the physician has to be substituted for that of
the criminologist.

Whether pedagogy and criminology are to make use of the services of
psychotherapy is thus certainly an open question. It would be
short-sighted to overlook the serious obstacles which stand in the way.
But while the social life outside of the circle of real disease may
better go on without direct interference by psychotherapeutic
influences, it is certainly the duty of the community to make the
underlying principles of psychotherapy useful for the sound development
of society. The artificial over-suggestions which are needed to overcome
the pathological disturbances of mental equilibrium may be left for the
cases of illness. But we saw that every mental symptom of disease was
only an exaggeration of abnormal variations which occurred within the
limit of health. To reduce these abnormalities means to secure a more
stable equilibrium and thus to avoid social damages, and at the same
time to prevent the growth of the abnormality to pathological
dimensions. To counteract these slighter variations, these abnormalities
which have not yet reached the degree of disease, will demand the same
principles of treatment, only in a weaker form. It is in a way not
psychical therapy but psychical hygiene. And this is no longer confined
to the physician but must be intrusted to all organs of the community.
And here more than in the case of disease, the causal point of view of
the physician ought to be brought into harmony with the purposive view
of the social reformer, of the educator and of the moralist.

The ideal of such mental hygiene is the complete equilibrium of all
mental energies together with their fullest possible development. To
work towards this end does not mean to aim towards the impossible and
undesirable end of making all men alike, but to give to all, in spite of
the differences which nature and society condition, the greatest
possible inner completeness and outer usefulness. The efforts in that
direction have to begin with the earliest infancy and are at no age to
be considered as finished; the whole school work and to a high degree
the professional work has to be subordinated to such endeavor. Society
has further to take care that those spheres of life which stand less
under systematic principles, such as the home life of the child and the
social life of the man, his family life and his public life, are
steadily under the pressure of influences which