Damage: Chapters 1-14

So far, just after reading the first fourteen chapters of this book, I am already anxious to keep reading and to find out what happens next!  This book is definitely suspenseful in the sense that I want to find out how far this affair goes and if anyone finds out.  In the beginning of the book, the narrator speaks a lot about his family and how he grew up.  He explains how his father is a very successful and wealthy man, and how he would make decisions based on what he believed his father wanted.  He went to school for medicine, following his father’s footsteps and became a doctor.  He even exclaims that his life thus far had been a great and successful one, but whose life was it really? 

The narrator goes on and speaks about his beautiful wife that he meets, Ingrid, and the two kids they have, Martyn and Sally.  He exclaims that it seems as if he has the perfect life and what more could he ask for.  He has a wonderful family, a wife and children that love him dearly, he is financially stable, and everything seems like it couldn’t be better.  Even though he was explaining these things, I feel like the way he said it made it seem like he felt that his life was almost too perfect and something had to be missing.

Getting to the good part, his son Martyn, who had been somewhat of a player and got a lot of girls due to his good looks, ends up meeting a woman who is eight years older than him, Anna.  Unlike all the other girls in his life that were just “mess-arounds”, he feels something more with Anna. From the beginning, Ingrid didn’t like Anna and felt like she just wasn’t the right woman for her son, and no later her instincts proved to be right.  Not only was she wrong for his son, but she was wrong for her whole family.  The narrator and Anna seem to have an instant attraction to one another when they meet at a party, and before you know it, they are having an affair behind the family’s back.  He claims to feel like once he met Anna, he finally found out who he was, basically now he feels whole.  Not only is he betraying his son, but his wife also.

After finding out about Anna’s background and how she feels she has been “damaged” because of her past experiences, I am even more shocked on how this affair is taking place.  She seems to not care about whose life she interferes with in order to obtain what she wants.  She even exclaims that she is damaged and gives him a warning that damaged people are “dangerous”.  This kind of bothered me because it seems as if she has the attitude that since she is already damaged, she has no pity on others lives who she might damage herself because no matter what, people will learn to survive like she did and life will go on.  I am anxious to read how this book will proceed and how it all ends.

Lolita

This reading was somewhat kind of disturbing to read because all I could think of was how a grown man could actually be sexually attracted to very young girls between the ages of eight and fourteen.  Humbert, the narrator of this excerpt, is basically obsessed with these young girls and refers to them as “nymphets”.   Humbert believes that this obsession with young girls had started off with Annabel, which was basically his first love. 

Throughout the reading, Humbert describes some of his sexual relations he had with other girls, and it was disgusting to know that he was only attracted to young girls, and if they started to show signs of being a woman, he was no longer attracted to them.  For example, he had tried to be a normal man by marrying an older woman, Valeria.  At first he was attracted to her because of her child-like attributes, but soon grew tired of her. 

Towards the end of the reading, Humbert meets twelve-year-old Dolores, who he calls Lolita.  He had just moved to New York and needed a place to stay.  Unaware of Humbert’s ways of liking young girls, Lolita’s mother allows Humbert to stay with them, and Humbert feels extremely attracted to Lolita.  It was very disturbing reading the part where Humbert explains how he starts to tease Lolita and touch her in certain ways that would seem normal to Lolita, but aroused him. He describes reaching an orgasm while she is next to him laying her legs on his lap.  As a young girl, Lolita had no idea what Humbert was doing and it disgusted me to know that Humbert had gotten aroused by this twelve-year-old girl.  At the end of the reading, Humbert learns that Lolita will be going away to summer camp and is greatly distressed.  

Love and Limerence

In this reading, the idea of the experience of “limerence” is explained in great detail.  Limerence is described as the experience in falling in love.  Limerence is also more than just sexual attraction.  Instead of just longing for sex, limerence is the idea of wanting reciprocation, as described in the text.  Limerence is similar to the idea of love at first sight, or  “a love potion, a dart from Cupid’s bow, the enchantment cast by a sorcerer.” It is unknown why limerence sparks at a certain time with a certain, it just happens.   As described by some of the interviewees, the sudden interest in someone is almost uncontrollable and you feel an instant attraction toward that person from maybe just a simple glance or smile.  It happens so suddenly, and this limerence sneaks up on you before you even realize it.

