Psychic indifference

Other psychiatrists noted early on how it produced a calming effect with a minimum of drowsiness and confusion (Hoch, Lesse, Malitz 1956), psychic indifference (Anton-Stephens 1954) and a pathological tranquillity of mind (Winkelman, Jr. 1957). Hans Lehmann, the first North American psychiatrist to use chlorpromazine described it as having the power to quiet severely excited patients without rendering them... 

The first British report concerning chlorpromazine as a psychiatric treatment (Anton-Stephens, 1954) confirmed the impact of the drug using small doses (200 mg/day). Anton-Stephens called it psychic indifference and again compared it to lobotomy. 

Several authors have documented the way that this new type of drug was perceived to work in the early days after its introduction into medicine and psychiatry (Breggin 1993b Cohen 1997 Gelman 1999 Valenstein 1988 Whitaker 2002). In 1952 Delay and Deniker noted that the apparent indifference or delay in response to external stimuli, the emotional and affective neutrality, the decrease in both initiative and preoccupation without alteration of conscious awareness or in intellectual faculties constitute the psychic syndrome due to treatment. They also described how patients returned to normality when the drug was stopped the patient, if he has been pale, regains his normal colour and activity and his normal "spirit" (Delay Deniker 1952, pp. 503-504). 

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