Outwitting Our Nerves: A Primer of PsychotherapyJackson, Josephine A. (Josephine Agnes)
Science
Outwitting Our Nerves: A Primer of Psychotherapy
Jackson, Josephine A. (Josephine Agnes)
Nervous system -- Diseases; Psychoanalysis; Therapeutics, Suggestive
=Simple Explanation.= So far, "the way out" sounds rather involved. It
seems to require a special kind of doctor and a complicated, lengthy
process before the exact trouble can be determined. But, fortunately
for the average nervous patient, this lengthy process of analysis is
by no means always necessary. People with troublesome nervous
symptoms, and even those who have had a serious breakdown, are
constantly being cured by a kind of re-education which breaks up
subconscious complexes without trying to bring them to the surface. If
the dead past can be let alone, so much the better. Sometimes a
bullet buried in the flesh sends up a constant stream of discomfort
until it is dug out and removed; but if it has carried in no infection
and the body can adjust itself, it is usually considered better to let
it remain.
The subconscious makes its own deductions. If resistances are not too
strong it is often possible to introduce healthy ideas by way of the
conscious reason, to break up old habits, and make over the mentality
without going to the trouble of uncovering some of the reactions which
are responsible for the difficulty.
=Moral Hygiene.= Because this is true, there has grown up a kind of
psychotherapy which is known as simple explanation, or persuasion. As
usually practised, this kind of re-education pays very little
attention to the ultimate cause of "nerves." It has little to say
about repressed instincts or the real reasons for fearful emotions and
physical symptoms. Instead, it attacks the symptom itself, contenting
itself with teaching the patient that his trouble is psychic in
origin; that it is based on exaggerated suggestibility and
uncontrolled emotionalism; that it is made out of false ideas about
the body, illogical conclusions, and unhealthy feeling-tones; and that
it may be cured by a kind of moral hygiene, which breaks up these old
habits and replaces them with new and better ones. It tries to
inculcate the cheerful attitude of mind; to give the patient the
conviction of power; to correct his false ideas about his stomach, his
heart, or his head; to train him out of his emotionalism; to lead him
into a state of mind more largely controlled by reason; and to make
him find some useful and absorbing work.
This kind of mental and moral treatment has been sufficient to cure
many neuroses of long standing. In cases that are helped by this
method, the patient's love-force, robbed of the material out of which
it has woven its disguise, and trained out of its bad habits by
re-education, automatically makes its own readjustments and forces new
channels for itself out into more useful activities. Very many nervous
persons seem to need nothing more than this simple kind of help.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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