There are still not a few physicians who regard the group of functional troubles commonly labelled “hysteria” as something closely akin to malingering. If it would not be considered invidious we could quote the opinions of well-known physicians published within the last five years, suggesting that there is no real line of demarcation. (It is not uncommon to meet the expression “_detecting_,” instead of _diagnosing_ hysteria.) But even among those who regard these serious affections as something more than mere simulation there is a tendency to look upon any form of sympathy as a dangerous pandering to the patient’s lack of will power.[27] This attitude often finds expression in leaving the patient alone to get better by his own efforts, or in suggesting to him that he is not so ill as he thinks he is, and that all he needs is some work to occupy his attention. The attempt is often made to justify such methods by the plea that it is “bad for the patient to talk to him of his worries.” But how a physician is to rid a patient of the very root of all his trouble without first discovering and then discussing it with him is not apparent. Nor, again, is it any more rational merely to tell a man who is weighed down with some very real anxiety to “cheer up,” or to “work in the garden,” or “take a walking tour.” We are not maintaining that such methods do not often meet with success in the case of many patients who are only mildly affected and earnestly want to get better. But experience shows that such advice is often fraught with danger, and, in severe cases of mental affection is worse than useless. The experience of those physicians who have been treating such patients with sympathetic insight during the last two years affords a striking condemnation of the theory that it is generally “bad to talk to them of their worries.” It has repeatedly happened that as soon as the patient was asked about his troubles he made a full statement of all that was troubling him and was obviously relieved to confess his worries to someone who took an intelligent interest in his welfare. In many cases the mere unburdening of this weight of anxiety and the removal by the physician of quite trivial misunderstandings which were the original causes of it, were sufficient to cheer up the patient and to start him on the way to complete recovery. Yet many of these men had been inmates of a series of hospitals in which no attempt had been made to discover what was the real source of all the trouble. Thus to their other worries and anxieties was added the real additional grievance that they were being neglected and were of no account. In many cases this constituted a serious aggravation of the patient’s mental disturbance and encouraged him to believe that his state was already beyond help.