Her sisters had inveigled her to my house under false pretenses, calling it a boarding-house and omitting to mention that I was a doctor, because “she guessed she knew more about her case than any doctor.”  For the first week I got in only one sentence a day,—­just before I slipped out of the door after taking in her “liquid nourishment.”  But at the end of the week I announced that thereafter her meals would be served in the dining-room.  When she found that there was to be no more liquid nourishment, she had to appear at the family table.  After that it was only a short time before she was at home, cooking for her sisters.  When she saw the role she had been unconsciously playing, she could hardly wish to go on with it.

=Feeling His Legs.= Mr. R. suffered from such severe and distressing pains in his legs that he believed himself on the verge of paralysis.  He was also bothered by a chronic emotional state which made him look like a “weepy” woman.  His eyes were always full of tears and his chin a-quiver, and he had, as he said, a perpetual lump in his throat.  Under re-education both lump and paralysis disappeared completely and Mr. R. took his wife across the continent, driving his machine with his own hands—­and feet.

=A Subconscious Association.= Mr. D.’s case admirably illustrates the return of symptoms through an unconscious association.  He was a lawyer, prominent in public affairs of the Middle West, who had been my patient for several weeks and who had gone home cured of many striking disabilities.  Before he came to me, he had given up his public work and was believed by all his associates to be afflicted with softening of the brain, and “out of the game” for good.  From being one of the ablest men of his State, he had fallen into such a condition that he could neither read a letter nor write one.  He could not stand the least sunshine on his head, and to walk half a mile was an impossibility.  He was completely “down and out” and expected to be an invalid for the rest of his life.

But these symptoms had one by one disappeared during his five-weeks stay with me.  He had done good stiff work in the garden, carried a heavy sack of grapefruit a mile in the hot sun, and was generally his old self again.  Now he was back in the harness, hard at work as of old.  Suddenly, as he sat reading in his home one evening, all his old symptoms swept over him,—­the pains in his head and legs, the pounding of the heart, the “all-gone” sensations as though he were going to die on the spot.  He became almost completely dissociated, but through it all he clung to the idea which he had learned,—­namely that this experience was not really physical as it seemed but was the result of some idea, and would pass.  He did not tell any one of the attack, ignored it as much as possible, and waited.  In a few minutes he was himself again.  Then he looked for the cause and realized that the article he was reading was one he had read several months previous,