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We have to consider both groups somewhat more in detail, as each again allows a large variety of cases. Thus we have before us, first the normal mind-brain system into which a disturbance breaks, injuring more or less severely and for a longer or shorter time the equilibrium of the psychophysical functions.
The neglect of training, for instance, in periods of development may have resulted in the retardation which yields the symptoms of a feeble-minded brain, or the wrong training may have created vicious habits, firmly established in the mind-brain system and gravely disturbing the equilibrium.
The loose interplay of the brain cells without the serious training of discipline must involve disorganization of the mind-brain system which may count often most powerfully in those spheres in which the mere needs of life are felt the least. There is only one great remedy: discipline, training for concentrated attention, for a work in submission of will to a steady purpose.
In the first case when the disturbance occurs in the mind-brain system itself, we ought to separate two large groups, first those cases in which the system itself is normal and the disturbance comes from without, and second those in which the constitution of the system itself was abnormal and led to disturbances under conditions in which a normal system would not have suffered.
Another and for the psychotherapist much more important group is that in which the impairment results from toxic influences. Alcohol, morphine, cocaine, tobacco, and many other drugs may have been misused and may have produced a most marked alteration in the mind-brain system.
We may utilize the influence which the mind-brain system has for the whole body and thus may apply the psychical tool to work on the disturbances in the bodily apparatus. We may discriminate a direct and an indirect influence in the psychical treatment of bodily diseases. Transition from the foregoing group of psychical disturbances offers itself perhaps most easily through the state of insomnia.
But the therapeutic effect is certainly not confined to the central nervous system. Whithersoever the centrifugal nerves lead there the mind-brain system may have its curative influence. In the most startling way that is true for the digestive apparatus. The secretions of the stomach, the activity of the intestines can be influenced to a decree which it is difficult to explain.
Incomparably small, on the other hand, is the aid which psychotherapy can offer in cases of real destructions in the brain, as in the case of tumors, hemorrhage, paresis or the degeneration by senility. More effective may be its work in concussion of the brain and especially with traumatic neuroses, as in the case when a railroad accident has put the mind-brain system out of gear.
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