ct also as if they were not true; to try
it and see what happens. Arguing, also, she finds, usually antagonizes
or makes the patient stubborn. He cannot prove by her logic his point,
but he "knows" from inner experience that he sees what he sees, hears
what he hears, and knows what he knows. The fact that the nurse does
not is merely annoying evidence that she is blind, deaf, or stupid to
these things of his reality. He knows he is lost and damned, or tainted;
that he is King George, Caesar, or the Lord, as the case may be; or that
his internal organs are all wrong. He "feels" it and the nurse
can't--therefore, he alone has true knowledge of it. In the end, the
wise nurse who never disputes with him, but leads him on to action which
utterly disregards these things, may bring about a gradual conviction in
the patient's mind that a man couldn't do what he does if all these
things were true; and the delusion slowly may lose its force or the
hallucination fade away. Many patients drop them from their lives
entirely. Many others in whom dementia is not indicated, or in whose
cases it is indefinitely delayed, can come to an intellectual
realization that all these things are fantasies, and do not represent
reality; that despite their continued, frequent, or occasional demands
upon feeling life, they can be consistently ignored. These psychopathic
individuals may act as they would if the delusions never came henceforth
to their consciousness, and so be enabled to live a comparatively normal
life.

THE OBSESSED PATIENT

A patient who is suffering from obsessions must carry out certain
abnormal actions, or be wretched. She cannot do otherwise. It is as
though she were forced by some outside agent, though the forcing is
actually from within. When the nurse realizes this, and the more
essential fact--that many patients, who have not true obsessions, yet
have a tendency toward obsessed ways of thinking and doing--when she
comprehends it almost as she would if she were the victim, then she is
ready to help the patient by gently making the action impossible, and at
the same time diverting attention.

THE MIND A PREY TO FALSE ASSOCIATIONS

Sometimes a nurse reminds a patient of some one in the past who has
complicated her life in an unhappy way, so she distrusts or dreads her
or is made constantly uncomfortable in her presence. In such a case, if
the nurse reports her patient as resistive, or fearful or cringing, or
distrustfu