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It is often argued that psychological treatment may cure people suffering from nervous troubles or those whose sicknesses are largely the result of their own imagination, but that such treatment is useless for physically caused maladies. The only way to get at the truth about this problem is to divide psychological treatment into mental and spiritual categories. Mental treatment, which includes hypnotic treatment, is suitable only for nervous troubles, for there alone can it effect a cure; but spiritual treatment is suitable for both nervous and physical troubles because it involves a higher power than the thinking or imagining one, a truly spiritual power which is able to affect the physical body no less than the personal mentality. Mental treatment includes a large part of so-called spiritual healing, which is not genuine spiritual healing at all. Philosophy is able to make this differentiation because it understands the psyche of man and his inner constitution, because it has a deeper knowledge than scientific observers working from the outside or religious devotees working by faith alone can get.

-- Notebooks Category 10: Healing of the Self > Chapter 5 : The Healing Power of The Overself > # 9