The psychoneuroses and their treatmet by psychotherapy / by J. Dejerine and E. Gauckler ; authorized translation by Smith Ely Jelliffe.

  • Déjerine, J. (Joseph Jules), 1849-1917.
Date:
[1915], ©1915
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The psychoneuroses and their treatmet by psychotherapy / by J. Dejerine and E. Gauckler ; authorized translation by Smith Ely Jelliffe. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    11/420
    PREFACE WHEN, more than thirty years ago, I began to devote myself to the study of diseases of the nervous system, I was struck, from the very beginning of my practice, with the slight success which resulted from treatment of neuropaths by medicines, whether combined or not with physical measures, and little by little I was led, by personal experience, to ask myself whether it would not be wise, in the case of all patients coming under the classification of neurasthenia or hysteria, to depart from the usual therapeutic methods, and seek the cause of their disease outside of the objective symptoms which they presented. I thus became more and more convinced that it was not the physical, but rather the moral which was the cause of all the symptoms of which these patients complained, and finally, after having practised Dr. Weir Mitchell’s methods for several years, my convictions were established. In using this method of treatment, which is based practically on isolation, rest in bed, over-feeding, douches, massage, and electricity, in fact on purely physical measures, I was not long in discovering that unless the patient’s state of mind improved the therapeutic results were far from satisfactory. It was thus that I soon came to see that in order to treat neuropaths, with the hope of curing them, the first and most important thing was to get hold of their morale, in other words, to practise psychotherapy. This is what I have been doing for the last twenty-five years. The influence of the morale on the physique has been known in all ages. It is in fact a popular belief that the health may be seriously affected by grief or vexation, but physicians have been, as a rule, the last persons to recognize that these might be connected with a very special class of affections, requiring particular treatment, based not on symptoms but on causes: and, without wishing to deny—at least in many cases—the accuracy of the old adage ‘Mens sana in corpore sano,’’ I nevertheless believe that, in the case of most neuropaths, whatever may be their symptomatology, the saying is not correct. With ‘them, as a matter of fact, if the body is not sound it is because their morale is unhealthy, and because they have either suffered or are still suffering morally or spiritually. As a method of general education, or moral guidance, psychotherapy is as old as the world. All philosophies, and all religions, above all, the Catholic religion—for the psychotherapist is nothing more than a confessor, or director of the lay conscience—have applied it, or are still applying it. Few, however, are the physicians who understand this, or who know how to make use of it, when they know the cause.