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OUTWITTING OUR

NERVES

A PRIMER OF PSYCHOTHERAPY

BY

JOSEPHINE A. JACKSON, M.D.

HELEN M. SALISBURY

NEW YORK

THE CENTURY CO.

1922

1921, by

THE CENTURY CO.

PRINTED IN U.S.A.

TO

MARY PATTERSON MANLY

A LOVER OF TRUTH

FOREWORD

"Your trouble is nervous. There is nothing we can cut out and there isnothing we can give medicine for." With these words a young collegestudent was dismissed from one of our great diagnostic clinics.

The physician was right. In a nervous disorder there is nothing to cutout and there is nothing to give medicine for. Nevertheless there issomething to be done,—something which is as definite and scientificas a prescription or a surgical operation.

Psychotherapy, which is treatment by the mental measures ofpsycho-analysis and re-education, is an established procedure in thescientific world to-day. Nervous disorders are now curable, as hasbeen proved by the clinical results in scores of cases from civillife, under treatment by Freud, Janet, Prince, Sidis, DuBois, andothers; and in thousands of cases of war neuroses as reported by Smithand Pear, Eder, MacCurdy, and other military observers. These armyexperts have shown that shell-shock in war is the same as nervousnessin civil life and that both may be cured by psycho-analysis andre-education.

For more than a decade, in handling nervous cases, I have made use ofthe findings of recognized authorities on psychopathology. Truths havebeen applied in a special way, with the features of re-education soemphasized that my home has been called a psychologicalboarding-school. As the alumni have gone back to the game of lifewith no haunting memories of usual sanatorium methods, but with theequipment of a fuller self-knowledge and sense of power, they havesent back a call for some word that shall extend this helpful messageto a larger circle.

There has come, too, a demand for a book which shall give accurate andup-to-date information to those physicians who are eager for light onthe subject of nervous disorders, and especially for knowledge of thesignificant contributions of Sigmund Freud, but who are too busy todevote time to highly technical volumes outside their own specialties.

This need for a simple, comprehensive presentation of the Freudianprinciples I have attempted to meet in this primer of psychotherapy,providing enough of biological and psychological background to makethem intelligible, and enough application and illustration to makethem useful to the general practitioner or the average layman.