The cure in psychoanalysis is no mystery but occurs through the simple understanding of the hidden forces and desires within one, with the strange and unsocial or obsolete ideas which have surrounded these from earlier stages of individual development and which analogous to earlier or even more primitive periods of racial history. When the real nature of this inner life is realized and its emotional dynamic force understood for the first time, it follows natu rally that the life is reconstructed along new lines of usefulness and health. Yet because of the depth and the complexity of this inner psychic life such understanding and readjust ment are not arrived at quickly or easily. For this reason psychoanalysis necessarily has to pursue a pathway of serious duty, profound psychology and extensive knowledge of human life in its present extent as represented in all peoples and all varieties of individual and in the past history of men and the gradual devel opment of the race as well. It must learn to know the history of human striving with these same emotions which belong to all ages, and to know the special manifestations of these which belong to any one age of history or evo lution. For traces of all these are found in the psychic recapitulation of each individual and any one of these may help to understand any particular mental fixation which may lie as a basic cause of a neurosis.
Psychoanalysis finds its particular field in the psychoneuroses or borderland cases, so called disorders of a mental rather than a purely physical anatomical type. Such cases are particularly fitted for the intellectual co-operation which the method entails and they are also in particular need of a method which combines reason and a frank recognition of the feeling life. Strictly medical procedures fail to reach them and other forms of so-called mental healing do not enter as psychoanalysis does into the detailed investigation of individual difficulties and bring them one by one into the clear light of reason. A sweeping and revo lutionizing 'faith') is supplanted here by per sonal and patient examination and interpre tation. Actual psychoses, pronounced mental derangements, are not always amenable to psychoanalytic treatment yet much has already been done here when the more lucid intervals or the still remaining reason of a patient could be utilized for co-operation. Psychoanalysis has proved itself invaluable in the understanding of such mental disorder and appreciation of the emotional conflict involved with an interpretation of the hitherto meaningless ideas and behavior of such patients. The field opens here for men tal prophylaxis through psychoanalysis. A prom ising field is opening up for the application of the principles of psychoanalysis to various physical diseases since on the side both of psychology and of physiology new information is continually being discovered and reported in regard to the close interrelation between men tal factors and physical manifestations. In its prophylactic function psychoanalysis bids fair to become an important pedagogical agent. It
has shown through its medical work the im portance for the health and success of later life of the right attitudes in childhood and of a clearer knowledge on the part of the child of the mental life which he conceals within him. Its province certainly lies in the future in bet ter instruction for children in regard to their own mental and physical lives and better under standing and adjustment of the problems which arise in the course of their development and adjustment to the world in which they are to live. Though psychoanalysis began as a form of medical practice and its chief service lies in this sphere, still from its nature it is bound to find its way into other territories. In the first place it has done much to reveal the close connection existing between the province of medicine., that is, health and disease, and every other interest of life. Then in its strictly medi cal application it has been shown how dependent it is upon all forms of human effort and interest for a complete understanding of the human problems and human strivings that make up the mental life of the patient. All this has tended to push it on into fields of wider in terest. The principles of the unconscious men tal life, preservation of the mentality of the past and present, the unconscious as the dyna mic source of endeavor, as the fountain from which human creativeness must draw, give it also a peculiar interpretative value in all forms of artistic creation, a special power of evalu ating these and a similar interest in the study of all forms of history, art, religion, language, material advance, in short of all human activ ity. It has a practical application in the dis covery of latent powers, the inhibitions and hindrances with which these are encrusted and, therefore, the spread of its principles of investi gation and understanding should form the true basis of a practical psychology of efficiency.
The history of psychoanalysis as a move ment dates from Freud's development of it in the last decade of the 19th century (1893) as he modified his own and Breuer's earlier treat ment of hysteria. He worked privately with a sincere conviction of the reasonableness of his method and its peculiar applicability to the psy choneuroses. His expectations were modest. Its radical character brought him opposition but he was 'content to work alone waiting for time to ove the correctness of his theories and the sefulness of the method. Soon, how ever, w e realized a growing interest about him. Other,' physicians gathered around him and in terest began to be manifested in the wider ap plication of psychoanalysis, outside the field 6edicine. Two of the early followers of ud were Bleuler and Jung who carried the teachings of psychoanalysis to Zurich and did much to disseminate them throughout the world. Although they have since altered to some ex tent the application of psychoanalysis to medical practice, they stand essentially for the original promulgation of these.