Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: obsession

  • “Something monomanical”: obsession and the unity of effect

    Jack RosserHerefordshire, England, United Kingdom The concept of monomania first gathered popularity in France at the beginning of the nineteenth century; the term “referred to a type of mental disorder in which a person would have fixed, and often grandiose, ideas that did not correspond to reality.”1 These ideas would be “confined to a single…

  • The elimination game

    Kelley YuanPhiladelphia, Pennsylvania, USA Xylophone ribs and sunken cheeks. A body desperate for food paired with a mind determined to starve. Here lies anorexia nervosa’s cruel paradox, of a body betrayed and a brain allowing it to waste away. The protest anorexic patients put up against eating, even as they lose hair and muscle, speaks…