Monomania Therapist...

It had been a month since the incident. Before finishing his morning coffee at work that day, and after a quick check of the site, he found himself summarily locked out and ejected from the team blog he oh so loved. He was a lone blogger once more, banished to the attic. Why had he so insisted on the importance of that post?! Its "democracy-masked" political content didn't necessarily resonate with him. It was just a cut and paste from one of those mass emails he occasionally received. But he had treacherously crossed the line on the agreed upon rules. For what? The whistle was blown. He was offsides. Posting had become a numbers game to him, a weekly notching of the belt, a future graph with a trend line. His ugly, unfair and eventually public attack on the site's self-appointed editor was indefensible in its outrage and tone. The editor's intentions were nothing but good here and had always been in the best interest of the site. It was he who was in the wrong. He apologized - perhaps a bit too excessively - to the editor and the spiritual founders of the journal in a later email when he got home that night. And yes, he did receive an email back less than a day later: "OK you have groveled enough. I accept your apology." This was quickly followed by another email with a blogger.com link inviting him to rejoin as a team member. But he remained deeply hesitant, troubled by the personal implications of his unhealthy obsession for the site, his fixation on it, his...MONOMANIA!

In psychiatry, monomania is a type of paranoia in which the patient has only one idea or type of ideas. Emotional monomania is that in which the patient is obsessed with only one emotion or several related to it. Intellectual monomania is that which is related to only one kind of delirious idea or ideas. The difference between monomania and passion can be very subtle and difficult to recognize.

The 19th century writer Edgar Allan Poe would often write tales in which the narrator and protagonist would suffer some form of monomania, becoming excessively fixated on an idea, an urge, an object, or a person, often to the point of mental and/or physical destruction.

Many of the tales in Poe's "The Black Cat and other stories" deal explicitly with monomaniacal behavior:

1. The Black Cat (a man fears his cat and kills it, adopts another cat, kills his wife, and is then punished by the cat)
2. The Oval Portrait (about a painter who is obsessed with painting his wife)
3. Berenice (about a madman who wants to marry his sick cousin only for her beautiful teeth)
4. The Red Death (a prince fears a terrible disease but finally gets ill from the red death and dies)

Before he could accept the generous invitation to rejoin the team blog, he needed to sort things out and take stock of himself. He felt he needed professional help first. He needed a therapist of some sort. He needed a...MONOMANIA THERAPIST!

DR. W.R. THORNTON
OK. This is our third session. Let's see. Looking over my notes here. Our last session. OK. We agreed that your feelings of proprietorship towards the site were misplaced, and that you were a real whiney ass about having your post removed. We then talked about your working on getting more balance in your life. And...and I know your sensitivity on this point, we agreed it wasn't exactly that you needed to get a life. When we ended you said you were determined to say YES to trying new things, and we wrote a few of those down here. So, how's the...the glass blowing, knitting and, umm, T-shirt screenprinting going?

CJM
Fine. Did you get the beer can cozy I knitted you? I sent it regular mail.

DR. W.R. THORNTON
Uh, uh, yes. Yes I did. Yeah, that'll really help keep those English beers I don't drink at normal room temperature if the furnace ever breaks down in winter I suppose. It's over there on the bookshelf next to the glass blown vase you sent the week before. Just curious, was the vase broken when you sent it?

CJM
Yes.

DR. W.R. THORNTON
Hmmm. No need to send me a T-shirt. I...I...I really only wear button downs anyway. Were there any other new things you pursued? I have here that you also thought you might want to try jumping out of a moving car...I mean, parachute out of a plane. Have you done...

CJM
I think I'm ready to go back in.

DR. W.R. THORNTON
Go back...really?! But, but...your MONOMANIA! Are you sure you're still not too fixated on the site? What about your excessive posting, all that hyperlinking, your...

CJM
I'm ready. It's been a month. Haven't had the site bookmarked in over three weeks. Unsubscribed from that Feedblitz thing. Haven't read a post in 23 days. I've been balancing my life more. OK, OK, I'll say it, getting a life! And I'm doing more than just what we wrote down last time. I've been spending less time on the computer and giving my family the time and attention they deserve. I've reduced my television viewing considerably: cut out those talking head cable shows and C-Span entirely. I'm eating more foods high in fiber content, like humble pie for instance. Stopped hanging my coat on that stationary bike in the living room and started actually using it three times a week...OK, OK, twice a week. Found time to finish that borrowed copy of "An Inconvenient Truth." Thanks Al. I even read the front and back of the book jacket of my college friend's scholarly tome. But most importantly, I haven't once googled for a Keith Richards photo. Not once! I really think I'm cured.

DR. W.R. THORNTON
You've still got twenty minutes left in your session.

CJM
Hmmm. Not enough time for you to figure out that dream of mine where I show up at school naked and never go swimming...I mean, I mean...my friend's dream. Well look, I am a little bit nervous about rejoining and posting again. So much time has passed. I'm worried everybody still thinks I'm an asshole.

DR. W.R. THORNTON
Don't worry. They all still do.

CJM
They...they DO?!!

DR. W.R. THORNTON
Maybe. Nothing you can do to change that anyway. Look, you gotta ease back into the thing. Just drop in a post quietly in the dead of night. See what happens. And remember: NO P-L-TI-S and NO R-L-GI-N! Give it two days, then go back and drop in that Bob Dylan video spoof you found on YouTube. Maybe that'll make 'em laugh and forget why they're mad at you. Most of those guys just love Dylan, like I love Dixie beer with my grits Sunday mornings.

CJM
OK, OK, you've given me the courage doctor. I'm going to beam back up...I mean, go back in.

DR. W.R. THORNTON
G-dspeed to you. Oh, and one more thing.

CJM
Yes?

DR. W.R. THORNTON
Watch out for ----------. He's still got you in the crosshairs.

CJM
I'm sorry, I didn't catch that. Watch out for who?

DR. W.R. THORNTON
Time's up. Our session's over.

He left Thornton's office and grabbed a slice of pineapple pizza at that takeout joint, the one in between the P&G and O'Brien's, that Guinness-serving pub he liked with the autographed Angela Lansbury photo on the wall above a Beatles-only jukebox. While focusing on a Lasik eye surgery ad on the subway ride home he vowed that this would be the night, his weekly horoscope warning be damned. He would go in quietly, after midnight. At 12:07 AM he rejoined the blog, then logged onto the site to post for the first time in a long time. His heart raced. There it was. The "Create new post" tab. He clicked on it. That blank white space again, ready for words. He started typing. Furiously. The keyboard sounded like a symphony. It seemed like an hour flew by but it had really only been a few minutes. He stopped, looked up and read his post over. No typos. Good. His heart wasn't racing anymore. He felt strangely serene. He wasn't sure if ending posts with a little visual sizzle was still de rigeur. Better safe than sorry. He decided to show a little leg.