Psychiatric symptoms are common among the sequelae of head injury.1 These symptoms may vary in quantity, intensity and duration from case to case. At one extreme may be merely increased irritability. At the other extreme may be a fully developed neurotic syndrome. In association with these symptoms are often prolonged invalidism and delay in resumption of occupation, or, in military life, delay in return to active duty.3
Various opinions have been offered as to the causation of these post-traumatic psychiatric syndromes. The subject has been ably reviewed by Strauss and Savitzky4 and by Schilder.5 The belief was expressed that the psychiatric sequelae of head injury are due mainly to anatomic and physiologic changes in the brain,6 that they result from an interest in gaining compensation,7 that they are largely ascribable to pretraumatic abnormalities of the personality8 and that there is high correlation with