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 /9 1
 
 RELIGIOUS ASPECTS OF 
 SCIENTIFIC HEALING 
 
 A PSYCHO-ANALYTIC GUIDE WRITTEN 
 FROM THE PATIENT'S POINT OF VIEW 
 
 BY 
 
 DONALD KENT JOHNSTON 
 
 Formerly Assistant to Dr. Elwood Worcester, 
 Emmanuel Church, Boston, Mass. 
 
 WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY 
 
 DR. ELWOOD WORCESTER 
 
 BOSTON 
 
 RICHARD G. BADGER 
 
 THE GORHAM PRESS
 
 COPYRIGHT, IQ2O, BY RlCHAED G. BADGER 
 
 All Rights Reserved 
 
 Made in the United States of America 
 
 The Gorham Press, Boston, U. S. A.
 
 FOREWORD 
 
 A MONG books aiming at the improvement of 
 -** life through knowledge of the laws of the 
 mind I believe that this little work will gain for 
 itself honorable recognition. Long and con- 
 stantly increasing as this series of writings is, the 
 combination of the rational and religious treat- 
 ment which characterizes Mr. Johnston's essay is 
 but scantily represented in it. Works on mental 
 therapeutics fall, with few exceptions, into two 
 distinct classes. One of these aims at being 
 strictly scientific. It deals with those affections of 
 the mind which apparently rest on no organic 
 lesion or progressive deterioration of the brain 
 and the nervous system. It approaches the sub- 
 ject through the refined methods and the termi- 
 nology of abnormal psychology, at present almost 
 exclusively the psychology of Freud. It regards 
 morbid psychical states, for the most part, as men- 
 tal mechanisms or defence reactions unconsciously 
 set up by the mind as the result of painful experi- 
 ences or unhappy memories, a process which may 
 lead to actual dissociation, and which can be under- 
 stood and integrated only by a long method of 
 
 2023892
 
 2 Foreword 
 
 analysis. Such books are usually written for spe- 
 cialists by specialists. They are couched in lan- 
 guage which for refined subtlety of definition has 
 not been equalled in Europe since the decline of 
 scholasticism, and their authors appear to be un- 
 der the illusion that for every strange Greek com- 
 pound they invent, a new and inestimable fact has 
 been brought to light in regard to the nature of 
 mind. Here, if I may be permitted to point it out 
 to the wise, is the greatest danger to the future 
 of their school. If these masters of phrase go on 
 coining new and incomprehensible terms to ex- 
 press their minute observations, it will founder in 
 a sea of verbiage, as scholasticism foundered when 
 its language became incomprehensible. Such 
 works, I need not say, contain no general philos- 
 ophy of life. They are not addressed to laymen 
 and they avoid rather than inculcate metaphysical 
 doctrines. As far as religion is recognized by this 
 school, it is as an instrument of "sublimation," 
 though much interesting work has been done, espe- 
 cially by Jung, in his psychological interpretation 
 of religious myths. The chief philosophical as- 
 sumption of the Freudian school is that of mechan- 
 istic determinism in every aspect and action of the 
 mind. Its chief positive achievement has been 
 the establishment of the subconscious element of 
 mind on a basis that will never be shaken. 
 
 The other class of works on psycho-therapy,
 
 Foreword 3 
 
 with which we are only too familiar, consists of 
 writings of men and women who in this field can 
 lay claim to no scientific knowledge, but who are 
 inspired by a vast enthusiasm. Far from making 
 a careful study of disease they desire to ignore it 
 or to deny it altogether, and to lift their readers 
 above the power of disease by the inculcation of a 
 massive, powerful faith, a task which they some- 
 times accomplish. Their writings are almost al- 
 ways founded on religion or on some general 
 metaphysical principle. Some are frankly and 
 avowedly Christian. Some, like the works of 
 Christian Science and most of the so-called litera- 
 ture of New Thought, have a philosophy of their 
 own which consists in the denial or the dismissal 
 of all the painful and the humiliating facts of life, 
 and the concentration of the mind on the bright 
 image of the ideal. If these writers have done 
 nothing else they have revealed to us unsuspected 
 power in the soul to triumph over the ills of exist- 
 ence, and they have taught us that only the things 
 to which we pay conscious attention have much 
 power over us. Moreover this philosophy breeds 
 optimism and is fatal to the two greatest enemies 
 of man fear and worry. 
 
 It is evident to anyone approaching this sub- 
 ject disinterestedly that both these schools are in 
 possession of valuable truths, and that in spite of 
 the claims of each to finality and absolutism, their
 
 4 Foreword 
 
 truths are not irreconcilable. In other words, it is 
 not necessary to be a fanatic, a materialist or even 
 a Freudian to be well and happy. The human 
 heart is diverse in its needs, diverse in its at- 
 tachments. Truths which are saving to one man 
 may appear mere nonsense or impiety to another. 
 This was the position taken by William James 
 who, though a physician and one of the greatest 
 of psychologists, knew how "to suffer fools 
 gladly," and was ever well disposed toward meta- 
 physical healing. 
 
 It is one of the excellencies of the present treat- 
 ise that though conceived and executed in a scien- 
 tific spirit, it preserves this precious quality of the 
 open mind, and its perception of new possibilities 
 of co-operation on the part of religion and science 
 is one of the hopeful signs of our times, namely, 
 that we have really entered a new era in which 
 man's faculties will no longer be dissociated by 
 this ancient antagonism. 
 
 Brief as this work is, it is comprehensive in its 
 scope and it touches life helpfully at many points. 
 It is a sincere work in the sense that it is written 
 with conviction and is based on both study and 
 experience, and through it shines the charming, 
 hopeful spirit of youth. Though its psychology is 
 distinctly Freudian, the author avoids Freud's 
 harsh terminology and expresses himself in easy, 
 simple English, and he allows Freud's insistence
 
 Foreword 5 
 
 of the sexual basis of all psychic disorders to re- 
 main in the background to be perceived by those 
 who know where to look for it. On reading the 
 proof of this work the thing which has impressed 
 me most is that it contains no thought or sentence 
 which can wound the most sensitive conscience or 
 depress the most troubled mind. I can therefore 
 commend it to invalids and to men and women 
 sustaining mental and moral conflicts, with the as- 
 surance that they will derive nothing but benefit 
 from its perusal, and I shall be glad to place it on 
 our bookshelves, along with the other works which 
 directly and indirectly have proceeded from Em- 
 manuel Church during the past fourteen years. 
 Perhaps its most original thought is the transfer- 
 ence of the Freudian wish to Christ. 
 
 ELWOOD WORCESTER. 
 Emmanuel Church, Boston. 
 February, 1920.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I SELF-TREATMENT OF THE MILDER FORMS OF 
 
 MENTAL DISORDERS 15 
 
 II THE UNCONSCIOUS MIND 37 
 
 III THE INTERNAL CENSOR AND GUARDIAN . 66 
 
 IV PERSONAL RELIGION AND MENTAL HEALTH 77
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 THIS brief description of the modern scientific 
 treatment of nervous disorders is as simply 
 as possible set forth primarily for people more or 
 less nervously afflicted for people of infirm 
 nerves and morbid minds. The subject of religion 
 is introduced and somewhat extensively considered 
 because of the many known instances in which 
 religion has contributed a vital factor in the re- 
 habilitation and re-education of nervous people. 
 
 In general these pages are intended to present 
 first the salient features of the widely accepted 
 methods of self-help for the recovery and preser- 
 vation of mental health; and secondly to present 
 the scientifically discovered causes of nervous dis- 
 orders in such a way that people may judge for 
 themselves whether or not their own efforts to 
 treat themselves show satisfactory results, or 
 whether for the sake of a really durable peace 
 of mind they might not better seek advice or help 
 from some nerve specialist or psychologically 
 trained clergyman who carries on his healing 
 work in conjunction with one or more competent 
 9
 
 io Introduction 
 
 physicians. More than incidentally, then, these 
 pages concern the clergymen or social worker 
 who inevitably comes in contact with nervous 
 people. It is indeed incumbent on the clergyman 
 to know what are the requirements for dealing 
 with nervously sick people. While he may think 
 that his disqualifications are absolute, there are 
 many ways in which he can supplement the 
 scientific treatment of mental disorders. It al- 
 ways lies within his power to supply the religious 
 factor in the healing process in which respect he 
 may occasionally become indispensable for the 
 most satisfactory re-education of the nervous pa- 
 tient. Again, for him a knowledge of the method 
 of analysing the unconscious mind (psycho-analy- 
 sis) is of the utmost value in determining whether 
 the person who comes to him for help is suffering 
 from a bad conscience or from causes in the per- 
 son's unconscious (subconscious) mind. If the 
 latter be the case, he can, at least, if he is not 
 skilled enough to mend the matter himself, see to 
 it that the sufferer is placed under a specialist's 
 care. A familiarity, then, with the scientific find- 
 ings of soul analysis makes for a greater efficiency 
 in pastoral care and the cure of souls. 
 
 This book is based first on the works of Freud, 
 Jung, Pfister, Ferenczi, Coriat, Lay, Holt, and 
 others; and secondly on the author's experience in 
 applying their method at Emmanuel Church,
 
 Introduction 1 1 
 
 Boston, Massachusetts, where for over two years 
 under the direction of the Reverend Dr. Worces- 
 ter, he dealt directly with such people as came 
 there for mental re-education. 
 
 The first chapter takes up the ways in which 
 a nervous person can help himself. The second 
 chapter deals with the unconscious mind (the Un- 
 conscious), describes its character, explains why 
 it is the seed-plot of nervous disorders, how it 
 may be investigated by a trained psychologist 
 (either a nerve specialist or a competent pastor) 
 and by him satisfactorily re-educated. In this 
 chapter considerable stress is laid on the part 
 played in the cure by the specialist or pastor, for it 
 is to him that at some stage of the re-educating, 
 healing process, the patient transfers his uncon- 
 scious likes and dislikes. This matter of the 
 ^'transference" is extremely important for the 
 cure and for the light it throws on the healing 
 power of Jesus Christ. The third chapter dis- 
 cusses the function of the internal, mental "Cen- 
 sor" with the purpose of assuring people that 
 there is within the soul a distinct faculty which 
 protects its health by controlling the unconscious 
 mentality. 
 
 The last chapter treats of the vast importance 
 of religion for mental health; it especially em- 
 phasizes Christ's uniqueness as the supreme per-
 
 12 Introduction 
 
 son to whom the nervously afflicted may transfer 
 their unconscious emotions and through Him may 
 experience the saving re-education of their whole 
 personality.
 
 RELIGIOUS ASPECTS OF 
 SCIENTIFIC HEALING
 
 RELIGIOUS ASPECTS OF 
 SCIENTIFIC HEALING 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 SELF-TREATMENT OF THE MILDER FORMS OF 
 MENTAL DISORDERS 
 
 HOW can I recover the health of my nerves 
 and keep it? How can I maintain from day 
 to day a smoothly working mind so that "as my 
 years so shall my strength be"? This matter of 
 steady nerves and well-balanced minds is becom- 
 ing more and more of a question everywhere, as 
 the world in growing busier, more intricate and 
 fiercer in competition, multiplies at an increasing 
 speed its exacting demands upon our supply of 
 emotion, memory, reason and will-power. To 
 convince ourselves of this condition, we have only 
 to consider any group of people in our church, 
 our club, our circle of friends and observe how 
 frequently their conversation turns upon nervous 
 troubles. The merely casual discussion of such 
 15
 
 1 6 Religious Aspects of Scientific Healing 
 
 a topic is a sign of the times and an unwholesome 
 thing in itself, for people are suggestible and the 
 subject of mental ills has a tendency unduly to 
 occupy the attention. We more than occasionally 
 meet people who have come to realize that they 
 have some disposition to weak nerves and for 
 that reason freely admit that under too trying con- 
 ditions they would probably break down. Then, 
 too, there is that group whose nerves have al- 
 ready more or less succumbed, for whom the ques- 
 tion of how to recover mental stability is dis- 
 tressingly acute. 
 
 Obviously for such people, who in varying de- 
 grees are concerned about their mental health, the 
 first word to be said is that mental stability can 
 be both recovered and preserved. Moreover, it 
 lies in their own power abundantly to help them- 
 selves. Simple methods of self-treatment, which 
 have been carefully elaborated and of late much 
 written about, have well served many a person as 
 efficient means for gathering up the fragments of 
 his shattered nerves and for re-shaping them into 
 a steady system. Further, these same simple 
 methods with slight modifications, which anyone 
 can work out for himself, may be used to safe- 
 guard the still healthy mentality from weakness 
 and possible breakdown. 
 
 While it is our sole purpose at this point to
 
 Self -Treatment of Mental Disorders 17 
 
 make clear the far-reaching possibilities of self- 
 treatment, yet of course such treatment does have 
 its limitations and it seems wise to make the state- 
 ment here that if for one reason or another the 
 methods of self-treatment fail to integrate the 
 mind and build up its nervous system there are 
 other methods to be employed which can be 
 depended upon for satisfactory results. These 
 more thorough methods, however, lie outside the 
 nervous person's own power and rest with the 
 skill of the nerve specialist or trained clergyman 
 to penetrate into the sufferer's unconscious mind 
 and re-educate his hidden forces. Such patients, 
 too, first require a physical examination by some 
 doctor to determine whether or not there is any 
 bodily or organic cause for their particular form 
 of nervousness. 
 
 If now in turning to the question of what I can 
 do for myself, we think of the mind as if it were a 
 household in which dwell many kinds of energy 
 having almost as much individuality as people 
 themselves, the problem of mental health re- 
 solves itself into a problem of keeping the peace 
 between definitely opposing mental forces. That 
 is, we are confronted with the task of nourishing 
 and holding the loyal support of the wholesome 
 ways of thinking and feeling, while we starve out 
 the unwelcome guests from the house of the soul.
 
