obsession – medhum.org

Obsession and “The Yellow Wallpaper”

Rudy Malcom — Fri, 29 May 2026 13:11:04 +0000

First published in 1892, “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman depicts a postpartum woman whose husband, a physician, prescribes a rest cure for her so-called “nervous depression,” confining her to a nursery. The narrator’s increasing fixation on the room’s titular wallpaper reflects her descent into psychosis, culminating in her belief that a woman is trapped behind the wallpaper—and, ultimately, that she herself is that woman.

What if the short story were told from the man’s point of view? Obsession—the micro-budget horror film that has quickly become one of the year’s biggest box-office successes—feels, in some ways, like an answer to that question.

Directed by Curry Barker, Obsession follows Bear (played by Michael Johnston), who acquires a supernatural toy that grants his wish for his co-worker and childhood friend, Nikki (Inde Navarrette), to love him more than anyone else in the world. Nikki’s mind and body are thereby effectively hijacked, echoing the woman’s loss of agency in “The Yellow Wallpaper.” Unlike Gilman’s short story, however, Obsession places us in the perspective of the controlling figure, forcing us to confront not only the horror of victimization but that of possessive desire itself.

Bear is initially presented sympathetically: as a lonely, shy, awkward music store employee with an unrequited crush. We might relate to his desperation for connection; after all, he seems as gentle as, well, a teddy bear. While bears are also predators, the character does not see himself as a villain—and because we spend time inside his mindset, neither do we. Even as Nikki begins to behave erratically, we believe that Bear deserves a chance at romance and that he can control the situation. More troubling, we believe that he can control Nikki.

Unlike “The Yellow Wallpaper,” in which we inhabit the woman’s mental breakdown, Obsession mostly foregrounds Bear’s fear and guilt, obscuring Nikki’s pain and suffering—at first. Hoping to alter his wish, he calls the toy’s customer support line and hears Nikki screaming in agony on the other end. He returns home to find her frozen in place, covered in excrement and vomit; later, she mutilates her own face with a broken bottle. Eventually, while she sleeps, the voice of her former self briefly resurfaces and begs him to kill her. But Bear refuses, asking, “What’s so bad about being with me?” His desire to be loved has become inseparable from his willingness to erase Nikki’s freedom. (Her surname, “Freeman,” feels heavy-handed.) The realization that we have centered Bear’s distress over the damage he has inflicted is powerfully uncomfortable.

Gilman’s short story concludes with the protagonist rubbing against the wallpaper and declaring, “I’ve got out at last… in spite of you,” causing her husband to faint as she continues circling the room, liberated through madness. By the end of Obsession, Bear is similarly inert, but Nikki is lucid and seemingly still trapped—that is, left to grapple with the carnage unleashed by the obsessive version of herself that Bear created.

Medicine is no longer the locus of patriarchal control it was when Gilman wrote “The Yellow Wallpaper,” but it still carries traces of gendered authority. Barker’s Obsession critiques the insidious logic of modern “nice guy” entitlement; believing he deserves Nikki’s love, Bear prescribes not a rest cure but a “love cure” that reveals how ordinary longing and self-pity can become coercive.

By aligning our sympathies with the perpetrator before exposing the full cost of his desire, the film tests our complicity and highlights the peril of love that demands possession.

Web image from Capstone Pictures.

Bibliophobia by Sarah Chihaya

Guy Glass — Tue, 30 Sep 2025 18:11:35 +0000

As Bibliophobia begins, author Sarah Chihaya has had a “nervous breakdown” and is in a hospital. Although she attempted suicide three times between the ages of 10 to 18, her depression has been more or less under control as an adult. But now she has been warned she will lose her job as a professor of literature if she does not produce an academic book, and the deadline has passed. She cannot take it anymore.

There is nothing to read on the psych unit but a bulletin board listing the daily activities and some magazines. This makes Chihaya think about her relationship to books, which is a complex one. She muses that “it is every writer’s fear that our books will be the death of us” (p. 11) and humorously writes about how she once had a bookshelf that was so wobbly she worried it would topple over on her. However, the real damage that books inflict may be insidious. The author first began to read as an escape from her unhappy childhood, but she fears she now “love[s] books to a dangerous degree” (p. 20). They have become her life to the extent that she does not know if she “would be anyone at all” (p.12) without them. A feature of her depression is that she has completely lost interest in reading. She half-seriously coins the diagnosis “bibliophobia” to describe her condition. It will take just the right book to cure her, and when she finds it, she begins to read again, and to heal.

Over the course of Bibliophobia Chihaya tells us about the books that have been of vital importance to her, many of which she associates with relationships or with stages in her life. Eventually, she reads the DSM about her own psychiatric diagnosis, and she reads books that other people have written about their depression. Working with a therapist, she realizes she needs to move on, and she lets go of her academic career. By the end of Bibliophobia we learn that Chihaya has finally written a book, but it is not the one she was expecting to write. It is Bibliophobia.

