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A monomaniac is a sick person whose mentality is perfectly healthy in all respects but one; he has a single flaw, clearly localized. At times, for example, he has an unreasonable and absurd desire to drink or steal or use abusive language; but all his other acts and all his other thoughts are strictly correct.
Emile Durkheim
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Interpretation

What this quote means

A monomaniac has a healthy mindset except for one irrational obsession or flaw.

In this quote, Emile Durkheim explores the concept of monomania, where an individual exhibits sound reasoning and behavior in every aspect of life except for a singular obsession. This condition highlights how a solitary flaw can dominate one's actions and thoughts, demonstrating the complexity of human psychology and the fine line between sanity and irrationality.

Themes

MonomaniaObsessionPsychologyBehaviorRationality

In practice

Example use cases

During a psychology lecture, this quote can illustrate the concept of focused obsessions.

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If religion has given birth to all that is essential in society, it is because the idea of society is the soul of religion.
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A person is not merely a single subject distinguished from all the others. It is especially a being to which is attributed a relative autonomy in relation to the environment with which it is most immediately in contact.
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The roles of art, morality, religion, political faith, science itself are not to repair organic exhaustion nor to provide sound functioning of the organs. All this supraphysical life is built and expanded not because of the demands of the cosmic environment but because of the demands of the social environment.
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A society whose members are united by the fact that they think in the same way in regard to the sacred world and its relations with the profane world, and by the fact that they translate these common ideas into common practices, is what is called a Church. In all history, we do not find a single religion without a Church.
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