The dangers of hypnosis have been much exaggerated.  Indeed, as an instrument in the hands of a competent physician, it is not to be feared at all.  It has, however, its limitations.  Many times the very memories which need to be unearthed refuse to come to the surface.  Stubborn resistances are more likely to be subconscious than conscious, and may prove too strong to be overcome in this way.  Moreover, the road to superficial success is very inviting.  It is easy to cure the symptom, leaving the ultimate cause untouched and ready to break out in new manifestations.  The drug and drink habits may be broken up without making any attempt to discover the unsatisfied longings which were responsible for the habit.  A pain may be cured without finding the mental cause of the pain or initiating any measures to guard against its return, and without giving the patient any insight into the inner forces with which he still has to deal.

Since nervousness is a state of exaggerated suggestibility and abnormal dissociation, many psychologists believe that it is unwise to employ a method which heightens the state of suggestibility and encourages the habit of dissociation.  They feel that it is wiser to use less artificial methods which rest on the rational control of the conscious mind and make the patient better acquainted with his own inner forces and more permanently able to cope with new manifestations of those forces.  They believe that the character of the patient is strengthened and his morale raised by methods which increase the sovereignty of reason and decrease the role of unreasoning suggestibility.

=Psycho-Analysis.= Freud’s contribution has been not only a discovery of the general causes of nervousness, but a special means of locating the cause in any particular case.  Abandoning hypnosis, he developed another method which he called psycho-analysis.  What chemical analysis is to chemistry, psycho-analysis is to the science of the mind.  It splits up the mental content into its component parts, the better to be examined and modified by the conscious mind.  Psycho-analysis is merely a technical process for discovering repressed complexes and bringing them into consciousness, where they may be recognized for what they are and altered to meet the demands of real life.  It is a device for finding and removing the cause of nervousness,—­for bringing to light hidden desires which may be honestly faced and efficiently directed instead of being left to seethe in dangerous insurrection.  In order permanently to break up a real neurosis, a man must first know himself and then change himself.  He must gain insight into his own mental processes and then systematically set to work to change those processes that unfit him for life.