Part Two

The New Doctrine of Nervous Health

Has not perhaps the gallant Viennese atmosphere—reminding one of Rococo culture—of which the extraordinary erotic refinement of Austrian women is a part, strongly turned the authors of Studies on Hysteria, and especially Freud, in a certain direction? The strong national differences in hysteria are well known.… [The sexual history of a Viennese married couple who recently consulted the author] illustrated once more what I had already known from hundreds of other experiences, but what one often forgets: what role the erotic, in all its expressions, had played for these good middle-class people—a role of which the average North German has not the least concept.

—Willy Hellpach, Basics of a Psychology of Hysteria, 1904