Myself am Hell

  I've been thinking a lot recently about how exposure to horrible events in real life might affect people with OCD. Not a day goes by at the moment when I'm not focused on the Israeli genocide of the Palestinian people. I don't want to take my eyes away from this. I don't want to be quiet about it on social media or just focus on the things in my life that I can control. A livestreamed genocide is something that affects every decent human being everywhere in the world. The fact that the government of my country has actively supported Israel's war crimes makes this feel even more urgent for me. Of course I wonder if thinking and reading and tweeting about the worst crimes imaginable, perpetrated by Israel on a daily basis, will make me more prone to OCD episodes. I don't know if there's a correlation between frequency of OCD obsessions and daily attention to troubling and awful world events. But it's certainly something that's been occupying my thoug...

  All quotations from William Faulkner's 'The Sound and The Fury' are from the Norton Critical Edition of the text (1994). All page references to quotations from critics also refer to this edition unless otherwise stated. For my latest OCD-themed reading of a great literary text, I have turned to one of my all-time favourite pieces of writing. This is a fascinating text for anyone who has experienced periods of mental unwellness. I first encountered William Faulkner's 'The Sound and the Fury' in the year 2006. This was during a period of relative mental stability for me in my twenties. Having been hospitalised with OCD and depression in 2003, during my Bachelor's degree, I was about to start my Master's in English literature. Faulkner's novel is preoccupied with time and the ways in which characters in the book try at different points to arrest, overcome, and recover time. In the throes of unchecked OCD and the performance of so many compulsions thro...

  'King Lear' can appear to be a play of numbers: Lear and his hundred nights, and his one Fool, and his three daughters. But isn't it more the play in which Shakespeare demonstrates most keenly his expertise in the ways of the human mind? In the revelations that strike Lear like lightning bolts after he has rashly divided his kingdom between daughters Goneril and Regan, we see one of a succession of rebirths that the character goes through. Amidst his hyperbolic response to his daughters' ingratitude, Lear is aware of a strain upon his mental wellbeing: 'O Fool! I shall go mad' (II.IV.288). Lear knows that the unexpected and self-inflicted strain he has placed upon himself has the potential to induce a mental breakdown in a man whose will has always held absolute sway in life until this moment of abdication. I feel that 'King Lear' is the culmination of Shakespeare's exploration of how all human beings' lives are subject to fluctuations in our m...

  I recently watched a film from December 2017 by Karol Jalochowski entitled 'Couldn't Care Less. Cormac McCarthy in conversation with David Krakauer.' Not only was it fascinating to sit in on an exchange between two such minds, but the direction of their conversation chimed, and made connections, with the direction of many of my current thoughts about OCD. Having read most of McCarthy's novels, but never having heard him speak on such a range of subjects at such length, I found it extraordinary to hear this great author conversing with David Krakauer (president of the Santa Fe Institute and Professor of Complex Systems) about everything from Frank Lloyd Wright, to Oppenheimer, to the workings of the unconscious mind. It is so gratifying that one of the greatest of all American fiction writers had such an inquiring, open, and flexible mind. In my own writing and thinking I have increasingly tried to embrace the broadest possible approach to learning that I can. Over the...

  One of the clearest and most keenly felt ways in which OCD tries to direct and limit our lives is through avoidance. OCD will tell us that we can be safe, or in many cases we can keep others safe, if we avoid certain people or situations. Taken to its conclusion, OCD will push us to follow this course of action until we only stay at home or in our bedroom because this is the only way to guarantee our own safety and the safety of others. The all-consuming nature of OCD can be seen in the fact that such extreme measures taken in the interests of placating and satisfying OCD will do no such things. Nothing is ever enough to satisfy OCD's selfish greed for attention and control. By acting in the way that OCD tells us to act, we only dignify it with an authority it does not merit; we act upon OCD's lies as if they were truthful. I have been reading a book called Break Free from OCD by Dr Fiona Challacombe, Dr Victoria Bream Oldfield, and Professor Paul Salkovskis. The book contain...

  In 2015's brilliant Mad Max Fury Road, the post-apocalyptic dictator Immortan Joe rules over the wasteland through the spurious quasi-religion of the 'Cult of the V8'. His authority is based on the myth of his immortality (hence the moniker 'Immortan') as well as control of the only source of drinkable water. Mythology is the basis for this very twisted future society in which 'milkers' provide 'Mother's milk' for the chosen few and 'breeders' are kept as slaves to provide healthy offspring for Immortan Joe. The movie shows us a patriarchal society in which machines are venerated and women treated as property. The Mad Max movies exist in their own universe (the latest instalment, Furiosa will be released next year), and are not intended to be social commentaries on existing societies or ideologies. However, Fury Road took over thirty years to come to fruition and in that time director George Miller and his team created a world far more ...