is particularly such a creature, with a host of deënergizing influences playing on her, buffeting her. Our aim will be to analyze these influences and to discover how they work.

I have stated that in medical practice two other types are described,—psychasthenia and hysteria. These are not so definitely related to the happenings of life as to the inborn disposition of the patient. Nor are they quite so common in the housewife as the neurasthenic, deënergized state. However, they are usually of more serious nature, and as such merit a description.

By the term psychasthenia is understood a group of conditions in which the bodily symptoms, such as fatigue, sleeplessness, loss of appetite, etc., are either not so marked as in neurasthenia, or else are overshadowed by other, more distinctly mental symptoms.

These mental symptoms are of three main types. There is a tendency to recurring fears,—fears of open places, fears of closed places, fear of leaving home, of being alone, fear of eating or sleeping, fear of dirt, so that the victim is impelled continually to wash the hands, fear of disease—especially such as syphilis—and a host of other fears, all of which are recognized as unreasonable, against which the victim struggles but vainly. Sometimes the fear is nameless, vague, undifferentiated, and comes on like a cloud with rapid heartbeat, faint feelings, and a sense of impending death. Sometimes the fear is related to something that has actually happened, as, fear of anything hot after a sunstroke; or fear of any vehicle after an automobile accident.

There is also a tendency to obsessive ideas and doubts; that is, ideas and doubts that persist in coming against the will of the patient, such as the obscene word or phrase that continually obtrudes itself on a chaste woman, or the doubt whether one has shut the door or properly turned off the gas. Of course, everybody has such obsessions and doubts occasionally, but to be psychasthenic about it is to have them continually and to have them obtrude themselves into every action. In extreme psychasthenia the difficulty of "making up the mind", of deciding, becomes so great that a person may suffer agonies of internal debate about crossing the street, putting on his clothes, eating his meals, doing his work, about every detail of his coming, going, doing, and thinking. A restless anxiety results, a fear of insanity, an inefficiency, and an incapacity for sustained effort that results in the name that is often applied,—"anxiety neurosis."

Third, there is a group of impulsions and habits. Citing a few absurd impulsions: a person feels compelled to step over every crack, to touch the posts along his journey, to take the stairs three steps at a time. The habits range from the queer desire to bite one's nails to the quick that is so common in children and which persists in the psychasthenic adult, to the odd grimaces and facial contortions, blinking eyes and cracking joints of the inveterate ticquer. Against some of these habit spasms, comparable to severe stammering, all measures are in vain, for there seems to be a queer pleasure in these acts against which the will of the patient is powerless.

Especially do the first two described types of trouble follow exhaustion, acute illness, sudden fright, and long painful ordeal. The ground is prepared for these conditions, e.g. by the strain of long attendance on a sick husband or child. Then, suddenly one day, comes a queer fear or a faint dizzy feeling which awakens great alarm, is brooded upon, wondered at, and its return feared. This fearful expectation really makes the return inevitable, and then the disease starts. If the patient would seek competent advice at this stage, recovery would usually be prompt. Instead, there is a long unsuccessful struggle, with each defeat tending to make the fear or anxiety or obsession habitual. Sometimes, perhaps in most cases, and in all cases according to Freud and his followers, there is a long-hidden series of causes behind the symptoms; subconscious sexual conflicts and repressions, etc. It may be stated here that the present author is not at all a Freudian and believes that the causes of these forms of nervousness are simpler, more related to the big obvious factors in life, than to the curiously complicated and bizarrely sexual Freudian factors. People get tired, disgusted, apprehensive; they hate where they should love; love where they should hate; are jealous unreasonably; are bored, tortured by monotony; have their hopes, purposes, and desires frustrated and blocked; fear death and old age, however brave a face they may wear; want happiness and achievement, and some break, one way or another, according to their emotional and intellectual resistance. These and other causes are the great factors of the conditions we have been considering.

Of all the forms of nervousness proper, the psychoneuroses, hysteria is probably the one having its source mainly in the character of the patient. That is to say, outward happenings play a part which is secondary to the personality defect. Hysteria is one of the oldest of diseases and has probably played a very important rôle in the history of man. Unquestionably many of the religions have depended upon hysteria, for it is in this field that "miracle cures" occur. All founders of religions have based part of their claim on the belief of others in their healing power. Nothing is so spectacular as when the hysterical blind see, the hysterical dumb talk, the hysterical cripple throws away his crutches and walks. In every age and in every country, in every faith, there have been the equivalents of Lourdes and St. Anne de Beaupré.

In hysteria four important groups of symptoms occur in the housewife as well as in her single sisters and brothers.

There is first of all an emotional instability, with a tendency to prolonged and freakish manifestations,—the well-known hysterics with laughing, crying, etc. Fundamental in the personality of the hysterics is this instability, this emotionality, which is however secondary to an egotistic, easily wounded nature, craving sympathy and respect and often unable legitimately to earn them.

A group of symptoms that seem hard to explain are the so-called paralyses. These paralyses may affect almost any part, may come in a moment and go as suddenly, or last for years. They may concern arm, leg, face, hands, feet, speech, etc. They seem very severe, but are due to worry, to misdirected ideas and emotions and not at all to injury to the nervous system. They are manifestations of what the neurologists call "dissociations of the personality." That is, conflicts of emotions, ideas, and purposes of the type previously described have occurred, and a paralysis has resulted. These paralyses yield remarkably to any energizing influence like good fortune, the compelling personality of a physician or clergyman or healer (the miracle cure), or a serious danger. The latter is exemplified in the cases now and then reported of people who have not been out of bed for years, but are aroused by threat of some danger, like a fire, reach safety, and thereafter are well.

Similar in type to the paralyses are losses of sensation in various parts of the body,—losses so complete that one may thrust a needle deep into the flesh without pain to the patient. In the days of witch-hunting the witch-hunters would test the women suspected with a pin, and if they found places where pain was not felt, considered they had proof of witchcraft or diabolic possession, so that many a hysteric was hanged or drowned. The history of man is full of psychopathic characters and happenings; insane men have changed the course of human events by their ideas and delusions, and on the other hand society has continually mistaken the insane and the nervously afflicted for criminals or wretches deserving severest punishment.

Especially striking in hysteria are the curious