 1 8 Religious Aspects of Scientific Healing 
 
 Fortunately the rightful inmates tend naturally to 
 look after their own welfare; our real task is to 
 distinguish and deal summarily with each slyly in- 
 sinuating weakness which is all the more danger- 
 ous because it may appear in an insidious and al- 
 luring form. Thus, for example, over-indulgence 
 in day dreaming may actually suffuse us with a 
 kind of pleasurable feeling but in time may end 
 seriously by rendering us incapable of living in a 
 world of hard fact. The day dreamer by with- 
 drawing into his own feelings and emotions, 
 shows a disposition to lose touch with reality and 
 to develop an introspective, ingrowing mind, 
 whereas some one has said that "the true health 
 of a man is to have a soul without being aware 
 of it." 
 
 To treat ourselves in an intelligent way re- 
 quires of us a knowledge of just what forms the 
 unwelcome guests may assume. The more we 
 know the better we can "try conclusions with 
 them" and evict them. These self-insinuating 
 weaknesses come in the shape of fears, depres- 
 sions, the sense of inferiority, fixed ideas, halluci- 
 nations and unreasonable compulsions; or they 
 may appear as vague, fidgety, panicy sensations 
 making us irritable by day and sleepless by night. 
 If these infirmities be of a hazy, ambiguous char- 
 acter, we are sufferers from nerve weakness or 
 neurasthenia ; if they be sharply outlined and easily
 
 Self-Treatment of Mental Disorders 19 
 
 distinguishable as is, for instance, a strong com- 
 pulsion, we are sufferers from soul weakness or 
 psych asthenia. Besides these, there appear at 
 times in some people marked perversions of nature 
 which require absolutely the attention of the 
 nerve specialist. 
 
 Nevertheless, formidable as these two groups 
 of nerve and soul weakness may be, it is possible 
 for us single-handed to control them and to a sur- 
 prising degree render them incapable of holding 
 dominion over our motor faculties, that is, they 
 can neither hinder and inhibit our activities nor 
 impell us to unreasonable behavior. Furthermore, 
 just as soon as these weaknesses are satisfactorily 
 disposed of, the bodily irregularities which are apt 
 to accompany them tend to disappear. Thus, 
 methods of self-treatment not only heal definite 
 disorders of nerve functioning and soul life but do 
 away as well with indigestion, constipation, head- 
 ache and a host of lesser ills. 
 
 The first important point in self-treatment con- 
 sists of this dogmatic, positive command: face 
 fairly and squarely everything which troubles the 
 mind. Any idea or problem which has come to 
 you as a great shock or has had for years an 
 accumulative, irritating effect needs to be dealt 
 with by your reason. The popular exhortation is 
 to "forget it" and we are tempted to shut the
 
 2O Religious Aspects of Scientific Healing 
 
 trouble out of our minds. But in forcibly trying 
 to rid our minds of the harassing subject, we 
 thereby thrust it into the unconscious part of our 
 mentality where, as we shall see later, it branches 
 out and creates one nervous (neurotic) symptom 
 after another. Every shocking idea or grief needs 
 attention and though at first it may be that all we 
 can do is to edge up to it with caution, we will 
 sooner or later be able to meet it with emotional 
 calm and stare it out of countenance. 
 
 It is a salutary practice at the end of each day 
 for the mind to take stock of what has happened 
 during the waking hours and come to immediate 
 terms with any thought or situation which has 
 any strongly emotional character about it of a dis- 
 tressing kind. You simply confront the thing and 
 resolve to disarm it of its emotional weapon. 
 Emotional stability, freedom from anger, fear, 
 disgust, resentment, is a first requirement for 
 nervous health and we are therefore immediately 
 concerned with definite ways for keeping our 
 emotional self-control. 
 
 How can we maintain emotional stability? 
 Chiefly through prayer. Nothing steadies the 
 emotional quicksilver in us like prayer. The be- 
 liever in and constant user of prayer has a tre- 
 mendous lever for lifting his spirit above the over- 
 whelming floods of anger, resentment and despair.
 
 Self-Treatment of Mental Disorders 21 
 
 Many an earnestly uttered cry to God for relief 
 has broken the paralysing grip of fear and de- 
 pression, and has made people see the absurdity 
 of their unreasonable ideas. The answer to such 
 prayer manifests itself in the widening of the nar- 
 rowed field of consciousness so that the mind sees 
 the outside world in its true perspective, while the 
 emotional fear of fear and other morbid obses- 
 sions utterly vanish. The sickly mind has either 
 too high an emotional coloring or else too low 
 and the effect of prayer is either to staunch the 
 inflow of emotions which would engulf the mind 
 or else cause the emotional level to rise as con- 
 ditions require. Prayer, however is not a magic 
 formula; it does not imply any potency in itself to 
 effect relief and exorcise the spectres from the 
 mind. Prayer is an act of faith in the healing 
 nearness and the reassuring indwelling of the 
 Spirit of God. If for any reason you are not able 
 to pray to God as a personal Spirit, at least pray 
 to some symbolic idea of Him as, for instance, the 
 Cosmic Harmony, the Soul of the Universe, the 
 Spirit of all Good; for the effective element in 
 prayer is a belief in the presence of a healing 
 power greater than any thought which the mind 
 can conjure up, that is, prayer is a cry for a har- 
 mony outside of ourselves to come and adjust us 
 to the facts of life. If, then, the reaction from
 
 22 Religious Aspects of Scientific Healing 
 
 the practice of prayer means for us a right per- 
 spective in our thoughts and feelings even to the 
 extent of allowing us at times to appreciate not 
 only the unreality but the actually humorous 
 character of the ugly phantoms in our mind, then 
 it has proved itself a veritably therapeutic factor 
 in our returning right relationship to the world. 
 To be sure at the first, the mental fiends from time 
 to time may come trooping back to work us woe, 
 and our prayers may seem ineffectual in coping 
 with them, yet the undeniable fact that prayer 
 once brought us power should be sufficient pledge 
 that it will serve us as well again. But prayer to 
 be a telling factor for health must be of the un- 
 ceasing kind, nor should people of too delicate 
 sensibilities demur that such prayers are an un- 
 worthy sort of begging. Jesus, the master physi- 
 cian, had tender regard for petitions and requests 
 for health. He prepared Himself for His heal- 
 ing work through prayer and by it maintained His 
 own calmness and endurance. The prayer of faith 
 called forth His special commendation and, as we 
 shall discuss in the last chapter, the prayer rela- 
 tionship to Him is positively necessary to the 
 fullest re-education, that is, we can best turn our 
 in-growing souls outward by faith and the service 
 of others. 
 
 The next point in our method is the practice of
 
 Self-Treatment of Mental Disorders 23 
 
 relaxation about which much has been written. 
 The habit of relaxing the body and mind is in- 
 valuable for keeping one's nerves intact and for 
 recovering their strength. Relaxation is an ab- 
 breviated but no less effectual form of rest cure. 
 When we come to consider religion and mental 
 health in the last chapter, we will have occasion to 
 think of relaxation as a form of prayer or at least 
 the prerequisite to quiet thinking of a spiritual 
 kind. We are concerned at present only with the 
 art or technique of relaxation. 
 
 To relax in a thorough way we assume an easy, 
 reclining position and think of every bit of ten- 
 sion and drawn feeling as utterly disappearing 
 from the scalp, the eyes, the mouth, the throat, 
 the back of the neck, the shoulders, the chest, the 
 arms, the fingers, the abdomen, the base of the 
 spine, the thighs, the knees and the ankles. We 
 should go through this process many times a day, 
 thinking of ourselves as having the fluid quality 
 of a tranquil stream. 
 
 It takes but a little practice before we begin to 
 notice the effects of relaxation. Sooner than we 
 expect we discover that we can relax in any posi- 
 tion in sitting, walking and standing. What we 
 should look for as a result of relaxation is the 
 quieting down of our feverish haste, the easing 
 off of our tingling nerves and the positive feeling
 
 24 Religious Aspects of Scientific Healing 
 
 of composure and calm. In relaxed moments, our 
 stream of thought and feeling flows freely and 
 there are no back eddies of wearying self-con- 
 sciousness. 
 
 This easy flow of our emotional currents is ex- 
 tremely important. Nervous disorders are not so 
 much a matter of illogical thoughts as the uneven 
 and poor quality of our emotions. They run at 
 a low ebb in sickly moments, but assisted by re- 
 laxation they tend to flood back and float the soul 
 above the reefs and shallows of depression. But 
 it is not merely in the matter of releasing our posi- 
 tive tone feelings that relaxation is such help but 
 also in the matter of regulating or even staunch- 
 ing the undue inrush of injurious feelings, for ex- 
 ample, if one relaxes immediately after giving way 
 to a burst of anger one may quickly regain self- 
 control and composure. 
 
 Relaxation because of its power to release or 
 regulate our emotional life, as the case requires, 
 must in some way act upon that special faculty in 
 our minds called the Censor. This should be re- 
 membered when we take up the function of the 
 Censor, for it is this faculty which guards our in- 
 tellectual, moral and emotional poise. 
 
 Further, relaxation with its ability to soothe 
 and heal is a blessing indeed to that large body 
 of mentally sick people who cannot afford to go
 
 Self-Treatment of Mental Disorders 25 
 
 to a sanatorium to recover or for that matter can- 
 not afford to lose a single day of work. They 
 are under the necessity of regaining mental equi- 
 librium amid the distractions of clanking looms, 
 crowded shops or this or that uncongenial place 
 of employment. In this connection one of Christ's 
 works of healing seems particularly illuminating. 
 According to the story about the Ten Lepers, 
 Jesus did not heal the lepers immediately but 
 ordered them to go to Jerusalem and show them- 
 selves to the priests. What is as extraordinary 
 as it is enlightening is the fact that "as they went 
 they were cleansed." It follows, then that if the 
 lepers were healed as they betook themselves to 
 Jerusalem, so, too, may many a person in our time 
 throw off his mental ills as he goes about his day's 
 work. Here is hope indeed for people of small 
 means ! A few moments' relaxation at bed time, 
 before meals or briefly in the midst of any kind 
 of work will tend to produce sound sleep, good 
 digestion and a relish and appetite for work, while 
 more prolonged periods of relaxation will allow 
 the freer, fresher modes of thinking to displace 
 the fears, fixed ideas, depressed moods and un- 
 reasonable compulsions. 
 
 Again, anyone who is endeavoring to extricate 
 himself from the alcohol or drug habit need have 
 no fear of those inevitable moments of sinking
 
 26 Religious Aspects of Scientific Healing 
 
 sensation, of tingling nerves or of the sense of in- 
 feriority and inadequacy which make him crave 
 the alcoholic or drug stimulant, for immediate re- 
 course to a relaxed condition will supply him with 
 normal stimulation and the sense of superiority. 
 
 It would seem as if beneath our fluctuating 
 thoughts and moods, there were a deeper, funda- 
 mental self which comes into control just as soon 
 as we have eased off the tension from both our 
 minds and bodies. It, then, becomes a question of 
 decided importance how to reach this fundamental 
 self and build up its morale and stimulate its 
 thought. Thought is the thing which heals. Re- 
 laxation does not heal ; it simply assists in freeing 
 our own healing thought and that thought itself 
 must be nourished with other constructive thought. 
 When we are convinced that our prayer for health 
 has been answered, the evidence on which we base 
 our conviction is the fact that we have been sud- 
 denly mastered by thoughts and tonic emotions 
 which we were of ourselves powerless to supply 
 in our hour of need, that is, we are convinced that 
 God sent us sustaining thoughts and feeling. This 
 is the essential point it was thought which 
 changed our mental condition for the better. From 
 this it follows that as far as possible we should 
 enrich our deeper selves with every healing 
 thought we can, then when relaxation releases our
 
 Self-Treatment of Mental Disorders 27 
 
 deeper selves they will be that much richer for our 
 provision and foresight. This brings us to the 
 third point in the method of self-treatment which 
 is self-suggestion. 
 
 Prayer, relaxation, self-suggestion these are 
 the fundamental features in the self-treatment 
 method. Prayer, however, stands by itself alone 
 while relaxation is dependent for its full force on 
 the practice of self-suggestion. To use self-sug- 
 gestion, you proceed as follows: when you have 
 induced the relaxed state for your body and mind 
 you make to yourself some terse, positive sugges- 
 tion such as "I shall be so superior to this or that 
 fear that I shall actually forget it," "I am so 
 rested that I can do my work cheerfully and well," 
 "I have all the courage I need to meet this situa- 
 tion and trial," or "I trust my deeper self to make 
 me equal to all the requirements of life, to keep 
 me composed, to make me effective and strong." 
 It is to be noticed that every good suggestion 
 should contain the thought that we can resign our- 
 selves with absolute confidence into the hands of 
 our deeper souls. Nothing strengthens the morale 
 of the fundamental self better than the practice of 
 self-suggestion. 
 
 Just why it is that our minds tend to act in ac- 
 cordance with the positive qualities of the ideas 
 we suggest must remain an open question. The
 
 28 Religious Aspects of Scientific Healing 
 
 theory is that some part of our unconscious (sub- 
 conscious) mind picks up the self-suggested ideas, 
 absorbs them and puts them into action, making 
 us cheerful, rested and courageous. But self-sug- 
 gestion must be consistently practiced and posi- 
 tive ideas must be constantly held in the mind. 
 No one should be content with a few trials at self- 
 suggestion; the thing we desire to be or possess 
 must be clung to even in the face of apparently 
 continuing failure. 
 
