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The chapter relates the occurrence of hysteria to women offenders because it leads to sensational trials that have little real value. At least half of the hysterical women are normal in intelligence, but they are easily distracted. Due to their profound egotism and total self-absorption, they adore scandal and public attention. Hysterical women are hypnotized easily. Their will is replaced by that of the hypnotizer, who can make one side of the patient's brain act quite contrary to the other side.

This article compares the intellect of women and men. Compared to male intelligence, female intelligence is deficient primarily in creative power. This deficiency reveals itself immediately in the absence of female geniuses. Some attribute this inferiority to social conditions, especially to enforced ignorance in which woman is held and her lack of opportunity for intellectual labor. But women's ignorance is not in fact as general as some think. While woman is barred from creating great things by her lack of genius, she is also less adapted than man to the minor productions at which average men succeed. This is due to her lack of originality, which is overdeveloped in the man of genius and found in more modest proportions in the average man. In fact, women have no particular talent for any art, science, or profession.