religions have based part of their claim on the belief of others in
their healing power. Nothing is so spectacular as when the hysterical
blind see, the hysterical dumb talk, the hysterical cripple throws away
his crutches and walks. In every age and in every country, in every
faith, there have been the equivalents of Lourdes and St. Anne de
Beaupré.

In hysteria four important groups of symptoms occur in the housewife as
well as in her single sisters and brothers.

There is first of all an emotional instability, with a tendency to
prolonged and freakish manifestations,--the well-known hysterics with
laughing, crying, etc. Fundamental in the personality of the hysterics
is this instability, this emotionality, which is however secondary to
an egotistic, easily wounded nature, craving sympathy and respect and
often unable legitimately to earn them.

A group of symptoms that seem hard to explain are the so-called
paralyses. These paralyses may affect almost any part, may come in a
moment and go as suddenly, or last for years. They may concern arm, leg,
face, hands, feet, speech, etc. They seem very severe, but are due to
worry, to misdirected ideas and emotions and not at all to injury to the
nervous system. They are manifestations of what the neurologists call
"dissociations of the personality." That is, conflicts of emotions,
ideas, and purposes of the type previously described have occurred, and
a paralysis has resulted. These paralyses yield remarkably to any
energizing influence like good fortune, the compelling personality of a
physician or clergyman or healer (the miracle cure), or a serious
danger. The latter is exemplified in the cases now and then reported of
people who have not been out of bed for years, but are aroused by threat