On the whole, there is a far-reaching independence between the apparent
mental variations and the seriousness of the brain affection. Light
hysteric states may produce a strong absenting of the mind while severe
epileptic conditions of the brain may be accompanied by very slight
mental changes. Every neurasthenic state may play havoc with mental
life, while grave brain destructions may only shade slightly the
character or the intellect. To deal with the mental changes as if they
belonged to a sphere by itself, to the soul which is well or ill through
its own independent alterations without steadily relating the changes to
the total organism, leads therefore necessarily to failure. The mind
reflects only symptoms of the disease; the disease itself belongs always
to the organism. Psychotherapy has suffered too much from the belief
that the removal of mental symptoms is a cure of disease.
Certainly the psychophysical symptoms may often stand in the foreground
of the disease, and in that case it may be left to the special needs
whether we deal with them as psychical or as physical changes. Even the
patient may be made to see them in one or the other way in accordance
with his special needs. To tell him that his brain cells are in disorder
and that they can be cured will be the right thing for him who takes
only the introspective view of his suffering and is in despair because
his own will seems powerless to overcome those mental changes. For the
next patient, the opposite may be wiser. The belief that his brain is
ill may have induced him to give up effort of the will instead of
helping along by steady self-suggestion. He will be helped more if he
understands that his mind is working wrongly. But the full truth is that
both mind and body are in disorder; the function of the disturbed brain
cells accompanies the ineffective will, and to reenforce the will means
to bring into equilibrium again the disturbed brain cells. For the
psychotherapist the temptation of giving the attention to the mental
symptoms only is strong. The more firmly the physician sticks to the
standpoint of psychophysiology, the better he will see ailment and cure
in their right proportion.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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