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
=When Simple Explanation Does not Explain.= For very many cases,
however, this procedure, good as it is, does not go deep enough.
Although it gives a sound objective education about the facts of one's
body, it furnishes only the most superficial subjective knowledge of
one's inner life. If the inner struggle be bitter, the competing
forces will hold on to their poor refuge in the symptom, despite any
number of explanations that the symptom can have no physical cause.
Sometimes it is enough for a person to be shown that he is too
suggestible, but often it is far more helpful for him to get an
inkling as to why he likes unhealthy suggestions, and to understand
something of his starved instincts which he may learn to satisfy in
better ways.
PSYCHOLOGICAL EXPLANATION
Between the two extremes of the cases which need a real analysis and
those which are cured by simple explanation, I have found the great
bulk of nervous cases. To simple explanation with its highly useful
information, I therefore add what might be called psychological
explanation, a re-education which makes use of all that illuminating
material unearthed by the explorations of hypnosis and especially of
psycho-analysis. Along with correct ideas about such matters as
digestion, sleep, and fatigue, I give, so far as the patient is able
to understand, a comprehension of the rights of the denied instincts,
the ways of the subconscious, the fettering hold of unfortunate
childish habits, the various mental mechanisms by which we fool
ourselves, and the ways by which we may make better adaptations.
=According to the Patient.= The treatment varies according to the
nature of the trouble, and is somewhat dependent on the mentality of
the patient. There are many people who would only be confused by being
forced into a study of mental phenomena. Not being students, they
would be more bewildered than helped by the details of their inner
mechanisms. Others, of studious habits and inquiring minds, are
encouraged to browse at will in a library of psychotherapy and to
learn all that they can from the best authorities.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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