Take our Addiction Test

Find a therapist to overcome addiction

"World sickness" is a vivid characterization to understand chronic or acute suffering.

People whose attitudes are out of sync with the world may experience less serious forms of world sickness.

People who believe the world is inherently bad are susceptible to more devastating forms of world sickness.

William James in The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902) describes a world sickness that can destroy joy, meaning, and value. I find this one of the best and most vivid ways to portray the different forms of acute and chronic suffering and anguish people experience. The richness of this concept, with vivid descriptions of its five phases, supplements the clinical language of some mental disorders including addiction. Overly clinical language may not be up to the task of capturing many people’s experiences of suffering. James’s world sickness gives voice to the ways suffering morphs and expands in a person’s life.

Out of sync with the external world

James divides the people who are most susceptible to world sickness into two types. The first type suffers from a maladjustment to the world. A person’s inner attitudes are out of alignment with the external world.

Phase one: Joy chilled. A person experiences joy chilled when he no longer feels happiness or joy in particular activities that had brought him pleasure previously. The shine is off. When something previously enjoyable no longer ignites a spark in a person, he may feel some confusion. A person may feel there is........

© Psychology Today