 Self-suggestion is an excellent way for purposely 
 substituting good thoughts for bad. It would 
 seem that we cannot dogmatically command our 
 mental troubles to vanish. They tend to stick the 
 more firmly when we order them to leave. But 
 they may be crowded out of our attention and di- 
 vested of their unpleasant emotional coloring by 
 substituting wholesome thoughts by means of self- 
 suggestion. The stronger substituted thought 
 starves out the unwelcome guests of the soul by 
 robbing them of sustenance. If by a determined 
 act of will we resolve to act and make decisions 
 only when we are in possession of positive thoughts 
 we will discover that the troublesome, depressing 
 negative thoughts grow weaker and weaker 
 through lack of exercise. 
 
 When self-suggestion has accomplished its per- 
 fect work we become aware of the happy fact by
 
 Self -Treatment of Mental Disorders 29 
 
 noticing that our attention no longer turns inward 
 to our maladies or shows any interest in our 
 mental life. The normal state of mind means 
 that our consciousness of self assumes a distinctly 
 secondary place and our attention primarily turns 
 outward to the world of affairs. If it be true that 
 by suggestion we can train ourselves to think 
 away from ourselves, so, too, by suggestion we 
 can induce our bodily functions to act normally 
 without in the least attracting our attention. 
 
 Granting, then, that our nervous affections rang- 
 ing from mild fatigues to actual hallucinations, 
 tend to disappear as the substitution of wholesome 
 ideas begins to crowd them out, we may gain 
 some notion of the uses self-suggestion might be 
 put to in normal mental life. We would find it 
 much to our advantage if we frequently suggested 
 to ourselves that our memory should widen out 
 and be more active, that our judgment should be 
 profounder, that our attention should attain a 
 greater power of concentration and that our 
 imagination should grow more versatile and 
 creative. Artists, poets, musicians, writers, public 
 speakers and business men, who use specially ap- 
 plied forms of self-suggestion in their work, testify 
 to how large an extent their faculties are thereby 
 heightened. Self-suggestion, therefore, is one of 
 the important ways for preserving the integrity
 
 30 Religious Aspects of Scientific Healing 
 
 and efficiency of the mind, and anyone engaged in 
 a profession or trade which has the tendency to 
 tighten up the nerves and key up the mind would 
 do well to hold constantly before his mind sucfi 
 ideas as make for quietness and self-composure. 
 
 Again, one might profitably use self-suggestion 
 as if it had the unerring, mechanical make-up of an 
 alarm clock which one can set ahead to perform 
 at some given time. That is, one can set his mind 
 to act on an idea and also determine the time 
 when the action shall take place. This fact enables 
 a person to prepare for an ordeal and unpleasant 
 situation which he knows he must inevitably meet. 
 For example, let us suppose that a person is under 
 the necessity of appearing in court as a witness. 
 The experience is new and full of terror; he espe- 
 cially dreads being cross-questioned because he has 
 anticipated the confusion he will probably exhibit 
 under the fire of the opposing attorneys. But the 
 necessity of appearing in the case need not cause 
 a single hour of apprehension, because if he sug- 
 gests to himself that at the required time he will 
 enjoy complete self-possession, he may rest as- 
 sured without further provision that the suggested 
 idea will, at the appropriate moment, spring out 
 of his unconscious mind and assist him to acquit 
 himself with credit. From this we learn that one 
 has first to suggest strongly the desired quality,
 
 Self -Treatment of Mental Disorders 31 
 
 then to dismiss it from the mind and confidently 
 to await results. It may be that Jesus had some- 
 thing of this idea in mind when He said that it is 
 the Holy Spirit who speaks for us in critical situa- 
 tions and there is no use in premeditating what we 
 will say. A large use, too, can be made of self- 
 suggestion in the cultivation of our religious 
 thought which must react beneficially on our 
 emotional stability. To suggest frequently that 
 we will be imbued with a spirit of gratitude to 
 God, of faith in His providence and of cheerful 
 resignation to whatever cross we have to carry, 
 will have a tonic effect on the whole personality 
 soul, mind, and body. If this seems to degrade the 
 motive for being religiously minded to a crass de- 
 sire for bodily and mental comfort, it is to be re- 
 membered that one of the ideals of life and there- 
 fore of religion is a sound mind in a sound body. 
 
 Self-treatment, then, involves the practice of 
 prayer, of relaxation and of self-suggestion and we 
 have touched briefly on the reason for their ef- 
 fectiveness. Prayer, to be sure, must always re- 
 main a mystery; we can appreciate its results but 
 we can not explain what its full process involves. 
 As to self-suggestion, it at once raises the ques- 
 tion as to what our unconscious mind is. In fact, 
 the Unconscious underlies our entire discussion and 
 for the consideration of nervous disorders as well
 
 32 Religious Aspects of Scientific Healing 
 
 as for the continuance of mental health it is of the 
 utmost importance. The Unconscious has many 
 levels and many functions of which we are little 
 aware, because we cannot become conscious of it 
 except indirectly, nevertheless many facts about it 
 and its general characteristics are well known. 
 
 Naturally, then, we must consider what is gen- 
 erally known about the unconscious mind because 
 in it lies deeply imbedded the cause of every nerv- 
 ous disorder. When, moreover, we have gained 
 some insight into the complexity of our Uncon- 
 scious, we may judge for ourselves to what extent 
 our methods of self treatment are satisfactory for 
 our particular mental disturbance. It may be that 
 after we have taken into consideration a few of 
 the most common forms of nervous trouble we 
 may decide that it were better to supplement our 
 own efforts for regaining mental stability by going 
 to some specialist or psychologically-trained pas- 
 tor and letting him probe deeply into our uncon- 
 scious life and straighten out the twisted and 
 crossed wires of our i.ethermost selves. 
 
 Before we take up, However, the main points in 
 our Unconscious, it seems wise to describe the art 
 of applied suggestion as the trained physician, 
 priest or pastor makes use of it in the matter of 
 re-educating a person's (patient's) nervous forces.
 
 Self-Treatment of Mental Disorders 33 
 
 To make the matter concrete, let us suppose that 
 you have come to the conclusion that it were best 
 to supplement your own effort to regain mental 
 health by placing yourself in the hands of some 
 competent Re-educator (either a doctor or clergy- 
 man). You go to his office or study with rather 
 intimate information about yourself to communi- 
 cate. The first thing to do is to feel the utmost 
 confidence in the Re-educator both in respect to 
 his skill and his character. You should go, thatts, 
 with the self-suggested idea that the men engaged 
 in the business of re-educating other people are 
 themselves above moral reproach. This precon- 
 ceived idea tends to relieve you from the feeling of 
 fear and hampering self-restraint. 
 
 The Re-educator seats you, his "patient" in an 
 easy chair and then suggests that every bit of ten- 
 sion and drawn feeling shall leave the body from 
 the scalp to the soles of the feet. 
 
 He talks quietly, soothingly and slowly and bids 
 you think of yourself as in the midst of refreshing 
 scenes, as, for instance, on the ocean, in some 
 woodland, beside some lake. It is indeed surpris- 
 ing what a quieting effect an oral description and 
 running narrative of the calm and beauty of Na- 
 ture produce on a tired and scatter-brained mind. 
 The probable reason for this effectiveness lies in 
 the Re-educator's ability to awaken in the "pa-
 
 34 Religious Aspects of Scientific Healing 
 
 tient" pleasant memories of green fields, of moun- 
 tains and summer skies. It is during or after this 
 restful description that the Re-educator suggests 
 such ideas as your case requires. They will be 
 ideas which naturally possess a quality and force 
 sufficient to crowd out your fears, your fixed ideas 
 and your compulsions ; or the Re-educator may di- 
 rectly but never too dogmatically suggest that 
 your specific mental weakness shall give place to a 
 positive emotional feeling and to thoughts of brav- 
 ery and courage. Further, the Re-educator will at 
 least indirectly impart the notion to you that you 
 will be shortly so self-sufficient that you can, with- 
 out emotional disturbance, face and reason with 
 your dark thoughts and moods and that your mind 
 will turn outward cheerfully to the facts of life. 
 
 The Re-educator exerts no magic power; his is 
 simply the scientific art of arousing your own heal- 
 ing memories, for instance, if under his suggestion 
 you pass into a refreshing sleep it is only because 
 his voice or his words recall to you the childhood 
 voices which lulled you to sleep. That is, he frees 
 the imprisoned feelings and healing forces of your 
 own unconscious mind. This will become clearer 
 in the next chapter as will also the part played in 
 the healing process by the Re-educator to whom 
 you, the patient, unconsciously for a brief time
 
 Self -Treatment of Mental Disorders 35 
 
 transfer the feelings you used to entertain toward 
 those people in your childhood who were of in- 
 tense emotional interest to you. The Re-educator, 
 that is, for the time being stands as a substitute in 
 your eyes without your knowing it, for your father 
 and mother, your brother and sister, your friend. 
 This fact should cause no embarrassment or alarm; 
 it is natural and plays a large part in determining 
 the choice of our friends whom we take to because 
 of their unconscious resemblance to the dear faces 
 of our childhood days. Besides, this "transfer- 
 ence" of our feeling to the Re-educator is always 
 a fleeting thing and may not even be at all notice- 
 able. Later we shall come to value this "transfer- 
 ence" as one of the chief factors in our cure and 
 we may think of it as one of the reasons why we 
 are attracted to Jesus Christ in Whom we see an 
 idealized father or mother or brother or sister 
 or friend. 
 
 The expert Re-educator understands this phase 
 of the subject perfectly; he knows the "transfer- 
 ence" will soon pass and he is not inclined to hin- 
 der its natural progress to some lasting interest 
 or person. In fact when you come to him for sug- 
 gestion and relaxation, he is chiefly concerned in 
 fastening your emotional interest on the people 
 and circumstances which ordinarily should absorb
 
 36 Religious Aspects of Scientific Healing 
 
 your attention. But to do this successfully he 
 must know the hidden forces and wishes in your 
 unconscious mind. In a word, he is the best Re- 
 educator and user of suggestion who first gains 
 an acquaintance with his "patient's" Unconscious.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 THE UNCONSCIOUS MIND 
 
 ONE must not be startled to learn strange 
 things about the unconscious mind nor grow 
 morbid about them. We will take them up pres- 
 ently but our immediate interest centres in the fact 
 that the Unconscious is the seed-plot of all nerv- 
 ous disorders and that it needs to be penetrated, 
 explored and persuaded to give up its secrets if 
 nervous disorders are to be cured at their source. 
 The actual stages in the healing of any nervous 
 trouble are first a knowledge of the Unconscious; 
 second, the fullfillment of its wishes, and third, the 
 transforming and re-education of its forces so that 
 they shall faithfully serve the interests, en- 
 thusiasms and ideals of the conscious mind. 
 
 In the first chapter we thought of the Uncon- 
 scious as an obedient kind of servant to which we 
 can make suggestions with the reasonable assur- 
 ance that the Unconscious will supply us with the 
 qualities of the suggested ideas whenever we need 
 them : we appeal to the Unconscious for sleep and 
 sleep it induces ; we bid the Unconscious make us 
 
 37
 
 38 Religious Aspects of Scientific Healing 
 
 brave and brave we become at least for the oc- 
 casion we have in mind. In fact, throughout the 
 following discussion we should not lose sight of 
 what the Unconscious is at its best it is a rich 
 storehouse of helpful emotional energy. But the 
 Unconscious has another side ; it lives a decidedly 
 independent life with very little of the servant in 
 its make-up. 
 
 The Unconscious in each of us, without our 
 knowing it, of course, has its own cluster of mem- 
 ories, its own emotions, wishes and will-power. It 
 lives an in-growing life with no interest in the ac- 
 tivities of our conscious mind. In fact, the Un- 
 conscious is antagonistic to our conscious mind, 
 would like to usurp its place and gain dominion 
 over our speech and actions. Sometimes it is able 
 to gain such dominion and then it is that nervous 
 disorders show themselves, because the conscious 
 mind will not surrender the control of our actions 
 without a vigorous struggle for its just rights. 
 
 It is, therefore, more accurate to say that nerv- 
 ous disorders are due to the conflict arising be- 
 tween the conscious and unconscious minds as to 
 which shall control our thoughts, moods and ac- 
 tions. The house of the soul becomes divided 
 against itself because of the radical difference be- 
 tween the unconscious and conscious mind. 
 
 The conscious mind, briefly stated, is our wak-
 
 The Unconscious Mind 39 
 
 ing mind ; it includes our reason, our memory, will- 
 power and attention. It is disposed to revery and 
 the play of the imagination while at all times it is 
 colored with some degree of emotion. We may 
 think of the conscious mind as the source of our 
 plans, morals, ideals and conscience it is our 
 civilized mind. 
 
 The Unconscious, on the contrary, is the un- 
 tamed, uncivilized, primitive part of our thinking. 
 It is the larger part of our mentality and retains 
 every one of the memories, feelings and wishes 
 which we have ever experienced. It is asserted 
 that its vaguest memories go back to the months 
 before we were born. There is, at least, no doubt 
 that its impulses come down to us from the re- 
 motest period of human history. Everything which 
 the race has ever felt or desired continues to live 
 in each one of us. We have, then, to consider 
 three characteristics of the Unconscious ; first, the 
 Unconscious is a child its impulses and emotions 
 react to the slightest stimulation, that is, its im- 
 pulses and emotions are its wishes; secondly it is a 
 veritable savage, reflecting in each one of us the 
 brute life of our earliest ancestors ; and thirdly, the 
 Unconscious is a coward it constantly craves to 
 be safe. 
 
