The displacement on to medical advisers and attendants originally directed to the parents, has frequently been recognised. Here again, it is more particularly the attribute of benevolent omniscience that is liable to be transferred. Three factors contribute especially to this result:--(1) The physician's knowledge on matters of the highest interest and importance, about which others are relatively ignorant (particularly perhaps "medical" matters, in the sexual sense of that euphemism); (2) the fact that the situations in which his assistance is called in, for the most part urgently demand some kind of action which he alone can adequately perform; the sense of helplessness which others feel in these situations being similar in many respects to that frequently experienced in early years when, as children, we were dependent upon the efforts of our parents in many of the important affairs of life; (3) the fact that this sense of helplessness and the general attitude of suggestibility are still further increased in the case of the patient by the general regression to a relatively childish state of mind which illness so frequently brings in its train. The physician's capacity to stimulate and maintain the power of suggestion, which he possesses in virtue of this attitude on the part of those who consult him, is undoubtedly the secret of much real success in medical practice, inasmuch as the mental factors in disease--the importance of which is now becoming fully recognised, although their nature is not yet always clear--are to a large extent directly affected by the patient's belief in his doctor's ability to understand and cure the complaint from which he suffers. [Sidenote: The rôle of parent-regarding tendencies in suggestion and hypnosis]