The author cursorily discusses the problem of which factors are effective in the curing process of psychoanalysis. He classes psychoanalysis as a 'direct psychotherapy' with persuasion (Du Bois), reasoning (Riggs) and individual psychology (Adler). In contradistinction to 'indirect psychotherapy' (occupation, recreation therapy, psychodramatics, hypnosis, shock treatment) which appeal to the emotional needs of the patients, direct psychotherapy is, according to Oberndorf, primarily intellectual in its approach, tracing the development of attitudes from instinctual urges formed in early infancy.

The author complains that this intellectual appreciation of the psychological factors involved in the causation and development of abnormal psychological trends is often woefully insufficient to change them, since such intellectual insight may be kept apart from the personality in a way similar to that of the lack of penetration of the intellectual processes in a manic personality. A depressed patient complained, 'When you are sick you don't accept