proportions of both. The proportions may vary greatly,
being mostly mental or mostly physical, but almost invari-
ably both causes exist in some proportion.
Many people do not realize that most diseases
have a primary mental cause, although the symptoms, and
indeed the bodily damages, are demonstratively physical.
These are called "psychosomatic" which the dictionary
describes as: "bodily disorders induced by mental disturb-
ances". It has long been known that more than half of all
patients in doctors' offices and in hospitals are suffering
from psychosomatic disorders (bodily illnesses, mentally
caused). Progressively, more and more bodily disorders
are diagnosed as being psychosomatic, even though the
patient may not be so informed. Some exh'emists now
declare that 90% of all illnesses have a primary mental
cause.
A patient with a broken arm certainly feels that
his accident was a physical happening as, of course, it was.
What he may not realize is that behind the physical event
was a mental desire to escape the responsibility of doing
something which for some subconscious reason he did not
want to do. People go blind, are partially or completely
paralyzed, develop almost every imaginable illness ( al-
though some psychosomatic disorders are much more prev-
alent than others) as a means of escaping some repugnant
situation, or in order to withdraw from some undesirable
reality of life, or even as a fOlm of self-punishment for a
repressed sense of guilt.
In addition to the psychosomatic disorders
with predominantly physical symptoms and often physical