easily be too much
of the faith emotion. Religious fervor has at all times helped to create
hysteria and to develop psychasthenias. It cannot be otherwise. A group
of ideas which has such tremendous power over man must easily be able to
produce inhibitions and exertions which become dangerous to a nervous
system the constitution of which is pathological. To leave such a
dangerous and powerful remedy entirely in the hands of men who by their
profession must aim towards a maximum dose of religious influence can
certainly not be in the interests of the patients or of the community.

Even the whole technique of this movement awakens the fear of possible
harmful consequences. On the one hand we have the movement itself as a
popular suggestion for the suggestible masses. The patient who seeks the
help of a scientific neurologist hardly becomes a center of psychical
contagion, but the church services for the sick offer favorable
conditions for an epidemic development of hysterical symptoms. But more
important are the influences on the individual patient. The whole
purpose of the treatment demands the highest possible degree of
suggestibility brought about by the ministerial persuasion. But it is
evident that this degree of suggestibility means at the same time the
most fertile soil for every chance suggestion and for influences which
are perhaps entirely unintended. The physician and the psychologist,
considering the mental state with reference to its elements, will make
most careful use of those accessory influences. The minister, who
necessarily has his spiritual aim in mind, cannot even become aware of
all the involuntary influences which reach the mind in its most
suggestible state. There can be no doubt that it would often need
psychological art to avoid the creation of new pathological symptoms in
such half-hypnotized patients. Yet the minister even goes so far as to
make use of the sleeping mind without any consideration of the possible
damage which may be done to his subject. He goes to the bedside of a
sleeping girl and whispers his suggestions and is satisfied when they
show their effects the next day. It does not lie in his horizon to
consider the grave consequences which such suggestions during sleep may
produce during future years in the brain the sleep of which has been
transformed into such half-somnambulic relations. Hysterias may be
created by such methods. No one can blame the minister for his
remoteness fro