Neelima Mathur: Handwashing a new ‘pandemic’ in offing?

Handwashing… or washing one’s hands of the coronavirus?

The latter is said to derive from biblical canon. For a moment, let us leave the politics aside. The symbolism is pertinent. Pontius Pilate “washed his hands of” the decision to crucify Jesus Christ. According to the Gospel of Mathew, he washed his hands in front of the crowd before announcing, “I am innocent of this man’s blood; see to it yourselves.”  

Centuries later, Shakespeare harks back to this symbolism in the play Macbeth and carries it ahead to levels of personality disorder and neurosis. After her husband murders Duncan, the King of Scotland, Lady Macbeth rubs the king’s blood on the attendants to frame them. Then she tells Macbeth: A little water clears us of this deed.

As the play proceeds, Lady Macbeth is consumed with guilt and becomes paranoid about her bloodstained hands. She orders for “light” — a candle — to overcome the darkness of the nights of misdeeds. Her attendant sees her abnormal sleepwalking behaviour. Lady Macbeth constantly rubs her hands in a washing motion for a “quarter of an hour”, mumbling, “Out, damned spot” and “All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this hand”. By the end, the audience learns she has committed suicide. In her neurotic madness, the bloodstain would not go from her mind.

It takes another few centuries before the psychoanalyst, Sigmund Freud, brings handwashing into the domain of a mental disorder. Specifically, OCD or  Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, a compulsion to perform certain actions repeatedly. At the base of it all, is an anxiety of being overwhelmed by the exterior world, over which the person has no control. The compulsive action is a way to gain some control over a hostile environment. Later, the psychoanalyst, Wilhelm Reich, was to call this “armour control”.   

In recent times, Wray Herbert, author, columnist and psychology blogger, has spoken about the symbolism of the compulsive hand-washer. He elaborates it in context of the human mind’s connection between morality and cleanliness, immorality and filth.  

There are other pertinent studies relevant to corona times. Some have shown that after having “contemplated” or “recalled” unethical acts, people tend to wash hands more than others. Another study states, only a little over 25 per cent of global bathroom visits with “potential faecal contact” was followed by handwashing with soap. Even in high-income nations, only 50 per cent of people use water and soap — that is abundantly available — after toilet visits. As recently as 2015, a Republican Senator in USA is said to have stated that: Requiring restaurant employees to wash hands is a classic example of over-regulation.

And now, 2020, the era of handwashing.

The world is stuck between a mix of existent handwashing cultures, contemplation and guilt about over-consumption, inequalities in global systems, ravaging of the environment and the looming threat of the coronavirus.

Do we need to heed another revealing study by Israeli scientist Reuven Dar and his colleagues? The study examines OCD, the need for control over stressful life events and compulsive rituals. Dar reported that handwashing did help to salve guilt about past misdeeds but reduced willingness to help another person in need. Pertinently, those with OCD were more prone to this effect.  

How does all this fit in with corona handwashing videos, songs, animations, spoofs, going viral on social media? Of handwashing becoming a global phenomenon?

Is it only the coronavirus or is there more behind it? Lockdowns have forced people worldwide to move into various phases and stages of introspection.

There is awe about experiencing silence, seeing nature bloom and flourish, smog-free skies and much more. There are the forced moments of being with one’s self and the loss of “freedom” to do anything at will and instantly.
And, at the core now, this endless handwashing.  

We come back to Freud in context of OCD. The anxiety of being overwhelmed by the exterior world. The implied finding that handwashing helps salve guilt for past misdeeds and provides moral relief. Now, the exterior compounded by an “external” threat, for which the world and each of us is pinning blame on that one “other” thing, person or country.

Is handwashing then set to become a global OCD pandemic as a precursor to better or worse times in collective human behaviour? The world is ravaged and severely compromised. Guilty we all are, like Lady Macbeth. After all the corona handwashing, will we, like Pontius Pilate, just wash our hands of the problem and leave the world and planet to fend for itself? God forbid because that may yet be another Kafkaesque tale.