man has again been made whole--a
very significant fact if taken in connection with religious conversion,
communion, confession, and prayer.

We have somewhat diverged, however, from our main theme, to which we
must now return. We have seen that the subconscious mind may become, so
to speak, _diseased_--this consisting very largely in the processes of
dissociation, complex formation, etc. Further, we have seen that this
dissociated, automatically-acting "self" may exist either as a separate
stream of thought running alongside of, or rather _below_ the main
current; or may alternate with it, by rising to the surface and
occupying the whole stage to the exclusion of the normal
consciousness--when we have those cases of alternating or multiplex
personality which have so puzzled psychologists for many years--and the
correct interpretation of which we are only just beginning to realize.
When this complete change of "self" has taken place, we have those cases
of altered personality referred to at the beginning of this
chapter--cases which are tragic in the extreme in many instances, but
which represent merely extreme types of those losses of memory from
which we all suffer, to a greater or lesser extent, even in our normal
life. The restoration of lost memories by means of suggestion--the
synthesis of the dissociated states--_this_ is the key to the mystery,
the great secret of modern psychotherapy.

And this theory of dissociation of consciousness has enabled us to
explain many puzzling facts hitherto inexplicable. Thus _hysteria_, with
its multiform symptoms and its internal contradictions, has long been
the stumbling-block of medicine. Now it is no longer thought to be a
morbid state (dependent usually upon sexual disturbances), but it is
regarded rather as an indication of the splitting of the mind, a
dissociation which embraces all the motor, physical, and psychical
activities. On this theory, hysteria is easily explained and all its
multiplex symptoms understood. In treating it, the self is unified,
abnormal suggestibility is removed, and the patient is cured!

_Psychaesthenia_ again, with its obsessions and fears, may be explained
in the same manner, and its cure rests upon the same principles. The
"attacks" cease so soon as the psychical synthesis is effected and the
morbid self-consciousness removed.

_Neurasthenia_, long regarded as a pathological state, due to
auto-intoxication and similar causes, is now though