ABSTRACT
The psychologist in giving advice can act as a free agent unvexed by his emotions, and may thereby be the means of unravelling a knotty problem. This may be far from a radical solution, but it can at least help in emergency, and sometimes leads to constructive and permanent results. Even "suggestion", so despised by psycho analysts, has its useful place in a practical therapy, especially when used in the form of a definite affirmation of wishes or intentions that one perceives the patient to have but about which he finds himself weak or vague. Then there are the real tragedies of life, which are unrolled in a psycho analyst's office, if anywhere. The purpose of the analyst to be a mirror in which the patient or pupil may see himself is indispensable, but to be a mirror and nothing more tends to throw back into deeper depths than before the sensitive feelings of those who are in distress.
