With contributions by numerous experts

History of CINP: From Rome to Munich.- The 1st Congress - Rome 1958.- The 2nd Congress - Basle 1960.- The 3rd Congress - Munich 1962.- The 4th Congress - Birmingham 1964.- The 5th Congress - Washington 1966.- The 6th Congress - Tarragona 1968.- The 7th Congress - Prague 1970.- The 8th Congress - Copenhagen 1972.- The 9th Congress - Paris 1974.- The 10th Congress - Quebec 1976.- The 11th Congress - Vienna 1978.- The 12th Congress - Gothenburg 1980.- The 13th Congress - Jerusalem 1982.- The 14th Congress - Florence 1984.- The 15th Congress - San Juan 1986.- The 16th Congress - Munich 1988.- Towards the 17th Congress - Kyoto 1990.- CINP Today.- Africa.- Americas - Canada.- Americas - Latin Americas.- Americas - United States.- Asia - Far East.- Asia - Israel.- Australia.- Europe - Benelux Countries.- Europe - Czechoslovakia.- Europe - Denmark, Finland and Norway.- Europe - France.- Europe - German-Speaking Countries.- Europe - Hungary, Romania and Turkey.- Europe - Italy.- Europe - Poland.- Europe - Portugal and Spain.- Europe - Sweden.- Europe - United Kingdom.- Europe - Yugoslavia.- Concluding Remarks.

The development of modern psychopharmacology was triggered by two major discoveries: the psychomimetic effects of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD-25) in 1943 and the therapeutic effects of chlorpromazine in 1952. In his opening address to the 1st CINP Congress in Rome, Rothlin pointed out that these discoveries gave "a great impetus for any kind of scientific approach to brain research" and had "revolutionary consequences in the treatment of psychotic patients". The incentive they provided "was not limited to theoretical and practical medical sciences but caused an even greater stimulus to the imagination of chemists, leading to the production of new compounds with a speed that neither pharmacological, biochemical nor clinical investigations could equitably follow. " The possibility to induce psychopathology by the administration of pharmacological agents and to control naturally occurring psychopathol ogy by drugs opened unforeseen possibilities for brain research and a new era in psychiatry. In psychiatry, the new psychotropic drugs with their increasingly better defined behavioral, neurophysiological and biochemi cal actions have provided a new means for therapeutically influencing and systematically studying psychopathological conditions, whereas in the basic sciences, neuropharmacological research, directed to reveal the action mechanism of new drugs, brought about unprecedented progress in the identification of the morphological substrate of different brain func tions. It also set the stage for the exploration of possible correlations between behavioral, including psychopathological, and neurochemical events.