med to have lost almost entirely the power to keep her
equilibrium in walking. Her center of gravity was never over her feet,
but away out in space, so that she was continually banging from one
side of the room to the other, only saving herself from injury by
catching at the wall or the furniture with her hands. Several
physicians who had been interested in the case had found the symptoms
strongly suggestive of brain-tumor. There were, however, certain
unmistakable earmarks of hysteria, such as childlike bland
indifference to the awkwardness of the gait which was a grotesque
caricature of several brain and spinal-cord diseases, with no accurate
picture of any single one. This was evidently a case, not of actual
loss of power but a dissociation of the memory-picture of walking. The
patient was a trained nurse and knew in a general way the symptoms of
brain-tumor. When the suggestion of brain-tumor had fixed itself in
her mind she was able subconsciously to manufacture what she believed
to be the symptoms of that disease.

By injecting a keen sense of disapprobation and skepticism into the
hitherto placidly accepted state of disability, by flashing a mirror
on the physical and moral attitudes which she was assuming, I was able
to rob the pathological complex of its (altogether unconscious)
pleasurable feeling-tone, and to restore to its former strength and
poise a personality of exceptional native worth and beauty. After a
few weeks at my house she was able to walk like a normal person and
went back to her work, for good.

We have already learned enough about the inner self to see in a faint
way how it works out its ideas. Since the subconscious mind runs the
bodily machinery, since it regulates digestion, the building up of
tissue, circulation, respiration, glandular secretion, muscular tonus,
and every other process pertaining to nutrition and growth, it is not
difficult to see how an idea about any of these matters can work
itself out into a fact. A thought can furnish the mental machinery
needed to fulfil the thought. Some one catches the suggestion:
"Concentration is hard on the brain. It soon brings on brain-fag and
headache." Not knowing facts to the contrary, the suggestible mind
accepts the proposition. Then one day, after a little concentration,
the idea begins to work. Whereupon the autonomic nervous system
tightens up the blood-vessels that regulate the local blood supply,
too much blood stays in the head, a