In recent years authoritative opinion in this country has decided that aged persons are less suited for magisterial duties in a juvenile court than justices who are younger.

Few psychologists or psychiatrists would object to the statement that the whole field of personality and temperament study is in a state of acute conflict and dissociation. This is as true on the psychological side, i.e. in the field of experimental tests, questionnaires, ratings and so forth (69, 1), as on the psychiatric side, i.e. in the field of the diagnosis and classification of mental disorders (39, 9). In the present paper an attempt is made to locate the fundamental trait-vectors in terms of which personality and temperament can be most parsimoniously described, and to demonstrate that the results thus obtained from a detailed analysis of psychiatric ratings and experimental tests carried out on 700 neurotics can serve to integrate findings from a wide variety of sources, which at first glance seem confused and even contradictory.

The patients forming the subject of the following paper were natives of East, West and South Africa. The South African group are mainly Basutos, mostly non-English speaking, and hence interviews had to be carried out with the aid of an interpreter. To obtain correct perspective of their types of illness it is of course necessary to know thoroughly their customs, beliefs and mode of living. For the sake of brevity illustrations are given only from the Basuto tribe, although it must be borne in mind that there is considerable difference between this and the other groups in this respect.

Recent observers have differed considerably as to the incidence of neurosis among dyspeptics in the services. Whereas Hinds-Howell (1) only found about 8 per cent. of neurotic dyspepsia in a group of cases, Hartfall (2) considered that 60 per cent. of his cases, with or without ulcers, had a neurotic basis. A leading article in the Lancet on June 20, 1942 (3), stated that dyspepsia is often a manifestation of neurosis, that anxiety neurotic features are frequently associated, and that most patients are constitutional neuropaths.

Ten years have elapsed since the introduction by Meduna in 1934 of convulsion therapy, and five since Cerletti and Bini first described the use of electricity as a convulsant. A not unreasonable early prejudice finds a later echo in the comment of Critchley (1943) that convulsion therapy “is crude, dangerous and repellent to anyone who holds the central nervous system in respect.”