ignored, and because it has
relationship to the general psychology of the sexual emotions. I refer to
that physiological hysteria which is the normal counterpart of the
pathological hysteria which has been described in its physical details by
Charcot, and to which alone the term should strictly be applied. Even
though hysteria as a disease may be described as one and indivisible,
there are yet to be found, among the ordinary and fairly healthy
population, vague and diffused hysteroid symptoms which are dissipated in
a healthy environment, or pass nearly unnoted, only to develop in a small
proportion of cases, under the influence of a more pronounced heredity, or
a severe physical or psychic lesion, into that definite morbid state which
is properly called hysteria.

This diffused hysteroid condition may be illustrated by the results of a
psychological investigation carried on in America by Miss Gertrude Stein
among the ordinary male and female students of Harvard University and
Radcliffe College. The object of the investigation was to study, with the
aid of a planchette, the varying liability to automatic movements among
normal individuals. Nearly one hundred students were submitted to
experiment. It was found that automatic responses could be obtained in two
sittings from all but a small proportion of the students of both sexes,
but that there were two types of individual who showed a special aptitude.
One type (probably showing the embryonic form of neurasthenia) was a
nervous, high-strung, imaginative type, not easily influenced from
without, and not so much suggestible as autosuggestible. The other type,
which is significant from our present point of view, is thus described by
Miss Stein: "In general the individuals, often blonde and pale, are
distinctly phlegmatic. If emotional, decidedly of the weakest, sentimental
order. They may be either large, healthy, rather heavy, and lacking in
vigor or they may be what we call anaemic and phlegmatic. Their power of
concentrated attention is very small. They describe themselves as never
being held by their work; they say that their minds wander easily; that
they work on after they are tired, and just keep pegging away. They are
very apt to have premonitory conversations, they anticipate the words of
their friends, they imagine whole conversations that afterward come true.
The feeling of having been there is very common with them; that is, they
feel under given circumstances t