Self-Health

In the study of Love and Pain I have discussed the sources of those aberrations which are commonly called, not altogether happily, "sadism" and "masochism." Here we are brought before the most extreme and perhaps the most widely known group of sexual perversions. ---

Under "Erotic Symbolism" I include practically all the aberrations of the sexual instinct, although some of these have seemed of sufficient importance for separate discussion in previous volumes. It is highly probable that many readers will consider that the name scarcely suffices to cover manifestations so numerous and so varied. The term "sexual equivalents" will seem preferable to some. While, however, it may be fully admitted that these perversions are "sexual equivalents"-or at all events equivalents of the normal sexual impulse-that term is merely a descriptive label which tells us nothing of the phenomena. "Sexual Symbolism" gives us the key to the process, the key that makes all these perversions intelligible.

These studies have been published in various journals at different times. They are reprinted together because there is some demand for them, and they are not easily accessible. In preparing them for publication in the present form, some of them have been expanded and all of them have been revised.

The sexual secrecy of life is even more disastrous than such a nutritive secrecy would be; partly because we expend such a wealth of moral energy in directing or misdirecting it, partly because the sexual impulse normally develops at the same time as the intellectual impulse, not in the early years of life, when wholesome instinctive habits might be formed. And there is always some ignorant and foolish friend who is prepared still further to muddle things. --- Some ask us why we would republish a series that might be outdated. Why? Earlier writings on this subject were not purely sterile and medicinal in content, but included a spiritual aspect that modern psychology and medicine overlook. These include a view of romanticism
lacking in most modern books on these subjects.

Much has been said and written about Naturopathy; Naturopathic practitioners have come much into prominence within the past few years; and everybody seems to be more or less aware of the fact that practically every sanitarium of any importance in either Europe or America is Naturopathic in theory and practice

The work that Mr. Are Waerland has produced is one which fulfils a great purpose. It at once instructs the reader in matters of vital importance to his health and happiness, clothing the information afforded in a most attractive manner.The author aims chiefly at making knowledge a living and integral part of the reader's mind by appealing not only to the intellect and the reasoning faculty but also to the great 'cantilevers' of human activities, the love of truth, the creative intuition and the enthusiasm, as the most powerful promoters of progress, without which much information, however valuable would not be converted into deeds or become a reality in life.

There is no doubt that hypnotism is a very old subject, though the name was not invented till 1850. In it was wrapped up the "mysteries of Isis" in Egypt thousands of years ago, and probably it was one of the weapons, if not the chief instrument of operation, of the magi mentioned in the Bible and of the "wise men" of Babylon and Egypt. "Laying on of hands" must have been a form of mesmerism, and Greek oracles of Delphi and other places seem to have been delivered by priests or priestesses who went into trances of self-induced hypnotism.