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Garma studies Maximiliano, principal character of the novel, Fortunata y Jacinta. Maximiliano thought himself ugly, retired from society, and developed a host of psychosomatic ailments, such as terrible toothaches and migraine, but in the course of the story fell deeply in love with a prostitute. After trying to deny that his wife, Fortunata, was promiscuous, he began to have a conviction that he was stupid and manifested paranoid thinking. When intensely enraged he even became blind and had convulsions. His intellectual activity and his genital sexuality were in direct relation: his intellectual inhibitions occurred as a consequence of sexual repression. His love for his wife determined the productiveness of his intellectual life; he said to her, 'looking at you I understand things clearly'. When he was confronted with her infidelity his 'pseudo-stupidity' reappeared. After fighting with her first lover and being worsted, he acquired a feminine voice, which lasted until Fortunata left him. She returned to him but again he found her unfaithful. This discovery led to paranoid ideas about his friends and family, delusions which disappeared the day Fortunata left him for a second time. 'His delusions were efforts at restitution, though inadequate ones.'
Maximiliano regretted being 'attached to a carload of affects'. To eliminate this state he became an avid reader, a therapy explained by the fact that a book often represents the female genitals. He stated, 'when I sleep, I dream, I am a man; now the Beast has tied me down, whipped me, and made me do everything the Beast wants'. Maximiliano finally became psychotic with the delusion 'of being a Messiah … what I call "Messiahnitis" … a modification of my jealousy. The Messiah … your son, born to a man who was not your husband. Everything is jealousy, jealous feelings fermented and putrefacted. Oh, my daughter! How bad it is to be crazy!'
Garma states that Galdos's explanations 'are by no means complete bu