My interpretation of The Northern Caves is that Salby and several of the other characters have Tourettic obsessive-compulsive disorder. I say this because I have Tourettic obsessive-compulsive disorder, and it feels like a definite wrongness in material arrangements of things.
TOCD is a weird condition kind of halfway between classic Tourettes and classic OCD. Tourettes is marked by tics, most famously shouting expletives but more commonly moving your body, touching things, or performing odd combinations of motions. These are not quite involuntary actions; patients can control them if they absolutely have to. Rather than the action being primitive, an overwhelmingly strong urge to perform the action that comes from nowhere seems to be primitive; the urge is so strong that the patient will almost always act upon it even though it makes no objective sense.
OCD is usually marked by obsessive thoughts that you have to perform rituals to banish. TOCD is sort of in between these two. Patients perform complex compulsions and rituals not because they have obsessions per se, but because they have this feeling that something is wrong until they perform them. The IOCDF describes the condition as:
Unlike true OCD, in which cognitions (obsessions) lead to an emotional (affective) state and typically fear of the content of the obsession, TOCD sufferers report discomforting sensory experiences such as physical discomfort in body parts including hands, eyes, stomach, etc., or a diffuse psychological distress or tension for example “in my head” or “in my mind.” These localized or general discomforts in the TOCD sufferer tend to be relieved by varieties of motor responses, including “evening things up,” doing things to certain numbers, positioning items, touching and retouching things, doing things symmetrically, and so on, typically with the requirement that these actions are performed “just so” or “just right” in order to alleviate the somatic/psychological discomfort. Unlike reports of subjective experiences associated with classic forms of OCD, individuals describe a relative absence of fear or concerns about catastrophic consequences occurring should the required actions not be performed. Instead, there are likely to be concerns that the discomfort might be intolerable or unending if the actions were left undone or done poorly.
I’ve sometimes described this to people as “having an extra sense”. That is, we have a sense of cold that gives us a specific uncomfortable feeling if an ice cube is touching us, which is resolved by moving the ice cube away. We have a sense of pain that gives us specific uncomfortable feeling if we sit on a sharp object, which is relieved by standing up. I have a sense of TOCD that gives me a specific uncomfortable feeling in certain apparently unrelated situations, which is relieved by certain compulsions.
For example, if I’m in bed at night, and my foot touches the edge of the bed, I get the uncomfortable feeling until I extend my leg out as far as it can go over the bed, then bring it back in again without touching the edge. Or if I breathe on one hand, I get the uncomfortable feeling until I breathe equally hard on the other. If my fingernail touches paper, I get the uncomfortable feeling until I have scratched some kind of smooth or shiny object.
It’s hard to explain this uncomfortable sensation. It’s like but unlike pain, in the same way intense heat or crushing pressure is like but unlike pain. But Salby’s term “definite wrongness” is pretty spot-on.
My main difference from Salby is that, thank goodness, my feelings are almost always related to my body. There are a few exceptions: when I was younger, I used to have to have the shutters on the windows in my room at a certain angle (not necessarily the same for each shutter). Certain doors that always had to be closed. A garbage can that always had to be touching my door. If my parents got weirded out and wouldn’t let me maintain these things, well, I wish I’d had the phrase “definite wrongness in the arrangement of material objects” to describe it to them.
But if I imagine the feelings I have about my own body suddenly extended to encompass the entire world without losing any intensity, I imagine ending up pretty much like Salby. I could absolutely imagine being William Chen and writing several pages on everything that was wrong with a glass of water.
(Actually, I could probably write several pages on everything that has been wrong with my body position in the past fifteen minutes as I’ve been writing this post, except that it’s gotten to the point where I adjust 99% subconsciously the same way other people would fidget and adjust to uncomfortable positions.)
The description of Salby and Chen disagreeing about the content of Mundum also sounds like TOCD - although there are a few common patterns, no two people have exactly the same tics or compulsions.
Sleeplessness and Adderall both exacerbate most anxiety disorders, presumably including TOCD. I’ve never had Adderall, but my OCD becomes much worse when I’m low on sleep. In the book, two of the main characters go thirty hours without sleep, take some Adderall, and develop a bad case of Salbianism. I think they had latent TOCD. Maybe something about the Chesscourt books attracted people with latent TOCD for some reason and the stress of the Caves reading has brought it out. Or possibly Caves is some sort of infohazard that installs TOCD into the brain of anyone who reads and understands it.
In support of my thesis, @nostalgebraist has said that he has (had?) Tourette’s disorder, and I bet this consciously or subconsciously inspired his thoughts about Mundum.
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