Outwitting Our Nerves A Primer of Psychotherapy   By: Josephine A. Jackson

A PRIMER OF PSYCHOTHERAPY

BY

JOSEPHINE A. JACKSON, M.D. HELEN M. SALISBURY

[Illustration]

NEW YORK THE CENTURY CO. 1922

1921, by THE CENTURY CO.

PRINTED IN U.S.A.

TO

MARY PATTERSON MANLY

A LOVER OF TRUTH

FOREWORD

"Your trouble is nervous. There is nothing we can cut out and there is nothing we can give medicine for." With these words a young college student was dismissed from one of our great diagnostic clinics.

The physician was right. In a nervous disorder there is nothing to cut out and there is nothing to give medicine for. Nevertheless there is something to be done, something which is as definite and scientific as a prescription or a surgical operation.

Psychotherapy, which is treatment by the mental measures of psycho analysis and re education, is an established procedure in the scientific world to day. Nervous disorders are now curable, as has been proved by the clinical results in scores of cases from civil life, under treatment by Freud, Janet, Prince, Sidis, DuBois, and others; and in thousands of cases of war neuroses as reported by Smith and Pear, Eder, MacCurdy, and other military observers. These army experts have shown that shell shock in war is the same as nervousness in civil life and that both may be cured by psycho analysis and re education.

For more than a decade, in handling nervous cases, I have made use of the findings of recognized authorities on psychopathology. Truths have been applied in a special way, with the features of re education so emphasized that my home has been called a psychological boarding school. As the alumni have gone back to the game of life with no haunting memories of usual sanatorium methods, but with the equipment of a fuller self knowledge and sense of power, they have sent back a call for some word that shall extend this helpful message to a larger circle.

There has come, too, a demand for a book which shall give accurate and up to date information to those physicians who are eager for light on the subject of nervous disorders, and especially for knowledge of the significant contributions of Sigmund Freud, but who are too busy to devote time to highly technical volumes outside their own specialties.

This need for a simple, comprehensive presentation of the Freudian principles I have attempted to meet in this primer of psychotherapy, providing enough of biological and psychological background to make them intelligible, and enough application and illustration to make them useful to the general practitioner or the average layman.

JOSEPHINE A. JACKSON.

Pasadena, California, 1921.

CONTENTS

PART I: THE STRANGE WAYS OF NERVES

CHAPTER I PAGE

In which most of us plead guilty to the charge of "nerves."

NERVOUS FOLK 3

CHAPTER II

In which we learn what "nerves" are not and get a hint of what they are.

THE DRAMA OF NERVES 10

PART II: "HOW THE WHEELS GO ROUND"

CHAPTER III

In which we find a goodly inheritance.

THE STORY OF THE INSTINCTS 33

CHAPTER IV

In which we learn more about ourselves.

THE STORY OF THE INSTINCTS (Continued) 51

CHAPTER V

In which we look below the surface and discover a veritable wonderland.

THE SUBCONSCIOUS MIND 77

CHAPTER VI

In which we learn why it pays to be cheerful.

BODY AND MIND 118

CHAPTER VII

In which we go to the root of the matter.

THE REAL TROUBLE 141

PART III: THE MASTERY OF "NERVES"

CHAPTER VIII

In which we pick up the clue.

THE WAY OUT 183

CHAPTER IX

In which we discover new stores of energy and relearn the truth about fatigue.

THAT TIRED FEELING 219

CHAPTER X

In which the ban is lifted.

DIETARY TABOOS 250

CHAPTER XI

In which we learn an old trick.

THE BUGABOO OF CONSTIPATION 278

CHAPTER XII