            Further into the reading, the “LO” (limerent object) is described.  The LO is the person that is being fell in love with.  Once a person finds him or herself experiencing this idea of limerence, the LO is all they can think about.  Everything about the LO seems perfect, and their flaws are no longer relevant in your eyes.  Certain aspects of the LO interest you immediately like their hair or the way they smile or their humor.  As described in the passage,  “the characteristics of the LO’s attractive characteristics are exaggerated and unattractive characteristics given little or no attention.”  Basically the positive aspects of the LO are enhanced and their negative aspects are basically invisible. 

            Limerence is also perceived as a condition of cognitive obsession.  The LO is constantly intruding into the other person’s mind and like an obsession is it is hard to think about anything else.  The person under the experience of limerence is constantly thinking about and rehearsing their next move with the LO and repeatedly planning what they are going to do next.  The passage gives an example of this from the famous movie “Rocky” when Sylvestor Stallone rehearses what he is going to say to Adrienne, or in this case, his LO.

The Possession

This book is about a woman that is trying to move on from a relationship that she herself broke off, but once she learns that her ex has found a new lover, moving on was way harder than she could’ve imagined.  Instead of trying to move on, she is consumed by the thought of the “other woman” and wants to find out as much as she can about her.  It is normal for people to be jealous about your ex finding someone new to replace you quickly, or even feeling hurt because the person that you love seemed to move on without a care in the world.  It seemed at first that the woman was just a bit jealous of the other girl, but while reading on, I soon learned that it is something much more than just jealousy.  She had tried to find out exactly who this other woman was through her ex, but when he failed to provide her with the answers she was looking for, she turned to other resources.  She would use any bit of information she knew about the other woman and actually try to find out who she was through the Internet.  In a way she had become obsessed with this other woman as Ernaux explained, “The search for the name of the other woman became an obsession, a need to be satisfied by any means necessary” (23).   The woman had been so consumed with wanting to uncover the identity of the other woman.  Like the author explains, “I was being inhabited by a woman I had never seen” (15).  Toward the end of the book, the woman expresses that she wants to tell her ex about the feelings that she still has and that she wants him back, but of course never does so.  Eventually, it came to a point where she had to finally move on, and finding information about the other woman was no longer of any importance.  Breaking off a  relationship with someone that you dearly love is hard as it is, and finding out that your ex so quickly moved on can be even harder.

Davis Chapter 3: Specialization in Monomania

In this chapter, Davis discusses how specialization had become an obsession.  Specialization was basically when a person focuses on a particular thing or subject.  For example like we discussed in class, someone can specialize not only in cancer but also in brain cancer, and that is there specialization.  Davis feels that specialization can lead to obsession because a person specializing in one thing rather than several things could get so consumed in his work and in that one subject that eventually that is all he thinks about.  Davis gives and example of specialization as an obsession of Sir Francis Galton, the “founder of eugenics”.  Galton had been obsessed with science and it had gotten severe to the point where he would have nervous breakdowns.  The example that was really interesting to me was when Davis explained how Galton actually “decided to measure human boredom by counting the number of times a group of people fidgeted”.   Although this obsession must seem extremely crazy, many of the things Galton developed and created wouldn’t have come about if he wasn’t obsessed in the first place.

 Finally, towards the end, Davis explains how eventually obsession seemed to have taken a turn and actually seemed normal in society and had been accepted.

