't bring their playmates into the house largely
because they know that mother, though she wants children to play, goes
after them picking up and cleaning."

This restlessness in the presence of disorder was accompanied by the
effort to eradicate all vices, all discourtesies, all errors in manners
from the children. She feared "bad habits" as she feared immorality. She
thought that any rudeness might grow into a habit, must be broken early;
any selfish manifestation might be the beginning of a gross selfishness,
any lying or pilfering might be the beginning of a career of crime.

Here one might hold forth on the necessity for trial and error in
children's lives. They want to try things, they form little habits for a
day, a week, a month which they discard after a while; they try out
words and phrases, playing with them and then pass on to a new
experiment. They are insatiable seekers of experience, untiring in their
quest for experiment,--and they learn thereby. Not every mickle grows
into a muckle, and the supplanting of habits, the discarding of them as
unsatisfactory, is as marked a phenomenon as the formation of habits.

So our patient allowed nothing for imperfections, experimental stages,
developing tastes in her children. She was, however, hardest on herself,
self-critical, scolded herself constantly because her house was never
perfect, her work never done. She never had time to go out; she had
become a veritable slave to a conscience that prodded her every time she
read a book, took a nap, or went to a picture show.

It was not at first obvious either to her or her husband that her own
ideal of cleanliness and perfection was responsible for her
neurasthenia. If her "stomach was out of order ought she not have some
stomach remedy; if her nerves were out of order would the doctor not
prescribe a nerve tonic or a sedative?" The idea of a medicine for
everything is still strong in the community and especially amongst
dwellers in small towns, and represents a latent belief in magic.

In addition to such medicines as I thought the situation demanded, and
to such advice as bore on her attitude to work and play, I hinted that
dressing more fashionably might be of value. For the poorly dressed
always have a feeling of inferiority in the presence of the better
dressed, and this feeling is seriously disagreeable. To raise the
ego-feeling one must remove feelings of inferiority, and here was a
relatively simple situation