If you’re awaiting clarity on the concept of hypochondria in Caroline Crampton’s book, prepare for disappointment. Instead of defining it, Crampton employs the exploration of the indeterminable, leading us through her kaleidoscopic world, where the polar spectrum of wellness and illness occupies her consciousness incessantly.
Crampton perceives hypochondria as a creation sparked by the ambiguity present in contemporary medicine. Bound with the consistent uncertainty of science and medicine, hypochondria continues its journey from its initial usage in the fifth century BC, where it represented the upper region of our belly, right through to current times.
In a beautifully crafted attempt to capture the spirit of the condition, she refers to it as “a longing for the very body that one inhabits”. This representation takes a heart-rending form when Crampton unfolds the birth of her own hypochondria from a battle with Hodgkin’s lymphoma at 17. As a consequence of her brutal half-decade long treatments leading to remission, she has become perpetually alert to “every prickle and scratch”.
By subtly connecting her journey with those of numerous intellectual giants and fictional personas with an unseen bond, she renders a holistic view of her malady. She brings to light Joan Didion’s life filled with magical prophecies following the demise of her beloved spouse, Woody Allen’s satirised neurotic characters’ fear of the unknown lies between being healthy and fatally ill, John Donne’s grief on confronting his impending death amidst recurring fever and Charles Darwin’s obsessive daily routines designed to suppress his anxiety about his deteriorating health.
Niamh Mulvey once supposed that authors belonged to a distinguished intellectual category that she felt she did not possess.
Crampton swiftly uncovers the paradoxical nature of her relationship with her ailment, switching quickly between drawing attention to its sheer ridiculousness, a feature which facilitates harsh satire, and demonstrating her deep-rooted respect for its fundamental existential origins. She posits that at its essence, hypochondria is merely a manifestation of death anxiety. She deliberates if it’s necessary or normal for everyone to dread mortality, intimating that unawareness about health and lack of medical knowledge could stem from an assuring falsehood: the belief that we will unequivocally exist tomorrow, despite the absence of any such absolute guarantee.
Upon comprehending the possibility of a tumour growing undetected for several years, and given her personal likelihood of having an unnoticed solid mass in her neck, Crampton feels a harsh disenchantment peel away her illusion.
Her unyielding scrutiny of hypochondria’s development gives rise to intriguing societal insights, as she contrasts the glaring resemblances in the behaviours of ancient and present-day charlatans. Both prey upon what she views as a hypochondriac’s urgent desire for certainty and a comprehensible story. According to Crampton, this craving is what feeds into current-day quackery, and the seemingly legitimate wellness industry.
Yet, by hinting that hypochondria fuels the burgeoning wellness industry, Crampton risks diluting a concept already hard to define to the point of making it meaningless, potentially transforming it into a generic term for anxiety. Nevertheless, a magnanimous reader will likely overlook her inclination to merge hypochondria with poorly defined chronic diseases, and her unintentional reinforcement of the outdated separation of “mind” and “body”, considering the impressive range and depth of her thought.
Crampton’s scrutiny extends beyond her personal journey and even beyond the portrayal of hypochondria as an evolving, age-old phenomenon, to examine what hypochondria unveils about the progression of scientific and medical understanding broadly.
The way hypochondria has transformed throughout the ages, from a purely physical condition originating in the abdomen to a functioning psychological disorder, is noteworthy. As studies probe the complex interaction between the microbiota, gut and brain and attempt to define and manage mental illnesses through biomarkers, Crampton senses that “the body is returning”, which could signify a “reversion to the very commencement of hypochondria”.
Haunted by the image of an immense pendulum symbolising hypochondria, she challenges our societal perception of scientific evolution as an unwavering journey towards a predetermined objective. As Crampton traces the transformation of hypochondria through various intellectual viewpoints that strove to demystify it, she illustrates that our advancements in medicine could paradoxically bring us back close to our initial point of departure. Somehow, the emergence of a new diagnostic name such as “disorder of illness symptoms” or “disease anxiety disorder”, coupled with the severity of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual Fifth Edition (DSM-5), seems to protect us from the recurring nature of progress.
Beginning and culminating the book as a hypochondriac, Crampton presents the reader with a snapshot of the significant struggle against her own perfectionism to conclude without a tidy narrative resolution, without an “instant of total catharsis”. In a way that fittingly encapsulates the actuality of hypochondria, she uncovers that a satisfactory conclusion is still forthcoming.