To enter into the full richness of this whole, large field of course lies entirely beyond the scope of our short discussion, which seeks as its only aim a clear recognition of the principles. Yet it seems essential to illustrate at least this sketch of the field by a more detailed account of actual developments. Various ways of procedure might appear in order and the most natural one would be, of course, to pass down from disease to disease and sketch special cases from diagnosis to cure. We might go through the various stages of neurasthenia and then through psychasthenia and then through hysteria and so on. And if we had to write a handbook for physicians, it would certainly be the desirable way, in spite of the too frequent repetitions which would become necessary. But as our aim is only a discussion of principles of psychotherapy, we have no right to use this method. Moreover, such a method would suggest the misleading view that the psychotherapist is called and is able to treat diseases. All that he treats are symptoms and he ought not to pretend that he can do more, as long as he abstracts from all other therapeutic agencies. Psychotherapeutic influence may remove the phobia of a psychasthenic or the obsession of a neurasthenic or the emotion of a hysteric, and thus may bring not only momentary relief but a change which may be favorable for general improvement, but certainly the neurasthenia and psychasthenia and hysteria are not really removed by it. Of course, even the treatment of symptoms demands a constant reference to the whole background of the disease. The depression of the neurasthenic must not be treated like the depression of the melancholic, the obsession of the psychasthenic must not be mixed with the fixed ideas of a paranoiac, the hysteric inability to walk must not be confused with an injury of the motor nerves; in short, each symptom has to be treated as part of a complete situation. The efforts of the psychotherapist will move over as large a part of the disease as possible and cover, perhaps, the causes of the disturbance as far as they are of psychical origin. Yet it would remain dilettanteism if we were to accept the popular view that the mere psychotherapeutic aid is a sufficient treatment of the whole disease. The physician has to be much more than a psychotherapist. Our discussion only seeks to point out that whatever else he may be, he must be also a psychotherapist.