&Hers to the Editor
• A PSYCHIATRIST'S CHOICE
la,—Your article 'A Psychiatrist's Choice' It most interesting and I write as one who admires immensely the work psychiatrists are ticlitlg. I am concerned, however, to note that Increasingly physical treatments of mental disease are taking precedence over the longer and more arduous psychoanalytical techniques. If it be proved that mental illness is physically caused, then we should expect physical reme- dies to eradicate, it. That some mental ill- nesses are physically caused no oneedoubts, but the mere cessation of symptoms following Physical treatment does not necessarily prove Physical causation or that a radical cure has been found.
For example, I think of a woman 'plunged into grief by the death of her son. Twenty times a day she has fits of crying. Her tears could be stopped by the surgical removal of her tear-ducts, but that would not heal a broken heart. Perhaps the only radical cure Is in religion.
I note your correspondent's comments on the operation called leucotomy, by which the frontal lobes ot the brain are destroyed or Put out of action. Some have claimed that this Physical operation 'changes the charac- ter of the patient. But how poor is the logic ! If I take a violin from a musician who loves to express himself in terms of violin atlusic, smash his instrument and prevent him 'ruin getting another, have I'changed his Characters and made him an unmusical per- " ? Assuredly not ! I have only taken away the only means by which he could express his musical character. It may be a Very good thing in leucotomy to destroy the Part of the brain by which certain emotions are expressed, but there is no evidence that Character is altered. It seems fundamental to discover in every case of mental illness whether, in fact, the Cause is physical or psychological. If the former, by all means let physical remedies be used, but, as I have tried to show, the cessation 9'. symptoms no more means that the disease Is eradicated than' the cessation of tears in the ,c_ase above means that the patient's grief has been dealt with. Wittkower claims to have Proved that our emotions can alter the chemical composition of our secretions. For myself I believe that many physical illnesses Change emotional and spiritual causes and to `euunge the emotion may set the patient free today, as when a man exchanging the tyranny tu,t guilt for the freedom of forgiveness found A',.lat he could take up his bed and walk.—
°urs faithfully,
rile City Temple
LESLIE D. WEATHERHEAD
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