ABSTRACT
Psychological treatment, in a wider sense, might be regarded as being as old as the hills and at least as old as any physical treatment, for every word spoken by one person to another and every influence of one person upon another has some psychological effect—for better or for worse. Some might consider that psychological treatment has a priority in medicine in so far as it might be regarded as beginning with the witch-doctors of the tribal life which marked the birth of culture. Psychologically the effect of such treatment, apart from unconscious temporary libidinal satisfactions—which seem to create an addiction for their repetition—is to confirm in the patient’s mind the erroneous thinking, unconscious and conscious, which led her to substitute a physical pain and disability for an unsolved emotional conflict. Dreams and day-dreams are of inestimable value, as they reveal, in their latent content, both the current and early emotional conflicts and tendencies.
