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 that they have had that identical
experience before in all its details. They are often fatalistic in their
ideas. They indulge in day-dreams. As a rule, they are highly
suggestible."[283]
There we have a picture of the physical constitution and psychic
temperament on which the classical symptoms of hysteria might easily be
built up.[284] But these persons were ordinary students, and while a few
of their characteristics are what is commonly and vaguely called "morbid,"
on the whole they must be regarded as ordinarily healthy individuals.
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