Bibliophobia is an unusual hybrid of a book that is part literary criticism part memoir. The author has been influenced by numerous mental health memoirs including recent celebrated works by Donald Antrim, Esmé Weijun Wang, and George Scialabba.

The first chapter, the subsequent emotional journey of the author, and her conclusions all captured my attention. I must confess that much of the rest of this book interested me less for the simple reason that I had not read any of the books the author discusses in detail. I do not even think we have the same taste in literature. However, this may not prove to be a stumbling block to potential readers who are fans of Toni Morrison, Anne Carson or Anne of Green Gables, or who just love reading about books.

According to the American Psychiatric Association, stigma around mental health is common in Asian American communities. One praiseworthy attribute of Bibliophilia is how it calls attention to the challenges that these groups experience in accessing care. Chihaya, was raised by a Japanese father and a Japanese Canadian mother who “did not believe in the concept of mental health; everyone was either fine or just complaining” (p. 49). Growing up with the message that depression is “not for the children of immigrants [but] something that happen[s] to white people in independent films” (p. 7) it goes without saying that Chihaya cannot bring her symptoms to her parents’ attention. Filled with shame, it takes her many years until she can no longer ignore them. Fortunately, Chihaya has given us a book filled with insights that one hopes will inspire others to seek help.

Bibliophobia
Sarah Chihaya
Random House, New York, 2025, 214 pages

References:
https://www.psychiatry.org/psychiatrists/diversity/education/asian-american-patients
Web image from Wikicommons.

Ward No. 6 by Anton Chekhov

Jack Coulehan — Tue, 11 Mar 2025 14:40:22 +0000

Dr. Adrey Yefimych Ragin has for many years been the superintendent of a provincial town hospital. Initially, he was energetic and enthusiastic. He made hospital rounds every day, worked long hours in the clinic, and tried to keep up as well as he could with the latest medical developments, but as time went on, he became less interested and engaged in his work, which he considers “palpable futility.” None of it makes any difference. The hospital is poorly equipped and out-of-date because of social forces beyond his control. Ragin has developed the philosophy that, since “dying (is) the normal and legitimate end of us all,” there is no point in trying to cure patients or alleviate suffering. The endeavor is futile. While he accurately observes deficiencies in the hospital and in the surrounding society, he does nothing to try to remedy them. Instead, he withdraws to his apartment and spends his time reading.

At one point Ragin accidentally visits Ward #6, the mental ward, where he encounters Ivan Gromov, a brilliant patient, and strikes up a conversation with him. Gromov, who carries a diagnosis of paranoia, loves life passionately. His passion attracts Ragin, whose sensibilities are blunted by the emotional numbness from which many physicians suffer. Ragin is attracted to Gromov like a moth to a candle. He begins to visit Ward 6 daily to debate with Gromov. Since the other doctors never visit Ward 6, this behavior is considered very peculiar.

Ragin yearns to feel something, anything, even to experience suffering, rather than to remain suspended in his emotionless cocoon. He develops an obsession that only suffering can redeem him. This obsession makes him even more dysfunctional, a situation which allows a junior doctor to have him fired as hospital director and, ultimately, admitted to Ward #6 as mentally ill. Once Ragin has become a patient, a “nobody,” the ward orderly hits him, thereby giving him the opportunity to suffer. Shortly thereafter, he has a stroke and dies.

Enormous demands and poor working conditions contribute to Ragin’s predicament, but Chekhov suggests that Ragin’s character is also deficient. Something is missing. He experiences a sense of futility and numbness. Is this an inevitable consequence of medical practice? Or is he particularly vulnerable to burnout? The deeper theme in “Ward No. 6” is Ragin’s failure to live an authentic life, to discover a sense of wholeness and meaning in his existence. It is possible that Ragin’s early enthusiasm for hospital practice disguised the fact that he never came to terms with his own needs and values.

Lady With Lapdog and Other Stories
Anton Chekhov
David Magarshack (Ed.)
London, Penguin Books, 1964.

A previous version of this review was published in the NYU Literature, Arts, and Medicine Database (Litmed).

obsession – medhum.org

Obsession and “The Yellow Wallpaper”

Bibliophobia by Sarah Chihaya

Ward No. 6 by Anton Chekhov

Reviews of Chekhov’s Stories

Cold Eye, Warm Heart: Medicine and Anton Chekhov

An Awkward Business by Anton Chekhov

The Grasshopper by Anton Chekhov

A Doctor’s Visit by Anton Chekhov

Ward No. 6 by Anton Chekhov

Ionych by Anton Chekhov

A Nervous Breakdown by Anton Chekhov

Enemies by Anton Chekhov