here by itself, to the soul which is well or ill through
its own independent alterations without steadily relating the changes to
the total organism, leads therefore necessarily to failure. The mind
reflects only symptoms of the disease; the disease itself belongs always
to the organism. Psychotherapy has suffered too much from the belief
that the removal of mental symptoms is a cure of disease.

Certainly the psychophysical symptoms may often stand in the foreground
of the disease, and in that case it may be left to the special needs
whether we deal with them as psychical or as physical changes. Even the
patient may be made to see them in one or the other way in accordance
with his special needs. To tell him that his brain cells are in disorder
and that they can be cured will be the right thing for him who takes
only the introspective view of his suffering and is in despair because
his own will seems powerless to overcome those mental changes. For the
next patient, the opposite may be wiser. The belief that his brain is
ill may have induced him to give up effort of the will instead of
helping along by steady self-suggestion. He will be helped more if he
understands that his mind is working wrongly. But the full truth is that
both mind and body are in disorder; the function of the disturbed brain
cells accompanies the ineffective will, and to reenforce the will means
to bring into equilibrium again the disturbed brain cells. For the
psychotherapist the temptation of giving the attention to the mental
symptoms only is strong. The more firmly the physician sticks to the
standpoint of psychophysiology, the better he will see ailment and cure
in their right proportion.

This demand for the consideration of the whole personality, mind and
body, ought not to be influenced by the popular separation between
organic and functional diseases. If we call organic diseases of the mind
those in which the mental disturbance is the accompaniment of a brain
disturbance, and functional those in which no brain disturbance exists,
we leave entirely the ground of modern psychology. As soon as we
believe that the mind can be disturbed without a change in the functions
of the brain, we give away all that which has brought scientific order
into the study of psychological existence. Every mental disturbance
corresponds to a disorder in the brain's functions. But there cannot be
a change in the functions of the brain without a change in its
stru