 It is easy to see, then, that our waking, conscious 
 mind with its ideals and moral judgments must be,
 
 40 Religious Aspects of Scientific Healing 
 
 whether we know it or not, in perpetual conflict 
 with the Unconscious, which on its childish, brutal 
 and cowardly side, tries to gain dominion over our 
 faculties and thus satisfy its cravings or uncon- 
 scious wishes. It is the unconscious wish to love 
 and hate and all the other wishes within us which 
 predispose the mind to nervous disorders. But the 
 normal mind, ordinarily, by means of its censoring 
 faculty, holds the Unconscious in check without 
 realizing the fact and even people who are inclined 
 to give way to the invasions of their unconscious 
 wishes, memories and impulses, may still remain 
 masters of themselves by self-treatment. Their 
 success in this particular simply indicates that their 
 prayers and their practice of self-suggestion have 
 sufficiently strengthened their conscious minds to 
 hold the Unconscious in satisfactory subjection. 
 But under self-treatment there is always the pos- 
 sibility that the conscious control may weaken if 
 circumstances are too unfavorable and allow the 
 Unconscious to cause trouble. The more thorough 
 way of guarding against the symptoms and morbid 
 manifestations of the Unconscious is to probe 
 deeply into its secret chambers, gratify its wishes 
 and set their emotional power to work to the ad- 
 vantage of the civilized and progressive, conscious 
 mind. 
 
 The Unconscious is the only mentality we have
 
 The Unconscious Mind 41 
 
 in our pre-natal and infant days. In these first 
 days, the Unconscious is solely an appetite it 
 craves and enjoys the sensation of being nourished. 
 Our enjoyment of the way we first receive nourish- 
 ment lives on in us and perhaps accounts for the 
 unconscious habit so many adults have of putting 
 things into their mouths, for instance, pens and 
 pencils. In the next stage of growth the infant dis- 
 covers that parts of its body are sources of pleas- 
 urable feeling. These parts are the so-called love- 
 exciting or erogenous zones. This fact, too, is un- 
 doubtedly the basis of certain peculiar habits, traits 
 and gestures which show themselves frequently in 
 later life. 
 
 In the course of time, the infant discovers that 
 its parents gratify its waking desire to be loved. 
 This fact makes its parents pre-eminently persons 
 of intense emotional interest an impression the 
 Unconscious in each one of us never forgets, mak- 
 ing it, in fact, the standard by which in later, adult 
 life we form our friendships and choose our help- 
 mates. 
 
 The sex instinct appears at an early period of 
 childhood, though parents and children are not 
 aware of the fact. Little boys fall in love with 
 their mothers quite unconsciously; while little girls 
 cling to their fathers and are jealous of their 
 mothers. Recently a four-year-old girl was heard
 
 42 Religious Aspects of Scientific Healing 
 
 to say, "Daddy, when I grow up I am going to 
 marry you." Some days later this child played 
 that her mother was dead. The reason for this 
 kind of play lies in the Unconscious. Under the 
 mask of this child's play there was at work a 
 primitive wish that her mother were dead so that 
 she might exclusively enjoy her father's love. 
 
 These distinct love cravings for either parent 
 are known as the "father and mother complex" or 
 "fixations." They forever live on in the race and 
 manifest themselves in people's lives in unsuspected 
 ways. Thus, many a man for no good reason at 
 all cannot live happily with his wife because it is 
 found when his Unconscious is investigated that 
 his affections are still fixed on the unconscious 
 image of his mother and that he does not love his 
 wife for the simple reason that she is not like his 
 mother. Some wives without knowing the signifi- 
 cance of their thought belittle their husbands be- 
 cause they still unconsciously desire their fathers 
 in place of their husbands. In a similar way in 
 adult life when we experience sudden likes or dis- 
 likes for people we may be sure that the reason lies 
 in the fact that in these people we recognize un- 
 consciously some strong resemblance to certain 
 people in our childhood who favorably or unfavor- 
 ably absorbed our emotional attention. 
 
 The Unconscious before it is re-educated must
 
 The Unconscious Mind 43 
 
 bear the blame for many more of our infirmities 
 in case the normal mind is not in complete control. 
 Thus, innumerable fears, which steal in upon us 
 we know not why, refer their origin back to some 
 specific fear we experienced in childhood. 
 
 The sense of having committed the unpardon- 
 able sin, which annihilates so frequently the peace 
 of mind in both young and old people, may be only 
 the exaggerated echo of an unconscious memory 
 of some occasion when a father in punishing his 
 child too severely and perhaps unjustly made the 
 child feel his guilt unduly. The unreasonable com- 
 pulsions felt so often in later days may be due to 
 a similar memory a child from a motive of fear 
 felt compelled to do something which at the time 
 he knew was unreasonably required of him. 
 Morbid cases of compulsion differ from cases of 
 simple bad conscience in this one particular that 
 the bad conscience knows perfectly well why it is 
 troubled while a morbid compulsion can not give 
 a single reason for its insistence. 
 
 But why do fears, compulsions and fixed ideas 
 have such sticking, pertinacious power? It is be- 
 cause their origin involved without doubt a great 
 deal of emotional upset. That is, when the child 
 was unjustly punished or compelled to do an un- 
 reasonable thing, the child's emotional life was
 
 44 Religious Aspects of Scientific Healing 
 
 thoroughly roused his feelings were outraged. 
 Then in the course of years the Unconscious 
 avenges itself for this outrage by rebelling against 
 the control and authority of the waking mind by 
 overclouding it with dark thoughts and moods. 
 The emotional quality of any memory guarantees 
 the persistence of that memory even though the 
 cause of it all was trifling. Thus, the sense of 
 guilt which may overspread the whole mentality 
 may have had the most insignificant origin, but 
 the Unconscious is careful that the emotional ele- 
 ment in any memory shall fasten to as many 
 thoughts as- possible. 
 
 The fear of closed places which numbers its 
 victims in large figures may be only the left-over 
 fear first induced when as children these people 
 were detected in some hiding place indulging in 
 some disgusting or injurious practice. The wide 
 spread sense of inferiority, of not being equal to 
 the requirements and hardships of life can be 
 traced usually to the indulgence of parents in pro- 
 tecting their children from responsibilities, in 
 shielding them from unpleasant facts and in sug- 
 gesting to them that they are not capable of this 
 or that task. The resentful, embittered disposi- 
 tions of older people may owe their particular in- 
 tensity to unconscious memories of childhood de- 
 privations and disappointments.
 
 The Unconscious Mind 45 
 
 Boys who do not get on well at school frequent- 
 ly show under analysis that their trouble lies wholly 
 in the fact that they unconsciously identify the 
 schoolmaster with some forbidding parent, brother 
 or relative who domineered over them as young- 
 sters. Many an employee can not keep his posi- 
 tion because he sees in the foreman or employer 
 the exasperating image of some earlier taskmaster. 
 
 Much of the suffering we go through is unneces- 
 sary; a little knowledge of our unconscious life 
 would at least afford something definite for the 
 reason to work on in the matter of mitigating its 
 unpleasant effects. Thus, religiously-minded peo- 
 ple are often cruelly scourged with a haunting 
 sense of God's wrath and the idea of the Father 
 in Heaven instead of bringing peace brings terror. 
 But there is every reason to believe that this terror 
 at the thought of God is only the survival of a 
 race memory dating from the time when our very 
 primitive ancestors killed their fathers and then 
 were paralyzed with a fear of their fathers' aveng- 
 ing, haunting spirit. 
 
 In general, then, fears, anxieties, depressed 
 states of feeling, fixed ideas and compulsions or 
 whatever else infests the mind can be traced back 
 usually to unconscious memories of actual but for- 
 gotten childhood experiences or to the collective 
 experience of the human race throughout its long
 
 46 Religious Aspects of Scientific Healing 
 
 history which continues to live in the Unconscious 
 of each individual. Such mental disorders are, 
 however, to a large extent curable. The cure is 
 brought about by thoroughly investigating and 
 analysing the afflicted person's Unconscious, by 
 drawing its memories out into the light of the 
 patient's reason, by fulfilling its wishes in a 
 symbolic way (known as the "transference") and 
 by re-educating its powers to co-operate with the 
 ideals of the conscious mind. How is this done? 
 Chiefly by analyzing and interpreting the person's 
 dreams. 
 
 The important discovery that our dreams are 
 the life of our Unconscious was made by Dr. 
 Sigmund Freud. After much scientific investiga- 
 tion, Freud came to the conclusion that our Un- 
 conscious tries to fulfill its wishes in our dream 
 pictures, that is, whatever we dream expresses the 
 fulfillment of an unconscious wish. Hence, if we 
 can rightly interpret the thought behind the dream 
 imagery we have the key to what memories and 
 wishes are predominant in our unconscious souls. 
 Dreams, then, are often the clue to the uncon- 
 scious wish which for lack of fulfillment is caus- 
 ing a nervous disturbance. 
 
 While it may seem for the most part that our 
 dreams center about people, scenes, and incidents 
 of our immediate, present life, yet behind these
 
 The Unconscious Mind 47 
 
 dream presentations of people and situations, 
 which we recognize as part of our modern life, 
 there are also the people of our childhood and 
 childhood incidents faithfully preserved, but so 
 disguised that we do not recognize them. Thus, 
 our dreams, without our knowing it, live over 
 and over again our childhood emotions and wishes 
 which still powerfully influence us because they 
 were once of intense emotional interest to us. 
 Dreams, then, are our own ancient and modern 
 history. But at present we are concerned only 
 with those features of dream life which reveal 
 the secret cause of this or that nervous disorder. 
 
 Let us suppose for the sake of example that a 
 man is not happy in his home and the fault seems 
 to be due entirely to his peculiar childish tempera- 
 ment. At length he goes to some competent Re- 
 educator (either a nerve specialist or clergy- 
 man) and places himself under his care. What 
 does the Re-educator do? In particular, besides 
 trying several other approaches to the man's inner 
 life, he will analyze his dreams for in them there 
 must be some hint of where the trouble originated. 
 The dreams, we will say, show quite clearly that 
 the man had never detached himself from his boy- 
 hood home, that is, his unconscious mind was still 
 living among its earliest affections. The first 
 thing the Re-educator will do is to point out this
 
 48 Religious Aspects of Scientific Healing 
 
 fact to his patient. If the patient is satisfied that 
 the Re-educator has unearthed the real cause of 
 his unhappiness the probability is that the patient's 
 unconscious mind will cease to hold him in bond- 
 age. That is, when the real reason is discovered 
 for this or that nervous disorder then its power 
 to hinder the waking mind tends almost at once 
 to disappear. This means that the strong feel- 
 ing of affection which the man felt for his old 
 home frees itself when once exposed to his reason- 
 ing power and attaches itself to the man's present 
 home. The emotional power transfers itself out 
 of the past into the present; it no longer with- 
 holds the man from loving his wife and children 
 but actually strengthens his new emotion. 
 
 What the Re-educator does is to discover 
 through the analysis of dreams just where the 
 trouble originated in the patient's childhood. The 
 next step is to present this fact to the patient's 
 reason and then by using suggestion the Re-educa- 
 tor directs the emotional force, which was asso- 
 ciated with the childhood days, to pass over into 
 an enthusiasm for the patient's present activities. 
 
 Were we to consider the case of a fear or a 
 compulsion the method of procedure would be 
 the same. The Re-educator would first investi- 
 gate what was the original fear or what was the 
 original thing which the -child had to do which
 
 The Unconscious Mind 49 
 
 later when he became an adult assumed the per- 
 sistent character of a fear or compulsion. Sooner 
 or later in the investigation, the dream pictures 
 will dramatize the scene in which long since the 
 fear or the compulsion began its work of trying 
 to becloud the patient's whole mentality. The 
 Unconscious has never forgotten the scene be- 
 cause of the explosive, emotional element which 
 was originally connected with it. This emotional 
 element lives on and on and is the cause of the 
 fear or the compulsion. But this emotional ele- 
 ment loses its disturbing force just as soon as it 
 has been traced to its source. We have only to 
 remember how long it takes injured feelings to 
 cool down to obtain some adequate notion of the 
 way early emotional tempests continue to rage in 
 the unconscious mind. 
 
 But our emphasis at this point is on the readi- 
 ness with which an imprisoned emotion transfers 
 itself outward to new interests. Just as we may 
 rapidly forget personal injuries as soon as an 
 adequate explanation has been offered so the un- 
 conscious feelings cease to be self-centered and 
 naturally align themselves with the forward 
 movement of the normal, waking mind as soon as 
 they have been satisfied with a reasonable explana- 
 tion. They so frequently right themselves auto- 
 matically after but one or two visits to the Re-
 
 50 Religious Aspects of Scientific Healing 
 
 educator that he has no need to use applied sug- 
 gestion to train them in the way they should flow ; 
 they naturally betake themselves along the proper 
 channels. But we must now consider the essential 
 feature in every childhood, emotional experience. 
 
 The pre-eminently vital feature in each child- 
 hood incident was, of course, the people for whom 
 the child had a feeling of hate or love. Every 
 fear, compulsion or fixed idea or whatever may 
 be morbid in an adult's mind originated in his 
 emotional attitude toward some definite person or 
 persons connected with his earliest days. It was 
 probably his father or mother or brother or sis- 
 ter or nurse who gave the troublesome incident its 
 emotional character which the Unconscious strives 
 to be rid of. This is an important fact and hence 
 in dream analysis when the cause of a nervous 
 disorder reveals itself these inevitable persons 
 make their appearance as the object of the child's 
 hate or love. In his Unconscious, the adult is still 
 a child and he wishes to show his hatred or ex- 
 press his love, as the case may be, to those with 
 whom he once lived long ago. 
 
