In the more healthy, merely hysteroid condition, the psychic
sexual organism is not injured, and still responds normally, removing the
abnormal symptoms when allowed to do so. It is the confusion between this
almost natural condition and the truly morbid condition, alone properly
called hysteria, which led to the ancient opinion, inaugurated by Plato
and Hippocrates, that hysteria may be cured by marriage.[288] The
difference may be illustrated by the difference between a distended
bladder which is still able to contract normally on its contents when at
last an opportunity of doing so is afforded and the bladder in which
distension has been so prolonged that nervous control had been lost and
spontaneous expulsion has become impossible. The first condition
corresponds to the constitution, which, while simulating the hysterical
condition, is healthy enough to react normally in spite of psychic
lesions; the second corresponds to a state in which, owing to the
prolonged stress of psychic traumatism,--sexual or not,--a definite
condition of hysteria has arisen. The one state is healthy, though
abnormal; the other is one of pronounced morbidity.
The condition of true hysteria is thus linked on to almost healthy states,
and especially to a condition which may be described as one of sex-hunger.
Such a suggestion may help us to see these puzzling phenomena in their
true nature and perspective.
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