ramsay & co.

attributes it to any but the right cause, and nearly always seeks a physical
explanation. Of human desires the greatest are undoubtedly the sexual and
those pertaining to self-preservation. Such desires usually produce the greatest
psychic trauma.
The Hysteric.
Here the origin of the condition is the same, but we have physical manifestations
as a solution of the mental conflict. Every hysteric's symptoms are the
means by which he has gained mental peace. Every good physician is therefore
a disturber of this peace.
Hysteria is divided into-
i. Anxiety Hysteria.—Where repressed mental complexes produce a certain
emotional state, a morbid anxiety with physical manifestations of this
anxiety.
2. Conversion Hysteria.—Here, by a process not involving mental anxiety,
the mental processes directly produce the symptom. The symptom is the symbol
of the complex.
(The term complex signifies a set of ideas repressed.)
Treatment.
General.—Treat your patient as a reasonable human being in very great
difficulties with an understanding as nearly scientific and real as you can give.
No neurotic understands his condition. If he did he would cure himself
without your aid.
Prove to him that you really understand him. Show him the cause of his
condition in general terms. Give him something definite to work upon, and
throw the onus of cure upon him. Give him an objective interest in himself.
Asking him to use every effort to struggle against his emotion is obvious
folly. Make him analyse and slowly work with you. It will reserve his strength.
Show him that a cause is discoverable for his condition, and assure him the
road to cure is a sinuous track, and see that he keeps this track.
Further treatment will fall into two categories :—
I. Symptomatic.—By suggestion instilling ideas of equal potency and
directed against the morbid ideas. Displacing one emotional state by another
of an opposed nature.
2. Radical.—Psycho-analysis.
The decision is of ten difficult, and must be as the individual case dictates.
Psycho-analysis is in most cases a necessity, but suggestion is of great use, and
more often the only practical method available. It is only with difficulty that
we realise the power of the idea. It is the preliminary of all action and progress.
The following are the methods of suggestion one may use :-
I. By art create an emotional state in your patient which gives him a new
viewpoint. Such an effect can only be produced by great mental energy and an
absolute conviction in one's own powers to influence another. A religious conversion
by the emotions is an equivalent example.
2. Hypnosis.
3. Suggestions given in semi-hypnotic state (Bramwell's method).
4. Baudoin's method, used by Coue.
5. The method of completely tiring the patient, used in hysterical symptoms.
Opposing your personality to the patient's for a period of five or six hours if
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