Psycho-Therapy

in the Practice of Medicine

and Surgery, by SHELDON
Leavitt, M. D.

The laws of thought are the laws of the universe.-Buchner.

He who will not reason is a bigot; he who cannot, is a fool;
he who dares not, is a slave.-Byron.

"I have always thought (and not without reason) that to have
published for the benefit of afflicted mortals any certain
method of subduing even the slightest disease was a matter
of greater felicity than the riches of a Tantalus or a Croesus.
I have called it a matter of 'greater felicity'; I now call it a
matter of greater goodness and of greater wisdom."

-Sydenham.

I will listen to any one's convictions, but pray keep your
doubts to yourself. I have plenty of my own.-Goethe.

TO THOSE OF

THE MEDICAL PROFESSION WHO LOVE TRUTH

AND

DO NOT FEAR TO STAND FOR IT

THIS WORK IS

DEDICATED

BY THE AUTHOR

135746

"I touched the garment-hem of truth, Yet saw not all its splendor.'

Preface.

When a student launches on the Sea of Mind he soon finds himself in deep water. His sounding line will not reach bottom. The trouble is that the depths are infinite. There are "the heavens above and the earth beneath and the waters under the earth," as the Universe is aptly described by the sacred writer.

In truth he does not launch at all, for he himself, in essence, is a part of the sea. It is a sea of vibrations in which he is immersed and of which his thinking self is an integral part.

I have hesitated to venture a public opinion concerning even those phases of psychology that most interest me as a physician and surgeon. My main object now is not edification and finality, but stimulation to inquiry, realizing that convictions of value are not gained from mere reading, but from soaking one's mind in a subject, "by continually thinking unto it," as Newton said.

"

I have been compelled to speak of the "conscious" and the "unconscious" "unconscious" or "subconscious," the "objective" and the "subjective, the "supraliminal" and the "subliminal." The exact significance of these terms I do not pretend to understand: the designated powers I do not undertake to define. The dual mind is hypothetical. It is probably only two phases of a much "greater self," as Myers has suggested. I beg not to be held to strict account.