This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1922 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER V AUTOSUGGESTION THE WORK OF THE NANCY AND ROUSSEAU SCHOOLS /" UR hysteria case must furnish us with yet one ^^^ more point of departure. We traced and analyzed, step by step, the process and mechanisms which led from a very ordinary domestic scene to a most extraordinary locking of the patient's right arm behind his back, and we saw how it was possible to cure him by reawakening memories of a conflict which carried too great an energy-charge for expression through the channels habitually used by the Unconscious. We saw in the rigid arm a steady discharge of both muscular and nervous energy, and unlike all voluntary actions it did not cause proportionate fatigue. This is a most important point. If any of us should attempt to duplicate the patient's muscular feat, there would be weariness and numbness. All conscious actions will bring fatigue if persisted in. The mere fact of being awake, even though there is no conscious expenditure of muscular energy, will sooner or later bring fatigue; from which it is obvious to deduce that attention itself is an act, and a voluntary one. Indeed it is a most highly complex act for it involves a heightened tonus of all the perceptive paths, as well as some of the projecting ones. It is a condition ...