will sleep the next night or that the pain
will disappear or that he will be able to walk with such firmness that
the counter-idea is undermined. It depends on the type of patient
whether such suggestions of belief work better when it is assured with
an air of condescension, spoken with an authority which simply ignores
every possible contradiction, or with an air of sympathy and hope.
Experience shows that it is favorable to connect such assurance with the
entrance of a definite signal. "You will sleep to-night when the clock
strikes ten," "The pain will disappear when you enter the door of your
house," or perhaps, "Read this letter three times quietly in a low
voice, and at the end of the third reading your fear will suddenly
stop." Psychological insight will further decide whether it is wiser in
the particular case to assure the patient of the resulting effect or
rather of the power to bring about the effect. With some people, it
works better to insist that the result will happen, with others to
promise that they themselves can secure it; in the one case they feel
themselves as passive instruments, in the other as real actors. To some
hysterics, it is better to say: "You will walk," to others, "You can
walk."

This belief in the future entrance of a change frequently demands an
artificial reenforcement. There belongs first the application of
external factors which awaken in the background of the mind the
supporting idea that something has been changed in the whole situation
or that some helpful influence has made the improvement possible.
Medicines of colored and flavored water, applications of electric
instruments without currents, in extreme cases even the claptrap of a
sham operation with a slight cut in the skin, may touch those brain
cells which words alone cannot reach with sufficient energy and may thus
secure the desired psychophysical effect. The patient who by merely
mental inhibition has lost his voice for weeks may get it back as soon
as the physician has looked into his larynx with a mirror and has held
an electrode without battery connection on the throat. Another way of
helping by make-believe methods is to give the impression that a decided
improvement is noticeable. The uneducated patient believes it easily
when the physician at his very entrance into the office expresses his
surprise about the external symptoms of a change for the better, perhaps
seen in the color of the skin or the shading of the i