Desire and obsession are motivational emotions that can lead to both good and bad things. They can lead to lead to more time and effort being spent on a specific topic which leads to a solution that would not have been found otherwise. However, they can also lead to a waste in time, trying to prove something that simply cannot be proven or does not exist. In extreme cases, can one’s desire to believe they are right, and their obsession to be right, lead the human mind to create an alternate reality for that person in which they are right as a coping mechanism?

Within Devils Bait by Leslie Jamison, one is introduced to Morgellons disease. A disease where people feel and can see foreign objects rising up and out of their skin. These objects are claimed to be microscopic and cause intense itching of the skin by the people who suffer from the disease. The itching leads to extreme scarring and disfigurement of the body areas affected. Each diseased person has their own abstract cure for the disease, but no cure for the disease seems to last for long. However, Morgellons disease is not credited as a real disease, but rather an irrational phobia of parasites, by the medical community. This leads to a group of Morgellons patients gathering at a conference where they are not outcast by the people around them, but instead welcomed by other people suffering from the same thing. Each interaction Jamison has with a patient reiterates the idea that the patient feels outcast by society because of their condition and that the things coming out of their skin is reality for them, not a figment of their imagination.

While reading this essay, one questions why each patient is so set on their beliefs if the medical community has already agreed that no such thing is happening to them. Nor, is there outside proof that the disease is anything more than a phobia. Also, the fact that no cases of such a disease are recorded before 2001. Are the patients so obsessed with finding the things under their skin so much so that their minds create it for them? Then begs the question: does the mind do this as a coping mechanism so that one’s desires are fulfilled because the contrary would lead to an endless pursuit of something non-existent?

Works Cited:

Jamison, Leslie. “Devils Bait.” The Empathy Exams 27-56