Cryptomnesia belongs to the category of psychiatric terms which acquired a bad reputation and nearly passed into obsolescence. Its disrepute has come from its popularity with people who are believers in psychic forces, spiritualism, vitalism and other supernatural agencies. Such people have used it to denote the apparent ability of some mediums to become aware, when they are in a trance, of “hidden” memories—hidden in the sense of being inaccessible to them in their normal consciousness.
The term “therapeutic factor” will be used to denote any agency which is potentially capable of producing such changes in the personality of a patient that an alleviation or cure of clinical symptoms may result. Such agencies originate either in the environment of the patient or in his organism. In psychotherapy we are primarily concerned with environmental agencies, namely those which are introduced, regulated and controlled by the therapist, and which are therapeutic only if the patient responds to them in a manner that is conducive to producing the desired changes in his personality. We can therefore distinguish three elements in a therapeutic process: environmental factors, responses by the patient, and ultimate personality changes.
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