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
Ordinarily, suggestion accompanies the material remedies that the
doctor prescribes. He must emphasize just when and how the medicine is
to be taken, and it is well to emphasize the effects that are expected
and just about how they will come. If he is prescribing a tonic, he
does not merely say before meals. He specifies from ten to twenty
minutes before meals, according as he wishes it taken, with a definite
amount of water, stating that the taste of it will excite appetite and
that only food in reasonably liberal quantities will satisfy the
craving produced by it. If he is prescribing a laxative, he states
just when it should be taken and when its effects may be expected. The
arousing of expectancy does much to relax inhibition and to permit the
flow of nervous impulses that may be helpful. If a sleeping potion is
given, the patient is directed to compose himself for sleep
immediately after it is taken, or to take it just a definite time
before he gets into bed, and then to expect its action in the course
of twenty minutes or a half hour, designating rather definitely just
when it shall have its climax of effect. Two or three things done
together, as, for instance, a gentle rubbing with cool water over the
body to produce a glow, a warm foot-bath, and then a sleeping potion,
will combine to produce a climax of physical and psychical effect.
In many conditions that come for treatment to the modern physician,
the physical remedies are much less important than the psychical. This
is particularly true for the affections known as psychoneuroses, in
which some slight nervous disturbance is exaggerated into an extremely
painful condition or a disturbing paralytic state; in the so-called
hysteria of the older times; in the drug habits; in the sex habits; in
the over-eating and under-eating habits, and then with regard to
dreads and other psychic disturbances connected with dreams,
premonitions and the like. In all these cases it is important to
secure concentration of the patient's mind on a neutralizing
suggestion. This must be done deliberately and in such a way as to
secure thorough concentration of attention. It is often a time-taking
process, but nearly everything worth while requires time, and the
results justify the expenditure. Methods mean much in the attainment
of this. They must be impressive, the patient must be convinced of the
power of the physician to help him, and he must have trust in the
efficacy of the mode of treatment.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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