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Hi P.

You own a business, right? How big is it? What does it do? How long have you been at it?

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If you’re looking for a truly articulate analysis of ADD and the damage it can do, may I recommend James Trilling’s article, My Father and the Weak-Eyed Devils, in the March 1999 edition of The American Scholar. It completely open my eyes.

The article created a stir when it was published, because Trilling—the son of famous New York critic Lionel Trilling—is not a mental health professional. Many thought it was inappropriate for a prestigious journal to publish an article about ADD by someone lacking the appropriate professional credentials. Still, he spoke to my/our condition with tremendous eloquence. For example, his definition of ADD, as I recall: “a neurological disorder of the moral will.”

Here’s a short extract…

“Attention deficit disorder is a congeries of symptoms, to all appearances unrelated and sometimes contradictory. If there is a linking theme, it is the inability to maintain a productive level of concentration (“focus”) through the normal range of daily activities. Lack of focus can show itself as a failure to do the right things or to keep from doing the wrong things. The symptoms are almost as diverse as the demands of life itself: hyperactivity, but also lethargy and daydreaming; procrastination, but also rushing into situations without thinking about rules and consequences; unwanted shifts of attention, as when a conversation overheard across the room suddenly drowns out everything else; unprovoked or disproportionate outbursts of temper; inability to plan ahead, stick to a task, or keep track of time; insensitivity to other people’s unspoken needs; high-risk and thrill-seeking behavior; and obsessive cravings that are no sooner satisfied than they give way to others just as intense. The list goes on, and it is easy to see why many people see the individual symptoms as no more than weaknesses of character, and “attention deficit disorder” as a product of our collective self-indulgence, invented to disguise our failure to discipline ourselves and our children.

Most specialists agree that the medical understanding of ADD began in 1902. That is when George F. Still, a London pediatrician and medical historian, gave three lectures (published in The Lancet of that year) on what he called a “morbid defect of moral control” in children. Faced with a range of crippling disorders, from simple inability to concentrate to “stealing, lying, vicious [and] spiteful acts,” Still was able to see that these apparently disparate symptoms flowed from a single source. He recognized that a failure of moral control need not be a failure of moral awareness; it can be a failure of will. Many of his patients knew the difference between right and wrong, but felt themselves in the grip of an “irresistible impulse” that kept them from translating their knowledge into action. Taking his cue from William James, who wrote in The Principles of Psychology that “the effort of attention is the essential phenomenon of will,” Still saw failure of attention as the common denominator.”

The entire article is available online (http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-54756983.html), but for a fee. If you don’t want to spend the money, try a local university library. Most would have back-issues of the American Scholar in their collections. It’s the magazine of Phi Beta Kappa.

P.S. If Trilling is right, it might explain why so many people refuse to believe in ADD. It would require them to concede that some people are not endowed with (truly) free wills. And that would cause millions of folks to have to rethink their core beliefs and theologies. THAT is something many, dare I say most, people simply are not prepared to do.

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