“I have no longer even the least lingering doubt that you can count me among your most brilliantly successful cures. I say this after many--too many--heart searchings which are probably characteristic of my somewhat doubting temperament. At first, I was disappointed with the whole business: I suppose I looked for strange and dramatic events to occur which would change my whole personality and temperament in a short time. Nothing so exciting happened; I left Portsmouth still feeling that I owned the same name, and very much the same ‘ego’ that I arrived with. I was unaware that any profound psychological operation had taken place. To be candid, I did not think it had--the beginnings, no doubt, were there--but no more. But now when I carry my mind back to the type of obsession which used to assail me--is there any change? Good God! I behold a miracle, although it has come about so silently that I can only realize the difference by comparing the present with the past. In conclusion I can only send you my undying gratitude.... You have saved me from what, I honestly believe, would have one day resulted in deliberate suicide which I often contemplated as the one solution of my trouble....” These extracts are typical of many others, and clearly show the enjoyment of new strength and powers until now unknown to the patient. Fresh reservoirs of reserve energy have been tapped and have become available in an hour of dire need. The patient has light and strength where there were darkness and depression. We are confronted here with the _important phenomenon of liberation of dormant reserve energy_. The patient feels the flood of fresh energies as a “marvelous transformation,” as a “new light,” as a “new life,” as “a something worth more than life itself.” The hypnoidal state helps us to reach the inaccessible regions of dormant, reserve energy, helps to break down inhibitions, to liberate reserve energies and to repair the breaches or dissociation of mental life. The painful systems become dissociated, disintegrated and again transformed, reformed, and reintegrated into new systems, full of energy and joy of life. The banishment of credulity, the cultivation of the upper, critical consciousness, the rational control of the subconscious, the moderation of the self-impulse, the regulation of the fear-instinct, and the access to the vast stores of subconscious reserve energy, all go to the formation of a strong, healthy-minded personality, free from fear and psychopathic maladies. INDEX Affections, neurotic, 59 Aphonia, 234, 248 Aristotle, 320 Automatic writing, 258, 260, 262 Automatic state, 121 Bacon, 301 Bain, 39, 56 Bernheim, 306 Binet, 255 Bramwell, 112 Carlyle, 49, 314 Catalepsy, 212, 218, 234, 244 Cataplexy, 67, 96 Characteristics of morbid states, 73, 74 Charcot, 325 Civilization, 273, 274 Claperèdé, 95 Compayré, 40 Consciousness, 77 will-, 77 Conversion, 312, 319