o look at the newspapers on account of the cholera
in St. Petersburg, and I have seen the time when I found it
difficult to drink water after I had boiled it myself."

Also the next man is familiar to all of us.

"Plainly we are told every man is born into the world to fill some
purpose, or at least be of some benefit to himself or his
fellowmen. For some reason I do not make friends among men. I have
not the zeal or ambition to carry or even begin a conversation
that will interest the individual man. I worry a great deal. I have
never been able to concentrate my mind to study and figure out
problems. I can read them zealously but apparently do not get to
the bottom and cannot retain what I do read. If I could just get
hold of the power of thinking and dig out that tangible something
that holds me back, I could go forward and make myself what I know
I should be. But I feel that so far I am a total failure. If I only
had that one great gift, the power of concentration and will power,
I would make what I so much desire, a success of myself."

A similar effect and yet psychologically a different condition exists
where the lack of energy results from the suggestive power of the
opposite, producing a constant indecision.

"I am thirty years old and nearly all my life since childhood I
have been fearfully troubled with the habit of indecision and
regretting whatever I do. It has grown into a habit so fixed that
at times I am fearful of losing my mind. I feel anxious to do
something and decide to do it, then as soon as it is done, I nearly
go wild with regrets until I have to undo it, if possible, and then
only to regret that. I am this way about the most trifling things
and about the most serious. I can't perform any duty well. In
business and in social affairs, it is always with me. It has me in
its clutches, a horrible monster dragging me down. My friends
misinterpret me and wonder what I mean by doing so when all the
time I want to do what is for the best and cannot for this tyrant
who is ever present with me. I will plod for hours and hours at a
time, and at every turn I am handicapped. I am intelligent
naturally and appear a perfect fool."

From the report of such chronic cases we may turn to the acute ones.
Here a characteristic letter of, a typical neurasthenic young