Outwitting Our Nerves

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Outwitting Our Nerves

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by Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net
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 we learn discrimination.
CHOOSING OUR EMOTIONS 359
CHAPTER XVI
In which we find new use for our steam.
FINDING VENT IN SUBLIMATION 379
GLOSSARY 386
BIBLIOGRAPHY 390
INDEX 393

OUTWITTING OUR NERVES
CHAPTER I
_In Which Most of Us Plead Guilty to the Charge of "Nerves."_
NERVOUS FOLK
WHO'S WHO
Whenever the subject of "nerves" is mentioned most people begin trying to prove an alibi. The man who is nervous and knows that he is nervous, realizes that he needs help, but the man who has as yet felt no lack of stability in himself is quite likely to be impatient with that whole