All his own human sympathy, with its indispensable basis, a knowledge of his own strength and weaknesses, all his learning in physical science and psychology, all his knowledge of morality and religion must be available for immediate and efficient use. In one interview he may have to lay down the law for the benefit of some ignorant and distressed patient who is desperately anxious to follow his advice unquestioningly; in the next he may be at close grips with a mind more flexible and independent than his own, knowing well that his every little victory must be consolidated, and that every position won may be subsequently counter-attacked by his patient. He must be ready to suggest, discuss, persuade as the time and the conditions indicate. While, therefore, the ultimate lines on which an ideal diagnostic analysis and curative re-education will be possible are as yet undefined, it would serve no good purpose in a book of this length to raise discussion on the question of psychoanalysis. Its future will be settled, not in the heated atmosphere of the debate, not in the acrid polemics of the correspondence columns, but in the calm, careful examination by the individual worker of his own actual findings and the honest comparison of them with those of others. FOOTNOTES: [37] Such development involves a complicated set of processes the nature of which is by no means obvious to unaided common sense. [38] “... for example, a patient may maintain that he is the king, but that an organised conspiracy exists to deprive him of his birthright. In this way delusions are sometimes elaborated into an extraordinarily complicated system and every fact of the patient’s experience is distorted until it is capable of taking its place in the delusional scheme.” Bernard Hart, _The Psychology of Insanity_, Cambridge, 1914, p. 32. [39] _Cf._ p. 15_f._ [40] _Cf._ Hart, _op. cit._, p. 66_f._ [41] The reader may pass an interesting time in trying to give himself or others an historical account of the events in his life which caused him to choose his present profession. He will probably find that memories emerge of incidents and conversations which have been forgotten for years. Yet he may find that they have influenced his present life and his action at any moment of the present, to a very great extent. Their present action clearly has been unconscious.