By injecting a keen sense of disapprobation and skepticism into the hitherto placidly accepted state of disability, by flashing a mirror on the physical and moral attitudes which she was assuming, I was able to rob the pathological complex of its (altogether unconscious) pleasurable feeling-tone, and to restore to its former strength and poise a personality of exceptional native worth and beauty.  After a few weeks at my house she was able to walk like a normal person and went back to her work, for good.

We have already learned enough about the inner self to see in a faint way how it works out its ideas.  Since the subconscious mind runs the bodily machinery, since it regulates digestion, the building up of tissue, circulation, respiration, glandular secretion, muscular tonus, and every other process pertaining to nutrition and growth, it is not difficult to see how an idea about any of these matters can work itself out into a fact.  A thought can furnish the mental machinery needed to fulfil the thought.  Some one catches the suggestion:  “Concentration is hard on the brain.  It soon brings on brain-fag and headache.”  Not knowing facts to the contrary, the suggestible mind accepts the proposition.  Then one day, after a little concentration, the idea begins to work.  Whereupon the autonomic nervous system tightens up the blood-vessels that regulate the local blood supply, too much blood stays in the head, and lo, it aches!  The next time, the suggestion comes with greater force, and soon the habit is formed,—­all the result of an idea.  It is a good thing to remember that constant thought about any part of the body never fails to send an over-supply of blood to that part; of course that means congestion and pain.

=Hands Off!= By sending messages directly to an organ through the nerve-centers or by changing circulation, the subconscious director of our bodies can make any part of us misbehave in a number of ways.  All it needs is a suggestion of an interfering thought about an organ.  As we have insisted before, the subconscious cannot stand interference.  Sadler well says:  “Man can live at the equator or exist at the poles.  He can eat almost anything and everything, but he cannot long stand self-contemplation.  The human mind can accomplish wonders in the way of work, but it is soon wrecked when directed into the channels of worry."[27] In other words, hands off!—­or rather, minds off!  Don’t get ideas that make you think about your body.  The surest way to disarrange any function is to think about it.  It is a stout heart that will not change its beat with a frequent finger on the pulse, and a hearty stomach that will not “act up” under attention.  “Judicious neglect” is a good motto for most occasions.  Take no anxious thought if you would be well.  Know enough about your body to counteract false suggestions; fulfil the common-sense laws of hygiene,—­eight hours in bed, plenty of exercise and fresh air, and three square meals a day.  Then forget all about it.  “A mental representation is already a sensation,"[28] and we have enough legitimate sensations without manufacturing others.