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Habromania

GNC

GNC

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Joined
Aug 25, 2001
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Has anyone here ever met a habromaniac? How could you tell they had habromania? Were they a good laugh but a bit creepy with it? This must be one of the rarest psychiatric disorders and I don't entirely understand it.
 
Here is a list of manias;
http://users.tinyonline.co.uk/gswithenb ... 0of%20page

Habromania = a morbid impulse towards gaiety.
hmmm...

What do they call an obsession with the internet? Plenty of people have that affliction these days, I bet.

oh look- there it is; 'netomania'. Not to be confused with nettomania, an obsession with bargain grocery shopping.
 
Even taking morbid in a clinical sense, how can an impulse to 'gaity' be a diseased state? Does it mean at inappropriate times? Surely what behaviour is judged to be appropriate is a normative (and socially conditioned) judgement.
 
I've read it defined as "Morbid Cheerfulness", but that's two different states, if not completely opposed, at least in marked contrast to each other. I don't know how you can be morbid and cheerful at the same time. Or how that can be a mental illness.
 
What it sounds like is the rather brittle giddiness and faux high spirits you find at the manic phase of Bi-Polar Disorder. But it's neither so high-flown nor so out-of-touch-with-reality as you get with true Manic-Depressive Psychosis. Thus the former, while it can be hard to take, is regarded as a neurotic "Shadow Syndrome" of the latter.
 
That's what it sounds like to me, too. But in that case, why not substitute the first part of the word and change it from "Habromania" to "hypomania"--which is what I think it's describing? :?

It's really confusing when even the shrinks start using two different words for the same condition!

And yes, hypomania is part of a milder form of Bipolar Disorder--which is indeed a mental illness.
 
synchronicity said:
And yes, hypomania is part of a milder form of Bipolar Disorder--which is indeed a mental illness.
Click to expand...

The only quibble I'd make is that Bi-Polar Disorder itself can be very mild.

And I've come to genuinely dislike the blanket term "mental illness" because it makes absolutely no distinction between minor neuroses and major psychoses.
 
I can remember an afternoon of weird high spirits when everything seemed to provoke laughter: I had just failed a driving test!

A case of nervous energy and disappointment being diverted, I suppose. I doubt if that was really Habromania so much as a weird response to the adrenalin and the social situation, surrounded by fellow-students. It wasn't a conscious attempt at bravado or laughing the thing off.

I have read of something called church-hysteria, where solemn situations provoke an opposite reaction. There are also fits of the giggles, which overcome individuals or groups in the classroom. The use of the suffix mania suggests something rather more serious, though. :?
 
I've read it defined as "Morbid Cheerfulness", but that's two different states, if not completely opposed, at least in marked contrast to each other.
Click to expand...

morbid can have a more general meaning, i've never quite grasped its use as a medical terminology myself, but according to dictionary.com, it can also mean 'affected by, caused by, causing, or characteristic of disease.'
 
JamesWhitehead said:
I have read of something called church-hysteria, where solemn situations provoke an opposite reaction. There are also fits of the giggles, which overcome individuals or groups in the classroom. The use of the suffix mania suggests something rather more serious, though. :?
Click to expand...

You also run into this at funerals.
 
I think this condition is what you call a frozen smile (Jack Nicholsons, The Joker character). In other words someone who is creepy because they find humour in what others might find inappropriate (laughing at funerals) or worse still being 'stuck' in an emotion, so that they cannot be anything 'apparently' but happy at everything (A one note piano - in other words not someone with a sick sense of humour but someone who can't react to anything but in pseudo jollity as they don't really feel anything at all).
 
I had a friend years ago, a long-time member of the Kentucky legislature, a genuinely pleasant-featured man (he looked like Dennis the Menace's Dad) who had a built-in, constant smile which he could do nothing about. It worked wonders for him as a politician but I understand that it at least a few times got him into trouble at funerals.
 
I knew a woman with a similar affliction, years ago. She'd been a model and had had a facelift in the 1950s, when facelifts weren't quite as cunning as they are now. This left her with a fixed smirk. Went down a storm with us at mass.
 
A Real Indication

So I'm going down this street
and I'm tryin' not to smile
'Cause the street is where I'm goin'
And the curb is at the side
By the sewer
where the rain goes down
Like this girl I once knew
'Cause the sewer is so hollow
and the yell
could last forever
Like the night my girl went away
Gone off in a world filled with stuff
Lights start changin'
And there's wires in the air
And the asphalt, man,
is all around me
And I look down
and my shoes are so far away from me, man
I can't believe it
I got a real indication
of a laugh comin' on
I got a real indication
of a laugh comin' on'
That old wind
is howling like a cold steel train
Girl has left me
Not comin' back again
Got rusted bullet holes in the Dodge
And a heartburn like a solar flare
The grass by the house is dry, man,
And a horsefly
buzzes
by the big mistake in the distance man,
I see myself, I see myself start to smile
I got a real indication
of a laugh comin' on

So I'm going down this street
and I'm tryin' not to smile
'Cause the street is where I'm goin'
And the curb is at the side
By the sewer
where the rain goes down
Like this girl I once knew
'Cause the sewer is so hollow
and the yell
could last forever
Like the night my girl went away
Gone off in a world filled with stuff
Lights start changin'
And there's wires in the air
And the asphalt, man,
is all around me
And I look down
and my shoes are so far away from me, man
I can't believe it
I got a real indication
of a laugh comin' on
I got a real indication
of a laugh comin' on'


Lyrics-David Lynch
Music-Angelo Badalamenti & Thought Gang
Vocals-Angelo Badalamenti
 
I used to feel guilty, really guilty, that I don't - can't - cry at funerals.

And these have been obsequies for people that I not only genuinely loved, but continue to love.

I never brought this up to a psychologist until around three years ago.

"Tell me," he asked, "do you have a strong belief in the human survival of death?"

"It's an absolute committment," I answered. "And that's not based on faith alone, but on thousands of reports from the annals of psychic research."

"That explains it," said the Good Doctor.
 
A miscellany:

I'm surprised that nobody's yet mentioned Ray Russell's novel, and later film, MR. SARDONICUS.

Didn't the great Dr. Abraham Van Helsing come down with a bad case of nervous giggles during Lucy Westenra's funeral in DRACULA (Bram Sroker's original novel)?

There's an old DICK VAN DYKE SHOW where he's been requested by the deceased himself to perform a rubber chicken-style "comedy" eulogy at the funeral, but the widow's not amused by the idea.

Ian Brady's favorite "joke," back during those days when he and his girlfriend were still a active team, was a riddle as to how to remove dead babies from a pick-up truck full of 'em. (With a pitchfork, if you really need to know the answer.)
 
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