Outwitting Our Nerves

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Outwitting Our Nerves

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Title: Outwitting Our Nerves A Primer of Psychotherapy
Author: Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury
Release Date: February 8, 2005 [EBook #14980]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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OUTWITTING OUR NERVES

A PRIMER OF PSYCHOTHERAPY
BY
JOSEPHINE A. JACKSON, M.D. HELEN M. SALISBURY
[Illustration]
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 is
nothing we can give medicine for." With these words a young college
student was dismissed from one of our great diagnostic clinics.
The physician was right. In a nervous disorder there is nothing to cut
out and there is nothing to give medicine for. Nevertheless there is
something to be done,--something which is as definite and scientific as
a prescription or a surgical operation.
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 of what 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 the truth 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