religious emotion. Thus the minister will be a very
important assistant to him and the church will most successfully do for
many patients what for other patients perhaps travel or music or the
theatre, sport or social life, may do.

Just in the relation to the church, the physician will need subtlest
discrimination, and he will not forget that while even a strong
religious emotion may be without damage for a normal man, it may well be
injurious to the unstable brain. But if the physician uses tact and
wisdom, he will be surprised to find how often the religious stimulation
can indeed be helpful for his purposes and the division of labor
demands that this be supplied not by himself but by the minister. He
will advise the consulting sufferer to seek the influence of a godly man
who awakens in him upbuilding wholesome emotions and volitions. The
minister may in this way very well become the assistant of the
physician. But whether this cooeperation is looked on from the one or
from the other point of view, in every case it needs absolute clearness.
Nothing is gained and too much is lost if the two functions are
carelessly mixed together. It is never the task of the minister to heal
a mind and never the task of a physician to uplift a mind. One moves in
the purposive sphere, the other in the causal sphere. Their friendship
can seriously endure only as long as they remain conscious of the fact
that they have two entirely different functions in the service of
mankind.

XIV

PSYCHOTHERAPY AND THE COMMUNITY

Both the physician and the patient find their place in the community the
life interests of which are superior to the interests of the individual.
It is an unavoidable question how far from the higher point of view of
the social mind the psychotherapeutic efforts should be encouraged or
suppressed. Are there any conditions which suggest suspicion of or
direct opposition to such curative work?

Of course society has to be sure that no possible misuse and damage are
to result from such practice. Fears in that direction have been uttered
repeatedly, but from very different standpoints. One which is perhaps
most often heard in popular circles results from an entire
misunderstanding and deserves hardly any discussion after our detailed
study of the processes involved. It is claimed that suggestive power,
especially in the form of hypnotization, may be secretly misused to make
anyone without his knowledge and against