The psychoneuroses and their treatment by psychotherapy / Translated by Smith Ely Jelliffe.

  • Dejerine, J. (Jules), 1849-1917.
Date:
1913
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Licence: In copyright

Credit: The psychoneuroses and their treatment by psychotherapy / Translated by Smith Ely Jelliffe. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by UCL Library Services. The original may be consulted at UCL (University College London)

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    same way. But other processes, such as distraction, turning the atten- tion away from the trouble, and the simple psychotherapeutic action of explanation, may often be sufficient to cause a disappearance of phenom- ena which, as a matter of fact, occupy only a small place in the symp- tomatic ensemble. In a similar way precordial, abdominal, genital, or perigenital pains can be made to disappear at the start, if the patient is reassured concerning their cause, and if one is able to get the pa- tient's mind off of the possible disease with which he believes himself attacked, and to arrive by re-education at the point where any functional trouble that has presented itself may be made to disappear. In cases like this the pain is for the patient, or becomes for him, nothing more than a psychic justification of a pathological conviction; the disappear- ance of the pathological conviction brings about the disappearance of the pain, even though the latter has been the origin of all the symptoms. III. Therapy of the Functional Manifestations of the Organs of Sense. These fixations will not detain us long. Sometimes consisting of pure phobic manifestations, sometimes resulting, as in the case of irritability to noise, from a condition of fatigue or an emotional state, sometimes caused by disharmonic disturbances, such as a deafness of attention in those patients who do not hear because they do not even attempt to listen, they do not furnish any special therapeutic indica- tions. And the patient whose faith is established, and who has been made to understand the real cause of the troubles which he presents, concerning which we have already sufficiently expatiated, will easily rid himself of them. IV. Therapy of Nervous and Psychic Manifestations Properly So Called. Here, on the other hand, there are numerous special therapeutic indications, and, even though we eliminate from our actual study all the disturbances which have any connection with hysteria, there will still remain much to do if we mention all the processes and all the thera- peutic precautions which belong to these very specialized localizations. A. Disturbances of Sleep.—In the first part of this work we set forth our ideas concerning disturbances of sleep. We have shown that there are insomnias due to education in subjects who, either accidentally or on account of the way their lives are arranged, have formed a habit of doing with very little sleep; insomnias of phobic origin in patients whose fear of not sleeping has made them restless and chased away their sleep; insomnias due to the obsessive action of some emotional