Oh, the Awful <i> Angst </i> of It All!

The doctor’s voice slid almost to a whisper as he prefaced the diagnosis: “I don’t mean to alarm you, but. . . .”

He paused, as if further gathering himself: “I’m glad you came in when you did.”

My insides shook, gripped by a gloomy, almost neurotic, feeling of anxiety and depression--symptoms that had led me to the specialist’s office in the first place. Our family doctor had thrown in the towel a couple weeks before and had recommended that I see someone with more diplomas and certificates on his wall, more acronyms following his name.

So here I sat, my mind whirling, trying to understand exactly what he was saying. Recognizing my growing consternation, Doc asked if I wanted him to repeat, or further explain, his diagnosis. Or if I needed a glass of water. It took everything I had just to nod.

Finally catching up to my internal roller coaster, my voice at least an octave higher, I muttered: “Uh, what did you say it was called, again?”

He moved around the desk and put his hand on my shoulder; his voice dropped once again.

“ Angst ,” he said, almost breathlessly, repeating it with a lingering emphasis on the short a -- Ah - ngst .

“Is it serious?” I asked.

“Quite.”

Reeling and stuttering, I pressed on: “I, uh, mean, uh, I mean, like, is it fatal?”

He said it could be: “It depends on the strain. There is a mild variety . . . classified by the lower-case letters in its spelling and its common, but incorrect, pronunciation--angst with long a , like anxious . But the most serious cases, like what you have, I’m afraid, have a capitalized A with the whole word italicized in print-- Angst . This gloomier kind is properly pronounced with a short a .”

I asked how I had caught Angst . Did I first get the lowercase strain and then have it escalate to the full-blown, capital A, italicized debility?

“Hard to say, for sure,” he replied. “Everyone carries the lowercase kind, but in some folks, it’s dormant. In others, it occasionally surfaces as mild to moderate feelings of anxiety, dread or anguish. Angst , however, is the most severe; something existentialists describe as extreme terror about existence. They thought it was felt by everyone, but psychologists later debunked that theory. It was too late, though: The disorder was already spreading.”

My anxiety turning to impatience, I again asked the doctor how I had got it.

“I’m getting to that,” he said. “Researchers have traced the current epidemic to a film critic--now known as the Angst meister --who picked up the word while dabbling in pop psychology and inflicted it on his readers. Then other film critics started to use and misuse it. Soon the word Angst spread to critics who wrote about music and dance. I once treated an extremely sick architecture critic who had even managed to work it into his description of a building.

“Filmmakers, screenwriters, actors, musicians and dancers caught on and diligently worked to see that their works had Angst so critics would take them seriously and could use the word in their reviews. It is so pervasive now that the word has found its way into stories about government, politics--even sports.”

I was finally getting some answers, but I was still frightened and baffled. “But I don’t know any critics,” I pleaded, “at least not in the biblical sense.”

“But you told me in our initial visit that you read voraciously, watch a lot of TV and movies, and recently moved to Los Angeles,” the doctor replied. “That’s probably how you caught it. It most likely was subliminal. You didn’t truly understand Angst and just ignored it when you read articles that used the word, watched Angst -laden movies or visited a trendy Westside bistro. Or maybe you were in that building I mentioned before.”

He continued, pounding on his desk, obviously angry: “Critics, celebrities, wanna-bes and other pretentious sorts are the principal carriers; they’re immune to its more severe symptoms and don’t seem to care who gets it. The outbreak originated on the coasts, but now it seems to be moving even into the heartland. An unconfirmed case has been reported in an Iowa hog breeder, who apparently was infected by a young reporter who criticized the county 4-H fair as ‘devoid of Angst .’

“It’s high time the government and society did something about it, too; the First Amendment doesn’t protect such utter disregard. This isn’t the first time they’ve caused such an epidemic. Until the late 1980s, they were infecting a whole generation with ennui .”

I was stunned: “Were they responsible for that, too? I had that once and it damned near bored me to death. I didn’t feel better until I canceled my New Yorker subscription. Is there a cure for Angst ?”

The good doctor said it could take years, “probably until these writers and other creative folks find a new ‘pop’ condition.”

I reminded him that he had mentioned that Angst could be fatal.

“We’re not aware of any human deaths,” he said. “But investigators are pretty sure that Angst killed ‘thirtysomething’.”