is an obsessive compulsive aspect in present day culture; it has been creeping in since AIDS, and is now exacerbated by COVID-19. I am particularly susceptible to this. When I was twelve I became obsessed with the idea that I hated God. Yes. I couldn’t get it out of my head. Our family was not particularly religious — we were 'Congregationalist Protestants' from New England (I tried many times to get my parents to explain this to me, and they always said: ‘it has something to do with the congregation being involved in church matters'). I could be obsessed with any idea and go running to my mother with that fear. I would receive absolution from her, as from a priest. It was incredibly calming to know that she would always be there for me and always solve my problems; this became an issue later as I grew up increasingly dependent on her, as my fears and obsessions increased. By the time I was 18 the obsession was with homosexuality. I was plagued with various evil thoughts; I went to a psychiatrist. His name Dr. Gordon Tisdall. I so remember him — he was a very odd man indeed — in his own way very much like the therapist in Miracle on 34th Street who fiddled so much with his eyebrow. Well Dr. Gordon W. Tisdall (was there a ‘W’ in there?) had a shock of long, greasy hair that often dangled coyly over his forehead, and he was always flicking it away. There was something very Jack Nicholson about him, I remember him having Jack Nicholson’s face, and oily smile. He wore wrinkled, ill-fitting suits and coached me in heterosexuality “Do you get erections when you dance with a girl?” I said I did. “That’s a good thing, then isn’t it?” I said I presumed it was. “You want that, then?” It went on like that until he had convinced me that I was heterosexual. The kicker was “You don’t want to be ‘have it done to you’ do you? You want to be the one who ‘does it’ don’t you?” Never having had it 'done to me’ — at that point — the prospect was somewhat intimidating, so I agreed with him. Besides, it made my fear go away. I don’t blame Dr. Gordon W. Tisdall, I’m sure he was doing his best in 1972 to make me healthy under the medical rubric of the time. I have up until now been able to control recurring instances of obsessiveness, having been released — by one of my therapists — from this cycle of confession and absolution, learning that it was tied to my mother’s need for me to be co-dependent on her. But seeing this tendency repeat itself in present day society, in a pathological way, makes me very nervous. I would call it the 'It’s Certainly Possible' tendency.' “It’s certainly possible, that if I walked out the door I might get hit by a truck, or an airplane might fall from the sky and kill me.” That sort of thing. You may substitute pretty much anything for what comes after ‘it’s certainly possible that’… in the above phrase. One can see how easily this obsession might be triggered by COVID-19. I have many friends who will not see me — or apparently anybody — because of the possibility that COVID-19 might be passed on to them, or through them, to an ailing relative. Of course I am not denying that possibility. But what must be remembered is this truism: anything is possible. By that I mean that though we might imagine any number of things might happen, that doesn’t mean we should live our lives in fear of such things, or else we might not ever leave the house. Sounds simple, doesn’t it? Perhaps the AIDS connection will bring this all home (as these days we are obsessed with victimhood and oppression). So when AIDS first appeared there was extensive homophobia everywhere, in fact the illness was about homophobia, as no one seemed to care about the victims (unlike with COVID-19 where everyone cares about them). However people did care very much about the horrible, evil, murderous, lecherous, homosexuals who were spreading AIDS willy-nilly -- and with aplomb. In the deep south there was a much publicized court case where three small children were exiled from their school as they were diagnoised as haemophiliac with HIV. The townsfolk -- pitchforks in hand -- crusaded against these innocents -- though they had been reassured over and over again by medical authorities that the 3 siblings could attend school without causing danger to other children. The terrified and enraged hill-folk relentlessly insisted that -- 'There is a still a possibility — I mean doctor, is there not a remote possibility that my children could catch AIDS from these children?” At which point the very scientific doctor would say “Of course there is the remotest possibility…” “Well if there is any possibility at all, I wish to protect my children.” And who could argue with that? The point of this is that when society becomes obsessive compulsive we all become paralysed. But worse than that there are those (like me) — who have some sort of mental illness (most much more extreme than I) who will never rid themselves of nagging doubts that may plague their lives forever. Descartes called nagging doubt a ‘genius malignus' and banished it with: ‘I think, therefore I am.’ It’s comforting that reason helped him; for most of us it will not do the trick. I have many friends who, are or were, mentally ill (one of them committed suicide in November) and I worry about them, especially my friend who is still alive, but obsessive compulsive. I had to stop seeing him and calling him years ago because he would inevitably break down in tears and tell me how little I cared, reminding me that his problems were all my fault; I would try and remind him that I was calling because I cared. He couldn’t leave the house without touching doorknobs 20 times -- and that sort of thing — but he was also one of the kindest, wittiest souls I have ever met. I miss him terribly. His main obsession was death; he regularly lost his will to live in the face of death ('Do you think the spirit lives on? Will I?'). This made him suicidal. As he had a serious chronic physical condition he was quite capable of pulling the plug on his own life, so to speak, at will, and he often tried to. I hope none of us will do so now. For we are not all Descartes, and unfortunately it is the nagging doubts that may kill us, way before we are touched by COVID-19.
