The emotional side of the impulse of self-preservation and of the fear instinct should always be kept in mind by the physician who undertakes the treatment of psychopathic cases. The physician must remember that the emotions in such cases are essentially of the instinctive type, that they therefore lie beyond the ken of the patient’s immediate control and action of the personal will. The physician should not, therefore, be impatient, but while protecting the invalid against the fears that assail the latter, he should gradually and slowly undermine the violence of the impulse of self-preservation and the anxiety of the fear instinct. For in all psychopathic maladies the main factors are the impulse of self-preservation and the fear instinct. FOOTNOTES: [17] The discussion here is necessarily brief. The reader is referred for details to my work “The Causation and Treatment of Psychopathic Diseases,” Ch. XVII, General Psychotherapeutic Methods. [18] See Sidis, “The Foundations,” Part II, Moment-Consciousness. CHAPTER XXXVII REGAINED ENERGY AND MENTAL HEALTH The _principle of reserve energy_, developed independently by Professor James and myself, is of the utmost importance to abnormal psychology. The principle is based on a broad generalization of facts--psychological, physiological and biological--namely, that far less energy is utilized by the individual than there is actually at his disposal. A comparatively small fraction of the total amount of energy, possessed by the organism, is used in its relation with the ordinary stimuli of its environment. The energy in use may be regarded as _kinetic or circulating energy_, while the energy stored away is _reserve energy_. There must always be a supply of reserve energy requisite for unusual reactions in emergency cases. Those organisms survive which have the greatest amount of reserve energy, just as those countries are strong and victorious which possess the largest amount of reserve capital to draw upon in critical periods. As life becomes more complex, inhibitions increase; the thresholds of stimulations of a complex system rise in proportion to its complexity. With the rise of evolution there is a tendency to increase of inhibitions, with a consequent lock-up of energy which becomes _reserve_. Now there are occasions in the life of the individual, under the influence of training and emotional trauma, when the inhibitions become unusually intense, tending to smother the personality, which becomes weakened, impoverished in its reactions, and is unable to respond freely to the stimuli of its environment. The inhibited system becomes inactive and may be regarded as _dissociated_ from the cycle of life.