Word: psychasthenia
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...mouse: his coloring was drab, and he stood scarcely 5 ft. 5 in.-a full head shorter than O'Toole.) In his performance, O'Toole catches the noble seriousness of Lawrence and his cheap theatricality, his godlike arrogance and his gibbering self-doubt; his headlong courage, girlish psychasthenia, Celtic wit, humorless egotism, compulsive chastity, sensuous pleasure in pain. But there is something he does not catch, and that something is an answer to the fundamental enigma of Lawrence, a clue to the essential nature of the beast, a glimpse of the secret spring that made him tick...
...Psychasthenia. This is the only type of neurosis which shows no physical symptoms. The victim is ridden by an obsession of which he is aware but which he cannot control; otherwise he can think clearly. Some psychasthenics cannot avoid stepping on the cracks of sidewalks or washing their hands every few minutes. Among psychasthenics are claustrophobes, who fear enclosed spaces; agoraphobes, who fear open spaces; acrophobes, who fear high places; zoophobes, who fear animals; siderodromophobes, who fear locomotives...
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