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The psychotherapeutic effort may be directed toward removing the source of the disturbance, bringing the patient under other conditions, curing the diseased organ, and where that is not possible, may work directly on the psychophysical state, inhibiting the pain, suppressing the emotion, substituting pleasant ideas, distracting the whole mind, filling it with agreeable feelings, until the normal equilibrium is restored.
The variety of the psychotherapeutic methods is great and only some types are to be characterized here. But one rule is common to all of them: never use psychotherapeutic methods in a schematic way like a rigid pattern. Schematic treatment is a poor treatment in every department of medicine, but in psychotherapeutics it is disastrous.
We have discussed both the psychological theory and the practical work of psychotherapy in a systematic order without any reference to personal chance experience. After studying the fundamental principles, we have sketched the whole field of disturbances in which psychotherapeutic influence might be possible and all the methods available.
Of course to a certain degree, mental illness too, is open to mental treatment; but certainly many diseases of the mind lie entirely beyond the reach of psychotherapy, and on the other hand psychotherapy may be applied also to diseases which are not mental at all. That which binds all psychotherapeutic efforts together into unity is the method of treatment.
If the physician knows that the good-will of the patient is insufficient to overcome the pathological disturbance, he ought not to make him feel ashamed or guilty, and that not only for moral reasons but also for strictly psychotherapeutic reasons.
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?
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