Latterly it has appeared that the patients treated accordingly by the Kaufmann method frequently relapsed when they were withdrawn from the influence of the doctor, or were again exposed to the dangers of the front. Time will show whether the psycho-analytic methods will procure more lasting cures. I will communicate in conclusion the result, instructive in this connection, of the recent treatment of a neurosis carried out in my private practice. I was able in a few weeks to remove a severe phobia in a boy twelve years old, which referred to air raids. The cure persisted when the boy returned home; he was there again daily exposed to the risk of air raids and put up with this situation just like a healthy person. Perhaps this result justifies the expectation that psycho-analysis will in fact in the permanence of its cures fill up the gaps that exist at present. Psycho-analysis, which enables us to penetrate deeper than any other method into the structure of the war neuroses, will perhaps take therapeutic precedence also in the sphere of the war neuroses[6].
For the past eighteen months I have been in charge of a special hospital for war neuroses, and the mass treatment necessary in such an institution has enabled me to make a comparative study of the different so-called psycho-therapeutic methods. Apart from the serious objections that can be raised with regard to all forcible and restrictive methods, which for the most part produce new psychic injuries, there are serious doubts as to the use of pure suggestion in the form of hypnosis when carried out indiscriminately as a blind technique for war neurotics. The removal of the symptom, which is done regardless of the remaining psychic constellations of the patient, generally produces at the same time a considerable general disturbance with marked subjective symptoms, such as headache, feelings of pressure on the head, insomnia, diminution of intellectual capacity, sexual impotence, etc.
On the other hand, the frequently observed fact that with the disappearance of the manifest symptom the neurosis appears in another form, has proved that with all these kinds of palliative measures the root cause of the suffering has not been touched.