Chapter 2: The Emergence of Obsession

In this chapter, Davis talks about monomania and how it was originally the first diagnosis defining what we refer today to as obsession.  Several people had their own definition of monomania, but generally speaking “monomania” basically meant a disease involving a preoccupation with a certain thought or idea, and being able to think with reason, but unable to stop your train of thought.  Also, similar with the notion of partial insanity, monomania was believed to affect only one or several parts of the brain or “faculties” while the remainder of the brain was in a state of perfect health.  Davis explains that monomania had seemed to replace the “quartet” and was seen as a disease of civilization.  It had become very popular, and I was surprised that monomania was frequently used as a defense for people who had made very serious crimes like murder

Chapter 1: Origins of Obsessions

In this chapter, Davis explains in detail the origins of obsessions, and how obsession was defined many years ago. Several steps had to come before the idea of obsessions in order for the emergence of obsession to be established.   Some of these steps included the idea of obsession being a demonic possession, the idea that obsession had to deal with nerves, the idea of partial insanity, and many more steps finally leading up to obsession.

 Davis gives facts relating all the way back to the Renaissance time when people considered obsession as demonic possession.  Davis explains the idea of the demonic possession model and how people believed that the devil was the cause of a person’s obsession.  In this idea, the only way to relieve a person from their obsession is through exorcism.  After the idea of demonic possession, the next explanation of obsessions and mental illness was the nervous system.  I was amazed that people actually believed that the cause of mental illness was nerves, and that the only solution was the applications of electric shocks!

Partial insanity, during the eighteenth century, was also a topic Davis spoke about, and I could actually see the relation it had towards obsession.  As Davis explains, partial insanity meant being “strongly affected by a mental problem but also clearly aware of the symptoms…the person might be said to articulate the conditions but powerless to resist.”  I see where this relates to obsession because when a person has an obsession, they know that they have a problem, but they cannot control or stop their thoughts.   Some diseases that people believed had the quality of partial insanity were hysteria, hypochondria, vapors, and spleen.  Davis refers to these conditions as “the quartet”.  Another topic I thought to be crazy was the idea of the “organ theory”, and how people actually believed that vapors from specific organs of the body affected other organs like the brain.

Even though we may look at these concepts as completely weird and useless, these concepts and others had to happen in order for the true meaning of obsession to come about and to understand it better.

OCD: Now and Forever

In this chapter, “OCD: Now and Forever”, Davis explains how OCD changed from being one of the most rare diseases before the 1970’s, and how now it is one of the most common disorders today.  This change wasn’t a small one.  Davis points out how before only one in twenty thousand people had OCD and how it increased to three out of a hundred, and yet again increased to one in ten all in the range of just thirty years!  One of the reasons that Davis says why this disorder seemed to increase so much is because of the media exposure.  According to the media exposure theory, more people have come forward and seemed to have confessed of having some of the same symptoms or feelings that they have heard on the radio or seen on TV, about 16 percent in fact.  Also, when it comes to Y-BOCS (Yale-Brown Obsessive Compulsive Disorder Scale), many people say that this isn’t very valid for various reasons like having a “leading the witness” effect, which probably lead more people to think they have OCD when they really don’t.  Another topic Davis touches upon is how now many books and psychologists are referring to OCD as a “hidden epidemic”.  He even points out the Osborn book, “Tormenting Thoughts and Secret Rituals: The Hidden Epidemic of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder”, that we read.  Overall, OCD is a very difficult and complex disorder, and it is very difficult to determine why a person has it. 

"Rat Man"

This so far is one of the most odd and confusing cases I have yet to read about OCD!  This reading involves a case that Freud himself analyzed, and it consists of all the notes Freud wrote down about each session that he had with the “Rat Man”.   The reason for his weird name is that he was told a terrifying story of a punishment including rats digging their way into a criminal’s anus from a pot held on their buttocks, and he was tormented by this fear.  Dr. Lorenz, the “Rat Man”, had a very odd case of OCD, and had suffered from obsessions since his childhood.  From my understanding, some of his obsessions included the fear that his father might die, even though he was already dead, and that something bad would happen to the woman he admired, or that he would harm her himself.  As I read farther into the reading, Freud takes note of the many bizarre dreams the Rat Man had, many of them being sexual.  Another subject that was frequently brought up was the Rat man’s masturbation.  I had trouble relating this to everything else, but I think it was maybe a compulsion that he did in response to some of his obsessions.  What was so confusing to me was the fact that there were so many different dreams and fantasies the Rat Man had and it wasn’t in any particular order, rather he jumped around from topic to topic throughout each session.  What I find interesting is the fact that Freud was able to take everything the Rat Man said and analyze it in some way.  Based on reading Freud’s notes on this case, I know I could never make any sense to the Rat man’s odd obsessions.

