Anjana Ahuja: Evolutionary roots of an urge to bite in a sporting competition

If the sound of cricket is the thwack of leather upon willow, is the footballing equivalent the crunch of enamel upon scapula? On Tuesday evening, during a World Cup group match, Uruguayan striker Luis Suárez appeared to sink his teeth into the shoulder of Italian defender Giorgio Chiellini.

While others seemed lost for words, former England footballer Ian Wright offered the pithiest punditry: “I feel sorry for [Suárez] because he’s obviously not in control of something . . . he needs help.” Having considered incriminating footage of Chiellini’s bruised shoulder, plus two previous offences of snacking on opponents, the sport’s world governing body has dished out a nine-match international ban, a four- month ban on all football and a fine of SFr100,000. He will not even be allowed to enter a stadium.

Suarez’s toothsome savagery appears to be almost primal behaviour of a kind more often associated with wayward toddlers than millionaire sportsmen. Inexplicable, uncontrollable urges live on the dark side of human nature. While Suárez’s bizarre urge to bite emerges only occasionally, apparently in response to extreme frustration on the pitch, some people are dogged by strange urges during every waking hour. In the case of obsessive-compulsive disorder , a compulsion emerges in ugly tandem with an obsession. An obsession with germs, for example, can lead to a compulsion to wash hands. Some sufferers hoard.

Keeping hold of stuff and avoiding excessive dirt may have given our ancestors a survival advantage; for this reason, some scientists speculate that OCD results when these brain circuits devoted to survival tip into overdrive. About one in 100 people has OCD proper – we are talking about mental illness here, not quirky neuroticism – but the true incidence is suspected to be at least double that because many are too ashamed to confess to a fragile mind.

Of course, not all thoughts become obsessions. The average person is said to have about 4,000 thoughts a day, and it is normal to harbour some that are ridiculous, irrational and scurrilous. The rich and famous are as afflicted as anyone else by odd thoughts and peculiar impulses. Winston Churchill avoided travelling by ship for fear he would jump into the sea. He had the good sense to disclose it to his doctor: “I’ve no desire to quit this world but thoughts, desperate thoughts, come into my head.”

Hans Christian Andersen, the spinner of fairy tales, was terrified by the prospect of being buried alive; his taphephobia (“fear of the grave”) led to him placing a note at his bedside each night explaining that he was not dead but asleep. Alfred Nobel, inventor of dynamite whose fortune was used to start the eponymous prizes, dreaded the same, leaving instructions that, on his death, his veins should be emptied and his corpse cremated.

All of these cases, plus the Ethiopian schoolgirl who felt compelled to consume a mud wall of her house, are documented in The Man Who Couldn’t Stop, a moving book on OCD by David Adam. For the past 20 years, he has grappled with an irrational fear of being infected with HIV. He describes the all-consuming grip of a compulsive urge as having “nowhere to hide and nothing to reason with. To resist a compulsion with willpower alone is to hold back an avalanche by melting the snow with a candle.”

Mr Adam eventually sought help after becoming a father and realising he was in danger of infecting his daughter with his obsession. Bill Brenner, a technology writer and author of The OCD Diaries blog, once told Forbes magazine, the mental condition “is kind of like a dark versus light power. When you are able to manage its darker elements, the drive it gives you can let you accomplish big things.”

Whatever the machinations of the Suárez brain, it has orchestrated great things. He is a goal conjuror of extraordinary talent, and one of the most celebrated players in club football. He is also one of the richest: Liverpool pay him a reported £200,000 a week.

Suárez does not normally go around biting people but, when under extreme pressure, he appears to struggle against a “darker element”. Unless he learns to restrain it, he will not be able to freely exercise the urge for which he is most admired: scoring goals.



Anjana Ahuja


Fonte: FT