While awaiting these returns, and while his mind is still uninfluenced by them, the occultist should make his own independent diagnosis.
In order to do this he should have at least two interviews with his patient.
In the first he should hear the case-history, allowing the patient to present the facts in his own way, without guidance or leading questions.
Immediately the patient has left, the operator should write out the case-history with as much detail as he can recall.
It is exceedingly undesirable to take notes in the presence of a patient, because it makes him nervous, for he feels that, in the words of the police-court, “everything he is saying will be taken down and used as evidence against him.” In preparation for the second interview the occultist should study this record carefully and have its points and sequence clear in his mind.
Now is the time to question the patient concerning any discrepancies or hiatuses.
This proceeding will reveal the liar, whether deliberate or hysterical, quicker than anything else, for the discrepancies of his second statement will be clearly revealed against the written record of his first.
If he is telling the truth, the two statements will be in agreement.
If he is distorting the facts, he will soon contradict himself.
Remember that you are dealing with a person who has something of either the psychic or the neurotic, or very likely both, in his disposition, and that your attitude towards him, and even your unspoken thoughts, will influence him profoundly.
If he feels that you are doubting his veracity, he will lose his self-confidence and begin to think that his experiences may, after all, be the fruits of his own imagination.
Consequently, he will suppress things which may be all-important from the diagnostic standpoint.
It is in this outpouring of relevant and irrelevant detail that you are going to find your clues.
There are certain landmarks which you want to look out for in taking this case-history, but you do not want to let your patient realise what you are looking for, because if you have won his confidence, he will be very apt to take on your view-point, and if he sees you have formed any opinion, he will unconsciously twist incidents so that they fit in with that opinion.
Do not allow him to guess the bearing of your questions, and then you will obtain from him an unbiassed response.
In order to prevent his guessing what you are driving at, do not ask a series of questions elucidating information on a specific point.
There will probably be several points on which you want information.
Ask questions upon first one and then another of these.
For instance, if you suspect that the trouble may be due to the house in which your patient is living, the last thing you want to do is to rouse his suspicions in this respect lest you should be on a false scent.
And even if you should prove to be on the right track, you do not want to disclose the facts to him until you are ready to act, for by increasing his apprehensions you will increase his sufferings.
If you suspect that sex plays a part in his trouble, and he guesses the trend of your questionings, he will immediately cover his tracks, and you will find it very difficult to get at the facts at all.
Whereas, if his suspicions are not aroused, he will reveal himself to an astute and experienced questioner who approaches him indirectly, without realising that he has done so.
By approaching thus indirectly you not only get at the real facts of the case, but spare his feelings.
In taking a case-history you want to look for correlations between your patient’s psychic experiences and the circumstances of his life.
Dates and places therefore should be sedulously sought for.
When did the trouble start, and where?
Having obtained as detailed information as possible on these two points, set out to see whether any occult significance is to be found in it.
The interference of a discarnate human soul, or the lingering condition of a particular place, with the living — Dion Fortune's distinction between a soul in distress that clings out of ignorance and ties itself to a person or locality, versus deliberate malice. Distinct from animism (indwelling nature-spirits inherent to a place by nature, not a specific dead individual's soul) and from psychopomp_journey and ancestor_veneration (guiding the dead onward, or the living's ongoing ritual obligation to the honoured dead) in naming the pathological case: a soul that has NOT been guided onward and instead interferes, whether with a person or a place.
The text mentions looking for correlations between psychic experiences and circumstances like the house the patient is living in, which aligns with Fortune's distinction regarding place-bound interference.
The doctrine and practice of one person deliberately inflicting harm on another through trained will, mind-power, or occult technique alone, without physical contact — producing exhaustion, illness, breakdown, or death in the victim; recognised cross-culturally as witchcraft, hexing, or the evil eye, and treated in Western esotericism as a genuine occult hazard requiring diagnosis and defence rather than dismissed as superstition. Distinct from magical_will (the general doctrine that trained volition has causal power, of which this is one malevolent application) and from spirit_conjuration (which subordinates an already-existing summoned spirit, rather than directing the operator's own power at a person).
The passage is explicitly about diagnosing the nature of a psychic attack, detailing methods to distinguish genuine occult interference from neurotic or hysterical distortion.