anhedonic

“Briefly, the anhedonic syndrome is manifested, first, by the disappearance or impairment of the appetite for food and drink and by failure to experience the corresponding satisfactions. [...] Thirdly, the appetite or desire for rest and the satisfaction of recuperation are also involved in the anhedonic syndrome.”

“The anhedonic depressed child creates special problems. He or she is bored most of the time, as he or she does not derive normal levels of pleasure from things, and the breadth of pleasurable events is rduced. The anhedonic youngster seems just to go through the motions of treatment.”

“[P]hysical anhedonics may not pay attention to tone stimuli (and therefore do not give SC [skin conductance] responses) because such subjects are identified on the basis of lacking pleasure and interest in physical events. As such, nonresponding in physical anhedonics may indicate validity for the way physical anhedonia is measured, but may not reflect a factor of etiologic significance.”

“The anhedonic can still speak about happiness and meaning et al., but she has become incapable of feeling anything in them, of understanding anything about them, of hoping anything about them, or of believing them to exist as anything more than concepts. Everything has become an outline of the thing. Objects become schemata. The world becomes a map of the world. An anhedonic can navigate, but has no location. I.e. the anhedonic becomes, in the lingo of Boston AA, Unable To Identify.”