The more conservative method which befits us may be, therefore, the method of dealing with symptoms only and abstracting from the more ambitious plan of discussing the diseases entire. We simply separate the mental symptoms and the bodily symptoms which the psychotherapist is to remove. And just in order to classify somehow the manifold mental symptoms, we might separate those in the sphere of ideas, those in the sphere of emotions, and those in the sphere of volitions. Of course, nothing is further from such a plan than the old-fashioned belief that intellect, feeling, and will represent three independent faculties of the soul. Modern psychology has not only substituted the millionfold phenomena for the schematic faculties, but emphasizes above all the interconnectedness of the mental facts. There is no experience into which ideas, and feelings, and impulses do not enter together. And correspondingly we emphasized that on the physiological side too, every sensory excitement is at the same time the middle point of central irradiation and the starting point of motor activity. Thus there can be no disturbance of ideas which does not influence feeling and will, and vice versa. Yet it would be artificial to deny that any one of those various sides of the psychical process may come to prominence, sometimes the impulse, sometimes the emotion, and sometimes the interplay of ideas. The separation means only an abstraction, but it is an abstraction which is justified and suggested by the actual experiences. Thus we shall deal with the psychical treatment of ideational, emotional, volitional, and bodily symptoms. Common to our discussions will be only the effort to avoid everything which is exceptional and by its unusual complications apparently unexplainable and mysterious. The greater complexity of the case certainly adds much fascination. Yet since we do not want to stimulate mere curiosity but clear understanding of the elements, we avoid every startling record. We confine ourselves carefully to those perhaps trivial experiences which daily enter into the view of those who come in contact with suffering mankind. There will be no startling stories of dissociated personalities, such as appear perhaps every few years on the horizon of the medical world, but we shall speak of those who every day in every town carry their trouble to the waiting room of the doctor and who might return more happily if he had more well-trained interest in the psychotherapeutic factors. Yet before we analyze some typical symptoms, it might be wise to review the whole series of means and tools which the psychotherapist finds at his disposal. VIII THE GENERAL METHODS OF PSYCHOTHERAPY