Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing

Cutten wrote this book at a fascinating historical moment, just as psychology was becoming a formal discipline but still willing to openly acknowledge what later generations would try to bury: that belief, suggestion, and faith have genuine healing power over the body. This 1910 work traces that knowledge across three millennia, from Egyptian temple sleep cures to Christian Science, from ancient Greek Asclepions to early psychotherapy. What makes it remarkable is not just its scope but its willingness to take every tradition seriously, to ask what worked, why people believed, and what that belief accomplished in measurable terms. Cutten demonstrates that the reciprocal relationship between mental states and bodily health was never entirely forgotten, only periodically rediscovered. For anyone curious about where modern psychology inherited its deepest questions - and what it may have quietly forgotten - this is an essential window into an era when the field was young enough to be humble about what it did not yet understand.