of woman's heart, but he does not say all that is to be said. Women deceive themselves as well as others on this point. One cannot artificially suppress and supplant one's real nature, the physical as well as the other side, without something happening. The hygienic penalty that must be paid for woman's denial of her real nature is hysteria.
Of all the neurotic and psychic phenomena, those of hysteria are the most fascinating for psychologists; they represent a far more difficult and, therefore, a more interesting study than those observed in melancholia or in simple paranoia.
The majority of psychiatrists have a distrust of psychological analyses which it is not easy for them to shake off; every statement of pathological alteration of tissues or intoxication by certain means is for them a limine credible; it is only in psychical matters that they refuse to recognise a primary cause. But since no reason has so far been given why psychical phenomena should be of importance secondary to physical phenomena, it is quite justifiable to disregard such prejudices.
It is quite possible—there is nothing to prevent it being so—that a very great deal, perhaps everything, may depend on the proper interpretation of the "psychical mechanism" of hysteria. That this is so is proved by the fact that the few conclusions of any value with reference to hysteria so far discovered have been arrived at in this way; the investigations carried out by Pierre Janet, Oskar Vogt, and particularly by J. Breuer and S. Freud, show what I mean. All good work on hysteria will undoubtedly follow the lines these men have worked on; that is to say, by investigation of the psychological processes which led up to the disease.
I believe myself that what may be called a psychological sexual traumatism is at the root of hysteria. The typical picture of a hysterical case is not very different from the following: A woman has always accepted the male views on sexual matters; they are in reality totally foreign to her nature, and sometime, by some chance, out of the conflict between what her nature asserts to be true and
