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