152 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXX. No. 761 



mined by causes is simply an unsolved prob- 

 lem"? Owing to the possible confusion of 

 morality and mentality the reader is forced 

 to see that the physician and psychotherapist 

 must use his weapons quite irrespective of 

 what he knows chiefly from the purposive 

 point of view of experience; a word of en- 

 couragement, such as " my friend, be cour- 

 ageous and faithful," is said to be used dif- 

 ferently by the physician from what the 

 layman or the minister has in mind, viz., 

 merely as natural and psychophysical material 

 to secure a certain effect, just as sodium bro- 

 mide would be used. Why this appearance of 

 insincere elimination of the inevitable human 

 feature of a useful reaction, and this reduction 

 to a cold-blooded " scientific " spirit? I grant 

 that " The highest moral appeal may be even 

 a most unfit method of treatment and the 

 religious emotion may just as well do harm as 

 good from the point of view of the physician " 

 (p. 84) ; but may not equally miscalculated 

 " causal " use of mental suggestion and sim- 

 ilarly uncritical uses of supposedly " efficient 

 stimuli" be as harmful? It is not so much 

 the standpoint that makes the trouble, but cer- 

 tain improprieties and the possible disregard 

 of experience. Difficulties concerning the re- 

 lation of the morbid manifestations and the 

 " underlying " factors are awkwardly intro- 

 duced in the frequent emphasis of the contrast 

 between " disease " and " symptom " : 



The mind reflects only symptoms of the disease; 

 the disease itself belongs always to the organism. 



How about the mind and the symptoms? 

 What does this contrast mean in hysteria? 

 Are not the " symptoms " the factors to be 

 handled and practically all we know of the 

 " disease " ? I do not deny that a certain 

 medical attitude gets a useful background 

 through these distinctions. But it is an atti- 

 tude which creates more confusion than good, 

 and which some of us are trying to make 

 unnecessary without surrender of scientific 

 principles. A distinction between leading or 

 essential facts and incidental or accidental 

 ones does more for clearness than the distinc- 

 tion of disease and symptoms. 



The chapters on suggestion and hypnotism 



and on the subconscious are the climax of the 

 introductory part. In the former the actual 

 constructive material is very profitable and 

 might have been given the lead to the extent 

 that the negative character of the key-note of 

 the latter chapter — " There is no subconscious- 

 ness " might readily have become the inevi- 

 table conclusion, instead of appearing like a 

 quibbling over terms, to one who may have 

 used the expression in a sense more justified 

 than the one criticized by Miinsterberg. The 

 positive contribution of these two chapters 

 belongs to the best the book offers. It reduces 

 suggestion to the principle of suppression of 

 opposite tendencies and impulses and wishes, 

 shows that there is no action which has not 

 its definite opposite, and that the induction 

 of opposite mental states constitutes the elim- 

 inative and curative power in suggestion. 

 Miinsterberg shows how this same principle 

 holds also for attention; how attention leads 

 to making the object clearer, while in sugges- 

 tion we change it in adapting ourselves to 

 the new situation in which we believe (since 

 actions and heliefs are the only possible ma- 

 terial of any suggestion). He shows that 

 there is nowhere a sharp line between re- 

 ceiving communications and receiving sugges- 

 tions, just as attention shades over into neu- 

 tral perception. 



It is in the highest interests of psychotherapy 

 that this intimate connection between suggestion 

 and ordinary talk and intercourse, between sug- 

 gestion and ordinary choice of motives, between 

 suggestion and attention be steadily kept in view 

 and that suggestion is not transformed into a 

 kind of mysterious agency. 



This discussion is most admirable. The 

 same form of constructive procedure might 

 very efficiently have kept out the contrasts of 

 moral and mental, etc., criticized above, where 

 only a ivrong method of dealing with the con- 

 trasted matters is the issue (see also p. 374), 

 and the contrast as such is relatively unes- 

 sential. 



The subconscious is done away with. Sub- 

 conscious mental facts are either not mental 

 but physiological, or mental but not subcon- 

 scious. Too much emphasis is put on the 