Diagnosing OCD

According to the chapter Diagnosing OCD, a person diagnosed with this disorder suffers from severe obsessions and compulsions.  Both of these parts have specific characteristics that determine whether or not a person is diagnosed with this disorder or if they are just having ordinary worries or addictions.

As stated in the DSM-IV, obsessions are "recurrent and persistent thoughts that are experienced as intrusive and inappropriate and that cause marked anxiety or distress".  Four main qualities that are described in this definition describe the term obsession: intrusive, recurrent, inappropriate, and unwanted.  A thought that is intrusive is a thought that unexpectedly pops into the mind at any moment without any warnings and was never triggered by someone or something in the first place.  Because it is "intrusive", it "intrudes" the mind at any given time.  Recurrent describes a thought that never seems to go away and stay away.  A recurrent thought will always come back no matter how hard you try to rid your mind from it.  This characteristic can confuse an obsession with a phobia since they are both recurrent.  Whereas a phobia is a fear of a certain situation or item like riding on a plane or mice, an obsession is mainly centered on a thought.  Another quality of obsession is that it is unwanted.  An obsession is not in any way wanted, not even the slightest bit.  A person that has an obsession tries with everything they have to get rid of it.  Unfortunately, the more a person tries to free themselves from an obsession, the more powerful it comes back.  This quality is similar with an addiction.  The difference between an addiction and an obsession is that a person with an addiction receives some type of pleasure whether it is with a drug, gambling, or anything else.  There is no pleasure that comes from an obsession.  Finally, the last characteristic of obsession is inappropriateness.  This basically means that there is really no solid reason for a person to have a particular obsession, they just do.  These four characteristics are what make up a severe obsession.  When a person is so desperate to relieve themselves from an obsession, compulsions start coming into play.

There are two different types of compulsions, behavioral and mental.  According to Osborn, "a compulsion is a repetitive act that is clearly excessive and is performed in order to lessen the discomfort of  an obsession".  Some examples of behavioral compulsions are washing checking, checking, and hoarding.  Some people have to wash their hands over and over again throughout the day because they have an obsession with thinking that their hands are always dirty.  Others cannot fall asleep or leave the house without constantly checking to see if the light switch or the stove is completely off.  People will even live in complete cludder and hardly be able to move around in their own home because they save practically everything thinking that it would be useful one day.  Mental compulsions try to releive a person from an obsession through ideas and certain rituals like repeating a prayer constantly or having a counter-image.  A counter-image is an idea in which a person tries to imagine a scenerio to get  rid of their obsession.  Osborn describes her experience of imagining her skin being covered by a protective cream beause her obsession was the thought  of needles being stabbed into her skin.

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder is something not to be played around with.  Some situations can really harm a person not only mentally but physically.  For example, people who wash their hands constantly can really damage their hands.  Their are several questionnares that Osborn mentions to help determine whether a person has OCD like the Padua Inventory, the Maudlsey Obsessive-Compulsive Inventory, and the Leyton Obsessional Inventory .

Napoleon's Worries

The letter Napoleon wrote to his wife while he was away at war clearly showed that he was very upset because his wife addressed him as "Vous" instead of "Tu", had failed to only write him two letters in a matter of four days, and wrote very brief and short letters at that. Napoleon may have exaggerated a bit but in my opinion he was not obsessing over the fact that his wife's behavior seemed a little suspicious.  Relationships today have small arguments over the simplest reasons such as not hearing from each other in several hours or being called by your name instead of "honey" or "babe".  Considering the fact that Napoleon is at war far away and he probably misses his family very much, the fact that he got upset is understandable.  He feels that because of the lack of communication and formal language that maybe his wife is being unfaithful, and all he wants is reassurance that nothing is going on behind his back which is completely normal.