Correspondence: Specificity of Sensory Nerve Endings

at the price of the familiar personality changes associated with leucotomy. These have not seriously impaired her functional efficiency [my italics]. Both the patient and her husband believe the operation well justified." One can only hope with Mr. Schorstein that this case may have "the welcome result of shocking medical opinion into reconsidering the whole problem in its basic aspects." The leucotomy enthusiasts have abandoned their initial claim that they cut the brain about only in the hopeless mental -hospital case. Gradually the indications for this treatment have encroached on the psychoneuroses. According to Dr. William Sargant obsessional neurosis often calls for this treatment, and in the Lancet (July 21, p. 87) he advocates leucotomy for "dermatitis, effort syndrome, nervous vomiting, anorexia nervosa, and thelike." Further, a new psychology is developing, as represented by his article "The Mechanism of Conversion " (August 11, p. 311), and we may expect a rapid growth of this theorizing which conveniently by-passes the psychology of the dynamic unconscious. Nevertheless very few find it good to protest, and it is for this reason that I write in support of Dr. Schorstein. The fundamental principle for which I think we must fight is that the human being has the right to suffer, and even to commit suicide, with the brain, the somatic basis for the psyche, inviolate.-I am, etc.,