The other woman suffered in much the same way except that she was fortunate enough finally to be deserted by her husband. This ended her doubts and fears, broke her down for a short while, and then she went back to industry. In this I have no doubt she found only an incomplete satisfaction for her yearnings and desires, but she had something to take up her time, and built up contacts with others in a way that was impossible in her lonely home.
Case IX. The will to power through weakness; a case of hysteria in the home.
This case is classic in the outspoken value of the symptoms to the woman. It is not of course typical, except as the extreme is typical, and that is what is usually meant, Roosevelt, we say, was a typical American, meaning that he represented in extreme development a certain type of man. So this case shows very clearly what is not so clear at first in many cases of conflict between man and wife.
The woman in question was twenty-seven, of French-Canadian origin, but thoroughly American in appearance and speech. She was of a middle-class rural family and had married a farmer who finally had given up his farm and was a mechanic in a small city.
The young woman had always been irritable, egoistic, and sensitive. As a girl if anything happened to "shock her nerves", i.e. to displease her, she fainted, vomited, or went into "hysterics." As a result her family treated her with great caution and probably were well pleased when she married off their hands and left the home.
Married life soon provided her with sufficient to displease her. Her husband drank but not sufficiently to be classed as a heavy drinker. He was a quiet, rather taciturn man, utterly averse to the pleasures for which his wife longed. She wanted to go to dances, to take in the theaters, to live in more expensive rooms, and especially she became greatly attached to a group of people of a sporty type whom her husband tersely called "tinhorn bluffs" and whom he refused to visit.
They quarreled vigorously and the quarrels always ended one way,—she became sick in one way or other. This usually brought her husband around to her way of thinking, at least for a time, and much against his will he would go with her to her friends.
Finally, however, she set her heart on living with these people, and he set his will firmly against hers. She then developed such an alarming set of symptoms that after a while the physician who asked my opinion had made up his mind that she had a brain tumor. She was paralyzed, speechless, did not eat and seemed desperately ill.
The diagnosis of hysteria was established by the absence of any evidence of organic disease and by the history of the case. The relief of symptoms was brought about by means which I need not detail here, but which essentially consisted in proving to the patient that no true paralysis existed and in tricking her into movement and speech.
When she was well enough to be up and about and to talk freely, she and her husband were both informed that the symptoms arose because her will was thwarted, and that part of their function was to bring the man to his knees. He agreed to this, but she took offense and refused to come any more to see me,—a not unnatural reaction.