Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 82.djvu/66

62 of mental pain will in time give way to conceptions that will be much more nearly correct, as they will be less cruel and dangerous.

However this may be, one need not hesitate to affirm to-day that we already know enough to make it absolutely unjustifiable in any case to make a "snap" diagnosis in favor of some "imaginary" disease which may be ignored or crudely managed, as ignorance, or whim, or presumption may dictate. If it be criminal to misinterpret or neglect physical ailments, it certainly is no less so thus to seriously neglect or bungle the more delicate matters of the diseased mind.

At the outset, then, every sufferer from mental distress has one inalienable right as well as the greatest need, namely, that his trouble shall be thoroughly understood, and that this understanding shall be based upon adequate investigation of all the facts involved in its origin and development. This, for one very important thing, will reveal unmistakably that every one of these poor sufferers from dire inadequacy, apprehension or discouragement, and from slowing and shallowing of faculties, and glooming of every outlook, are really experiencing a kind of suffering whose original and persisting causes are not less real than are those of physical suffering, although such causes may often, if not always, lie altogether too deep in the personality to be either self-discovered, or "intuitively divined," or superficially or too promptly judged. Again it will soon appear, even not less convincingly, that if such sufferers presume to rely upon self-investigation or self-treatment alone, or upon the offers of even the shrewdest ignoramus or most devoted" curest," they will most likely find themselves from the first but painfully misled and thwarted at every step, and eventually becoming more and more deeply sickened and more thoroughly discouraged than ever. It must be remembered that this kind of pain, the pain of mental disease, is always so indissolubly a part of the innermost self and bound up with its every impulse and movement; is withal so unexpectable and incalculable, so dominant and threatening, so undermining and degrading, and positively intrusive; in fact, so devilish and selfishly excluding; so monopolizing in all its tendencies and demands, that the sufferer must necessarily find himself, no matter how skilful in even his most resolute attempts at self-relief, much more frequently in the position of one who would lift himself by tugging at his boot-straps, than otherwise, and eventually not thus to be especially helped, no matter how much he tries; while as to the outcome of the hit-or-miss remedies and practises of every sort of unqualified remedialist, whether "regular" or otherwise, to which the discouraged invalid so often goes, it must be said that ultimate failure applies equally often, and with even more force. Practically speaking, it quite regularly occurs in these cases that there develops eventually the firm, almost immovable conviction of the futility of everything which might