Psychosomatic Medicine 9:260-268 (1947)
© 1947 American Psychosomatic Society

Clinical Notes

The Intravenous use of Sodium Amytal in Psychosomatic Disorders

¹ Cornell University Medical College and the Departments of Psychiatry and Medicine, New York Hospital, New York, N. Y.

The action of intravenously administered sodium amytal in 500 patients in military and civilian practice has been analyzed from the standpoints of its usefulness in diagnosis, treatment, prognosis, and investigation of etiology of bodily disorders arising from problems of personality adjustment.

The drug has been found useful chiefly as follows:

I. Diagnostically

a. In distinguishing between irreversible, structurally determined disorders and functional disorders of organ systems.

b. In distinguishing between neurosis and malingering.

c. In the elucidation of dynamically significant situational conflicts.

II. Therapeutically

a. In the alleviation of troublesome symptoms.

b. When data obtained during sodium amytal interview was used in formulation to the patient or when the reassuring value of the reversibility of symptoms was used, or in the use of hypnotic or post-hypnotic suggestion.

III. Prognostically, in determining the depth of a disturbance and its susceptibility to treatment.

IV. From an investigative standpoint in rendering modifiable the bodily disturbances of various diseases.

The most suitable subjects for narcoanalysis by means of sodium amytal are those with disorders of personality adjustment of relatively short duration. The drug is less useful in diagnosis or treatment of patients with rigid personalities or longstanding patterns of disability.

Sodium amytal is a highly useful tool in medicine but it is in no sense a specific or automatic agent. It is only of substantial value in the hands of an appropriately skilled physician who utilizes the state which the drug induces to gain diagnostic or therapeutic leverage.