, has come into new perspective
through this pioneer work which men like Bleuler, Jung, and Stekel have
developed in various directions.

Thus in recent decades the thorough work of scientific physicians has
developed a psychotherapy of considerable extent and of indubitable
usefulness, far removed from the simultaneous efforts of the churches
and of the popular mental healing cures. A number of eminent men in all
countries have tested the methods and have published the results. But
the curious side of it is that all this is essentially a movement of
leaders while the masses of the profession hesitate to follow. It is a
set of officers without an army. Every large city has one or another
specialist who applies suggestive therapy, one or another nerve
specialist who hypnotizes, but the average physician moves on without
any serious effort to utilize psychotherapy. It is as if the
prescription of the modern chemical drugs were confined to some leading
scholars in the country, while the thousands abstained from it in their
office work and in their family practice. In reality psychotherapy ought
to be used by every physician, as it fits perfectly the needs of the
whole suffering community. Its almost exceptional use in the hands of a
few scholarly leaders deprives it of its true importance. It is the
village doctor who needs psychotherapy much more than he needs the knife
and the electric current.

Why does the medical profession on the whole show this shyness in the
face of such surprising results? In other fields they do not show any
reluctance in taking up the newer developments of method. Even the
Roentgen ray apparatus has quickly won its way, and psychotherapy is
less expensive. To be sure, the most important reason is probably one
which is most honorable. The physicians do not like to touch a tool
which has been misused so badly. Psychotherapy has come too much into
the neighborhood of superstition and humbug. Where miracles are
performed, the man of science prefers to leave the field. The less one
knows about those groups of problems, the less one is able to see the
sharp demarcation line between true scientific studies, for instance, in
hypnotism, and the pseudo-scientific fancies of psychical research.
Experiments in suggestibility are then easily mixed with experiments in
telepathy, and those go over by gradual degrees to clairvoyance and
premonitory apparitions, and from there the way is not far to the
reappea