around
to her way of thinking, at least for a time, and much against his will
he would go with her to her friends.

Finally, however, she set her heart on living with these people, and he
set his will firmly against hers. She then developed such an alarming
set of symptoms that after a while the physician who asked my opinion
had made up his mind that she had a brain tumor. She was paralyzed,
speechless, did not eat and seemed desperately ill.

The diagnosis of hysteria was established by the absence of any evidence
of organic disease and by the history of the case. The relief of
symptoms was brought about by means which I need not detail here, but
which essentially consisted in proving to the patient that no true
paralysis existed and in tricking her into movement and speech.

When she was well enough to be up and about and to talk freely, she and
her husband were both informed that the symptoms arose because her will
was thwarted, and _that_ part of their function was to bring the man to
his knees. He agreed to this, but she took offense and refused to come
any more to see me,--a not unnatural reaction.

The outlook in such a case is that the couple will live like cats and
dogs. Such a temperament as this woman's is inborn. She is essentially,
in the complete meaning of the word, unreasonable. Her nature demands a
sympathetic attention and consideration that her character does not
warrant. Throughout life she demands to receive but has no desire to
give. Nor is she powerful enough to take, so there arise emotional
crises with marked disturbance in bodily energy, and especially symptoms
that frighten the onlooker, such as paralyses, blindness, deafness,
fainting spells, etc. Whatever is the source of these symptoms, they are
frequently used to gain some end or purpose through the sympathy and
discomfort of others.

Not all hysteria, either in men or women, is united with such a
character as this woman's. Sufficient stress and strain may bring about
hysterical symptoms in a relatively normal person and short hysterical
reactions are common in the normal woman. The height of cynicism may be
found in the discovery that war causes hysteria in some men in much the
same way that matrimony causes hysteria in some women. A humorous review
of a paper on the domestic neuroses was entitled "Kitchen Shell Shock."
But severe hysteria, when it arises in the housewife, springs mainly
from her disposition and not from the kitchen