Keeping a notebook is another helpful means of objectifying the work. As a basis for this book I have collected some sixty statements pertaining to the elimination of the alcoholic habit.

These ideas, which average about one hundred and fifty words each, are set down on separate sheets of paper, one of which the patient takes home with him, after it has been carefully discussed, and transcribes in his own handwriting.

He is cautioned to do this work only when he has sufficient time to give the point under consideration considerable reflection. If he can expand the idea, or if he can express it, without changing the sense, in words that make more of an appeal to him, so much the better.

He also copies into his notebook those ideas which he has marked in the books that he has read, Thus he creates a personal reference book which should stimulate him by precept, warning, or inference toward better control and more mature behavior.

This book he should turn to frequently for the purpose of refreshing his mind with his new system of philosophy and as a means of correcting any negative suggestion which he may have absorbed.

Of course it is the spirit with which the notebook is kept that is important, not the perfunctory copying out of so many words in an uncritical and unreflective frame of mind.

If the alcoholic cannot see the help to be derived from this procedure, as in the case of the schedule, he should not be coerced into taking it up. But the conscientious student who wishes to make the most of his time will be anxious to employ all the elements that have assisted others toward reconstruction.

There are too few of these aids as it is, and it is hardly fair if one or two are neglected, particularly as the one that is slighted is presumably the one that is most necessary.

"Many patients," writes Dr. Menninger, "show their resistance by doing everything imaginable in the name of treatment, except the thing most likely to cure them."

For example, if exercise is avoided, the mind has to work against, rather than with, a body which at least should be pulling its own weight.

If, again, the pre-sleep suggestion is forgotten, the unconscious is not being trained to cooperate with the conscious, and thus one of the strongest methods of attacking the problem is omitted.

I have emphasized the right spirit in which the work should be undertaken and maintained. Anticipation is a powerful aid to this proper frame of mind. The alcoholic must continually suggest to himself that he is going to carry on the work just as conscientiously and seriously in the future as he did in the beginning until he has had a year of uninterrupted sobriety behind him.

If he faithfully faces the future in this manner, he will be well armed against overconfidence or laziness. (If he is sane and sincere, there is no chance of an "about face" as regards his intellectual attitude.)

In the beginning he is particularly apt to get good results, because, although he is very near to the latest expression of the habit he is endeavoring to conquer, the treatment is colored with novelty and enthusiasm.

When this wears off, as it is bound to do, he may become lazy and uninterested if he has not taken pains to prepare his future mental attitude, though the method that this laziness will take will be a premature conviction that he is already cured.

Experience has shown that relapses come about in this way and not because of the accumulation of an irresistible thirst through a period of abstinence.

As a matter of fact, in no case yet where a relapse has occurred has the patient told me that it resulted from overwhelming temptation in spite of conscientious work. In each and every instance it was frankly admitted that the carrying out of the therapeutic measures had been allowed to slacken some time before a drink was actually taken.

There have been a few instances which might be considered an exception to this statement in its narrowest sense. These occurred very early in the treatment and were the sudden expression of rage or grief which gave the neophyte the "justification" he was looking for.

Before finishing the discussion of the treatment, there is one point which I should like to bring home. So much has been said about methods for overcoming the alcoholic habit other than the old-fashioned one of straight will power that the reader may be wondering if this does not enter into the work at all.

On this point there should be no misunderstanding. Will power is most decidedly necessary, but after the first month or two it is used chiefly as a force to compel the patient to carry on his work. It is much more effective if applied in this manner than if it is blindly directed against the habit itself.

The latter method might be described as will power fighting with its bare fists, and the former as will power armed with an assortment of weapons with which to coerce an errant mind.

If the will is used without any imagination in a headlong and unscientific attack, if all effort is concentrated on the control of the habit and none on the redirecting of the desires, sooner or later willpower will lose and a long (?) period on the wagon will be the best that can be said for the energy expended.

But while the new habits are forming, the will must he used without stint whenever necessary. The treatment is founded on common sense and sound psychological principles rather than magic, and there is no known means for removing instantaneously the desire for alcohol forever.

At later periods also there may be times when, in spite of all his efforts, the patient frankly wants to drink. But he will be tempted less intensely as time passes and far less frequently, so that it can do him no harm to fall back on will power to tide him over his occasional "crises," conscious that his temptation will be short-lived and in the end entirely eliminated.

The question of will power has been stressed because one or two individuals have conceived the idea, probably as a result of wish fulfillment, that the treatment would instantly remove the desire for drink and that will power did not enter into the matter; that therefore if they really wanted to drink they might do so, leaving the future change in point of view to some transcendental power.

They were right about will power not entering into the matter after the cure has been completed, but to try this theory at the beginning of the treatment when they were naturally full of thirsty associations was the worst form of sophistry and rationalization.