the society. It is the sphere in which it may be most difficult
to indicate the way towards a development without dangers. There is no
doubt the arbitrary suppression of the sexual instinct must be
acknowledged as the source of nervous injury while indulgence may lead
to disease and misery. But in any case frivolous habits and easy divorce
contribute much to the unbalanced life which ruins the unstable
individual. Not less difficult and not less connected with the mental
hygiene is the alcohol problem. For normal adult men mild doses have
through their power to relieve the inhibitions undeniable value for the
sound development of the community. Its intemperate use or its use by
young people and by pathological persons is one of the gravest dangers.
Whether intemperance ought to be fought by prohibition or rather by an
education to temperance is a difficult question in which the
enthusiastic women and ministers, backed by the well justified fears of
psychiatrists, will hardly be on the same side as the sober judgment of
scientists, unprejudiced physicians, and historians. In any case the
saloon and its humiliating indecency must disappear and every temptation
to intemperance should be removed. Above all, from early childhood the
self-control has to be strengthened, the child has to learn from the
beginning to know the limits to the gratification of his desires and to
abstain from reckless over-indulgence. With such a training later on
even the temptations of alcoholic beverages would lose their danger. Not
less injurious than the strong drinks are the cards. All gambling from
the child's play to the stock exchange is ruinous for the psychophysical
equilibrium. The same is true of any overuse of coffee and tea and
tobacco, and as a matter of course still more the habitual use of the
drugs like the popular headache powders and sleeping medicines. The life
at home and in public ought to be manifold and expansive but ought to
avoid over-excitement and over-anxiety. A good conscience, a congenial
home, and a serious purpose are after all the safest conditions for a
healthy mind, and the community works in preventive psychotherapy
wherever it facilitates the securing of these three factors.

For that end society may take over directly from the workshop of the
psychotherapist quite a number of almost technical methods. Suggestion
is one of them. The means of suggestion through education and art,
through the church and through pu