ABSTRACT
Where an illness, however mental its manifestations, is found to have its foundation in physical disorder, and where the precise nature of that physical disorder is thoroughly understood, physical methods may emerge which are specific, and a triumph for scientific knowledge. Modern methods are better rationalised, at least when they aim at specific, as distinct from palliative, treatment. The various methods of analysis, including psycho-analysis, are the only known forms of treatment of which it can be said that, while they utilise the whole of the ego, they also aim essentially at bringing to consciousness as much as possible of the repressed unconscious. As the root of every psychogenic disorder is held to lie in the unconscious, this remains the only truly scientific method of treatment, the only method relevant to our current knowledge of psychopathology.
