very,+very+dreadfully+nervous

The Tell-Tale Heart
 * TRUE! --nervous --very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad?**

Nervousness, in itself, wouldn't seem to be either a cause or a symptom of a murderous person. We've all been nervous at one time or another, before a game, a test, a performance, or before or during a meeting with an important person. So what is this "nervousness" that Poe's narrator is speaking of?

Well, it gets complicated right from the start. Here's what "nervousness" brings up at [|Wikipedia]:

//Anxiety is a physiological state characterized by cognitive, somatic, emotional, and behavioral components (Seligman, Walker & Rosenhan, 2001). These components combine to create the feelings that we typically recognize as fear, apprehension, or worry. Anxiety is often accompanied by physical sensations such as heart palpitations, nausea, chest pain, shortness of breath, stomach aches, or headache. The cognitive component entails expectation of a diffuse and uncertain danger. Somatically the body prepares the organism to deal with threat (known as an emergency reaction): blood pressure and heart rate are increased, sweating is increased, bloodflow to the major muscle groups is increased, and immune and digestive system functions are inhibited. Externally, somatic signs of anxiety may include pale skin, sweating, trembling, and pupillary dilation. Emotionally, anxiety causes a sense of dread or panic and physically causes nausea, and chills. Behaviorally, both voluntary and involuntary behaviors may arise directed at escaping or avoiding the source of anxiety and often maladaptive, being most extreme in anxiety disorders.//

That sounds pretty serious, but the paragraph ends with this:

//However, anxiety is not always pathological or maladaptive: it is a common emotion along with fear, anger, sadness, and happiness, and it has a very important function in relation to survival.//

source: [|Medline] [|More on Anxiety]
 * [[image:anxiety.jpg]]||

So, what does this have to do with our narrator? Is he the victim of anxiety attacks? If so, why would these lead him to commit murder? Many people have anxiety or panic attacks, but this never causes them to kill folks, chop them up, and hide them under the floorboards.

Thoughts on this? 1196991671