Anankastikos (In Defence of OCPD)

When I hang my washing out on the line, I like to ensure three things: 

(i) all items of a similar type are kept together (socks with socks, pants with pants, etc.) 

(ii) all items are hung according to size (the largest things first) 

(iii) all items are hung inside out, facing the same way and the same way up.

In addition, I like to make sure all of the pegs are wooden and of the same type; or, if using the plastic pegs, that they are all the same colour (preferably blue). 

According to a full-figured friend of mine who likes to boast of having a degree in psychology, this meticulous attention to detail and concern with aesthetics isn't a noble attempt to impose order upon a chaotic world and give style to an otherwise drab and dreary domestic chore; rather, it's a sign that, like Sheldon Cooper, the fictional theoretical physicist played so brilliantly by Jim Parsons in the CBS television series The Big Bang Theory, I suffer from a mental health issue known as obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). 

Technically, she means obsessive-compulsive personality disorder (OCPD), which is clinically distinct from the above, though I hardly dare correct her for fear that she regards this as further proof of the condition; a condition which, in my view, is neither undesirable nor unhealthy, but is rather egosyntonic and characteristic of all great artists, dandies, philosophers, and others concerned with achieving a level of perfection.      

My friend might find pleasure in doing her laundry in a carefree manner - recklessly mixing the colours with the whites, hanging things in a higgledy-piggledy fashion, folding items in an incorrect manner - but she'll never know how to give birth to a dancing star or understand why it is that nothing tastes as good as skinny feels.  

        

On Dance as a Method of Becoming-Bird

 Anorexic Ballerina by Mexxkid 

deviantart.com 

What, ultimately, is dance, if not a method of becoming-bird; that is to say, a way in which the human being learns how to experience the incredible sensation of taking flight? This is why the connection between the ballerina and the swan is more than a delightful metaphor and why ballet is more than merely a form of entertainment. 

Spectators are right to be amazed by what they see on the stage, but if they press on beyond their astonishment at what young bodies can do, they'll discover that within classical dance is a profound experimental and ascetic practice, or what Amélie Nothomb describes as a fearsome ideal - one capable of ravaging the flesh and acting upon the mind like a drug.

Nothomb is right to understand ballet as a becoming-bird of the human being (although mistaken to think of this in the molar terms of species transformation). She's right also to stress the elements of violence and delirium, discipline and madness. Which is why it's not entirely outrageous to describe ballet training as a form of child abuse, involving psychological terror and physical maltreatment; a regime in which injuries are routinely ignored, eating disorders discreetly encouraged, and young dancers placed under constant pressure to push themselves beyond their own limits in order to develop wings.

As Nietzsche says, if you would teach young girls to fly in defiance of the spirit of gravity, you must first hollow out their bones and remove all obstacles to their becoming-bird: it is better to live in freedom with nothing to eat, than un-free and over-stuffed. 

However - crucially - Nietzsche also counsels taking things slowly: She who wants to learn to fly one day must first learn to stand and to walk and to run and climb ... and for these things you need strong legs and a healthy body. You can be thinspired, but anorexia is not the answer and there's no virtue in physical deprivation (no salvation through starvation).