Progress in psychiatry; guest editorial.

Abstract

The emergence of psychiatry as an important part of medicine is marked by the amount of active therapy carried on in a field of medicine traditionally thought to have so little to offer in the way of therapeutic aid. This is true in both the functional and the somatic aspects. Psychotherapy has become increasingly specific and organized, and psychoanalysis has steadily increased its impact on psychoses as well as on neuroses. But in the last three decades and especially in the latter portion of this period we find particular intensification of study and progress in those methods of therapy primarily directed at the soma itself. Not to consider further the advances in success of psychotherapy but to examine more carefully the possibilities in somatic therapy might be heartening. We find new activities and approaches in pharmacological therapy, more scientific utilization of electrostimulation, continued use of insulin coma therapy, and an