ction and the Roentgen rays are
by far more dangerous. Those who think that for hypnotizing especially
inborn power is needed stand, of course, outside of a serious
discussion. They do not even know the elements of the modern theories.
Every physician has in himself the necessary means for a
psychotherapeutic treatment in every form.

More scientific insight belongs to the argument that most of these
psychotherapeutic schemes are essentially for treatment of symptoms. We
have acknowledged that throughout. The possibility of a relapse or of a
new obsession is thus to a high degree open, and that is certainly a
discouraging feature. Yet we have seen sufficiently that as soon as the
symptoms are removed, there is no lack of means, also by psychotherapy,
to prevent the recurrence. Moreover, to remove the present symptoms is
in any case a great gain and in many cases a decisive gain. And whatever
can be secured by such methods is of such a character that hardly any
other method could have been substituted. It can be said with certainty
that hundreds of thousands leave the offices of their doctors every year
without relief where relief could be secured by psychotherapeutic means.

To be sure, one reply of the physicians is not infrequent and carries
some weight. Psychotherapeutic methods demand much time and patience and
skill. To relieve a cocainist of his desire by mere suggestion may
demand an assiduity which the average physician simply cannot afford;
and nothing requires more time than a real use of Freud's psychoanalytic
method. Hours and hours of conversation about the most trivial
occurrences have to be spent to relieve the repressed ideas and to give
them a chance for a free ascension. It cannot be denied that most of the
really illuminating work in all these fields has been done by scholars
who combine a strong theoretical interest with their effort to cure the
patients, and who therefore examine and treat the individual case
primarily from the wish to get new insight into the laws of nature. The
average physician whose time is his income may be the less willing to
enter into such time-devouring schemes, as the patients too easily may
think that the physician did not do much for them when he simply was
sitting down and gossiping with them.

Yet after all, behind all of it stands one motive which has held back
the development of psychotherapy in the medical profession more than
anything else. The physician feels in