Eighty patients over the age of 60 and suffering from combinations of depression, restless agitation, paranoid ideation, or confusion were assigned in a prearranged sequence to five treatment conditions. Sixteen patients each were given chlorpromazine, reserpine-pipradrol, deodorized tincture of opium, or a placebo (lactose). An additional group of patients were given no special medication.Observations were made at the end of one-, two-, four-, and eight-week intervals by psychiatrists and psychologists who were uninformed about the treatment given any one patient. Anxiety decreased in both the chlorpromazine and placebo groups over the two-month period. The placebo group, however, also gained better spirits and greater spontaneity.Among the group who received no special medication, anxiety increased. No special benefit from the ataractics could be demonstrated in this study. The evidence indicates the importance of a semblance of medication and care in a geriatric ward.THE SERIES of clinical observations on geri¬ atric patients reported here was initiated in 1957. Several highly encouraging clinical reports had just appeared that claimed effectiveness for some of the ataractics in controlling agitation, de¬ lusions, belligerence, anxiety, and behavior disor¬ ders in senile patients. Particularly noteworthy were the studies on chlorpromazine by Howell, Harth, and Dietrich,2 in 1954, followed by a paper by Seager,5 in 1955, and Pollack,4 in 1956. In addi¬ tion, a paper by Martin, Overley, and Krone,' in 1957, offered hope for controlling similar difficulties in geriatric patients by means of a combination of pipradrol hydrochloride (Meratran) and reserpine. This combination of stimulating and tranquilizing effects was alleged to give a balanced medication for both the depression and agitation characteristic of this patient group. In order to evaluate the bene¬ fits of these new medicaments, a standard drug of known characteristics, namely, deodorized tincture of opium (DTO) was employed in this study.Since the wards on which this project was to be carried out were typically understaffed and overpopulated, the suggestive effects of medication had to be carefully controlled. Therefore, two additional treatment conditions were included in our experi¬ mental design. A placebo (P) of lactose was intro¬ duced and its medication schedule matched to the reserpine-pipradrol group. In addition, a compara¬ ble group of patients without any special medica¬ tion (NM) was observed over the same period. The patients in these five groups were all studied while living together on several different geriatric wards.The problems of using a formal double-blind ap-proach were too great to permit its use in this re¬ search study. Therefore, a modification of this method was used which offers many advantages.The medication and ward management of all of the patients in this study were carried out by a medical staff who were informed about the medicine given,

In the Studies on Hysteria (Breuer & Freud, 1893), Breuer gave a short description of a young boy and wrote of him as follows :. . .A twelve-year-old boy, who had previously suffered from pavor nocturnus and whose father was highly neurotic, came home from school one day feeling unwell. He complained of difficulty in swallowing and headache. The family doctor assumed that the cause was a sore throat. But the condition did not improve even after several days. The boy refused food and vomited when it was pressed on him. He moved about listlessly, without energy or enjoyment; he wanted to lie in bed all the time and was very much run down physically. When I saw him five weeks later, he gave the impression of being a shy and shut-in child, and I became convinced that his condition had a psychical basis. On being questioned closely, he brought up a trivial explanationa severe reproof given by his father-which had clearly not been the real cause of his illness. Nor could anything be learnt from his school. I promised that I would extract all the information later under hypnosis. This, however, turned out to be unnecessary. In response to strong appeals from his clever and energetic mother, he burst into tears and told the following story. While on his way home from school he had gone into a urinal, and a man had held out his penis to him and asked him to take it into his mouth. He had run away in terror, and nothing else had happened to him. But he was ill from that instant. As soon as he had made his confession he recovered completely. In order to produce the anorexia, the difficulty in swallowing and vomiting, several factors were required: the boy's innate neurotic nature, his severe fright, the irruption of sexuality in its crudest form into his childish temperament and, as the specifically determining factor, the

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JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.. International Society of Political Psychology is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Political Psychology.Through a synthesis of the concepts of charisma and collective psychological regression, we construct a theoretical bridge spanning the abyss between the two traditional approaches to leadership studiesthe study of the personality of the individual charismatic leader versus the study of the characteristics of the members of a mass movement. We argue that neither of these traditional approaches is sufficient to illuminate the underlying but often hidden dynamics that forge the psychological context within which a charismatic leader and members of a mass movement interact. Drawing upon a large body of earlier work from the fields of both psychoanalysis and the social sciences, including our own previous studies, we provide theoretical documentation for the concept of collective pathological regression within a charismatically led mass movement. As an historical example of this phenomenon, we analyze the Reverend Jim Jones and his followers in the People's Temple in an attempt to understand the group psychology triggering the mass madness that engulfed the inhabitants of Jonestown. Our conclusion is that without additional scientific efforts to understand and explain the events of Jonestown, members of the public remain vulnerable to further similar tragedies.

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