In normal people there is a slight consciousness of mental processes, but
the mind rarely watches itself work; the neurasthenic is unable to
concentrate, and gets charged with inconstancy and shiftlessness.

His ideas are restive, continuous thought is impossible, and when talking
he has to be "brought back to the point" many times. Memory and attention
flag, and he listens to a long conversation, or reads pages of a book
without grasping its import, and consequently he readily "forgets" what in
reality he never laboured to learn. Trembling of limbs is common.

He lacks initiative, and whatever course he is forced to take--after much
indecision--he is convinced, a moment later, it would have been wiser to
have taken the opposite one.

All his acts are done inattentively. He goes to his room for something, but
has forgotten what when he gets there; later, he wonders if he locked the
drawer, and goes back to see. At night he gets up to make sure he bolted
the door, put out the gas, and damped the fire.

Regret for the past, dissatisfaction with the present, and anxiety for the
future are plagues common to most people, but they become acute in a
neurasthenic, who reproaches himself with past shortcomings of no moment,
infuriates himself over to-day's trivialities, and frets himself over evils
yet unborn.

Such a patient is often greatly upset by a trifle, yet little affected by a
real shock, which by its very severity arouses his reactive faculties which
lay dormant and left him at the mercy of the minor event. He will fret over
a farthing increase in the price of a loaf, but if his bank fails he sets
manfully to.