ABSTRACT

Even before Freud, Jung and Ferenczi arrived in the United States in 1909, participating in the Clark University's twentieth anniversary conference, psychoanalytic thinking had in¯uenced many Americans working with the severely mentally ill. Many were infused with hopefulness that having a method of understanding the symbolism in patients' delusions and nonverbal gestures would give them access to increasingly solid communication with their patients, which would encourage restored cohesiveness and calmness. If we can understand dreams, we can understand psychosis; if neuroses can resolve, so can psychoses. Various forms of psychotherapy had gained popularity in the preceding decades, including hypnosis and suggestion: `Into this therapeutic ferment dropped just the right catalyst, the Swiss psychotherapist Paul Dubois' book The Psychic Treatment of Nervous Disorders (1905) . . . [which] quickly [became] the ``Bible'' of the nascent psychotherapy movement in America' (Gach, 1980: 143). But Dubois' book provided encouragement without the conceptual framework Freud would supply. `American physicians were ready for a theoretical model which explained psychological facts psychologically and which prescribed a clinical technique for their patients' (Gach, 1980: 145). Clifford Beers' moving autobiography, A Mind That Found Itself (1907), stirred the conscience of the mental health profession while providing the spark of hope for more recoveries.