o-analysis and re-education. What does that mean in the
language of the psychology of a few years ago? In cases of
unreasonable fears or phobias, for example, there is a firmly rooted
system of ideas which refuses to depart at the command of
consciousness. We analyze the mental store to find out the cause of
the unreasonable persistence, and sometimes, quite frequently in fact,
have to resort to hypnosis or hypnodization to find the initial
trouble. It is then corrected, and re-education consists in living
over again from the first experience, the events connected with that
fear and correcting them up to date. In this process minutes only are
used where the original experiences took weeks. Putting it in other
words, we have certain systems of ideas; as a psychological fact of
long standing we know that other elements may be injected into that
system so as to change it, or that one system may be destroyed and
another system built up to take its place. This is the secret of cures
of this nature--of mental troubles--the irritating factor, the thorn
in the mind, is extracted.

We have heard in modern psychology of the hot and cold places in
consciousness, or, to use other terms for the same idea, the central
and peripheral ideas, meaning the ideas which dominate consciousness,
and those which are in the background. The mind can readily attend to
only one thing at a time; if that be pain, for example, that takes up
all of our attention. On the other hand, if for some reason some other
ideas suddenly become central, then the pain is driven away to the
periphery and we say we have no pain, or we have less pain. The
sufferer from neuralgia experiences no pain as he responds to the fire
alarm, and the toothache stops entirely as we undergo the excitement
and fear of entering the dentist's office. Serious lesions yield to
profound emotion born of persuasion, confidence, or excitement; either
the gouty or rheumatic man, after hobbling about for years, finds his
legs if pursued by a wild bull, or the weak and enfeebled invalid will
jump from the bed and carry out heavy articles from a burning house.
The central idea is sufficient to command all the reserve energy, and
that idea which has suddenly and unexpectedly become central may
remain so. What Chalmers called "the expulsive power of a new
affection" in the cure of souls, is the precise method of operation in
the cure of some bodily ills.

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