psychologists to lie in mental dissociation, that is that the various mental processes do not cooperate harmoniously and that some are active while others are dormant. Suggestion in the hypnotic state seems artificially to procure this very state of dissociation, and in fact is widely held to induce a mental state analogous to, if not identical with, that of hysteria. To avoid so unhappy a result of a therapeutic measure as the establishment of a morbid state, endeavours have been made to practise suggestion when the patient is not under hypnosis, that is, when he is awake. It is nevertheless usual to direct the patient to allow his mind to adopt an attitude of passive receptivity, and when, if he can, he has done this to make suggestions to him. Only so far as the critical faculties are dormant are such suggestions likely to be efficacious, and if the critical faculties are dormant the method is open to such objection as may be made to hypnotism. This mode of suggestion is probably but little removed from the method of persuasion, the physician hoping that his case may be accepted under the guise of suggestion with a minimum of ad- verse criticism.
The term " auto-suggestion " has been used to denote a process in which the patient himself attempts to exercise a salutary influence upon his malady by concentrating his thought upon the idea of his cure or by, as it were, commanding his symptoms to disappear. The operation may be assisted by the withdrawal of the patient to a quiet place, by his placing himself in an attitude of repose and by his endeavour to empty his mind of all ideas save the one which is curative. Given sufficient intensity of purpose a man may by such treatment of himself rise superior to the ills that afflict him, think or act in spite of them, and, indeed, in certain cases annihilate them. It is not, however, given to many to reach success on these lines. Afflicted man seeks two things, one to know what really is the matter with him and the second to obtain succour from forces external to himself; he ardently desires a diagnosis and a healer. The desire for correct diagnosis is necessarily shared by him who aspires to be a scientific physician, prompts the constant search for the cause of symptoms and inspires the hope that, a cause being discovered, treatment will be more radical and effectual. Such ideas have led to the inquiries which of recent years have been instituted into the development of the human mind, both from the racial and from the individual aspects, and have resulted in new methods of mental analysis.
Psychological analysis (or " psycho-analysis ") has been prac- tised by the method of introspection for centuries. It involves the examination of his mind by the individual himself and the attempt to differentiate between such mental operations as those of feeling, knowing, reasoning, wishing and willing. Such inquiries eventuated in difference of opinion and ceaseless controversy as to the spheres of these faculties, as they were called; nor was the introspective method, owing to the difficulty of getting it efficiently practised by patients, of much value in morbid psychology. The newer methods of analytical psychol- ogy as applied to morbid mental manifestations, or to such bodily symptoms as might be supposed to be due to disordered mental processes, have addressed themselves to the discovery of a presumedly basic causative idea, its association with other ideas, and its genesis.
The earliest signs of mind in the individual have the character of reflexes, that is, that upon the reception of a certain stimulus by the organism a particular series of movements ensues. Some of these pass by the name of instincts, are of a complicated char- acter, and appear to occur without previous experience and with- out education or direction from without. Very early, however, in the History of the child the play of instinct is controlled, re- pressed or supplanted by positive injunctions from others, by the inculcation of habits, by lines of thought and conduct sug- gested to him by his observations of those about him, by his desire to imitate their doings and to repeat their sayings, and by his personal experience. The purely natural development of the child is interfered with in order that he .may be fitted for life in a civilized society. During this process certain actions initially pleasurable come to be regarded as unconventional, or repre-
hensible, or shameful, or immodest, or all of these together, and so gradually rules of thought and conduct come into being. Almost all, and perhaps all, thoughts and actions are associated with some emotional tone, that is, with feelings of pleasure or displeasure or pain. Such feelings are of varying intensity, being in some cases so weak that they can scarcely be discerned and in others so powerful as to occupy and command the entire personality. During the education of the child a separation may be brought about between an action and the associated emotional tone or affect, as it is termed. If a child has learnt to regard a pleasurable act as blameworthy and in fact acts no longer in this particular way, the affect which was associated with the act may become partially or wholly detached from it and may perhaps be replaced by its opposite. It is one of the hypotheses of psycho-analysis that a dissociated affect of this character may produce symptoms at once or in later life, either because the affect has not been passed on to some other important or more legitimate object of activity and remains as a quantum of unused psychic energy, or because it has become attached to a sub- stitute for its original partner of unworthy or ridiculous charac- ter. The gradual passing on of affects from lower levels of activ- ity to those that are higher has been called sublimation, and their progress from the satisfaction of very lowly bodily wants to the highest ethical and aesthetic acquirements of the mind has been elaborately examined. The failure in attachment of an affect to any sort of substitute for its original partner may result in those indefinite emotional states, sometimes of a distinctly morbid character, in which the individual may be happy or miserable or excited or apathetic for no reason which is obvious to himself or to anyone else; while the attachment of affects to somewhat trifling and comparatively valueless objects is seen in the inordinate interest taken by some in domestic pets, bric-a-brac, pastimes, or fantastic and inane social entertain- ments. Sometimes, however, the affect remains unconverted and still attached to the original act, so that a conflict arises between the primitive and personal desires on the one hand and desires of later acquisition weighted with civilized, ethical, legal and religious authority, on the other. Many such con- flicts are plainly carried on in full consciousness, and are examples of the lust of the flesh against the spirit and of the spirit against the flesh and of the contrariness of the one to the other, but others are by no means so obvious, and their existence may only betray itself by trifling, though odd, deviations from ordinary conduct, by unexplained prejudices and habits, or by symptoms of functional nervous disorder or by the yet more pronounced symptoms of insanity. The conflicts which lie in the field of consciousness may largely be dealt with, in so far as they come under the notice of the physician, in that field. The mere dis- closure to another of the existence of a conflict may suffice to produce a therapeutic effect, and this may be further enhanced by the discussion of the subject and its illumination by another mind, but there are conflicts in which the opposing elements and their origin and genesis are not apparent or recognized or indeed discoverable without much labour. Such conflicts are said to lie in the field of the unconscious and to be due to the per- sistence in that field of repressions made at that time of life when the instinctive desires of the individual, tutored by early environment and education, have undergone a process of re- straint. By a wide, and as it seems to some, unnatural extension of the term "sexual" the interest of the infant in its excretory functions and its relations with its parents is ascribed to the sexual instinct, and is that which, owing to existing social con- ventions, is most subject to repression. It is held that the rela- tions of the child to his mother have an element of sexuality hitherto not determined. Hence the frequent occurrence of such terms as the " Oedipus Complex " and " incest " as descriptive of certain infantile affects. It is further held that the earliest interest of a child in itself is of a sexual character, that it is " auto-erotic." Progress is made from this stage to another in which the child's sexual admiration for himself is termed " nar- cissism"; then to one in which the interest is extended to other members of his own sex, and finally to one in which sexuality
