SECTIONAL TRANSACTIONS.— J. 417 



traits such as emotional adjustment, introversion, sociability, self-assertion, 

 etc. They contain lengthy series of intimate personal questions bearing 

 on these emotional traits. It is shown that the attitude of the subject 

 towards the test and the investigator, his conscientiousness or suspicion, 

 also his unconscious resistances, his suggestibility, and his degree of aware- 

 ness of his own emotions, greatly affect the responses that he makes. Hence 

 the validity of the quantitative results which the tests yield is generally 

 poor. They may however sometimes be of qualitative value to the clinical 

 psychologist, e.g. as a starting point for an interview. 



One of these questionnaires, devised by Dr. Boyd to measure nineteen 

 traits or personality tendencies, was applied to men and women at a training 

 college. When the results were studied by Thurstone's multiple factor 

 analysis technique, it was found that the nineteen tendencies overlapped 

 very greatly, and could be reduced to four more general independent 

 tendencies, which seemed to correspond to : 



1 . General maladjustment of self-depreciatory tendency. 



2. Care-freeness. 



3. Scrupulousness. 



4. A sex difference factor. 



A discussion is given of the psychological significance of these factors. 



Dr. W. Brown. — Hypnosis, suggestibility and progressive relaxation (12.0). 



1 . Clinical and experimental evidence continues to add to our knowledge 

 of the nature of the hypnotic state, and of its relation to sleep on the one 

 hand, and to suggestibility on the other. Conditioned reflexes appear to be 

 readily produced in hypnotised subjects, and the therapeutic effects of pro- 

 longed suggestion treatment may be in part explained in terms of the building 

 up of new conditioned reflexes by a repetitive process. But the fact that 

 a single treatment of brief duration may sometimes produce immediate 

 and lasting benefit indicates that this explanation is incomplete. 



2. The induction of muscular relaxation (as also the suggestion of sleep) 

 is often an integral part of hypnotic procedure. But it is not an essential 

 part. The beneficial effects of progressive relaxation are probably quite 

 distinct from those of hypnotic suggestion. Nevertheless, experimental 

 investigation on the knee-jerk, etc., shows that by the use of suggestion 

 muscular and neural relaxation can be induced with increased rapidity and 

 to an increased extent (as compared with non-suggestion or non-hypnotic 

 methods). In this way great help can be given to persons suffering from 

 anxiety states and other forms of functional nervous disorder, provided that 

 the treatment is preceded by a certain amount of mental analysis. 



3. Methods of producing progressive relaxation. 



4. The problems of personal influence, including those of leadership, 

 oratory, dramatic acting and all forms of personal education and inspiration, 

 are in essential relation with the problem of hypnotic suggestion, and pro- 

 longed psychological analysis of subjects, both normal and abnormal, is 

 throwing increasing light upon the nature of this relationship. 



Monday, September 6. 



Miss M. D. Vernon. — The motivation involved in the choice of a career 

 (lo.o). 



It seems likely that in general the individual's choice of a career is deter- 

 mined less by his specific abilities and by the qualifications which the 



