Behaviors that we do not understand often become nearly invisible—even when, in retrospect ,we see how truly strange they are.
When I was a psychiatric resident, we had a faculty member who was famous for his messy office: stacks of papers and old journals covered every chair and table as well as much of the floor. One day, as I walked past the open office door with one of my supervisors, he murmured mildly, “Odd duck.” And that was as far as anyone seemed to reflect on this peculiar state of affairs within an institution staffed by psychiatrists. Eventually, the faculty member had to be given another office in which to see patients.
Not surprisingly, the psychiatric diagnostic manual does not list “messy room” in the index. But it does mention a tantalizing symptom: inability “to discard worn-out or worthless objects even when they have no sentimental value,” It comes under the diagnosis obsessive-compulsive personality disorder，an obscure cousin of the more famous obsessive-compulsive disorder.
I was barely aware of the diagnosis. Every era has mental disorders that for cultural or scientific reasons become popular. In Freud’s day it was hysteria. Currently, depression has moved to center stage. But other ailments go relatively ignored, and this disorder was one.
It came with a list of additional symptoms that appeared to be peculiar; anxiety about spending money, excessive devotion to work to the exclusion of leisure activities, rigidity about following rules, perfectionism in doing tasks—at times to the point of interfering with finishing them.
In moderation, the symptoms seemed to fit right in with our workaholic culture—perhaps explaining the low profile of the diagnosis. Relentless work orientation and perfectionism may even be assets in rule-and detail-oriented professions like accounting or law.
But when the symptoms are too intense or pervasive, they become crippling. Beneath the seemingly adaptive behaviors lies a central disability. People with this diagnosis have enormous difficulty making decisions. They lack the internal sense of completion that most of us experience at the end of a choice or a task, eyen one as simple as throwing something out or making a purchase. In obsessive-compulsive personality disorder, this feeling occurs only after endless deliberation and revision, if at all.
The need to come up with the “correct” answer, the best purchase or the perfect proposal leads to excess rumination over each decision. It can even lead to complete paralysis. For such people, rules of all kinds are a godsend—they represent pre-made decisions. Open-ended assignments, like writing papers, are nightmares.
For such a patient or for a psychiatrist，understanding a cluster of diagnostic symptoms can be a revelation. The picture leaps out from the previously disorganized background. But undoubtedly, at times we can become too reductionistic, seeing patterns where none exist: sometimes a messy room is just a messy room.
1.Which of the following best describes people’s attitude towards the faculty member?
2.The popular mental disorder of current time, according to the author, is ______.
3.The reason why symptoms of the “obsessive-compulsive disorder” go unnoticed is that _________.
4.Rules are godsend to persons with the obsessive-compulsive personality disorder because ____________.
5.From the last paragraph we can see that the author’s view is that _________.
