Outwitting Our Nerves

There is no more reason why the average man should be unaware of the instincts or the subconscious mind, than he should be ignorant of germs or of the need for fresh air. -from "The Drama of Nerves" Promising "accurate and up-to-date information... on the subject of nervous disorders" and a simple, comprehensive presentation of Freudian principles, this 1921 handbook for the layman was a bestseller in its day... and no wonder. Laying bare the mysteries of the mind-as they were understood at the time-this guide to "knowing our machine" is a fascinating glimpse inside how the human mind controls the human body. Discover the unexpected mental stimulus behind: . instincts such as hunger, fear, repulsion, and curiosity . race memories and ancient knowledge . the power of suggestion . physical complaints from insomnia to constipation . "female nervousness" . and much more. JOSEPHINE AGNES JACKSON (1865-1945) also wrote "Guiding Your Life With Psychology as a Key" (1937).

In the early twentieth century, the emergence of psychotherapy initiated a paradigm shift in the treatment of mental health conditions. Originally intended for an audience of physicians, Outwitting Our Nerves offers a basic primer on nervous conditions and methods for ameliorating associated symptoms.

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Psychotherapy, which is treatment by the mental measures of psycho-analysis and re-education, is an established procedure in the scientific world to-day. Nervous disorders are now curable, as has been proved by the clinical results in scores of cases from civil life, under treatment by Freud, Janet, Prince, Sidis, DuBois, and others; and in thousands of cases of war neuroses as reported by Smith and Pear, Eder, MacCurdy, and other military observers. These army experts have shown that shell-shock in war is the same as nervousness in civil life and that both may be cured by psycho-analysis and re-education.

Tired man, your nerves are sick! They need rest and a tonic to restore their worn-out depleted cells! No wonder people have believed this kind of thing. It has been dinned into their ears for many years. They have read it with their breakfast coffee and gazed at it in the street cars and even heard it from their family physicians, until it has become part and parcel of their thinking; yet all the time the funda mental idea has been false, and now, at last, the theory is exploded.