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Psychosomatic Medicine 4:390-395 (1942)
© 1942 American Psychosomatic Society

Symposium--Second Colloquia on Psychodynamics and Experimental Medicine

The Alteration of Instinctual Processes Through the Influence of Conditioned Reflexes

H. S. LIDDELL 1

1 Cornell University

A review of results obtained from our study of motor and salivary conditioned reflexes in sheep and pig have led to the following conclusions. Pavlov's conditioning method is not an impersonal observational procedure but a traumatizing procedure. During the course of prolonged conditioning the animal's behavior moves toward a pathological terminus--the experimental neurosis. At least two factors play a part in the onset of experimental neurosis, viz., the monotonous and ‘unsatisfying’ repetition of stimuli according to a fixed temporal pattern, and the tensions developed by the animal's self-imposed restraint within the Pavlov frame.

The intimacy which develops between animal and experimenter during prolonged conditioning must enter into the appraisal of the results of the experiment. Because of the importance of the experimenter-animal relationship and because of the changes in the patterning of many physiological functions as a consequence of conditioning emphasis falls upon the case history of the individual animal. Many such considerations support the position that conditioned reflex study constitutes a separate branch of experimental medicine intimately related not only to essential physiology but to internal medicine and psychiatry.

Note:
This paper and the following paper were given at the second Colloquia on Psychodynamics and Experimental Medicine on March 7 and 8. Other papers were delivered by Dr. Flanders Dunbar, Dr. Bela Mittelmann and Dr. Robert Waelder. These may appear in a later issue. The discussions of these papers are on file at the Psychoanalytic Institute.






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Copyright © 1942 by the American Psychosomatic Society