Psychotherapy, which is treatment by the mental measures of psycho-analysis and re-education, is an established procedure in the scientific world to-day. Nervous disorders are now curable, as has been proved by the clinical results in scores of cases from civil life, under treatment by Freud, Janet, Prince, Sidis, DuBois, and others; and in thousands of cases of war neuroses as reported by Smith and Pear, Eder, MacCurdy, and other military observers. These army experts have shown that shell-shock in war is the same as nervousness in civil life and that both may be cured by psycho-analysis and re-education.
For more than a decade, in handling nervous cases, I have made use of the findings of recognized authorities on psychopathology. Truths have been applied in a special way, with the features of re-education so emphasized that my home has been called a psychological boarding-school. As the alumni have gone back to the game of life with no haunting memories of usual sanatorium methods, but with the equipment of a fuller self-knowledge and sense of power, they have sent back a call for some word that shall extend this helpful message to a larger circle.
There has come, too, a demand for a book which shall give accurate and up-to-date information to those physicians who are eager for light on the subject of nervous disorders, and especially for knowledge of the significant contributions of Sigmund Freud, but who are too busy to devote time to highly technical volumes outside their own specialties.
This need for a simple, comprehensive presentation of the Freudian principles I have attempted to meet in this primer of psychotherapy, providing enough of biological and psychological background to make them intelligible, and enough application and illustration to make them useful to the general practitioner or the average layman.
JOSEPHINE A. JACKSON.
Pasadena, California, 1921.
CONTENTS
| PART I: THE STRANGE WAYS OF NERVES | |
| CHAPTER I | PAGE |
| In which most of us plead guilty to the charge of "nerves." | |
| [Nervous Folk] | 3 |
| CHAPTER II | |
| In which we learn what "nerves" are not and get a hint ofwhat they are. | |
| [The Drama of Nerves] | 10 |
| PART II: "HOW THE WHEELS GO ROUND" | |
| CHAPTER III | |
| In which we find a goodly inheritance. | |
| [The Story of the Instincts] | 33 |
| CHAPTER IV | |
| In which we learn more about ourselves. | |
| [The Story of the Instincts] (Continued) | 51 |
| CHAPTER V | |
| In which we look below the surface and discover a veritable wonderland. | |
| [The Subconscious Mind] | 77 |
| CHAPTER VI | |
| In which we learn why it pays to be cheerful. | |
| [Body and Mind] | 118 |
| CHAPTER VII | |
| In which we go to the root of the matter. | |
| [The Real Trouble] | 141 |
| PART III: THE MASTERY OF "NERVES" | |
| CHAPTER VIII | |
| In which we pick up the clue. | |
| [The Way Out] | 183 |
| CHAPTER IX | |
| In which we discover new stores of energy and relearn thetruth about fatigue. | |
| [That Tired Feeling] | 219 |
| CHAPTER X | |
| In which the ban is lifted. | |
| [Dietary Taboos] | 250 |
| CHAPTER XI | |
| In which we learn an old trick. | |
| [The Bugaboo of Constipation] | 278 |
| CHAPTER XII | |
| In which handicaps are dropped. | |
| [A Woman's Ills] | 300 |
| CHAPTER XIII | |
| In which we lose our dread of night. | |
| [That Interesting Insomnia] | 322 |
| CHAPTER XIV | |
| In which we raise our thresholds. | |
| [Feeling Our Feelings] | 333 |
| CHAPTER XV | |
| In which we learn discrimination. | |
| [Choosing Our Emotions] | 359 |
| CHAPTER XVI | |
| In which we find new use for our steam. | |
| [Finding Vent in Sublimation] | 379 |
| [Glossary] | 386 |
| [Bibliography] | 390 |
| [Index] | 393 |