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Mothers and their neonatal babies were studied during breast-feeding and control periods. Those mothers whose attention to external stimuli diminished during feeding, when this was inferred from habituation rate, had babies whose heart rates significantly increased during feeding. On the other hand, mothers who did not show the expected relative inattention to external stimuli during feeding had babies whose heart rate did not significantly increase when they were fed.The possible relevance of these findings to the study of attachment behaviour is considered.

The histories of three patients with spasmodic torticollis who were treated under various theoretical guises and recovered suggested a hypothetical model of spasmodic torticollis which depends upon the notion that fortuitous head movements in the direction of the torticollis, in the absence of spasm, produce anxiety, which the ensuing spasm momentarily reduces. In this way, the movement is slowly conditioned.A patient showed skin resistance changes on head movements which were consistent with this hypothesis, and she was accordingly treated by systematic desensitization to the anxiety-provoking effects of her own head movements. The success of this treatment and the failure to demonstrate, electromyographically, the phenomenon of reactive inhibition in eight cases of spasmodic torticollis suggested that, where massed practice succeeds, its action is similar to systematic desensitization.

A double blind comparison is reported of a new tetracyclic antidepressant, maprotiline, with amitriptyline and placebo in psychiatric outpatients. Amitriptyline was significantly more effective than placebo in its global effect on depression. Maprotiline emerged as neither inferior to amitriptyline nor superior to placebo. Methodological difficulties prevented an adequate assessment of the anxiolytic activity of maprotiline.