psychic dispatchers, its mandates obeyed by psychic executors. Installed in all positions of usefulness, both high and low, conscious and subconscious are psychic representatives. They have been appointed to their office by Universal Intelligence. They have received careful training for their work. They are loyal and faithful servitors, and stand in readiness to be used and used effectively for the good of the whole system over which they are set, to shield, guard, control, and develop it. Their acquaintance should be sought, and the whole man needs to be on the best possible terms with them. If honored by wise and intelligent commands from the "I," it is surprising how quickly and efficiently they do their work.

We may therefore concisely state the reasons for the superiority of the first theory as follows:

1. Its categories are simple and give the best causal explanation of the facts that need to be accounted for. 2. It has been most thoroughly worked out in different ways and from somewhat different points of view.

3. It is least beset and attended with crude and fanciful views of man and of his relations to his complex environment.

4. It is in best accord with other correlated sciences, physiology, neurology, biology, and has the best prospects for further scientific development.

5. It is open to the wider implications of man's moral and purposive existence, i.e. it allows for the explanation and elucidation of the facts of his moral and spiritual nature as well as either of the others.

CHAPTER III

THE PRINCIPLES OF PSYCHOTHERAPY

I. THE PSYCHOTHERAPEUTIC ARMAMENTARIUM

BEFORE proceeding to the religious aspects of the mental element in health, a careful collation and description of the psychotherapeutic principles are necessary. By a fairly thorough comprehension of these we shall be in a much better position to understand how the church may legitimately employ and apply mind health.

In establishing these principles, Psychology in its wider content, including abnormal psychology and even psychiatry, must be called into requisition. The mind in its conscious, coconscious, and subconscious states, making up, as we have endeavored to show, its unity, must be recognized in its largest aspect. The transitions from the normal to the abnormal, or the reverse, and the causes of these transitions must here be discussed.

The principles governing mental functioning, bearing on health states, have been laid down as complication or complex formation, conservation, dissociation, automatism, and emotional energy. These are seen operative in both conscious and subconscious states, though in different degrees and intensities. A brief discussion of these will enable the reader to understand better the psychotherapeutic principles.

In view of the intricacy of the nervous mechanism, it is not surprising that we meet with the complex formation of our thoughts. Thoughts tend to become woven together into associational complexes, and when one thought is aroused, the complex of which it is a member is aroused. This tendency to form associational complexes is what is termed complication.

This complex formation is seen in both normal and abnormal states. Mosso gives an interesting reply of an old soldier to the query as to what his greatest fears had been. He said: "I have had only one, but it pursues me still. I am nearly seventy years old, I have looked death in the face I do not know how many times, I have never lost heart in any danger, but when I pass a little old church in the shades of a forest, or a deserted chapel in the mountains, I always remember a neglected oratory in my native village and I shiver and look around, as though seeking the corpse of a murdered man which I once saw carried into it when a child, and with which an old servant wanted to shut me up to make me good." One of Dr. William A. White's patients had psychic attacks preceded by a sensation of green. His original traumatism occurred on a stage carpeted with green baize from which he was carried, face downward. White concludes his article, "The Theory of the Complex" in Interstate Medical Journal, 1909, Vol. 16, pages 243-258, as follows:

"The operations of the mind are never fortuitous : if we ever seem to see mental events that have no efficient cause, it is only because we are not in possession of all the facts. Ideas neither arise spontaneously nor do they exist without having established relations with other ideas again because of a good and sufficient

reason.

The relationships thus established are brought about and cemented by the emotional content of the event which brings them together and they bear thus a relation of interdependence as among themselves they are constellated. These constellations exist as the mental counterparts of events and correspond to experiences which have emotional content. Thus do our sorrows and our pains, our longings and our desires, in fact, all of the springs for action, exist as organized though submerged groups of ideas which from behind the scenes, as it were, direct our conduct."

The psychophysical organism is a wonderful instrument for the preservation of these thoughts or complexes, either in the conscious or subconscious states; but while preserved they may become dissociated, because of neural dissociation, so often seen in abnormal and in a light way in normal states. Automatism is seen in muscular movements and in the inner physiological processes. The most intimate relation exists between the thought tinged with its emotions on the one hand and these processes so accustomed to automatic discharge on the other. These two principles of dissociation and automatism explain the wide sweep of suggestion, which, briefly stated, is the procuring for a single idea the unrestricted right of way for its discharge. All human life is amenable to it. The alert judgment of the waking consciousness is its overofficer. As the overofficer goes off duty, it exercises greater sway, and in precise proportion as the other relaxes his duty. From the waking, through the graded states of narrowing and diminishing, consciousness until we come to the hypnotic state, suggestion becomes more and more operative. It is always characterized by intelligence, but an intelligence modified and different from that

of the alert judgment. The field of sense perception narrows. Through dissociation apperception has much more limited sway. Memory in some of its phases is greatly strengthened. Logical thought of an inductive character is largely inhibited. Deductive thought has wide play. Very slight stimuli are operative here, and these are carried quickly into physiological expression. A hint, a slight move, a glance, a facial or bodily expression, a change in the accustomed environmental setting, a modification of temperature howsoever slight and either interpretable to consciousness or not, may have their effects on the bodily processes; these, oft reiterated, tend to become fixed, settle into habits and operate permanently to change the health for better or for worse. Treatment of a positive, didactic, scolding, or threatening character will be unavailing to rid the person of harmful habits or states. Suggestion or autosuggestion alone will effect a material change.

In dissociation, automatisms have wide play. The inhibitions of the waking consciousness are not regulative. Here imperative ideas established and enforced by suggestion and autosuggestion have their sweep. But these automatisms, properly educated and brought under control by right thinking, act powerfully for the economy of activity, and release the alert waking consciousness from oversight of activities once learned, to new conquests of higher activities which work for the increasing welfare of the individual.

Accompanying the transformation in bodily processes and outward activities are marked mental and moral ones. The clinics of psychotherapeutic practitioners abound in cases of marked change of character. Feeling and emotion enter and play an extensive rôle