There are some experiences, however, to which we cannot react by anger or confidence, and so we imprison our emotions, and try to obtain peace of mind by forgetting the irritation.

Freud thinks perverted sex ideas are thus repressed, and cause hysteria by coming into conflict with the normal sex life.  If these old sores can be laid bare by psycho-analysis, and the mental abscess drained by confession and contrition, cure follows.

The biologists consider hysteria as an adult childishness, a primitive mode of dodging difficulties.  Victims cannot live up to the complicated emotional standard of modern life, and so act on a standard which to us seems natural only in children and uncivilized races.

Savill gives the following differences between neurasthenia and hysteria: 

NEURASTHENIA HYSTERIA

Sex Both sexes equally. 97 per cent females.

Age Any age.  First attack before
page of 25.

Mental          Intellectual weakness;   Deficient will power,
peculiarities   bad memory               Want of control
and attention.           over emotions.

Causes Overwork; dyspepsia; Emotional upset or
accident; shock.
nervous shock.

Course Fairly even.  Paroxysms.  Vary
from hour to hour.

Mental Mental exhaustion; Emotional; wayward;
Symptoms unable to study; no self-analysis,
restless; sad; living by
irritable; not rule or reading
equal to medical books;
amusement.  May Fond of gaiety;
be suicidal. sad and joyous by
turns.  Never
suicidal.

  General Occasional giddiness; Flushing; convulsions
    Symptoms fainting rare; and fainting
                    convulsions; common; no
                    headache; backache; symptoms between
                    sleeplessness; no attacks; local
                    loss of feeling. anaesthesia or
          
                                   hyperaesthesia.

  Termination Lasts weeks or Lasts lifetime in
                    months. spasms. 
                    CURABLE.  TEMPORARILY
          
                                   CURABLE.

Hysteria is a disease of youth, usually ceasing at the climacteric.  Social, financial and domestic worries are exciting causes, a happy marriage often curing, and an unhappy one greatly aggravating the complaint.  It is most common among the races we usually deem “excitable”, the Slavs, Latin races and Jews, and is often associated with anaemia and pelvic disorders.

Symptoms.  Changeability of mood is striking.  “All is caprice.  They love without measure those they will soon hate without reason.”