 It follows, then, that a large part of re-educat- 
 ing a person's Unconscious consists in establishing 
 a normal relationship between him and his child- 
 hood associates. Probably they are people who 
 are actually dead or far distant, but for the per-
 
 The Unconscious Mind 51 
 
 son's Unconscious they are still alive. Toward 
 them he still has definite though unconscious 
 wishes and for his cure these wishes must be ful- 
 filled, be they wishes inspired by hatred or love. 
 The fulfillment of these wishes devolves 
 upon the Re-educator. He must stand as 
 the symbol and substitute for all the people 
 on whom the patient wishes unconsciously 
 to lavish his love or vent his spite. In 
 a word, the patient simply "transfers" his long- 
 imprisoned feeling for parents, brothers, sisters, 
 and relatives over to the Re-educator. He in one 
 capacity or another satisfies the patient's hate or 
 love wishes. The "transference" of feeling seems 
 to be a necessary part of the cure. It is perhaps 
 this fact which explains why the people possessed 
 with devils cried out to Christ to leave them alone, 
 while others manifested to Him their most ardent 
 affection. Anyone who has tried to be of help 
 to a person who was in a "state of nerves" will 
 recall with what ease the person's moods would 
 alternate from intense affection to abhorence, the 
 reason being that the person without doubt un- 
 consciously recognized in his friend now some- 
 body he once loved and in the next moment some- 
 body he once hated as a child. In every friend- 
 ship there is always some evidence of "transfer- 
 ence" ; either one of the friends sees in the other
 
 52 Religious Aspects of Scientific Healing 
 
 or both friends see in each other some quality 
 or trait which belonged to the first persons they 
 were unusually fond of. 
 
 No one should long be surprised or foster dis- 
 gust on account of this transference. If it is 
 necessary for you to be under the care of some 
 Re-educator you may feel confident that he has 
 no personal interest in whatever transference you 
 may make to him. The Re-educator knows that 
 for a limited time he must stand in the eyes of 
 your unconscious mind for a host of people, it 
 may be for your father, your mother, your 
 brother, your sister, or nurse, in fact, for any 
 person connected with your earliest years. You 
 observe there is nothing very personal or of 
 emotional interest in this matter of momentarily 
 taking somebody else's place. When without your 
 knowing it the Re-educator observes that you di- 
 rect your anger or affection toward him, his only 
 interest is in the fact that you are giving way to 
 the transference which unconsciously you wish to 
 make in order that henceforth you may be free 
 from the pressure of this or that long repressed 
 emotion. The love, the friendship, the hatred 
 and disgust which your Unconscious has long since 
 desired to express toward certain people eventual- 
 ly finds in the Re-educator a satisfactory though 
 momentary substitute.
 
 The Unconscious Mind 53 
 
 The "transference" does not last long for the 
 emotion a patient feels for the Re-educator usually 
 passes on rapidly to some person, interest, or situa- 
 tion for which he has a natural leaning and de- 
 sire. 
 
 The "transference" is the bridge over which 
 the imprisoned emotional energy passes out into 
 an emotional interest in the contemporary world. 
 The "transference" usually serves also as a rapid 
 means by which the infantile, unconscious wishes 
 and impulses transform themselves into support- 
 ing forces of the grown-up personality. Because 
 his infantile emotional nature was not properly 
 transformed but remained stunted, many a bril- 
 liant man has had to write himself down as a 
 failure. 
 
 So far we have considered the Unconscious as 
 a prison for infantile emotional energy, but it is 
 also the prison for all the emotional energy which 
 throughout our lives we consign to its keeping. 
 This brings us to the important subject of re- 
 pression. Every day we have to make moral de- 
 cisions; we have to choose between two or more 
 impulses and while we naturally follow some of 
 them out completely there are many we have to 
 repress. These repressed impulses and desires 
 simply withdraw into the Unconscious where they 
 continue to strive for expression.
 
 54 Religious Aspects of Scientific Healing 
 
 Many of these repressed impulses are moral 
 and wholesome, but we can not follow them out 
 perhaps on account of our financial inability or 
 our education and training do not sanction them, 
 or the conventions of our community intimidate 
 us. At any rate they are forced into the limbo of 
 the Unconscious where they stir up resentful and 
 rebellious moods. Time and time and again a 
 thorough re-education of a person's nervous sys- 
 tem means not only that these repressions must be 
 ferreted out by analysis, but that the person must 
 be urged to express them completely. A too puri- 
 tanical way of looking at life often results in years 
 of repression and consequently in years of nerv- 
 ous trouble which is the only way the repressed 
 impulses can compensate themselves. Adults who 
 for years have lived with parental warnings and 
 promptings ringing in their ears need to be freed 
 and re-educated. In this connection it is reassur- 
 ing to know that as soon as dream analysis or any 
 other means of soul analysis reveals these repres- 
 sive commands in their injurious aspect they tend 
 to lose their force. 
 
 We have been thinking of the Unconscious in 
 its character as a child, but as a matter of fact, this 
 characteristic contains within it the brute and 
 coward aspects of the Unconscious. The brutal 
 side of the Unconscious, however, is not particular-
 
 The Unconscious Mind 55 
 
 ly evident though in moments of revery we may 
 suddenly surprise ourselves by imagining or wish- 
 ing that certain brutal things might happen. The 
 brutal characteristic shows itself oftenest in the 
 things we do in our dreams or the disguised death 
 wishes we unconsciously entertain. Anyone who 
 is familiar with little children must have noticed 
 how they at time give way to the most barbaric 
 sentiments or dramatize symbolically in their play 
 decidedly brutal incidents. The Unconscious as 
 a coward, however, is less capable of disguising 
 itself. We are all greatly influenced by the uncon- 
 scious desire for safety. 
 
 With this motive for safety in mind, we can 
 undoubtedly call to mind certain people of our 
 acquaintance who like children shrink from re- 
 sponsibility and hide behind every kind of an ex- 
 cuse. Such people make up the large number 
 whose neurotic symptoms take the form of fleeing 
 from reality. The flight from reality is a distinct 
 form of mental disorder. Back of it is probably 
 the wish to regress and hide among the memories 
 of a protected and care-free childhood. This mo- 
 tive for safety may be the unconscious origin of 
 this or that form of bodily sickness. Thus, if 
 once as a child by feigning sickness a person was 
 able to shirk some duty or salutary discipline, it 
 might easily happen that his Unconscious which
 
 56 Religions Aspects of Scientific Healing 
 
 could never forget such a successful evasion, would 
 resort to exactly the same method if the person 
 were confronted with some difficult situation. 
 This person, let us imagine, knows definitely that 
 he must do something not at all to his liking. This 
 fact revives the unconscious memory of his child- 
 hood success in evading the unpleasant and im- 
 mediately the Unconscious attempts to gain con- 
 trol of his bodily functions and throw them into 
 disorder. Then for no conceivable reason he be- 
 comes ill and for a time at least is physically un- 
 able to deal with the difficulty he must needs meet. 
 We are assuming that he did not deliberately make 
 himself ill but he had the safety motive so little 
 under normal control that it easily induced the 
 incapacitating illness. Many a person is inhibited 
 from living the broad and daring life which his 
 gifts and talents warrant, because of the pressure 
 of the safety motive. 
 
 The safety motive has under the conditions of 
 war been one of the factors in shellshock cases. 
 The soldier, in his waking, conscious mind, cher- 
 ishes ideals of bravery and endurance, but if the 
 wearing terrors of war or the sudden, near-by 
 bursting of a shell happens to demoralize or ren- 
 der the faculties of his conscious mind temporarily 
 powerless to control the Unconscious, the Uncon- 
 scious in accordance with its wish to be safe is at
 
 The Unconscious Mind 57 
 
 once free to incapacitate the soldier's bodily 
 organism by inducing blindness, deafness, loss of 
 voice or paralysis. These afflictions tend to dis- 
 appear, however, as soon as the normal control 
 of the idealistic, conscious mind is re-established 
 under proper treatment. Then, of course, besides 
 warshock we have the slower breaking down of 
 this healthy control by the tedious, nerve-wrack- 
 ing circumstances and hardships of life which per- 
 mit the Unconscious to come forward with what- 
 ever neurotic symptom it is disposed to. 
 
 Further, every nervous disorder follows the 
 thrust of the safety motive, that is, every nervous 
 disorder wishes to be safe and therefore dreads 
 the possibility of being cured. The nervous 
 affliction, as it were, has a will to live. For this 
 reason the Unconscious resists the various methods 
 for penetrating into its lair. It seems sometimes 
 as if the nervous disorders tried to falsify the 
 real meaning of the dreams which dramatize them 
 so that no clue may appear as to their existence. 
 Fortunately, nervous disorders, by the very fact 
 that they try to intrench themselves in every pos- 
 sible symptom, are bound to leave unprotected 
 some way of approach to their source and origin. 
 
 Self-protection is also a strong motive with 
 the conscious mind, but in this case the motive
 
 58 Religious Aspects of Scientific Healing 
 
 for safety is a desirable thing indeed because it 
 strengthens our morale and gives us hope, in case 
 we are nervously ill, to know that the controlling 
 mental faculty which holds the Unconscious in 
 check is itself determined to keep us efficient and 
 sufficiently healthy to meet the requirements of a 
 competitive world. This guarding faculty of the 
 mind so zealous for our mental and moral health 
 is of enough importance to consider under a sepa- 
 rate section. We have, therefore, more to learn 
 about the Unconscious, but it will be the Uncon- 
 scious as it is regulated by that faculty of the con- 
 scious mind called the "Censor." 
 
 While we have noticed the reluctance which the 
 Unconscious shows if any attempt is made to 
 unearth its morbid secrets, yet strangely enough 
 when left to its own impulses it shows a strong 
 desire to talk about itself. That is, there is some- 
 where in the mental make-up an innate desire to 
 obtain relief from any kind of emotional pressure 
 by speaking it aloud. This is the basic reason for 
 the age-long practice of going to a priest to con- 
 fess one's sins. While, without doubt such a prac- 
 tice brings relief when the penitent is fully and 
 unmistakably aware of what is troubling his con- 
 science, yet, when his trouble is of a psychological 
 and unconscious character, confession can bring
 
 The Unconscious Mind 59 
 
 relief only to the extent that it satisfies the blind 
 impulse to confess something. As a rule, the priest 
 who hears confessions is quite capable of distin- 
 guishing between a conscience which accuses itself 
 justly and one which is merely morbid. The 
 science of psycho-analysis, however, might very 
 well in the future play more and more of a part 
 in the educational equipment of the men who are 
 to hear confessions. 
 
 Most of the conversations which a Pastor has 
 with members of his congregation, when the sub- 
 ject turns upon the secret problems of their lives, 
 are veritable forms of confession, and scientifically 
 nothing helps the nervous patient so much as a per- 
 fectly frank talk with somebody who understands. 
 Conversations which have as their object the 
 clearing up of some thing which troubles the mind 
 are a part of the method for investigating the Un- 
 conscious. While dream analysis is the most 
 scientific way, yet very frequently the information 
 which a patient divulges in a conversation will af- 
 ford enlightening hints as to the trouble in his Un- 
 conscious. The patient's choice of words, his slips 
 of the tongue, his lapses of memory, his probably 
 unconscious gestures are apt to tell a great deal 
 more than he thinks, because while he is really 
 trying to make a clean breast of his trouble, his 
 Unconscious is trying to resist giving any vital in-
 
 60 Religious Aspects of Scientific Healing 
 
 formation. It is the conflict between the con- 
 scious desire to tell and the unconscious reluctance 
 to give away secrets which produces all the uneven- 
 ness of manner and imperfections of speech which 
 for the competent Re-educator are just so many 
 guide-posts into the realms of the patient's Un- 
 conscious. We shall meet this phase of the sub- 
 ject again in our consideration of the Censor in 
 the next section. 
 
 Nervous disorders originate in the Unconscious 
 this fact we take now for granted but while 
 we have familiarized ourselves with the thought 
 that it is the childhood "fixations," repressions and 
 unfulfilled wishes which cause us fears, fixed ideas 
 and compulsions, yet the repressed wishes and im- 
 pulses of later years can cause much mental dis- 
 turbance. This is true especially when the Un- 
 conscious has a repressed moral problem of our 
 own making which it would like to have cleared 
 up and banished. 
 
 A moral cause, then, of our own making yet 
 utterly forgotten may lie at the bottom of some 
 queer symptom as, for instance, a person's in- 
 ability to board a street car or enter an elevator. 
 Let us suppose that a man has an unreasonable 
 dread of street traffic. It is an evasive, general 
 sort of fear but it may go back to a definite inci- 
 dent. The victim of this fear submits himself to 
 psycho-analysis. His dreams are examined and
 
 The Unconscious Mind 61 
 
 while they, of course, refer to some childhood in- 
 cident, yet they have a more modern meaning 
 which is the one to be interpreted. His dreams, 
 we will suppose, dramatize a theft. By continued 
 analysis and the conversational method, his Un- 
 conscious reveals that this man in his eighteenth 
 year stole some money and escaped out of town 
 on a bicycle. At the time, this youth repressed 
 his bad conscience, glossed over his guilt and be- 
 fore long his waking memory forgot the whole in- 
 cident. But for years and years his Unconscious 
 had this moral problem to deal with until suddenly 
 it was able to indicate its existence by making the 
 now grown man afraid to cross a street. Why 
 the fear of crossing a street? Because any street 
 meant the probable appearance of a bicycle and a 
 bicycle stirred his Unconscious with unpleasant 
 memories of the long forgotten theft. Dream 
 analysis, when it happens to unearth forgotten 
 sins which still live on with hair-trigger irritability 
 in the Unconscious, often reveals why people are 
 addicted to drugs or alcohol which are not really, 
 in many instances, pleasurable to the victims of 
 them but are a means for relieving the emotional 
 pressure exerted on their conscious mind by some 
 hidden plague spot of long standing, some ancient 
 sin or some more recent problem. Any injurious 
 habit, therefore, suggests the advisability of dis- 
 covering what unconscious sense of guilt, what
 
 62 Religious Aspects of Scientific Healing 
 
 motive for fleeing from reality or what particular 
 childhood "fixations" are irritating the waking 
 mind. When we realize how easily a problem 
 left unsolved at the time of its first appearance 
 may, after incubating in the Unconscious, resur- 
 rect itself in the form of a deleterious habit or 
 neurotic symptom, we see how important is the 
 first great command in the method of self-treat- 
 ment: Face fairly and squarely at the beginning 
 anything which troubles the mind; meet it with 
 poise and discriminating judgment and at the end 
 of each day take stock of the emotional problems 
 of the preceding hours. 
 
