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
Besides the nervous folk who feel themselves so weary that they
scarcely have strength to live, there are thousands upon thousands of
men and women who are called normal but who have lost much of the joy
of life because they feel their bodies inadequate to meet the demands
of everyday living.
To such men and women the Biblical promise, "As thy day, so shall thy
strength be," comes now as the message of modern science. Nature is
not stingy. She has not given the human race a meager inheritance. She
did not blunder when she made the human body, nor did she allow the
spirit of man to develop a civilization to whose demand his body is
not equal. After its long process of development through the survival
of the fittest, the human body, unless definitely diseased, is a
perfectly adequate instrument, as abundantly able to cope with the
complex demands of modern society as with the simpler but more
strenuous life of the stone age. The body has stored within its cells
enough energy in the shape of protein, carbohydrate and fat to meet
and more than meet any drains that are likely to be made upon it,
either through the monotony of the daily grind or the excitement of
sudden emergency. Nature never runs on a narrow margin. Her motto
seems everywhere to be, "Provide for the emergency, enough and to
spare, good measure, pressed down, running over." She does not start
her engines out with insufficient steam to complete the journey. On
the contrary, she has in most instances reserve boilers which are
almost never touched. As a rule the trouble is not so much a lack of
steam as the ignorance of the engineer who is unacquainted with his
engine and afraid to "let her out."
="The Energies of Men."= Perhaps nothing has done so much to reveal
the hidden powers of mankind as that remarkable essay of Professor
William James, "The Energies of Men."[48] Listen to his introductory
paragraph as he opens up to us new "levels of energy" which are
usually "untapped":
[Footnote 48: James: _On Vital Reserves_.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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