ABSTRACT
I have not followed this important trail because this theme has been developed with great competence in various addresses to medical students by physicians who remember the bad old times, and who see that from the teaching point of view the bad old times could claim some points in their favour. My theme follows another path which in the end will, I think, prove to be a related one, since again it concerns the natural tendency towards health and the use that we can make of this tendency as doctors. In the psychological field the principle that there is a natural tendency towards health or developmental maturity is one which has a particular significance. It could be said that much of physical disease is due to an invasion from the environment or to an environmental deficiency, and is not a purely develop mental disorder. By contrast, psychological disorder can always be described
in terms of emotional development either delayed or distorted or in some other way prevented from reaching the maturity that is due at the age which the child has reached. There is an even closer link therefore in psychological medicine between the normal and the abnormal than there is between physiology and the pathological processes of tissues and functions. In fact when there is only a disturbance of physiology then the illness is usually psychogenic.
