One  will  yield  to  pure  logic,  and  another  is  carried  away
by  sentiment.  This  patient  loves  authority,  and  even  demands
that  her  physician  shall  be  brusque  and  scold  her,  while  another
loses  all  courage  if  he  raises  his  voice.  Alas !  there  are  some
who  resist  all  these  means,  and  meet  our  efforts  with  incredible
inertia.  I  call  them  "  bags  without  handles,"  because  they
slip  through  our  hands.
Success  depends,  first  of  all,  upon  the  mentality  of  the
physician.  He  must  be  master  of  himself  in  order  to  adapt
himself  to  the  requirements  of  the  moment.  It  has  been  said
that  one  must  have  an  iron  hand  gloved  in  velvet  for  the
treatment  of  the  psychoneuroses.  But  this  hand  is  still  rather
hard,  and  I  prefer  an  ungloved,  supple,  mobile,  and  sensitive
hand,  such  as  those  of  mind-readers,  who  detect  the  mental
conditions  of  the  person  to  whom  they  give  their  own  hand.
Since  we  are  on  the  subject  of  nervous  attacks,  let  us  give
a  few  lines  to  the  traumatic  neuroses.  I  have  already  said
that  there  is  no  room  to  create  a  special  morbid  entity  under
this  title.  Traumatism,  by  the  moral  shock  which  it  produces,
is  the  provoking  cause  of  a  psychic  trouble,  which,  following
the  predispositions  of  the  subject,  creates  diverse  conditions
of  psychoneuroses.  Hysteroneurasthenia  is  the  most  fre-
quent form,  and  it  is  not  rare  to  observe  in  men  the  convulsive
forms  that  are  peculiar  to  hysteria.  But  the  prognosis  seems
to  me  particularly  severe  by  the  very  reason  of  the  psycho-
logical condition  in  which  the  subjects  find  themselves.
