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PROBLEMEarly termination in psychotherapy has been studied in relation to actuarial variables and psychiatric diagnosis with somewhat conflicting result^(^^ *, More recently it has been related to the expectancies which patients and therapists have pertaining to psychotherapy@* 7 , and to therapist variables@, *). This study investigated selected behaviors and perceptions of patient and therapist in a first therapy interview and related these to duration of stay. A number of rating scales were devised for this purpose and provided the data for the study. METHODOur Ss were six therapists and 24 patients, with each therapist seeing four patients. The therapists were two psychologists with four years of postdoctoral experience in clinical psychology and four resident psychiatrists in the second year of their residency training.The patients were randomly assigned to the therapists after being accepted for psychotherapy a t our Outpatient Clinic. The patients selected had no prior psychotherapy experience and did not show evidence of psychosis or brain damage.2 The age range of the patients was limited to 18 to 50 years.The patients, 10 men and 14 women, had an average age of 27 years and a median educational level of twelfth grade. Their psychiatric diagnoses were as follows: Neuroses, 10; character and personality disorders, 11 ; psychosis, 1; and others, 2.Three judges listened to recordings of all first therapy interviews and independently completed a series of rating scales. Two of the judges were clinical psychologists and the third was a psychiatrist, all diplomates in their respective fields. In addition, the therapist completed three rating scales after the first interview and again after the fifth interview, if the patient were still in therapy. The patient also completed a rating scale after the first and fifth interviews. DEWRIPTION OF RATINQ SCALES3Outpatient Rating Scale. This is a 16-item scale designed to rate varioue aspects of the r t i e n t , the therapist's personal feelings toward the patient, and specific predictions concerning ength of stay in psychotherapy. A description of the scale has been given elsewhere'l). Both the therapist and the judges rated the f h t interview on this scale while the therapist also rated the fifth interview.

39 children in a psychiatric hospital were tested on 2 types of learning tasks and several performance tasks before, during, and after a 4-week period on chlorpromazine or placebo, the types of medication being assigned randomly in a double-blind design. Medication was controlled according to clinical criteria. Paired-associate learning was less efficient under chlorpromazine, especially on later learning trials and among initially slower learning Ss. Serial learning and tapping rate showed less consistent trends. Porteus Maze Mental Age scores declined under chlorpromazine, while Q scores on the same test tended to improve. No drug effect was noted on remote or immediate memory. The results were tentatively interpreted in terms of impairment of attention span by chlorpromazine.

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