CONCEPTIONS AND MISCONCEPTIONS 227 



scientifically and as important economically as any in the 

 history of modern medicine, I do not by any means regard 

 psychoanalysis as a universal panacea for nervous dis- 

 orders, but on the contrary consider it as the particular 

 method of psychotherapy that is most restricted in its 

 possibilities of application, 7 a reflection, however, which 

 is rather comforting than otherwise when we consider the 

 length of time required frequently, as I have said, as 

 much as an hour daily for weeks and even months for 

 the adequate analysis of a single case. This being true, 

 it seems a fortunate circumstance that psychoanalysis is 

 not the suitable method in all cases that other and sim- 

 pler methods of psychotherapy are applicable in many 

 types and degrees of nervous manifestations, and even if 

 sometimes unscientific, they are at least effective for the 

 ignorant masses to whom they are applicable. 



The fact is that psychoanalysis is practically adapted ta 

 only a few persons, but those few belong, generally speak- 

 ing, to the most educated classes and are precisely those 

 personalities who, from the nature of the conditions of 

 the onset of a neurosis, are the most sensitive, highly de- 

 veloped and worth while among us, and whose re-educa- 

 tion through self-analysis will be most far-reaching in its 

 influence on the body social. 



Psychoanalysis can never hope to become popular for 

 the reason that it is honest. It does not flatter or cajole 

 the patient or seek to appease him with subtle blandish- 

 ments ; on the contrary, it mercilessly thwarts and assails. 

 him. The mawkish and artificial will find in it little unc- 

 tion of their boredom. Psychoanalysis offers nothing bril- 

 liant or spectacular, but, being a robust, uncompromising^ 

 method of scientific investigation, it proceeds in the la- 

 borious, unobtrusive manner of all earnest research, and 

 is adapted to the needs of only earnest and intelligent men 

 and women. 



7 Freud has himself been most explicit in the practical limita- 

 tions he has recognized in the use of the psychoanalytic method. 



