ell back on her grief
and sorrow by which to plague him into submission, into yielding.
Children use this weapon constantly; they cry for a thing and develop
symptoms in the face of some disagreeable event, such as a threatened
punishment. In their day-dreams the idea of dying to punish their cruel
parents is a favorite one.

This appeal to the conscience of the stronger through a demonstration of
weakness may be called "Will to Power through Weakness." It has long
been known to women that a man is usually helpless in the presence of
woman's tears, if it is apparent that something he has done has brought
about the deluge. And in the case of some housewives, certain
similarities between tears and the symptoms appear that show that in
these cases, at least, the symptoms of nervousness appear as a
substitute for tears in the marital conflict.

Not that this is a deliberate and fully conscious process, nor that it
causes the symptoms. On the contrary, it is a use for them!

Such a conclusion of course is not to be reached in those cases where
the symptoms arise out of sickness of some kind, or where they follow
long and arduous household tasks. But every one knows that the woman
who gets sick, has a nervous headache, weakness, a loss of appetite, or
becomes blue as soon as she loses in some domestic argument, or when her
will is crossed; these symptoms persist until the exasperated but
helpless husband yields the point at issue. Then recovery takes place
almost at once.

In some of the severer cases of neurasthenia in women such a mechanism
can be traced. There is a definite relation between the onset of the
attacks and some domestic difficulty, and though the recovery does not
take place at once, an adjustment in favor of the wife causes the
condition to turn soon for the better.

I do not claim that the above is an original discovery. True, the
medical men have not formulated it in their textbooks, but every
experienced practitioner knows it to occur. And the humorists and the
satirists of the daily press use the theme every day. The favorite point
is that the brutal husband is forced to his knees through the
disabilities of his wife, and that cure takes place when--he gets her
the bonnet or dress she wants, when the trip to Florida is ordered, etc.
etc.

Discreditable to women? Discreditable to those women who use it? Men
would do the same in the face of superior force. In the battle of wills
that goes on in life