ANHEDONIA

A new word entered my vocabulary recently: anhedonia. Only the word is new, however. Not the concept.

 An article in the October 21st Science section of the NY Times, entitled “Joy Seems Dead. There’s a Word for That,” by Christina Caron, describes anhedonia as a condition that prevents a person from enjoying things, even things that would usually make him or her happy. This person feels no desire to seek out experiences that might create happiness as the steps in that process seem too difficult and overwhelming.

 Often connected to depression, but not always, anhedonia can easily go undetected for years as it is a quiet affliction. While short periods of it can be normal, the inability to experience pleasure for long stretches of time can be serious. On occasion, anhedonia is part of some form of mental illness, such as schizophrenia or PTSD.

 In my novella The Whale Surfaces, the teenage protagonist Marcia Gold accompanies a group of girlfriends from school on a shopping trip. The following section describes what she feels while in a department store dressing room:

It seemed to be going on forever. Marcia was sitting on the floor of her fitting room, staring into the mirror, looking at her pallid face, her brown hair clustering in messy waves, frizzy from the rain, her deadened expression. What had happened, she wondered. She’d been excited about this day, but now something had changed inside her. Then she looked over at the clothing she had hung up. Jeans, of course. And tops in blue and green and red and black. She turned away. It suddenly meant nothing. The clothes were hideous, garish. Her hands began to tremble. She wanted to run out of there, dump all those ridiculous clothes in the nearest trash can, scream into the rain.

At an ice cream parlor with the girls afterwards, she feels the following:

Sitting in the booth with the girls, tasting from one another’s selections and laughing over the flavors, Marcia looked out the window at the steady drizzle and saw herself standing out there, looking in. Here was this happy group of friendly, nice girls—all good students—having a fun day together. Did she look like the others? Could this observer tell that she—this one girl in the group—was not enjoying herself, that she was apparently incapable of enjoying ordinary pleasures of life that everyone else relishes? Why was she different? Why was she pretending to be present when she was actually suffering, aching to get away from them, to erase the entire shopping experience?

Back home, she says to her mother: “I’m not like other people. I can’t have fun.”

I guess I knew something about this condition when I wrote the book without knowing it has a name. I am familiar with those feelings, and I gave my protagonist a slew of psychological problems. This one is related to her other issues, issues she will eventually have to acknowledge and work on.

Unable to have fun on a shopping and ice cream day with friends, Marcia is confused and thinks something is terribly wrong with her. I wish my Marcia, my creation, could know that she is not alone, not the only one dealing with this confounding condition. That is what I wish for anyone—whether child, teenager, or adult—struggling with any type of mental disorder. Understanding that others face the same or similar problems is such an important step toward mental health. The next step is recognizing the need to get help.

If there is any message in my two novels about Marcia Gold, that is it.