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Updated: May 15, 2025
"You've heard of obsessions of men seized every six months with an irresistible desire to drink of kleptomaniacs who, having all they need or wish, must steal or go mad of others driven by inexplicable impulse, mania, to set fire to buildings, for the thrill they get out of seeing the flames burst forth.
These "longings" in their extreme form may properly be considered as neurasthenic obsessions, but in their simple and less pronounced forms they may well be normal and healthy. The old medical authors abound in narratives describing the longings of pregnant women for natural and unnatural foods. This affection was commonly called pica, sometimes citra or malatia.
Here is the man who wants to abolish sex. He believes in spirit. He is timid and womanly, his mind is pure and inexpressibly shocked at the carnal desires which disfigure the otherwise fair picture of humanity. Love, marriage, procreation, cannot these be purged from the base and degrading obsessions of sex? By abstinence, by concentration, we may eliminate them.
The passive as well as the active obsessions can be overcome by cultivating the commonplace, or average normal, attitude, and resolving gradually to accustom one's self to the disagreeable. This change of attitude can be made in adult life as well as in youth. "You cannot teach an old dog new tricks," we are told. The reason is not that the old dog cannot learn them, but that he does not want to.
Lloyd George served the nation, not for money but from public spirit; a conservative insisted that ability should be rewarded and rewarded well; whereupon ensued one of the most enlightening discussions, not only as a revelation of intelligence, but of complexes and obsessions pervading many of the minds in whose power lies the ultimate control of democracies.
There can never be any true criticism of Synge till we have got rid of all these obsessions and idolatries. Synge was an extraordinary man of genius, but he was not an extraordinarily great man of genius. He is not the peer of Shakespeare: he is not the peer of Shelley: he is the peer, say, of Stevenson. His was a byway, not a high-road, of genius.
So, in a measure, you have found yourself: have retreated behind all that flowing appearance, that busy, unstable consciousness with its moods and obsessions, its feverish alternations of interest and apathy, its conflicts and irrational impulses, which even the psychologists mistake for You.
Although her sobs had ceased, she did not reply. Two obsessions occupied her thoughts: one was an instinct of abasement before the man who had such a tender concern for her future; the other, a fierce pride, which revolted at the thought of her being under a possibly lifelong obligation to the man with whom, in the far-off days of her childhood, she had been on terms of economic equality.
It is remarkable how many obsessions we may harbor without causing us to swerve from our accustomed line of conduct. Whatever our thoughts, our conduct may be such that we attract little attention beyond the passing observation that we are a little odd. We may break down, it is true, under the double load we carry, but we are in little danger of insanity.
Luther, from his religious point of view, still had the right to separate the two groups because only those functional diseases were effects of the devil, obsessions which could be banished by the minister and by prayer, while the other diseases did not result from the devil, but merely from natural causes. Such a definition does not fit into the modern system.
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