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In an address delivered before the Paddington Medical Society, Ernest Jones shows how psycho-analysis can be compared to the functioning of modern clinical medicine, the importance of the dynamic striving impulses of the mind being particularly emphasized. In considering the contact made between psycho-analysis and general clinical medicine, the following three impulses are dealt with: the assistance psycho-analysis gives in dealing with a hitherto obscure field of clinical medicine; the light it throws on the interaction of mind and body in cases of organic disease; and the extent to which it is widening the field of medical practice.
Experienced practitioners have estimated neurotic disorders as varying between 60 and 90 per cent., irrespective of whether organic disease is present or not. Even if the body is one half of the organic personality and the mind the other half, then the understanding of disease can be divided equally between general medicine and clinical psychology. One common attitude is to deny the significance of these facts; other well-known methods of evasion are then commented on.
An analogy is drawn between bodily and mental pain, and it is pointed out that the mind is far more ingenious than the body in masking pain. Apart from the obvious acute pain of agitated melancholia most mental pain is overlooked and not 5 per cent. of it is appreciated at its true value. All neurotic symptoms are a method of escape from mental pain, and in this connection the conversion hysterias are exemplified. Mental dis-ease is often masked by its opposite, pseudo-happiness. The suicide frequently gives the impression of being 'in the best of spirits'.