CLINICAL experience in the treatment of neurotic patients with tranquilizing drugs, as well as the results emerging from a research program in which tranquilizers and placebo were used in a double-blind paradigm,1-2 have suggested that the manner in which certain personality factors affect response to treatment may be quite different in drug and placebo treated patients. The following note is intended to illustrate such differences between drug and placebo treated patients in the relationships between a mea sure of compliance, on the one hand, and doctor's rating of improvement, patient's rating of improvement, and the incidence of side reactions, on the other.
It was felt that pharmacologically induced anxiety reduction might provide a drug treated patient group with a tangible ex perience of change which its more compliant members might more readily interpret as improvement. Since such a pharmacologi cally induced nucleus is not present in placebo treated patients