ame plan of re-education.

=Explanation vs. Suggestion.= Re-education through this kind of
explanation is simply a matter of learning the truth and acting upon
it. It is a process of real enlightenment, and is very different from
suggestion which trades upon the patient's credulity, increasing his
already exaggerated suggestibility.

Freud illustrates the difference between suggestion and
psycho-analysis by saying that suggestion is like painting and
psycho-analysis like sculpture. Painting adds something from the
outside, plastering over the canvas with extraneous matter, while
sculpture cuts away the unnecessary material and reveals the angel in
the marble. So suggestion covers over the real trouble by crying,
"Peace, peace, when there is no peace." Without attempting to remove
the cause, it says to the patient: "You have no pain. You are not
tired. You will sleep to-night. You will be cheerful." Sometimes the
suggestion works and sometimes it does not, but at best the relief is
likely to be a mere temporary makeshift. The symptom may be relieved,
but the character is not changed and therefore no permanent relief is
assured. It is far better for a nervous person to say to himself,
"There is something wrong and I am going to find it," than to keep
repeating over and over, "There is nothing wrong," and so on through a
list of half-believed autosuggestions.

On the other hand, psycho-analysis, and this kind of re-education
based on psycho-analytic principles, do not pay a great deal of
attention to the individual symptom. Instead of adding from without
they try to take away whatever has proved a hindrance to normal
growth and development, and to remove unnecessary resistances which
are responsible for the symptom, and which have been holding the
patient back from the fullest self-expression.

=Incantation vs. Knowledge.= There came to me one day a well-known
public woman who had suffered from nervous indigestion for many years.
As she was able to be with me for only one night, we had time for just
one conversation, but in that time she discovered what she was doing
and lost her indigestion. In the course of the conversation she turned
to me, saying: "Doctor, I know what a force suggestion is. I believe
in its power. Will you tell me why I have not been able to cure myself
of this trouble? Every night after I go to bed I repeat over and over
these Bible verses," naming a number of passages relating to God's
goodness