In view of these considerations, if you feel disposed to go further into the matter, I should be grateful if you would furnish me with more convincing reasons why hypnotic treatment must be dispensed with; and explain how to do without it, or with what to replace it in such cases. Were I convinced, I would give it up as you have done, but what convinced you has, so far, not convinced me. Si duo faciunt idem, non est idem.
Now I want to consider another important matter to which you alluded, but only cursorily, and to put one question: behind the neurotic phantasies there stands, you say, almost always (or always) a moral conflict which belongs to the present moment. That is perfectly clear to me. Research and therapy coincide; their task is to search out the foundations and the rational solution of the conflict. Good. But can the rational solution always be found? “Reasons of expediency” so often bar the way, varying with the type of patient, for instance children, young girls and women from “pious” catholic or protestant families. Again that accursed opportunism! A colleague of mine was perfectly right when he began to give sexual enlightenment to a young French patient, a boy who was indulging in masturbation. Whereupon, like one possessed, in rushed a bigoted grandmother, and a disagreeable sequel ensued. How to act in these and similar cases? What to do in cases where there arises a moral conflict between love and duty (a conflict in married life)?—or in general between instinct and moral duty? What to do in the case of a girl afflicted with hysterical or anxiety symptoms, needing love and having no chance to marry, either because she cannot find a suitable man or because, being “well-connected,” she wants to remain chaste? Simply try to get rid of the symptoms by suggestion? But that is wrong as soon as one knows of a better way. How to reconcile these two consciences: that of the man who does not want to confine his fidelity to truth within his own four walls; and that of the doctor who must cure, or if he dare not cure according to his real convictions (owing to opportunist-motives), must at least
