predisposed to the nervousness of the
housewife it is to be emphasized that conditions may bring about the
neurosis in the normal housewife. Nevertheless, there are groups of
women who, because of their make-up or constitution, acquire the
neurosis much more easily and much more intensely than do the normal
women. They are the types most commonly seen in the hospital clinic or
in the private consulting room of the neurologist.

First comes the hyperaesthetic type. One of the chief marks of advancing
civilization is an increasing refinement of taste and desire. The
fundamental human needs are food, shelter, clothes, sex relations, and
companionship. These the savage has as well as his civilized brother,
and he finds them not only necessary but agreeable. What we call
progress improves the food and the shelter, modifies the clothes,
elaborates the sex relations and the code governing companionship. With
each step forward the cruder methods become more actively disagreeable,
and only the refined methods prove agreeable. In other words, desire
keeps pace with improvement, so that although great advances materially
have been made, there has been little advance, if any, in contentment.
This is because as we progress in refinement little things come to be
important, manner becomes more essential than matter, and we get to the
hyperaesthetic stage.

Thus the dinner becomes less important than the manner of serving it. In
the "highest circles" it is the _savoir faire_, the niceties of conduct,
that count more than character. Words become the means of playing with
thought rather than the means of expressing it, and thought itself
scorns the elemental and fundamental and busies itself with the vagaries
of existence.

From another angle, to the hyperaesthetic more and more things have
become disagreeable. To the man of simple tastes and simple feelings,
only the calamities are disagreeable; to the hyperaesthetic every breeze
has a sting, and life is full of pin pricks. "The slings and arrows of
outrageous fortune" are multiplied in number, and furthermore the
reaction to them is intensified. In the "Arabian Nights" the princess
boasts that a rose petal bruises her skin, while her competitor in
delicacy is made ill by a fiber of cotton in her silken garments. So
with the hyperaesthetic; an unintentional overlooking is reacted to as a
deadly insult; the thwarting of any desire robs life of its savor;
sounds become noises; a bit o