Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Chapter III. ON THE ETIOLOGY AND TREATMENT OF THE PS YCHONEUROSES. The subject with which I have undertaken to deal is such a vast one that I can obviously only touch on a few great mountain peaks of a vast country. The various maladies classified as " psychoneuroses " cause perhaps more misery than any other single group with which the community is afflicted. Not only is this true, but the study of their etiology, their treatment and their prevention, on which you have honored me with an invitation to address you, has an importance far transcending the question of the comfort and happiness of those persons who come to physicians for advice. Without understanding the nature of nervous invalidism in the individual it is impossible to understand the true nature of many traits which count as normal, and of many great social problems which are constantly pressing themselves upon our notice. There is an additional reason why an intelligent company of physicians should think this subject worthy of being taken up afresh. As matters now stand, some of the graver varieties of these psychoneuroses pass practically untreated, not because physicians fail to recognize them as serious, but because they are thought too serious, too nearly incurable, to be fit subjects for time-absorbing treatment. I have in mind, as examples, two patients, of excellent intelligence and warm affection, who livepractically exiled from their homes because they have the obsession that they shall kill some member of their families. I know how hard the successful treatment of such cases is, but I believe that the method of treatment which I shall here mainly advocate holds out good hopes for unfortunate patients of these sorts. Read before the Canadian Medical Association, Toronto, June, 1910. Publish...