AUTONOMIC RESPONSES IN DIFFERENTIAL DIAGNOSIS OF ORGANIC AND PSYCHOGENIC PSYCHOSES

Abstract

<h3>I. STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM</h3> DURING the past half-century, since the discovery of the conditional reflex¹by Pavlov, a wealth of material has been accumulated from the study of the behavior of animals by this means. Nearly every important organ of the body has been investigated, chiefly in dogs, from the point of view of the animal's ability to form new stimulus-response patterns on the basis of individual experience. The published material is abundant, notwithstanding the lack of its availability in the standard medical and physiological texts. Relatively little, however, has been published regarding the results of such studies on the human being. A great deal has been written of a general discursive nature regarding human conditional responses, much of it under the broad designation of "behaviorism," but the interest in that approach to psychology has fallen off because too much was claimed for it in broad general terms.