Memory studies in electric convulsion therapy.

The disturbances of memory immediately following electric convulsion therapy (E.C.T.) have been the subject of many investigations (Zubin and Barrera, 1941; Mayer-Gross, 1943; Liberson and Wilcox, 1945; Kalinowsky and Hoch, 1947). Implicit, ifnot explicit, in the majority of these papers is the assumption that memory can be studied in isolation, Bartlett, however, (1932), long ago demonstrated that what a person remembers depends on many other factors within the fields of personality and mental activity, and Stone (1947 a and b), studying the effect of E.C.T. on mental activity in general, found that memory was not the only mental function to suffer temporary impairment from this form of treatment. Wittman and Russell (1942) also noted that mental efficiency and memory levels following other forms of shock therapy were directly correlated with changes in the patient's general attitude, while much of the German literature stresses the presence of disturbances in other spheres of mental activity as well as that of memory in the Korsakoff states to which post-E.C.T. amnesias are allied. In view of these reports it seems desirable that *some studies of the memory changes following E.C.T. should be combined with studies of other mental functions, the most frequently disturbed of which in the organic amnesic state appears to be that of perception (Bonhoeffer, 1901 ; Bumke, 1928; MacCurdy, 1928; Buirger-Prinz and Kaila, 1930). Since Lowenbach and Stainbrook (1942) also found temporary modifications in the responses to the Rorschach test in the records ofpost-E.C.T. patients, it seemed likely that a useful preliminary investigation would be one in which perceptual changes were taken into account at the same time as the memory defects were measured. This paper is an account of such a study. In order to allow for the assessment of perceptual disturbances, material of an ill-defined and ambiguous nature has been used ofa type somewhatsimilar to that in the Rorschach test and in contrast to the well defined words or pictures reported on by the majority of other workers. Method