Some thoughts on the social ecology of present day psychopharmacology.

The present paper discusses some of the questions frequently encountered in the diagnosis and treatment of hyperactive children. The author attempts to order these questions within an ecological frame of reference, using Popper and Eccles' recent book The Self and its Brain as an evolutionary model. Problems of diagnosis and treatment relating to hyperactivity are given for each evolutionary level and data from the author's own work are cited in support of this model.