Thursday, August 16, 2012

Hypochrondria in the age of Google and Osama

The New Yorker nails the essence of the malady of imagined maladies with this book review.

"For example, my therapist tells me that to worry unceasingly about getting cancer is as irrational as worrying about getting hit by a bus on Flatbush Avenue. In fact, I am terrified of getting hit by a bus on Flatbush Avenue, and I think he is the madman for being so cavalier on the subject. Has he been out there recently? Belling says that hypochondria is 'always ironic,' by which she means that, despite all its convolutions, hypochondria is always right. You will get sick and die. The question is only when and how. The bus is coming."

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