ty 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 d