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| Hate hearing someone eat? It could be misophonia – or plain old misanthropy | Hate hearing someone eat? It could be misophonia – or plain old misanthropy |
| (about 1 month later) | |
| For some time I lived with someone who did not like the way I breathed. Apparently I do not breathe regularly; I hold it in and release it, as if I am perpetually in suspense, or on the alert for some calamity. (This seems about right.) For some time, I assumed that this was simply a building frustration with the fact that I was breathing at all: but it turns out she may well have had misophonia, a condition whose sufferers are tipped into rage by sounds like other people eating, clicking a biro, or, indeed, breathing. Researchers at Newcastle University bunged volunteers into an MRI scanner, played recordings of “trigger sounds” and watched the misophones’ brains light up in outrage. | For some time I lived with someone who did not like the way I breathed. Apparently I do not breathe regularly; I hold it in and release it, as if I am perpetually in suspense, or on the alert for some calamity. (This seems about right.) For some time, I assumed that this was simply a building frustration with the fact that I was breathing at all: but it turns out she may well have had misophonia, a condition whose sufferers are tipped into rage by sounds like other people eating, clicking a biro, or, indeed, breathing. Researchers at Newcastle University bunged volunteers into an MRI scanner, played recordings of “trigger sounds” and watched the misophones’ brains light up in outrage. |
| Well, we’ve all been there. That, though, is the problem. And although I am no scientist, or at least unable to get my hands on an MRI scanner in order to verify their results, I would suspect that the condition is more flexible than these good scientists are leading us to believe. Indeed, it was in order to quash scientific scepticism about the condition’s existence that the experiment was performed in the first place. | Well, we’ve all been there. That, though, is the problem. And although I am no scientist, or at least unable to get my hands on an MRI scanner in order to verify their results, I would suspect that the condition is more flexible than these good scientists are leading us to believe. Indeed, it was in order to quash scientific scepticism about the condition’s existence that the experiment was performed in the first place. |
| One does not have to be misophonic, for instance, to be distressed by the sound of someone playing music on their phone | One does not have to be misophonic, for instance, to be distressed by the sound of someone playing music on their phone |
| You can understand such scepticism. After all, one of the great offences known to humanity is to eat crisps on a train. Who has not listened to the crunching of a fellow passenger without wanting to commit violence? One has to suffer in silence. Not even in the silent carriage, we feel, can we express our indignation. The imagination, in particular, is overexcited and revolted. One imagines the crisps in another’s mouth (this may be a factor: they should be in our mouth, dammit!), being reduced to a moist paste by the teeth ... ugh. One experiences all the disdain for the body that the early church fathers had. (Particularly Tertullian, who saw the body as nothing more than a skin covering for a long, snaking, excrement-filled bowel.) Things got a lot worse when they invented properly crispy crisps. When I was a lad, we only had brands which were already soft enough to be sucked rather than crunched. | You can understand such scepticism. After all, one of the great offences known to humanity is to eat crisps on a train. Who has not listened to the crunching of a fellow passenger without wanting to commit violence? One has to suffer in silence. Not even in the silent carriage, we feel, can we express our indignation. The imagination, in particular, is overexcited and revolted. One imagines the crisps in another’s mouth (this may be a factor: they should be in our mouth, dammit!), being reduced to a moist paste by the teeth ... ugh. One experiences all the disdain for the body that the early church fathers had. (Particularly Tertullian, who saw the body as nothing more than a skin covering for a long, snaking, excrement-filled bowel.) Things got a lot worse when they invented properly crispy crisps. When I was a lad, we only had brands which were already soft enough to be sucked rather than crunched. |
| The condition is, I venture, at the very cusp of science and psychology. It is both a scientific and a philosophical problem. It is a flexible condition, highly dependent on mood, set and setting. One does not have to be misophonic, for instance, to be distressed by the sound of someone playing music on their phone on public transport: in fact, there should be extensive research on why there are some people who are not distressed by it. (My hunch about such superhuman tolerance is that is it a combination of genetic hard-wiring and a couple of drinks.) | The condition is, I venture, at the very cusp of science and psychology. It is both a scientific and a philosophical problem. It is a flexible condition, highly dependent on mood, set and setting. One does not have to be misophonic, for instance, to be distressed by the sound of someone playing music on their phone on public transport: in fact, there should be extensive research on why there are some people who are not distressed by it. (My hunch about such superhuman tolerance is that is it a combination of genetic hard-wiring and a couple of drinks.) |
| Consider true misophones. Do these people refuse to go to restaurants, cook for or accept dinner invitations from friends and lovers, or go on planes? How the cinema must irk them. It irks me, sitting next to someone scoffing away. Unless they are my children. Or unless I am scoffing. Correction: if I am eating popcorn in the cinema, as is my right, this doesn’t mean the person sitting next to me, or even several seats away, can do the same. It doesn’t work like that. | Consider true misophones. Do these people refuse to go to restaurants, cook for or accept dinner invitations from friends and lovers, or go on planes? How the cinema must irk them. It irks me, sitting next to someone scoffing away. Unless they are my children. Or unless I am scoffing. Correction: if I am eating popcorn in the cinema, as is my right, this doesn’t mean the person sitting next to me, or even several seats away, can do the same. It doesn’t work like that. |
| The principle is similar to the definition of an alcoholic as supplied by Dylan Thomas: someone you don’t like who drinks as much as you do. Which leads me nicely on to my next observation: that my own misophonia is strongly influenced by whether I am suffering from the over-indulgence of the night before. There is a particular kind of hangover that brings this on: it is not so much a heightened sensitivity to loud noises, as a huge increase in irritation to absolutely everything, including any noise whatsoever. This can include the voicing of certain political opinions, requests for tea or other favours, and, indeed, the sound of other people eating. | The principle is similar to the definition of an alcoholic as supplied by Dylan Thomas: someone you don’t like who drinks as much as you do. Which leads me nicely on to my next observation: that my own misophonia is strongly influenced by whether I am suffering from the over-indulgence of the night before. There is a particular kind of hangover that brings this on: it is not so much a heightened sensitivity to loud noises, as a huge increase in irritation to absolutely everything, including any noise whatsoever. This can include the voicing of certain political opinions, requests for tea or other favours, and, indeed, the sound of other people eating. |
| At this point misophonia becomes not so much a physiological condition as an existential one: a profound exasperation with the world and everyone in it, and the aural evidence of someone else stinking up the place by not considering our delicate sensibilities becomes too much to bear. Let’s face it: there are times when this seems like the only reasonable response. | At this point misophonia becomes not so much a physiological condition as an existential one: a profound exasperation with the world and everyone in it, and the aural evidence of someone else stinking up the place by not considering our delicate sensibilities becomes too much to bear. Let’s face it: there are times when this seems like the only reasonable response. |
| • Nicholas Lezard is a literary critic for the Guardian | • Nicholas Lezard is a literary critic for the Guardian |
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