ve
years of regular medical studies, three years in Leipzig and two years
in Heidelberg; I have an M.D. degree from the University of Heidelberg.
In my first year as docent in a German university twenty years ago, I
gave throughout the winter semester before several hundred students a
course in hypnotism and its medical application. It was probably the
first university course on hypnotism given anywhere. Since that time I
have never ceased to work psychotherapeutically in the psychological
laboratory. Yet that must not be misunderstood. I have no clinic, and
while by principle I have never hypnotized anyone for mere experiment's
sake but always only for medical purposes, yet I adjust my practical
work entirely to the interests of my scientific study. The limitations
of my time force me to refuse the psychotherapeutic treatment of any
case which has not a certain scientific interest for me, and of the many
hundreds whom I have helped in the laboratory, no one ever had to pay
anything. Thus my practical work has strictly the character of
laboratory research.

The chief aim of this book is twofold. It is a negative one: I want to
counteract the misunderstandings which overflood the whole field,
especially by the careless mixing of mental and moral influence. And a
positive one: I want to strengthen the public feeling that the time has
come when every physician should systematically study psychology, the
normal in the college years and the abnormal in the medical school. This
demand of medical education cannot be postponed any longer. The aim of
the book is not to fight the Emmanuel Church Movement, or even
Christian Science or any other psychotherapeutic tendency outside of the
field of scientific medicine. I see the element of truth in all of them,
but they ought to be symptoms of transition. Scientific medicine should
take hold of psychotherapeutics now or a most deplorable disorganization
will set in, the symptoms of which no one ought to overlook to-day.

HUGO MUeNSTERBERG.

HARVARD UNIVERSITY, March 20, 1909.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I. INTRODUCTION 1

PART I

THE PSYCHOLOGICAL BASIS OF PSYCHOTHERAPY

II. THE AIM OF PSYCHOLOGY 9

III. MIND AND BRAIN