which will help us feel more at home in this fascinating realm. At
present, we are not attempting anything more than a suggestion of the
itinerary which we shall follow. A book on physical hygiene can
presuppose at least a rudimentary knowledge of heart and lungs and
circulation, but a book on mental hygiene must begin at the beginning,
and even before the beginning must clear away misconceptions and make
clear certain fundamental principles. But the gist of the whole matter
is this: in a neurosis, certain forces of the personality--instincts
and their accompanying emotions--which ought to work harmoniously,
having become tangled up with some erroneous ideas, have lost their
power of coöperation and are working at cross purposes, leaving the
individual mis-adapted to his environment, the prey of all sorts of
mental and physical disturbances.

The fact that the cause is mental while the result is often physical,
should cause no surprise. In the physiological realm we are used to
the idea that cause and effect are often widely separated. A headache
may be caused by faulty eyes, or it may result from trouble in the
intestines. In the same way, we should not be too much surprised if
the cause of nervous troubles is found to be even more remote,
provided there is some connecting link between cause and effect. The
difficulty in this case is the apparent gulf between the realm of the
spirit and the realm of the body. It is hard to see how an intangible
thing like a thought can produce a pain in the arm or nausea in the
stomach. Philosophers are still arguing concerning the nature of the
relation between mind and body, but no one denies that the closest
relation does exist. Every year science is learning that ideas count
and that they count physically, as well as spiritually.

=Such Stuff as "Nerves" are Made Of.= Dr. Tom A. Williams in the