The machinery of the mindFirth, Violet M. (Violet Mary)
Science
The machinery of the mind
Firth, Violet M. (Violet Mary)
Psychology
The difference in the view-point of the two schools of psychoanalysis
leads to a difference in the method of handling the patient; the
Freudian who believes that all nerve trouble is due to the retention
of infantile habits of thinking, confines himself to analysis and
nothing but analysis, offering the patient little or nothing in the way
of explanation or instruction, but simply aiding him to lay bare the
depths of his subconscious mind, believing that by so doing pent-up
emotions will be worked off and split-off complexes reassociated to
the personality. The disciple of Jung, on the other hand, believing
that the trouble is due to a present failure of adaptation, though
using the psychoanalytic method to reveal and bring into consciousness
the dissociated complexes, uses a considerable amount of teaching and
explanation in an endeavour to enable the patient to assimilate the
fruits of experience and adapt himself to his environment. The Freudian
complains that the follower of Jung beclouds the issue by unintentional
suggestion, and the latter accuses the former of unnecessarily
prolonging the process by leaving the patient to find his own way
unaided by a wider experience.
The teaching and explanatory method, generally known as re-education,
is chiefly associated with the name of du Bois, who was its
original exponent, but as, in his day, the psychoanalytic method of
investigating the causes of mental disease was unknown, he was often
groping in the dark, and dealing with secondary symptoms and effects,
so that his method fell into disrepute in the eyes of the new school;
but that this method, wisely handled, can be of great benefit in
expediting a cure and lessening the painfulness of the process is
beyond gainsay.
CHAPTER XXII
HYPNOSIS, SUGGESTION, AND AUTOSUGGESTION
Much popular misapprehension exists with regard to the phenomenon known
as hypnosis. It may briefly be described as a condition in which the
reason and judgment of the subject are in temporary abeyance, and any
idea presented to him will be accepted without reflection, and take
so strong a hold upon the mind that it will act itself out almost
automatically. This condition of passive receptivity graduates from
slight abstraction, almost undistinguishable from normal consciousness,
to a condition resembling sleep, or the cataleptic rigidity of deep
trance. Its manifestations and characteristics are manifold and most
curious and instructive, but beyond the scope of the present work.
Different hypnotists use different methods of inducing this condition,
but the main factor in all of them is the fixation and arrestation of
the attention and the use of suggestion. It is generally held that it
is autosuggestion on the part of the subject, induced by the hypnotist,
that is the crux of the whole problem, and that without this internal
co-operation, which is often of an unconscious and involuntary nature,
the work of the operator would be unavailing.
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