 In the light of what the Unconscious is, it were 
 well to revert to the subject of self-suggestion. 
 Self-suggestion is not so much a curing process as 
 a means to magnificent self-control over one's Un- 
 conscious. The Unconscious is ever ready to 
 break in with its queer moods, thoughts and ac- 
 tions so that a constant vigilance is necessary 
 which itself may turn into a well-defined fear as 
 to whether we will be able to maintain sufficient 
 control or not. In those instances of nervous dis- 
 order where self-suggestion and prayer have 
 brought permanent peace and influenced their self- 
 conscious and introspective thought to assume its 
 naturally secondary place, the explanation must 
 be that the afflicted persons were able to hold out 
 against the Unconscious and its invasions long
 
 The Unconscious Mind 63 
 
 enough to allow the Censor to make the proper 
 adjustments between their conscious and uncon- 
 scious minds. One hesitates in any way to hint 
 at the actual limits of self-suggestion in the face 
 of all the good it has accomplished for scores of 
 people, yet if self-suggestion is too exhausting and 
 self-conscious a process, the sufferer from fears 
 and other nervous symptoms would do well to 
 have his Unconscious analyzed and re-educated. 
 Such a procedure might easily be the means of 
 heading off any incipient insanity. When one 
 comes to examine his own mental state, one needs 
 to use common sense first and last, for it is an 
 easy matter to distort one's prespective and be- 
 come morbid over some fancied weakness or 
 shadowy sense of guilt. One can be considerably 
 neurotic without serious detriment to one's work 
 or happiness and it needs to be remembered that 
 the Unconscious is neither good nor bad in itself; 
 it is only what one allows it to become which de- 
 termines its character. We have seen that one 
 may train the Unconscious to serve one's energies; 
 the thing to be guarded against is any countenanc- 
 ing of its irrational outbursts, or any habitual ac- 
 quiescence in its retrograde wishes and fixations. 
 What we know of the Unconscious and of the 
 need, in so many instances, of re-education enables 
 us to estimate correctly the use of applied sug- 
 gestion as the Re-educator practices it. As a mat-
 
 64 Religious Aspects of Scientific Healing 
 
 ter of fact, everything the Re-educator does or 
 says has a quality of suggestion about it and he re- 
 sorts to definite suggestion (the patient having 
 first been relaxed) only when the analyzed person- 
 ality is backward in righting itself. When the Re- 
 educator discovers that an impulse tends to re- 
 cede into its infantile state, he uses applied sug- 
 gestion to turn the impulse outward and forward. 
 If, for instance, he finds that in her Unconscious 
 a woman turns from her husband back to an in- 
 fantile desire for her father, the Re-educator, in 
 case after the analysis the woman does not turn 
 spontaneously to her husband, will use applied 
 suggestion as a possible means for securing the 
 desired result. 
 
 Again, when a patient's dream life is meager 
 and void of information, the Re-educator may by 
 using suggestion often induce him to recall events 
 and people which supplement the facts which the 
 dreams withhold. People of extraordinarily shut- 
 in personality under suggestion frequently become 
 communicative and enlightening as to their 
 trouble. Applied suggestion by the Re-educator, 
 on the contrary, may be useful in quieting a per- 
 son sufficiently, so that he is able to concentrate his 
 attention on what he desires to tell. 
 
 We have, then, three methods for penetrating 
 into a person's Unconscious : dream analysis, ordi- 
 nary conversations and directed suggestion. It is
 
 The Unconscious Mind 65 
 
 evident that the "patient" cannot employ these 
 methods by himself, though some people become 
 proficient in interpreting their own dreams. It, 
 therefore, becomes necessary for the Re-educator 
 to use all the rational methods he knows for ascer- 
 taining the mysterious life which the Unconscious 
 leads below the threshhold of conscious thought. 
 We have said nothing of the use of hypnotism, for 
 while that was once a recognized method it has 
 been largely displaced by dream analysis. If un- 
 der hypnotism a patient was asked to give infor- 
 mation about a certain fact in his life he would 
 undoubtedly do so, but it would be only the bare, 
 unrelated fact. The methods now in use not only 
 obtain the specific information but also a mass of 
 related ideas and emotions which are fully as im- 
 portant. 
 
 Furthermore, this style of method, which se- 
 cures also the associated ideas as well as the 
 principal idea itself connected with the trouble to 
 be treated, usually awakens the patient's interest 
 in the results and moves him not only to assist in 
 the analysis and interpretation of his Unconscious 
 but to manifest an enthusiasm which hastens his 
 complete re-education, that is, the turning of his 
 Unconscious away from its own self-consuming 
 life to a ready co-operation with the problems and 
 purposes of the moral and conscious mind.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 THE INTERNAL CENSOR AND GUARDIAN 
 
 WE call that mental faculty the Censor which 
 is set as a guardian of our sanity and be- 
 havior. The Censor has two things to do : ( I ) 
 to shield us from the injurious effects of external 
 circumstances, and (2) to protect us from the 
 irrational efforts of our Unconscious to gain con- 
 trol of our thoughts, feelings, speech, actions and 
 of our motor organism as a whole. Hence any 
 discussion of the Unconscious, or any understand- 
 ing of the connection between the Unconscious and 
 our conscious, civilized, mind requires at least a 
 glance at the Censor. Moreover, because it in- 
 cludes our faculties of conscience, we have to con- 
 sider the Censor in any intelligent view of the sub- 
 ject of religion in its relation to the cure of nerv- 
 ous ills and the re-education of human personality. 
 The Censor usually does his work well. This 
 is the same thing as saying that the conscious mind 
 always tends to preserve or regain its equilibrium 
 and control the nervous system. In fact while we 
 are young and untroubled we give the Censor no 
 
 66
 
 The Internal Censor and Guardian 67 
 
 thought because it works so smoothly that it at- 
 tracts no attention to itself. It is only as the 
 Censor slowly becomes worn down that we realize 
 its importance. 
 
 In our relation to a world of people and things 
 and noise, the Censor guards our peace of mind 
 by sifting our experiences as they come to us and 
 by allowing only such elements to attract our at- 
 tention as will tend to suffuse us with a sense of 
 well-being. Take, for instance, as simple a mat- 
 ter as sitting down in cold blood and deliberately 
 trying to solve some of the knotty problems of 
 philosophy and life. No matter with what in- 
 tellectual calm we might approach them, such 
 problems, were we allowed for a moment to feel 
 their terror and immensity, would certainly over- 
 whelm us with a depressing sense of the futility 
 of human life, but the Censor sees to it that we 
 not only fail to appreciate their terror and im- 
 mensity but that we actually experience an in- 
 tellectual pleasure in our philosophizing. This 
 means that the Censor guards our emotional calm. 
 Thus, in associating with people, the Censor fore- 
 stalls our feeling in too oppressive a way the 
 slights, the indifference and the competition which 
 every person in some degree must have in store 
 for us. On the contrary, the Censor allows us
 
 68 Religions Aspects of Scientific Healing 
 
 chiefly to feel only the advantages of associating 
 with our fellows. 
 
 If it were not for the Censor's guarding our 
 sympathetic feelings, our emotional nature would 
 be continually lacerated by the sight of every 
 beggar, cripple or unfortunate on the streets. We 
 are, of course, naturally sympathetic but not nearly 
 so much so as the constant challenge of poverty, 
 sickness, vice and crime would warrant. This be- 
 comes apparent immediately whenever the Censor 
 weakens its control, for then, because there is 
 nothing to prevent the full emotional significance 
 of the outside world from streaming in, many peo- 
 ple are made helplessly miserable by the width and 
 intensity of their sympathy with the sufferings of 
 men and animals. Such uncensored sympathy is 
 actually injurious because it paralyses a person's 
 power to do anything for the relief of suffering. 
 No one person is competent to alleviate all the 
 misery he sees and the Censor, by narrowing the 
 intake of our feeling for others, enables us to save 
 some portion of our vitality for actually helping 
 others. 
 
 Again, the clamorous busy world would wrack 
 us beyond recovery but the Censor softens the ef- 
 fect of street cries, the noise of traffic and the 
 babel of tongues; what really happens is that we
 
 The Internal Censor and Guardian 69 
 
 are not allowed to pay attention to them. The 
 Censor is, therefore, the guardian of the attention. 
 That the outside world's insufferable irritants are 
 ever at work, we would soon learn to our sorrow 
 if by mischance the censorship was withdrawn. 
 
 Then, too, in the matter of memory, how many 
 unpleasant, difficult situations we have at some 
 time struggled through lose the poignancy of their 
 horror when we recall them to memory! Their 
 full . shattering effect is still a living memory in 
 our Unconscious and under hypnotism we could 
 be made to feel their original unpleasantness and 
 terror, but in normal health the Censor more and 
 more strikes out the painful elements from our 
 recollections. Thus, the Censor strives to elimi- 
 nate the emotional element from our memories as 
 being an injurious factor. 
 
 Again, we may hear of some heart-breaking 
 news and the Censor immediately stuns our sen- 
 sibilities. It is the stunning of our sensibilities 
 which saves our reason by permitting' us to take 
 in only very gradually as we are able to endure it, 
 the otherwise crushing significance of the death 
 or tragedy which has affected us. If we suffer a 
 reverse of fortune or are called on to live in 
 strange, uncongenial surroundings, the Censor as 
 far as possible glosses over the misfortunes and 
 shuts out the destructive sense of strangeness in
 
 70 Religious Aspects of Scientific Healing 
 
 order that we may adjust ourselves to the new 
 conditions. 
 
 The Censor also guards our sleep. Dreams 
 tend to waken us but the Censor is constantly 
 modifying the dream pictures so that even if they 
 are unusually vivid and intense they do not as a 
 rule disturb the conscious mind during its repose. 
 Here is an important item in the analysis of 
 dreams; why is it that at this or that point the 
 Censor stepped in and changed the series of dream 
 pictures? At night, however, the Censor is at its 
 weakest and frequently dream pictures slip by of 
 such a thrilling or horrid character that they 
 waken us. Nevertheless, the vital meaning of 
 the dream is always too carefully obscured by the 
 Censor for us to be conscious of it at the time. 
 
 Our dreams in some instances would certainly 
 shock and astound us if we knew their meaning; 
 for the dream life just because it acts out and 
 dramatizes the impulse to murder, lust and theft, 
 which our brute ancestors and caveman forebears 
 gave way to with little or no restraint or compunc- 
 tion, implies that we unconsciously desire to carry 
 out these same impulses. Our civilized mind will 
 not permit the brute Unconscious in us to execute 
 these impulses so they have to find their gratifica- 
 tion in dream pictures. This gives us a hint of 
 what the dream wish is like; it means that by
 
 The Internal Censor and Guardian 7 1 
 
 nature we have these impulses and we would like 
 to give way to them when they are roused and 
 stimulated. In our waking life something angers 
 us and our impulse is to avenge ourselves it is a 
 murder wish ; our latent wish to murder is stimu- 
 lated by the person who angers us. As to our im- 
 pulse dreams, the thing which would shock us 
 would be a recognition of the people whom we un- 
 consciously wish to victimize. The Censor, how- 
 ever, witholds this recognition. When in our 
 dreams we wish for the death of somebody near 
 to us a desire which our uncivilized ancestors 
 could carry out to their heart's content the 
 Censor utterly obscures the true nature of this 
 wish by changing the dream into a fear on our 
 part lest that beloved person will die. But an 
 anxiety dream usually is only a thin disguise drawn 
 over a startling wish dream. The mere fact that 
 only an insignificant handful of people recognizes 
 or is trained to recognize the often brutal charac- 
 ter of dream wishes indicates how successfully for 
 the greater majority of people the Censor con- 
 ceals the true meaning of the dream. 
 
 We have emphasized the brute element in our 
 dream life for the explicit reason of showing the 
 care the Censor has for our peace of mind it 
 does not allow us to recognize our unconscious de- 
 sires. Further, if we were to enter deeply the
 
 72 Religious Aspects of Scientific Healing 
 
 question of the Censor in the matter of interfering 
 with the dream pictures, we would find how fre- 
 quently the dream life instead of merely picturing 
 the fulfillment of primitive wishes actually tries 
 to find a solution of moral problems. This can 
 mean only that the Censor has a distinctly moral 
 character and endeavors to clear our conscience 
 and guide our conduct by working out our diffi- 
 culties, while our waking mind sleeps and re- 
 cuperates. This interference of the Censor, now 
 changing this dream, now offering this or that 
 solution, is of the utmost importance for the 
 analyzer of dreams. Sometimes a dream has no 
 other value in the process of discovering the rea- 
 son for a nervous symptom than the revelation 
 that the Censor has been strenuously at work. 
 Why is this changed, why is this portion obscure, 
 why is the olream so cut up ? these are the ques. 
 tions the Re-educator has to answer satisfactorily. 
 We have said that the Censor is weakest at 
 night and that consequently the Unconscious is 
 able to dramatize in our dreams some unusual 
 wishes. In this connection we might add that in 
 our moments of revery, the Censor lifts its censor- 
 ship more or less and this is why our reveries some- 
 times contain rather brutal wishes. Again, in un- 
 guarded and uncensored bits of conversation we 
 disclose our primitive wishes often in this kind of
 
 The Internal Censor and Guardian 73 
 
 a phrase, "It would be a good thing if so-and-so 
 were to pass on." It is a common phrase but 
 the Unconscious is saying, "I wish so-and-so were 
 dead." 
 
