e that
the complexity of the process is no argument against the strictly
physiological character of the event. That various activities can
coexist in such a way that one of them may at any time slide down from
the conscious centers to the merely physical ones, we all know by daily
experience. We may go home through the streets of the busy town engaged
with our thoughts. For a while the idea of our way and of the sidewalk
is in our consciousness, when suddenly we reach our house and notice
that for a long while we have no longer had any thought at all of the
way. We were absorbed by our problems, and the motor activity of walking
towards our goal was going on entirely in the physiological sphere. But
whether we prefer the physiological account or insist on the coconscious
phenomena, in either case is there any chance for the subconscious to
slip in? That a content of consciousness is to a high degree dissociated
or that the idea of the personality is split off is certainly a symptom
of pathological disturbance, but it has nothing to do with the
constituting of two different kinds of consciousness or with breaking
the continuous sameness of consciousness itself. The most exceptional
and most uncanny occurrences of the hospital teach after all the same
which our daily experience ought to teach us: there is no
subconsciousness.

PART II

THE PRACTICAL WORK OF PSYCHOTHERAPY

VII

THE FIELD OF PSYCHOTHERAPY

We have discussed the psychological tools with which the psychotherapist
has to work but we have not spoken as yet of psychotherapy itself. All
that we have studied has been by way of preparation; and yet the right
preparation is almost the most important factor for the right kind of
work. To rush into psychotherapy with hastily gathered conceptions of
mental life may be sometimes successful for the moment, but must always
be ultimately dangerous. It is often most surprising what a haphazard
kind of psychology is accepted as a basis for psychotherapy even by
scientifically schooled physicians who would never believe that common
sense would be sufficient to settle the problems of anatomy and
physiology; as soon as the mind is in question, no serious study seems
needed. Can we be surprised then that in the amateur medicine of the
country within and without the church any fanciful idea of mental life
may flourish? If we are to recognize the rights and wrongs of
psychotherapy in a scientific spirit, a sob