ndless ways in which psychical influence may work
towards the general health and towards the victory over bodily disease;
and all that may be acknowledged without the slightest concession to the
metaphysical creeds of mental healers and Christian Scientists. But to
make use of those means and to harness such influences, it cannot be
enough to rely on the common-sense of the physician any more than we
should trust the common-sense of the surgeon to use his knife without
condescending to the study of anatomy. The psychological study of the
anatomy of the soul shows a not less complicated system of mental
tissues and mental elements.

To enter into the full richness of this whole, large field of course
lies entirely beyond the scope of our short discussion, which seeks as
its only aim a clear recognition of the principles. Yet it seems
essential to illustrate at least this sketch of the field by a more
detailed account of actual developments. Various ways of procedure might
appear in order and the most natural one would be, of course, to pass
down from disease to disease and sketch special cases from diagnosis to
cure. We might go through the various stages of neurasthenia and then
through psychasthenia and then through hysteria and so on. And if we had
to write a handbook for physicians, it would certainly be the desirable
way, in spite of the too frequent repetitions which would become
necessary. But as our aim is only a discussion of principles of
psychotherapy, we have no right to use this method. Moreover, such a
method would suggest the misleading view that the psychotherapist is
called and is able to treat diseases. All that he treats are symptoms
and he ought not to pretend that he can do more, as long as he abstracts
from all other therapeutic agencies. Psychotherapeutic influence may
remove the phobia of a psychasthenic or the obsession of a neurasthenic
or the emotion of a hysteric, and thus may bring not only momentary
relief but a change which may be favorable for general improvement, but
certainly the neurasthenia and psychasthenia and hysteria are not really
removed by it. Of course, even the treatment of symptoms demands a
constant reference to the whole background of the disease. The
depression of the neurasthenic must not be treated like the depression
of the melancholic, the obsession of the psychasthenic must not be
mixed with the fixed ideas of a paranoiac, the hysteric inability to
walk must not be co