eir particular character not through the secondary intrusion but from
the primary desire. To discharge that intrusion leads therefore only to
the elimination of those symptoms which resulted from it, but the
primary disturbance goes on and any new chance intrusion will produce
new explosions. The psychotherapist should therefore go deeper and
relieve the mind from those primary desires which may belong to early
youth and which are entirely forgotten. Even the method of automatic
writing may here sometimes lead to an unveiling of those deepest layers
of suppressed desires. In the same way a careful, subtle analysis of
dreams may support the search for the hidden source of interference.

We have spoken of the technical methods of the psychotherapist. It would
be short-sighted to ignore the great manifoldness of secondary methods
which he shares with the ordinary intercourse between man and man, the
methods which the teacher uses in the schoolroom, which the parents use
in the nursery, which the neighbor uses with his neighbor, methods which
build up the mind, methods which train the mind, methods which reenforce
good habits and suppress unwholesome ones, methods which stimulate sound
emotions and inhibit a quarrelsome temper, methods which indeed are not
less important in the psychiatric clinic and in the hospital than in our
daily life, and which certainly have central importance in that
borderland region which is the particular working field of the
psychotherapist.

X

THE MENTAL SYMPTOMS

We have discussed both the psychological theory and the practical work
of psychotherapy in a systematic order without any reference to personal
chance experience. After studying the fundamental principles, we have
sketched the whole field of disturbances in which psychotherapeutic
influence might be possible and all the methods available. It seems
natural that our next step should be an illustrating of such work by a
number of typical cases. Here it seems advisable to leave the track of
an objective system and to turn to the record of personal observation.
As this is not a handbook for the physician, dealing with the special
forms of disease, we emphasized before that we avoid even any attempt in
such a direction because it would have to introduce not only the
questions of diagnosis, but above all the highly important questions of
treatment by physical agencies. We saw that for us nothing else can be
desirable, but to show