Aubrey Lewis's introduction to his report.

Abstract

At the suggestion and with the support of the Rockefeller Foundation I visited in 1937 all the European countries except the Balkans, Spain and Portugal, and Germany. As I had already seen something of the psychiatric work in Spain before the Civil War, and had studied in Germany some years ago, when the level of medical work there was higher than it is at present, these omissions did not appreciably affect the purpose of my journey, which was to learn what is being done in neuropsychiatry and related fields. The net was cast fairly wide, in that I was provided by the foundation with letters of introduction not only to those active in teaching and research in neurology or psychiatry, but also to the physiologists, psychologists, geneticists, and others who were pursuing in these fundamental sciences studies which would throw light on our clinical problems and methods of investigation; I was also able to see administrators who controlled organization and development. Such a round of visits (formidable in many respects, and quite impracticable if one had not already from the literature and from personal contacts some knowledge of the work being done) was a reminder of the enormous field psychiatry now straddles over or touches; from social legislation, psychotherapy, or statistics, to neurology, internal medicine, and the minutiae of laboratory research. I have put down in order the men and places I visited, and stated at the beginning some general impressions. It would be possible to avoid so bald a catalogue of an immensely informative and stimulating journey by giving a much more detailed account, which would be to a large extent technical, and by expressing freely the opinions I formed about what I saw in each place, but these, in the circumstances, might sound patronising when appreciative, and hasty or ill-mannered when critical. Moreover, it was impossible not to see the close influence which the political and social situation in each country had upon psychiatry, whether as a branch of public health, medical practice, or research (this, however, goes rather beyond what were my immediate "terms of reference"). It was evident-perhaps as a by-product of this state of affairs-that in many places where Germany had long been regarded as the European seat of authority and progress in medical, and especially psychiatric, matters, its place was being taken by England and USA. Many people, I found, were eager to turn …