Neurosis
People may become obsessed by dirt and engage in fantasies and compulsive behaviour about it, such as making and eating mud pies. The source of such thinking may be genetic, as the emotion of disgust is common and a location for it in the brain has been proposed.
Read more about this topic: Dirt
Famous quotes containing the word neurosis:
“Devout believers are safeguarded in a high degree against the risk of certain neurotic illnesses; their acceptance of the universal neurosis spares them the task of constructing a personal one.”
—Sigmund Freud (1856–1939)
“Every neurosis is a primitive form of legal proceeding in which the accused carries on the prosecution, imposes judgment and executes the sentence: all to the end that someone else should not perform the same process.”
—Lionel Trilling (1905–1975)
“We have created an industrial order geared to automatism, where feeble-mindedness, native or acquired, is necessary for docile productivity in the factory; and where a pervasive neurosis is the final gift of the meaningless life that issues forth at the other end.”
—Lewis Mumford (1895–1990)