurobiochemistry directs attention toward the structural mechanisms of the central nervous system and particularly to the ways and extent to which these built-in mechanisms order response. The work which has emerged to date has immediate pertinence for some of the problems which have always been crucial ones in personality theory : problems related to how personality is formed, what personality change is and how it is brought about, the nature and significance of individual differences. As the laws of input-organism exchange are extended by subsequent research, and as we begin to think of the therapeutic communication itself as input, we may have to revise sharply our current ways of thinking about the clinical process itself, and some of the notions which are inherent in it. At this point systematic presentations of the clinical and observational data which are the wealth of the clinical psychiatrist would be very helpful in establishing the significance of the neurophysiological findings and even in contributing clues as to the directions in which further advance might lie.