 In fact, all through our waking life the Censor 
 is at work, now vigorously, now relaxedly, and it 
 is sometimes amusing to detect its interference or 
 attempts to cover up the thoughts which spring 
 out of our Unconscious. We make slips of the 
 tongue, we give way to queer, nervous gestures 
 or blushings or we have sudden, irrational lapses 
 of memory. Such unexpected uprushes from the 
 Unconscious cause us frequent moments of em- 
 barrassment and the Censor tries its best to gloss 
 them over just as we consciously change a laugh 
 to a cough or resort to other bits of subterfuge. 
 Slips of the tongue, nervous gestures, lapses of 
 memory or any other unconscious manifestation 
 of the Unconscious are important to the Re-educa- 
 tor; he at once becomes eager to know what wish 
 lies in the Unconscious which is strong enough to 
 gain this or that momentary control of our motor 
 faculties (our speech and gestures). 
 
 The Censor is the pink of propriety. It tends 
 to restrain the artist from making his art too sen- 
 suous and the poet from expressing his emotions 
 too exuberantly. This phase of the censorship 
 gives rise to the use of symbols. The censor prac-
 
 74 Religious Aspects of Scientific Healing 
 
 tically says this or that thought however extreme 
 may be expressed in art, literature and conversa- 
 tion provided a symbol or substitute idea is used 
 which is not too explicit. Our conversation, in par- 
 ticular, is full of roundabout expressions in ac- 
 cordance with the Censor's command that nothing 
 morally shocking shall be too blatantly worded. 
 Our modified oaths and expletives are just so many 
 repressed wishes to commit murder or to 
 blaspheme God's name as our murderous, 
 blasphemous ancestors actually did with but little 
 restraint. 
 
 The Censor, then, is the guardian of our at- 
 tention, our sleep and our moral sensibilities. But 
 the wear and tear of life may weaken the censor- 
 ship and, therefore, one object of self-suggestion 
 should be to keep the censor itself in good health. 
 To this end, it would seem helpful to suggest and 
 constantly hold such ideas as "I shall more and 
 more control my unconscious impulses," "I shall 
 view the facts of life in their right perspective," 
 "I shall be superior to the irritations and bom- 
 bardments of the outside world." 
 
 The Censor, too, has its diseases ; it not merely 
 requires to be rested and strengthened, it actually 
 needs to be re-educated. The censorship is mor- 
 bidly severe sometimes and many of our impulses 
 far too repressed. Not everything which comes
 
 The Internal Censor and Guardian 75 
 
 from the Unconscious is of a destructive kind. In 
 fact, one of the lurking dangers in discussing the 
 Unconscious is the tendency to distort the sub- 
 ject. No apology is required of the Unconscious 
 at its best for it is a storehouse of emotional and 
 spiritual energy. 
 
 When the Censor overdoes its vigilance there 
 is a repression of this or that impulse which left 
 to itself would free our personalities from their 
 morbid rigor and reserve. Old fashioned Puritan- 
 ism has been a poor schoolmaster for the Censor. 
 Puritanism tends to repress dogmatically without 
 allowing the Censor to use its own healthy judg- 
 ment and discrimination. The Censor should be 
 educated to govern with a loose rein and to grow 
 in wisdom with maturing experience. The Censor 
 like the Unconscious needs to be detached from 
 its infantile fixations and its undue notion of 
 parental authority. It should be trained in in- 
 dependence and not to adhere to outgrown pre- 
 cepts. On the positive side, it should be trained to 
 permit spontaneously the appearance of every 
 thought and impulse which gives the personality 
 flexibility and initiative. 
 
 There are many instances on record of people 
 who have had premonitions, warnings and guid- 
 ance which have saved them more than once from 
 disaster and death. While these secret mental
 
 76 Religious Aspects of Scientific Healing 
 
 forces cannot be explained, it would seem, how- 
 ever, as if the Censor were mysteriously played 
 upon by ether vibrations and given information 
 of a kind which protected the bodily and spiritual 
 personality. We might submit the idea, then, 
 that the Censor, whatever faculty it is, has at 
 times in the case of some people a veritable 
 clairvoyance and mediumistic foresight.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 PERSONAL RELIGION AND MENTAL HEALTH 
 
 RELIGION has a profound influence on our 
 mental health. It keeps us sane; and in the 
 most satisfactory restorations of nerve and soul 
 and in the completest re-education of a personality, 
 religion is the essential factor. Religion, then, 
 must have a direct bearing on our Unconscious, 
 on the Censor within us and our conscious mind. 
 That is, our religion must center in a person to 
 whom we may direct the required "transference" 
 of our deepest emotions. Jesus Christ fulfills this 
 requirement. His wonderful character makes 
 Him the supreme object of "transference" and 
 men and women in "fixing" their love on Him be- 
 come cured and re-educated for the service of men. 
 To be effective, religion must be personal. It 
 is a belief in the goodness of God, an intimate 
 communion with Him through prayer and an 
 earnest effort to live unselfishly. Personal re- 
 ligion means following Christ's Spirit in all the 
 relationships of life in our occupations, our fam- 
 
 77
 
 78 Religious Aspects of Scientific Healing 
 
 ily life and our recreations. When we are drawn 
 to the service of Christ it is because we instinctive- 
 ly believe that what He was, He still is the di- 
 vine Re-educator and Savior. 
 
 One of the striking ways in which Christ was 
 the Savior was His freely presenting Himself to 
 the nervously afflicted as the healing object of 
 their "transference." Jesus anticipated in His 
 methods all that is true or likely to be lasting 
 in our methods of curing nervous disorders. 
 Naturally, He did not use the word "unconscious," 
 but what better description of the morbid side of 
 the Unconscious is there than the one He gave 
 as we have it in the i5th chapter of St. Matthew? 
 We have only to substitute for His word "heart" 
 our word "unconscious" and the I9th verse reads : 
 For out of the Unconscious proceed evil 
 thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, 
 false witness, blasphemies. 
 
 Nor did Jesus use the word "transference," yet 
 when the evil spirits commanded Him to leave 
 them because they knew Him, it is not straining 
 the meaning too much to suppose that evil thoughts 
 and impulses, which like demons were in com- 
 plete possession of their victims, were momentarily 
 transferring to Him their unconscious hate and 
 fear. When we recall how many nervous dis-
 
 Personal Religion and Mental Health 79 
 
 orders strive to the utmost not to be cured, we 
 are not wide of the mark in suggesting that the 
 "devils" implored Christ to leave them in peace 
 because after all they were only morbid eruptions 
 from the Unconscious which craved to be allowed 
 to continue their torments. The incident in St. 
 Luke IV:33 is a good example of hate and fear 
 transference, and any re-educator of our day sees 
 similar though perhaps milder forms of this kind 
 of transference. The "devils" or as we call them, 
 the infantile fixations and complexes, recognized 
 in Him their destroyer. By crying out to Him 
 vehemently they fulfilled their hate wishes, that 
 is, Jesus relieved their emotional pressure and then 
 proceeded to re-educate the nervous victim's per- 
 sonality. For such people He was indeed a Savior. 
 Then there was that other class of sick folk 
 who found in Him the true object of their deepest 
 affections. He was a Savior to them because all 
 the unfulfilled love wishes which had been craving 
 in vain for gratification were suddenly released and 
 fulfilled in Him. This suggests that Jesus had 
 the power instantly to uncover a person's Uncon- 
 scious. Whatever is the right approach to this 
 question of His unusual knowledge of the souls of 
 .men and women, it is certain that, while His cures 
 and re-educations worked rapidly, yet certain 
 phases in the means He used and the reactions He
 
 8o Religious Aspects of Scientific Healing 
 
 stimulated remind us of phases which the modern 
 Re-educator encounters. 
 
 What Jesus did, He still does. He draws men 
 and women to Him though some of them are 
 drawn while a veritable rebellion is going on within 
 them at the thought of Him. That is, like those 
 possessed with devils, some people have to suffer 
 severe reactions while they approach Him. This 
 is, perhaps, an unusual feature in religious ex- 
 perience, yet a well-attested experience. It can 
 mean only that such people have a veritable intui- 
 tion, that to be converted must involve for them 
 a complete change in their Unconscious; they 
 realize that Jesus sees them through and through 
 and knows especially the secret springs of action. 
 This is the same as saying that there are "fixa- 
 tions," memories and impulses within them which 
 dread the idea of being changed and cured. Such 
 people would cry out for deliverance from any 
 contact with the Spirit of Christ while on their 
 better side they know that this Spirit will remake 
 them. When they finally make the complete sur- 
 render, the peaceful reaction they feel is like the 
 peace the possessed felt when Jesus ordered the 
 "evil spirits" to leave their victims. What we 
 have here is a special form of religious reaction 
 to the thought of Christ which continues our in- 
 terest in the question as to what part the Un-
 
 Personal Religion and Mental Health 81 
 
 conscious plays in religious conversions. One 
 thing we do know and that is conversion brings 
 peace of mind and steadiness of soul. 
 
 The larger group of religious people, however, 
 are drawn to Christ without this feeling of re- 
 bellion within the Unconscious. They come 
 naturally to Him and it would seem as if without 
 any violent change their infantile "fixations" and 
 the whole of their unconscious emotional life seize 
 upon His divine person. Unconsciously for be 
 it remembered our emphasis is on the relation of 
 Christ to our Unconscious the kind of person- 
 ality which turns to Christ in an evenly progressive 
 way recognizes in Him an idealized earthly father 
 and mother and sister and brother and all the 
 loved ones of childhood. On the contrary, those 
 who come to Him with half their personality in 
 rebellion at the idea, unconsciously recognize in 
 Him perhaps only a terrifying resemblance to per- 
 sons in their childhood whose righteous wrath they 
 at some forgotten time provoked. Whatever 
 emotional wishes they felt toward these people, 
 they now under the form of inner rebellion "trans- 
 fer" to Christ. Strange as it may seem Christ, 
 according to the evidence of religious experience, 
 offers Himself as the object of their hatred and 
 fear, in order that He may ease off the emotional 
 pressure, and re-educate them.
 
 82 Religious Aspects of Scientific Healing 
 
 The emotional hold which Christ has over His 
 followers is due to His ability to gratify the un- 
 conscious love wishes. The frequent conscious and 
 unconscious disappointment, which even our dear- 
 est ones cause us, utterly vanishes when we come 
 to know the idealized Friend. Our need of Him 
 is lifelong and our love for His person is a spiritual 
 achievement. But our highest development does 
 not end with our personal love of Christ, for as 
 Jesus bade them, which followed Him in the days 
 of His flesh, go and serve the needs of men and 
 women, so religious experience teaches us that He 
 bids us extend our personal love for Him into a 
 life of service for Him as He lives in other people. 
 In this way Christ re-educates us and saves us 
 from ourselves. 
 
 Christ cures, therefore, first by offering Himself 
 as the supreme object of our "transference" and 
 secondly by re-educating our activity to further 
 His work among His brethren. This relationship 
 with Him is sustained by faith, prayer, worship 
 and good works. We will call it the relationship 
 of prayer. 
 
 This relationship of prayer the love for 
 Christ's Will and Service is thoroughly tested 
 when a person deliberately relies on it to help him 
 through the dark defiles of unpleasant experience. 
 If this relationship to Christ is not to be a merely
 
 Personal Religion and Mental Health 83 
 
 sentimental thing it should so be trusted and its 
 fruits recognized. Consider, for instance, the num- 
 bers of people who break down nervously simply 
 because they have nourished discontent and re- 
 sentment at their uncongenial lot in life; but the 
 message of religion for such people is that God's 
 temple is in every nook and cranny of the globe, no 
 matter how obscure. For such people the prayer 
 life might not only be the means by which they 
 were able to preserve their mental health but the 
 lamp to show them fields of social service. This 
 is why instruction in religion and service can be 
 made almost the supreme factor in re-educating a 
 person's nerves and stabilizing his emotions. If 
 we allow our surroundings to make us, their work- 
 manship is apt to be disastrous for our peace of 
 mind, but fortified and inspired by the relationship 
 of prayer we can transform utterly the emotional 
 coloring of our physical and social environment. 
 This fact is illustrated over and over again in the 
 lives of missionaries. 
 
 Naturally we desire as many approaches to 
 Christ as possible. We know that He satisfies our 
 unconscious longings and therein puts His healing 
 finger on the cause of our mental and nervous 
 troubles. But we need a social, intellectual and 
 artistic approach to Him. That is, the multifari- 
 ous activities and tastes which we consciously de-
 
 84 Religious Aspects of Scientific Healing 
 
 sire to follow out might well be brought into re- 
 lationship with Christ. It is not merely the un- 
 conscious wishes which Christ is able to sanctify 
 but the desires of the whole personality. 
 
 The Christian Church offers Christ to us as the 
 "first among many brethren," as the incomparable 
 interest of the intellect, as the inspirer of 'the finest 
 literature and art and as the soul of ceremonial 
 worship. 
 
