Word: paranoia
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Leontes, who unjustly believes himself cuckolded and proceeds to wreak his jealousy on everyone around, even defying the oracle of Delphi. Of Shakespeare's three great studies of jealousy--Leontes, Othello, and Ford--this is the most realistic. Leontes is a neurotic with high blood pressure and fits of paranoia. Whereas Othello's jealousy builds up in a steady crescendo, Leontes' bursts out in white heat at the outset and, feeding on itself, stays at the same level...
...both biographies suggest, money on a big scale becomes a kind of magic potion. Common crotchets are taken for the stigmata of genius; petty fears mushroom to paranoia. A Gulbenkian day began with setting-up exercises. Swedish massage and a bowl of yoghurt. Mr Five Per Cent was a health faddist, and for a time lived on a massive diet of carrots washed down with turnip juice. His father had lived to 106. and Gulbenkian fully expected to reach 120. To avoid dust, he sat only on leather cushions, slept on a leather mattress...
...week's end Lincoln's fear had given way to funerals; Lincoln's citizens were trying to figure out what made Chuck Starkweather kill eleven people. Psychiatrists attributed it to mild paranoia, Starkweather's friends mentioned the fact that his plans for marriage had been opposed by both families; his father guessed it was mainly a slow boy growing up too fast. Home again and locked in a special cell at the Nebraska penitentiary, Chuck himself showed signs of realizing that in the end the world had beaten him. He had been gay and insolent earlier...
...nightmare. The spectator is locked in the sinister bunker like Germany in its obsession, and the end is less an exit than a cure. Actor Skoda, for all the impacted passion of his playing, never really gets the number of the beast, but he manages to suggest both paranoia and genius, and he expounds the lesson of Nazi Germany as shockingly sometimes as if he had borne the head of the dictator through the theater on a pole...
When a beautiful woman tells of her husband's violent jealousy, the story is usually interesting. But if the husband's jealousy develops into paranoia, her story also becomes frightening...