Psychotherapy: Including the History of the Use of Mental Influence, Directly and Indirectly, in Healing and the Principles for the Application of Energies Derived from the Mind to the Treatment of DiseaseWalsh, James J. (James Joseph)
Science
Psychotherapy: Including the History of the Use of Mental Influence, Directly and Indirectly, in Healing and the Principles for the Application of Energies Derived from the Mind to the Treatment of Disease
Walsh, James J. (James Joseph)
Mental healing
Supposed Novelties in Mind Healing.--We hear much of mental healing,
of absent treatment, of various phases of suggestion, and of the
marvelous therapeutic efficiency of complete denial of the existence
of evil, and sometimes we wonder whether all these things are not
offshoots of our recent growth in the knowledge of psychology. It is
possible, however, to find, masquerading under the head of the
efficacy of nostrums in the past, the equivalents for all the
activities of mental healing of the present. It all depends on what is
the scientific fad of the hour. If it is electricity, then some mode
of electrical treatment serves the purpose of suggesting cure, and
relief of symptoms follows. If drug treatment of any particular kind
is attracting much attention, then the suggestion is most effective
that is founded on this basis. Perkins' tractors or the Leyden jar are
effective at one time, radium or the X-rays at another, sarsaparilla
or dilute alcohol at another, while a generation that is much
interested in psychology may find, as ours does to a noteworthy
degree, quite sufficient favorable suggestion for the cure of many
ills in purely psychic influences, either direct or indirect,
deliberate or unconscious.
Men and women do not change, their ills are about the same, and except
for certain definite scientific remedies it is only the superficial
mode of treatment that differs very much. Psychotherapy has always
been an important element in most of the therapeutics of history. With
so much accomplished in the past by indirection, there can be no doubt
but that important advances in psychotherapeutics must result from the
extension of its deliberate use.
We have not yet reached a point in our knowledge of the mode of the
{6} influence of the mind on the body that will enable us to treat
this large subject in a scientific manner. What has been written is
set down rather as suggestive than conclusive. There is almost nothing
that the human mind cannot do, its power ranging from the ability to
delay death for hours or even days to causing sudden or unlooked for
death under strong emotional strain. But we are as yet without
definite data as to the possibilities of the immense power for good,
and also for ill, that lie unrevealed in this domain. Anything that
makes for observations by a large body of trained observers in a large
number of cases will almost surely serve to bring about a development
of this subject of valuable practical application.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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