s that the
regular practitioner, who is very irregular, cannot. If there is
one good doctor I have not consulted, I would like to know his
name. I was doing editorial work in X and broke down. Still the
doctor said that if I liked my work, I should go back to it and
pitch in. I did. It lasted a few days and then I had to give up
altogether, couldn't grind out another word. Then to another
doctor----also the best in the city. He told me to give up all
work, which I did, and then I went on a farm for six months. That
did not help me either. Later I went west and spent some time in
the mountains. I felt no better there. Then I went to Arizona and
lived in a tent out on the desert; that did not help me. There was
always a sensation of exhaustion and any physical exertion put me
on my back, even when it was light and pleasant exercise. Then I
went to California; it did me little good. It is a perfect paradise
for anyone who has not got neurasthenia. I still have not got
myself in hand. I cannot do or say or write just what I wish, and
cannot concentrate my thoughts. To try to read a book is punishment
because I forget as fast as I read." And so on.

I answered him certainly not to come but tried to induce some
autosuggestions. A few weeks later, he wrote me: "Ever since you
wrote me, I am now feeling somewhat improved." Yet I cannot judge
how far the improvement belonged to the psychical factor only,
inasmuch as I had advised him also to take some bromides. The
really effective treatment would have been heterosuggestion and I
had no time to enter into the case.

Where direct suggestion is used, the effect is often surprising.

A young lawyer after a period of overwork had come to a state of
complete lack of energy. He could not find strength to write a
letter and he came to me at a day when he did not see any way but
suicide open for himself. He complained that, as soon as he began
to grasp a thought, it was evaporating. He stared absently about
the room and felt sure that he would never again achieve anything.
He had not even the energy to read the newspaper. I hypnotized him
three times, each time waking in him the pleasure in a definite
piece of work, at first simply in a novel which he was to read,
then in some letters which he was to write, and t