2009同濟考博英語閱讀

Behaviors that we do not understand often become nearly invisible — even when, in retrospect, we see how truly strange they are.
When I was a psychiatric resident, we had a faculty member who was famous for his messy office: stacks of papers and old journals covered every chair and table as well as much of the floor. One day, as I walked past the open office door with one of my supervisors, he murmured mildly, “Odd duck.” And that was as far as anyone seemed to reflect on this peculiar state of affairs within an institution staffed by psychiatrists. Eventually, the faculty member had to be given another office in which to see patients.
Not surprisingly, the psychiatric diagnostic manual does not list “messy room” in the index. But it does mention a symptom: inability “to discard worn-out or worthless objects even when they have no sentimental value.” It comes under the diagnosis obsessive-compulsive personality disorder, an obscure cousin of the more famous obsessive-compulsive disorder.