In pathological cases the inability to choose becomes so marked as to make it impossible for the patient to choose any line of conduct. "To do or not to do" extends into every relationship and every situation. The patient cannot choose as to his dress or his meals; cannot decide whether to stay in or go out, finds it difficult to choose to cross the street or to open a door; is thrown into a pendulum of yea and nay about speaking, etc. This psychasthenic state, the folie du doute of the French, is accompanied by fear, restlessness and an oppressive feeling of unreality. The records of every neurologist contain many such cases, most of whom recover, but a few go on to severe incurable mental disease.
I pass on, without regard for logic or completeness, to a personality type that we may call the anhedonic or simpler a restless, not easily satisfied, easily disgusted group. Some of these are cyclothymic, over-emotional, often monothymic but I am discussing them from the standpoint of their satisfaction with life and its experiences. The ordinary label of "finicky" well expresses the type, but of course it neglects the basic psychology. This I have discussed elsewhere in this book and will here describe two cases, one a congenital type and the other acquired.
T. was born dissatisfied, so his mother avers. As a baby he was "a difficult feeding case" because the very slightest cause, the least change in the milk, upset him, a fact attested to by vigorous crying. Babies have a variability in desire and satisfaction quite as much as their elders.
Apparently T. thrived, despite his start, for as a child he was sturdy looking. Nevertheless, in toys, games, treats, etc., he was hard to please and easy to displease. He turned up his nose if a toy were not perfection, and he had to have his food prepared according to specification or his appetite vanished.
Moreover, he had a very limited range of things he liked, and as time went on he extended that list but little. He was very choice in his clothes--not at all a regular boy--and quite disgusted with dirt and disorder. "A little old maid" somebody called him, having in mind of course the traditional maiden lady.
As T. grew his capacity for pleasure-feeling did not increase. On the contrary his attention to the details necessary for his pleasure made of him one of those finicky connoisseurs who, though never really pleased with anything, get a sort of pleasure in pointing out the crudity of other people's tastes and pleasures. This attitude of superiority is the one compensation the finicky have, and since they are often fluent of speech and tend to write and lecture, they impose their notions of good and bad upon others, who seek to escape being "common." In T.'s case his attitude toward food, clothes, companions, sports and work created a tense disharmony in his family, and one of his brothers labeled him "The Kill-joy." Secretly envious of other people's simple enjoyment, T. made strenuous efforts at times to overcome his repugnances and to enlarge the scope of his pleasures, but because this forfeited for him the superiority he had reached as a very "refined" person, he never persisted in this process.
When he was twenty he found himself the theater of many conflicts. He was weary of life, yet lusted for experiences that his hyperestheticism would not permit him to take. Sex seemed too crude, and the girls of his age were "silly." Yet their lure and his own internal tensions dragged him to one place after another, hoping that he would find the perfect woman, able to understand him. At last he did find her, so he thought, in the person of a young woman of twenty-five, a consummate mistress of the arts of femininity. She sized him up at once, played on his vanity, extolled his fine tastes and never exposed a single crudity of her own, until she brought him to the point where his passion for her, his conviction that he had found "the perfect woman," led him to propose marriage. Then came the blow: she laughed at him, called him a silly boy, gave him a lecture as to what constituted a fine man, extolling crudity, vigor and virility as the prime virtues.
His world was shattered, and its shadowy pleasures gone. At first his parents were inclined to believe that this was a good lesson, that T. would learn from this adventure and become a more hardy young man. Instead he became sleepless, restless and without desire for food or drink; he shunned men and women alike; he stared hollow-eyed at a world full of noise and motion but without meaning or joy. Deep was this anhedonia, and all exhortations to "brace up and be a man" failed. Diversion, travel and all the usual medical consultations and attentions did no good.
One day he announced to his family that he was all right, that soon he would be well. He seemed cheerful, talked with some animation and dressed himself with unusual care. His parents rejoiced, but one of his brothers did not like what he called a "gleam" in T.'s eyes. So he followed him, in a skillful manner.
T. walked around for a while, then found his way to a bridge crossing a swift deep river. He took off his coat, but before he could mount the rail his watchful brother was upon him. He made no struggle and consented to come back home. In his coat was a letter stating that he saw no use in living, that he was not taking his life because of disappointment in love but because he felt that he never could enjoy what others found pleasurable, and that he was an anomaly, a curse to himself and others.
He was sent away to a sanatorium but left it and came home. He began to eat and drink again, found he could sleep at night (the sleepless night had filled him with despair) and soon swung back into his "normal" state. He passes throughout life a spectator of the joys of others, wondering why his grip on content and desire is so slender, but also he thinks himself of a finer clay than his fellows.
