Chapter I: Foreword

This little book is the outgrowth of a conviction, strengthened by some years of experience with hundreds of supposedly normal young people in schools and colleges, confirmed by my years of training in a neurological hospital and months of work in a big city general hospital, that it is of little value to help some people back to physical health if they are to carry with them through a prolonged life the miseries of a sick attitude. As nurses I believe it is our privilege and our duty to work for health of body and health of mind as inseparable. Experience has proved that too often the physically ill patient (hitherto nervously well) returns from hospital care addicted to the illness-accepting attitude for which the nurse must be held responsible.

I conceive of it as possible that every well trained nurse in our country shall consider it an essential to her professional success to leave her patient imbued with the will to health and better equipped to attain it because the sick attitude has been averted, or if already present, has been treated as really and intelligently as the sick body. To this end I have dealt with the simple principles of psychology only as the nurse can immediately apply them.

The writer wishes to acknowledge her indebtedness for criticism of this work and for several definitions better than her own, in the chapters _The Normal Mind_ and _Variations From Normal Mental Processes_, to Dr. Robert S. Carroll, who through the years of hospital training helped her to translate her collegiate psychology from fascinating abstract principles into the sustaining bread of daily life.

MARY F. PORTER.

ASHEVILLE, N. C.,
_August, 1921_.

CONTENTS

PAGE
CHAPTER I

WHAT IS PSYCHOLOGY? 11

CHAPTER II

CONSCIOUSNESS 20
The Unconscious 23
Consciousness is Complex 29
Consciousness in Sleep 31
Consciousness in Delirium 32

CHAPTER III

ORGANS OF CONSCIOUSNESS 34
The Central and Peripheral Nervous Systems in Action 35
The Sympathetic Nervous System 37

CHAPTER IV

RELATION OF MIND AND BODY 40
The Cerebrum or Forebrain 43

CHAPTER V

THE NORMAL MIND 47

CHAPTER VI

THE NORMAL MIND (Continued) 59
Instinct 59
Memory 62
The Place of Emotion 67
The Beginning of Reason 69
Development of Reason and Will 71
Judgment 72
Reaction Proportioned to Stimuli 75
Normal Emotional Reactions 77
The Normal Mind 77

CHAPTER VII

PSYCHOLOGY AND HEALTH 79
Necessity of Adaptability 80
The Power of Suggestion 84
One Thought Can Be Replaced by Another 89
Habit is a Conserver of Effort 90
The Saving Power of Will 93

CHAPTER VIII

VARIATIONS FROM NORMAL MENTAL PROCESSES 95
Disorders and Perversions 95

CHAPTER IX

VARIATIONS FROM NORMAL MENTAL PROCESSES (Continued) 101
Factors Causing Variations from Normal Mental Processes 108
Heredity 108
Environment 109
Personal Reactions 110

CHAPTER X

ATTENTION THE ROOT OF DISEASE OR HEALTH ATTITUDE 112
The Attention of Interest 112
The Attention of Reason and Will 118

CHAPTER XI

GETTING THE PATIENT'S POINT OF VIEW 124
What Determines the Point of View 124
Getting the Other Man's Point of View 126
The Deluded Patient 133
Nursing the Deluded Patient 135
The Obsessed Patient 136
The Mind a Prey to False Associations 137

CHAPTER XII

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE NURSE 139
Accuracy of Perception 141
Training Perception 142
Association of Ideas 143
Concentration 146
Self-training in Memory 150

CHAPTER XIII

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE NURSE (Continued) 152
Emotional Equilibrium 152
Self-correction 160
Training the Will 161

CHAPTER XIV

THE NURSE OF THE FUTURE 164

* * * * *

INDEX 169

Applied Psychology for Nurses