Fourth is the method of the weak, to gain an end through weakness, through arousing sympathy, by parading grief, by awakening the discomfort of unpleasant emotion in an opponent who is of course not an implacable enemy.  This has been woman’s weapon from time immemorial; tears and sobs are her sword and gun.  Unable to cope with man on an equal plane, through his superior physical strength, his intrenched social and legal position, she took advantage of her beauty and desirability, of his love; if that failed, she fell 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.