lity
without going to the trouble of uncovering some of the reactions which
are responsible for the difficulty.

=Moral Hygiene.= Because this is true, there has grown up a kind of
psychotherapy which is known as simple explanation, or persuasion. As
usually practised, this kind of re-education pays very little
attention to the ultimate cause of "nerves." It has little to say
about repressed instincts or the real reasons for fearful emotions and
physical symptoms. Instead, it attacks the symptom itself, contenting
itself with teaching the patient that his trouble is psychic in
origin; that it is based on exaggerated suggestibility and
uncontrolled emotionalism; that it is made out of false ideas about
the body, illogical conclusions, and unhealthy feeling-tones; and that
it may be cured by a kind of moral hygiene, which breaks up these old
habits and replaces them with new and better ones. It tries to
inculcate the cheerful attitude of mind; to give the patient the
conviction of power; to correct his false ideas about his stomach, his
heart, or his head; to train him out of his emotionalism; to lead him
into a state of mind more largely controlled by reason; and to make
him find some useful and absorbing work.

This kind of mental and moral treatment has been sufficient to cure
many neuroses of long standing. In cases that are helped by this
method, the patient's love-force, robbed of the material out of which
it has woven its disguise, and trained out of its bad habits by
re-education, automatically makes its own readjustments and forces new
channels for itself out into more useful activities. Very many nervous
persons seem to need nothing more than this simple kind of help.

=When Simple Explanation Does not Explain.= For very many cases,
however, this procedure, good as it is, does not go deep enough.
Although it gives a sound objective education about the facts of one's
body, it furnishes only the most superficial subjective knowledge of
one's inner life. If the inner struggle be bitter, the competing
forces will hold on to their poor refuge in the symptom, despite any
number of explanations that the symptom can have no physical cause.
Sometimes it is enough for a person to be shown that he is too
suggestible, but often it is far more helpful for him to get an
inkling as to why he likes unhealthy suggestions, and to understand
something of his starved instincts which he may learn to satisfy in
better ways.