> figure/ground becomes figure/figure/figure; the 'footstep' no
> longer a marker of time but a duration (however small), the mnemonic
> resonances of which ripple through the activities which it bounds or
> interrupts...
> here the signification-form becomes established
> through the course of navigation. no longer "this is...", rather: "this
> AND this AND this AND..."
I refer to one of the texts that Keller and I included, by Isaac Meyer
Marks ("Fears, Phobias, and Rituals," 1987). Marks cites two cases
(described by Cammer, 1976) of obsessive counting rituals.
Case 1: "I have to touch the venetian blinds 4 times, then all the
objets d'art in the vestibule 5 times. That prevents harm to my older
brother. He comes home safely, and proves that my ritual works… If I
don't go through with it, I start to suffer."
Case 2: "I count the number of letters in the words spoken to me in any
conversation, and I can tell you instantaneously the exact total of
letters up to 350 or so. When you say 'Good morning, John,' I make an
immediate mental note that this has 15 letters. When you ask me 'does
your counting obsession interfere with your conversation with people' I
answered 'not really,' but before I answered I noticed that your
question contained 64 letters. I also must count the number of letters
on every street sign. That does interfere sometimes, especially when I
am in a hurry to get somewhere in the car and there are lots of signs in
the streets. If there are 3 numbers in a house or store window I must
multiply them. For example, if I see 275 on a building, I multiply 2 x
7 x 5 very rapidly. It equals 70."
This act of counting brings to mind a beat: when you count t + h
+ e + n + u + m + b + e + r + o + f
letters in this sentence you create a kind of beat-sequence, a kind of
scansioning. And interestingly, in some cases, it's combined with
touch:
THIS and THIS and THIS… or THAT and THAT and THAT and THAT
It becomes performative. It's not just a number, but a beat-sequence
combined with signification and materiality. Beat/sign/material object
intertwined, brought into being with a touch, like the Good Witch
touching air with the magic wand - DING! - and erupting an object into
being.
Marks then writes about compulsive slowness. "Repeated obsessions and
rituals and the need for orderliness slow sufferers in the time they
take to complete everyday activities such as dressing or undressing."
Eighty percent of the cases are men. "Careful inquiry usually reveals
that even when no visible rituals are present to explain the slowness,
there are nevertheless mental checks or obsessions that do so, or the
need to follow a meticulous preset order without repetition." These
subjects may take hours to do things that most people can accomplish in
one or two minutes. If they are told how many hours they have taken to
get dressed or cross the road, they are often surprised, because their
estimation of objective time is normal.
This suggests that through ritualistic behavior, one's actions can occur
along a drastically reduced or elongated timeline, which is subjectively
the same as objective time. It suggests a field of operations (and a
space of contestation) in the realm of ritual, habit, routine.
However this habitualizing is something that occurs below awareness; it
isn't necessarily consciously induced, or produced through overt
external prompting. "Compulsive slowness does not affect automatic
behavior such as driving a car or playing fast games in which one is
continually responding to ongoing cues. Patients who take hours to
finish dressing or undressing are nevertheless able to play a splendid
game of badminton, squash, or table tennis." And these subjects
promptly execute commands to get up, sit down, or cross the room. As
such extreme slowness seems to affect self-initiated actions that are
not objectively prompted. "When prompted and paced, sufferers speed up
considerably without showing much anxiety, only to slow down more when
prompting and pacing is withdrawn, even if it has been given for months
over hundreds of hours and faded out very gradually over further months;
tape-recorded prompts from the therapist that the patient plays when
alone have not been a great help." This makes the disorder extremely
difficult to treat. Marks cites many cases in which the final outcomes
are poor. He contrasts these results to those of the cases involving
the "average ritualizer" (which I guess would be more like you and me),
who "not only improves rapidly to treatment by exposure with response
prevention but also maintains his or her gains after the therapist
withdraws from the scene."
Marks cites one of his cases, a man who had been out of work for 8 years
because of slowness. To be on time for his appointments, the man had to
shave the previous day. Bathing took 8 hours. Crossing the road took
several hours. It took a long time simply to turn on a light switch.
However, when the man drove his car, he high-tailed it down the road
well above the speed limit. He would speed up when supervised - when he
was prompted, paced - but lapsed as soon as he was left on his own. He
"believed his behavior was normal given the risks involved."