Experience has shown that no time in life precludes the acquirement of new knowledge and new habits by one who thinks it worth while to make the attempt. The elderly person will be surprised at his progress if he will bring to bear upon a new subject a mind free from doubts of its usefulness, doubts of his own ability, worry lest he is wasting valuable time, regrets for the past and plans for the future.
It is not always possible to say just where useful habit merges into obsession. A certain individual, we will say, invariably puts on the left shoe before the right. This is a useful habit, fixed by constant repetition, useful because it relieves the brain of conscious effort. But suppose he decides some morning to put on the right shoe before the left; this new order so offends his sense of the fitness of things that he finds it hard to proceed; if he perseveres, his feet feel wrong to him; the discomfort grows until finally he is impelled to remove the shoes and replace them in the usual order. In this case an act which started as a useful habit has been replaced by an obsession.
Suppose, again, a person obsessed by the fear of poison is prevented from washing his hands before eating. He sits down, perhaps, fully intending to proceed as if nothing had happened, but the thought occurs to him that he may have touched something poisonous, though his reason tells him this is most improbable. He reviews the events of the day and can find no suggestion of poison; still the thought of poison obtrudes itself, and he finds it impossible to put anything which he touches into his mouth. He next wonders if he has not already put something into his mouth. This thought produces a mental panic, the blood mounts to his head, he becomes incapable of coherent thought or speech, and the task of finishing his dinner would now be beyond his power even if he had not lost all taste for it.
Such illustrations of obsession in daily life, by no means rare, could be multiplied indefinitely, and may be perhaps better appreciated than the text-book illustration of the man who neglected to flick off with his whip a certain stone from the top of a wall, and who could not sleep until he had returned to the spot and performed the act.
Suppose a man has always worn high boots and is accustomed to a feeling of warmth about the ankles. The desire for warm ankles may finally so dominate him that he not only cannot wear low shoes in mid-summer, but he cannot wear slippers, even in a warm room; and finally, perhaps, finds that he must wear woollen socks to bed. By this time the desire for a certain sensation is in a fair way to become an obsession. When you assure him that many wear low shoes throughout the winter, he asks if their ankles really feel warm. That is not the question. The question is, can one accustom himself to the ankles feeling cool, just as he accustoms himself to his face feeling cool. If he can, he has conquered a sensory obsession, and has made a step toward fitting himself to meet more serious vicissitudes with equanimity.
Similar instances can be adduced in all realms of sensation, both general and special. One person cannot bear the light, and wears blue glasses; another cannot breathe out-door air, and wears a respirator; another cannot bear to see a person rock or to hear a person drum.
If a family or circle of friends is so constituted that some are obsessed to do certain things and others are obsessed not to stand them the foundation is laid for a degree of irritability inconsistent with mental health. Mrs. X. simply cannot stand hearing Mr. X. tap the floor, and if he continues, her discomfort becomes acute; the sound so dominates her that she can think of nothing else and can accomplish nothing until the sound is stopped. She can stand anything but that. The daughter, Miss X., hardly hears the tapping, and is irritated and impatient to the last degree on account of her mother's "silly" notion. What Miss X. simply cannot bear is hearing her brother continually clear his throat, and if he does not stop she must leave the room or "go wild." Unfortunately, meantime, Mr. X. is so obsessed to tap the floor that he cannot follow his task without it, and Master X. must clear his throat every few moments with a peculiar note because he "has catarrh."
Here we have a common starting-point for family discomfort, and here we have a clue to the advice of the physician who advises isolation as a step toward the cure of the member of the family who first breaks down, not simply under the stress of occupation, but of occupation plus the wear and tear of minor but constant sources of irritation.
It is said that the victim of jiu jitsu, by breaking one hold, places himself in the greater danger from the next. Similarly, after having conquered a few obsessions, one is overwhelmed with the obsession to set every one straight. Soukanhoff was right in warning the obsessive to beware of pedantry.