ly removes that part of the disturbance which had
been superadded by the mental emotion but it cannot remove that primary
factor, the objective inability, and every cure thus finds its limit
there.

Near the field of emotions stand also the many varieties of sexual
abnormities and perversities. I abstain from discussing any special
cases but it may be said that suggestive treatment is in this region
powerful to an almost surprising degree. Even homosexual tendencies
which go back to the beginnings of the memory of the individual yield,
as my experience shows, in a few weeks, if again the suggestion is not
so much directed towards the suppression as to the creation of the
antagonistic reaction, that means in this case, of the normal sexual
desire.

Both ideas and emotions, of course, lead to actions. Moreover we always
insisted that the resulting action is an essential part of the
psychophysical situation and that every mental experience has to be
characterized as a starting point for action. Yet this factor of
activity and of attitude sometimes stands in the foreground. The
controlling idea is then the idea of an end of action, the predominant
emotion, the emotion anticipated from a certain activity. Typical for
that are those disturbances in which an abnormal impulse or an abnormal
desire awakes perhaps a desire for ruinous drugs like morphine or
cocaine or an impulse to criminal deeds, like stealing. But the
disturbances of the psychomotor factor are not less present when the
central complaint is a lack of energy, the most frequent symptom of the
neurasthenic; and our whole discussion has made it clear that a mere
lack of attention belongs to the same category.

Of course, the abnormal impulse is psychophysically not different,
whether it leads to a legally important result like the impulse to kill
or leads to an indifferent result. The subjective suffering may be the
same in both cases. The starting point of the impulse may be any chance
experience. The psychasthenic may pick up such impulses from any model
for imitation or from any haphazard report. It may be entirely freakish
and yet beyond conscious control.

A physician had read in a well-known book on hysteria about a case
in which a girl was troubled by a constant effort to move the big
toe in her shoes. This idea worked on him as a suggestion for
several months. At my advice he fought it by auto-suggestion. He
brought himself into