 It is the mission of the Church to bear witness 
 to the ever healing presence of Christ and to set 
 forth the ways in which men and women may come 
 to Him and be spiritually re-educated. Christ is 
 present in a social way where two or three gather 
 in His name; He is present in the Bible, in the 
 Holy Communion and in the Church's worship, be 
 it liturgical or extemporary. The therapeutic 
 value of the Church idea rests in the fact that the 
 Church is a brotherhood and declares that the 
 really healthy person is he who mingles with his 
 fellows in their joys and in their sorrows. The 
 Church is a saving protest against a morbid, self- 
 centred individualism. Christ was the Son of Man 
 and He bids us be likeminded. He is the bridge 
 over which we pass from our own prisons to a life 
 of freedom through service. Such service is the 
 guarantee of healthy minds and while the external 
 features of the Church may be of great help to an
 
 Personal Religion and Mental Health 85 
 
 expansion of the personality and to a consecration 
 to service, yet the vital force back of all externals 
 is the relationship of prayer. Such prayer is 
 greatly helped by self-suggestion in moments of 
 relaxation. It is then that a person may suspend 
 the fret and hurry of his superficial self and allow 
 the ever present Spirit of Christ to invade him 
 and crowd out his selfish tastes and interests by 
 filling him with consecrated thoughts and purposes. 
 To suggest at stated times to one's self the ideas 
 of faith, hope and love is a telling way to build up 
 the prayer relationship. 
 
 The pastor and priest, too, can greatly com- 
 fort people in times of sorrow, tragedy and 
 deprivation by relaxing them and then by using 
 applied suggestion. By suggesting to the afflicted 
 the power of faith and hope and the presence of 
 Christ, the pastor can, at least, minimize, if not 
 wholly eliminate, the morbid, paralyzing effects of 
 grief and ward off the brooding disposition which 
 is the soul's effort to turn inward upon itself and 
 take refuge in its saddened feelings. In a similar 
 way, in his ministrations to shut-ins, to the bed- 
 ridden and the helpless, the pastor by means of ap- 
 plied suggestion can effectively bring to bear the 
 truths and consolations of religion for relieving 
 the sense of loneliness and want and for making 
 real the sustaining power of Christ. From such
 
 86 Religions Aspects of Scientific Healing 
 
 applied suggestion the sufferer usually learns the 
 art of self-suggestion and grows in the thought that 
 religion is not merely a make-shift compensation 
 for the loss of earthly comforts but is itself the 
 pearl of great price. 
 
 Christians have Biblical authority for believing 
 that the Church has power to forgive sins and 
 whatever our view of this may be, we must admit 
 that the priestly or pastoral absolution of sins is 
 a splendidly affirmative statement that God actual- 
 ly forgives the sinner's guilt and continues His 
 gracious communion with the repentant soul. The 
 Church's absolution in the name of Christ makes 
 greatly for mental stability by removing the sense 
 of guilt and estrangement from the Heavenly 
 Father. It could be made of even greater value 
 in its healing aspect if the priest or pastor who 
 hears confessions were to supplement the idea of 
 absolution with the more positive thought that the 
 penitent is a child of God and that there is no 
 condemnation for them who are in Christ Jesus. 
 That is, in addition to the bare thought that guilt 
 has been done away and sins forgiven, the grant- 
 ing of absolution should be made the occasion for 
 building up the penitent's thought with stimulating 
 ideas of his actual sonship in Christ. In fact, both 
 the mentally sick person in his efforts to think heal- 
 ing thoughts and the Re-educator who recognizes
 
 Personal Religion and Mental Health 87 
 
 religion as a healing force would do well to make 
 good use of the Bible's reassuring messages of 
 hope, of restoration and of our oneness with God. 
 
 Self-forgiveness is also a vital factor in the 
 working of any cure and in the process of re-educa- 
 tion. The nervous troubles which arise because 
 we have deliberately defied the moral law need to 
 be faced resolutely and a course of action deter- 
 mined upon which shall make impossible the con- 
 tinuance of the nervous symptoms. The first thing 
 in a case of this kind is to declare frequently our 
 own absolution, our new birth and our resurrection 
 to the right kind of self-confidence. Many a per- 
 son in order to become well needs only to forgive 
 his own sins, provided he is determined to attain 
 to righteousness of life. Despair and morbid sor- 
 row for one's sin are so many barriers to the ever 
 ready Spirit of God to forgive and restore. Such 
 sorrow and despair wilfully indulged in are them- 
 selves grievous offences against sound mental 
 health. 
 
 When we take up such a subject as forgiving a 
 sin which we remember to have committed we have 
 left the Unconscious and are dealing with the 
 waking, conscious life and its ideals and moral 
 standards. It was on the conscious, moral life 
 that Jesus laid His emphasis. His words were of 
 love, of sacrifice of faith in God and the great
 
 88 Religious Aspects of Scientific Healing 
 
 moral and spiritual qualities in general. What He 
 preached He exemplified and showed what the 
 normal life should be. It is, indeed, necessary for 
 our re-education that we appreciate what He 
 taught and what His manner of life was, because 
 in Him we have a standard by which to re-educate 
 the censoring faculty in our make-up. Too many 
 people are under the impression that to be religious 
 means that they must lead utterly repressed lives. 
 This repression is often the cause of nervous 
 symptoms for the simple reason that if an instinct 
 is repressed it is bound to avenge itself by appear- 
 ing in sickly forms. Jesus lived a natural life 
 among men and women and did'not forcibly re- 
 press the social instinct. He was free of class 
 prejudice and had none of the Pharisee about Him. 
 Many nervous disorders are due to repression of 
 the social instinct. The shut-in personality is 
 melancholy because it does not expand with inter- 
 est in all sorts of people. The Censor should de- 
 liberately try to break with any anti-social inhibi- 
 tion. The Censor is greatly influenced by educa- 
 tion and should be indoctrinated with a rational 
 view of the relation between the sexes and of the 
 question of amusements. But naturally, if for a 
 well-balanced mind the Censor needs in the case of 
 some people to be expanded and made flexible, so, 
 too, in the case of others it needs to be narrowed
 
 Personal Religion and Mental Health 89 
 
 lest it condone courses of behavior which spell 
 nervous disaster. The naturalness of Jesus, His 
 appreciation of human life and also His accurate 
 vision of what the restraints on human impulses 
 should be, afford the rational standard for human 
 conduct. 
 
 Jesus was pre-eminently a .teacher and his teach- 
 ings and life work are the foundation of a healthy 
 philosophy of life. There is a Christian phi- 
 losophy and estimate of the value of life's ex- 
 periences. Such a philosophy of life is a thing to 
 be meditated upon in moments of quiet thinking. 
 Times of quiet thinking are necessary for the nor- 
 mal growth of a well-ordered mind. The Chris- 
 tian view of life revolves about such pivotal points 
 as God is our Father, therefore whatever happens 
 can be made to yield us its blessing; each human 
 life is a veritable entrance of God into the world to 
 learn about His creation through each person's 
 experience ; though we live in a world of sin, God 
 works out everyone's salvation through trial and 
 fire. Thoughts of this kind might well occupy the 
 attention until each one is saturated with the feel- 
 ing of his unique place in the universe. One should 
 not shrink from thinking that one is of value in 
 God's scheme of things. In a word, to see the 
 issues of life in a religious perspective ; to see God 
 in control of what appears as inexorable destiny
 
 90 Religious Aspects of Scientific Healing 
 
 and fate, and to be thankful for the discipline of 
 events, are ways of thinking which bring cheerful- 
 ness and nerve control. 
 
 Again, Jesus was a lover and observer of Na- 
 ture. A Christian view of Nature should be part 
 of a healthy mind's meditation. If a few weeks 
 spent in the country will bring about a restoration 
 of one's nerves and a calm to one's mind, so also 
 the mere contemplation of blue skies, of valleys, 
 wooded hills and of beautiful landscapes in general 
 is certain to induce a feeling of restedness and the 
 rejuvenation of one's spirits. It is because the 
 Christian believes that God dwells in the heart of 
 Nature. 
 
 Modern education has done so much in the way 
 of material advancement and for the enjoyment 
 of intellectual and artistic interests that one dislikes 
 offering any criticism of the spirit of our schools 
 and colleges. But for the health of our minds and 
 the stability of our nerves modern education is 
 too crudely materialistic; it leaves God out of con- 
 sideration. The emphasis of our education on 
 the universality of natural law tends to inculcate 
 a deadening fatalism and unbelief in spiritual 
 realities. The trouble lies in the fact that modern 
 schooling does not train us to appreciate the won- 
 derful manifestations of the good side of our Un- 
 conscious. Yet out of the Unconscious come
 
 Personal Religion and Mental Health 91 
 
 marvellous flashes of faith, visions of hope, in- 
 spiring imaginations, to say nothing of the many 
 unaccountable intuitions and instances of clairvoy- 
 ance all which we call the psychic aspects of life. 
 
 It is chiefly the Bible, with its insistence on the 
 presence of God in the psychic facts of life, which 
 at all corrects our too materialistic way of looking 
 at the Universe. According to the Bible, our 
 Christian Church thrived on psychic experiences. 
 Dreams, visions and ecstasies are in the Scripture 
 acknowledged frankly to be the working of the 
 Holy Spirit. Such things were the life of the 
 Church until the over-intellectual view became su- 
 preme. But to-day we are beginning to understand 
 the value of the Unconscious in the life of the 
 Church and for the mental health of the individual. 
 Both the Church and the Individual are too shut-in 
 and repressed. What is needed to free the Church 
 and the individual from their lack of spiritual 
 spontaneity is a greater appreciation of the psychic 
 side of life, for God is the creator of the psychic 
 as well as the purely rational and conscious life. 
 
 This leads naturally to the subject of the im- 
 mortality of the soul and here again the modern 
 emphasis on the material side of life has over- 
 shadowed the question of another world beyond 
 death. Yet the insidious notion that death ends 
 our personal existence accounts for our modern
 
 92 Religious Aspects of Scientific Healing 
 
 feverish, nerve-wracking haste to live as sensuously 
 as we can in order, as it were, to enrich our life 
 which so shortly must end forever. But such a 
 greedy way of life can not assure mental health 
 or those qualities of mind which are necessary to 
 the enjoyment of life whether it be long or short. 
 The soul must take time to grow and to learn the 
 art of adjusting itself to adverse conditions. But 
 no sooner is this adjustment achieved than life 
 itself ends. A belief in immortality, however, 
 gives us a basis for developing our lives as if they 
 were to live for ever and for looking at life's 
 experiences as a preparation for a life hereafter 
 with God, the Father. 
 
 The outstanding thought in Jesus' preaching 
 was the Fatherhood of God and we must relate 
 this idea to the question of our spiritual re-educa- 
 tion. The Christian believes that God is like His 
 Son so that whatever Christ means for our Un- 
 conscious, our internal Censor and our waking, 
 conscious mind, God the Father has the same 
 meaning. The chief tendency of the Unconscious 
 is to hold us in bondage to our infantile affections. 
 We tend to regress into the past, that is, our first 
 likes and dislikes determine very largely the way 
 we regard both people and places in our adult 
 years. This tenacity on our part of infantile af- 
 fections shows clearly how naturally mankind
 
 Personal Religion and Mental Health 93 
 
 longs for a home and dear faces. But re-education 
 of the Unconscious so often has the task of break- 
 ing up these infantile, unconscious affections which 
 hold our later, maturer lives in bondage to the 
 past. Clearly, then, what is needed is not a home 
 which draws man backward and strives to keep 
 him undeveloped, but a home to which he can look 
 forward to. It is the Fatherhood of God, as * 
 
 Jesus indicates, which supplies us with the idea 
 of a better home yet to be. In a word the idea 
 of the Fatherhood of God bids us break with our 
 unconscious longing to remain contented with the 
 fleeting scenes of earth and instead draws us for- 
 ward to contemplate and long for our new home in 
 the heavens where God is our Father. God as a 
 Father transfers our earthly fixations to find their 
 true realization and fulfillment in Himself. He 
 re-educates us throughout our life by providing us 
 with the experience of discipline and suffering 
 which shall prepare us the better for the life here- 
 after. The Fatherhood of God becomes the su- 
 preme Christian idea because of the spiritual 
 qualities it calls into activity. It causes us to look 
 forward; to endure patiently while we are here /. 
 and to live as people who must develop spiritual 
 natures befitting the new home which is to be ours. 
 Innumerable are the people who throughout the 
 checkered course of their lives have demonstrated
 
 94 Religious Aspects of Scientific Healing 
 
 the sustaining effect of this belief in the Father- 
 hood of God. Many a martyr and saint, many a 
 bed-ridden person, many a soul, called upon to en- 
 dure years of living death, has trusted implicitly 
 in the Fatherhood of God and been wonderfully 
 upborne when no ray of earthly comfort or con- 
 solation shone upon him. People of this metal 
 exist in large numbers to-day and probably will 
 always exist. Their faith, their clear recognition 
 of God as the wise dispenser of their destiny, and 
 their willingness to do His will cheerfully make 
 them indeed the salt of the earth and the living 
 demonstration that those who trust God need have 
 no fear for their mental health and endurance. 
 
 In many ways man declares himself to be a 
 child, especially in the presence of the mysterious 
 vicissitudes of life. But we are the children of 
 Nature first and children of God only by grace 
 and spiritual re-education. The mind, therefore, 
 which would always be healthy and triumphant 
 over the facts of life, must not look backward and 
 crave to remain shackled to a childish past, but 
 must fasten its gaze on the homeland to be and 
 seek after such re-education and moral rectitude 
 as is required for eternal life with the Father in 
 Heaven "Except ye be converted and become 
 as little children ye shall not enter into the King- 
 dom of Heaven."
 
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