recovering economist
To – Harramph – is to clear your throat noisily.
Yeah, I had to look it up too.
Turns out I do it too (when I’m nervous).
Who knew? 🤣
I sat quietly holding his hand while he ran through his repertoire of tics—jerking, trembling, murmuring. Trying to think of something to engage his attention, I finally said, “I’m writing a book, Dad.” He harrumphed, emphatically—one of the peculiar ways he liked to communicate.
So from what I can gather, a Psychogenic Syndrome is an illness that is brought on by stress.
Think Christ sweating blood in the garden.
Teenagers fainting over Elvis.
Or, having a nervous breakdown after getting kicked out of graduate school.
I think we easily forget how brutal shock and stress can be.
Warren Buffet may live forever in this regard. The man is worth billions and sits around reading all day.
I bet he sleeps like a snuggly little baby.
Sometimes the news so shocks the mind that the brain suffers an electrical short. This phenomenon is known as a “psychogenic” syndrome, a severe version of the swoon some experience after hearing bad news. When my mother, alone at college, heard that her father, who had championed her right to an education in rural 1960s India, had finally died after a long hospitalization, she had a psychogenic seizure—which continued until she returned home to attend the funeral.
-Paul Kalanithi, When Breath Becomes Air (Amazon)