# Is there a psychological term for this line out of Comfortably Numb? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [April 22, 2013, 7:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-psychological-term-for-this-line-out-of-comfortably-numb/656429 "2013-04-22T19:59:33Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![dstarfire](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dstarfire/32/5762_2.png) [@dstarfire](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dstarfire)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2013, 6:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-psychological-term-for-this-line-out-of-comfortably-numb/656429/21 "2013-04-23T18:28:41Z")
> [@deltasigma](#): > > So . . . you have a familiar eh? WITCH!!! 😉 No no no no no. A witch wouldn’t be so careless as to admit that in public. Everybody knows witches keep cats as familiars. But witches are cunning and sly so they’ll disguise it as something else, therefore anybody you see with a cat can’t be a witch, especially if it’s a black cat. Now, you see a guy with a white dog … it’s time to call the Inquisition. _clubs the red-robed Monty Python actor suddenly jumping through a nearby door_ ---
**Author:** ![Maastricht](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/a88e57/32.png) [@Maastricht](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maastricht)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2013, 6:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-psychological-term-for-this-line-out-of-comfortably-numb/656429/22 "2013-04-23T18:34:23Z")
> [@whc.03grady](#): > > This phenomena seems to me to also be related to the conceit that the world we experience is something like an illusion or construct, and that if you could just ‘turn around’ quick enough you’d get a look behind the curtain and see the world’s real workings. I’d also bet it’s related to the more or less vague feeling some have that one is some kind of imposter or fake (for me, it’s that I was literally an alien) and the world is an elaborate stage upon which they act or are studied or whatever. That is [Solipsism.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solipsism) ---
**Author:** ![whc.03grady](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/a6a055/32.png) [@whc.03grady](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/whc.03grady)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2013, 6:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-psychological-term-for-this-line-out-of-comfortably-numb/656429/23 "2013-04-23T18:38:49Z")
> [@Maastricht](#): > > That is [Solipsism.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solipsism) Not exactly. Solipsisim is when you believe you’re the only thing that exists, or is real, period. The cases I’m talking about are where other things are real, but are not at all what they seem. ---
**Author:** ![Chimera](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/8e8cbc/32.png) [@Chimera](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chimera)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2013, 6:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-psychological-term-for-this-line-out-of-comfortably-numb/656429/24 "2013-04-23T18:58:47Z")
> [@whc.03grady](#): > > This phenomena seems to me to also be related to the conceit that the world we experience is something like an illusion or construct, and that if you could just ‘turn around’ quick enough you’d get a look behind the curtain and see the world’s real workings. I know it isn’t the traditional interpretation of the song, but that’s the way I always see it now. As if saying: I almost got a glimpse of it (the Illusion of the World) as a child, but lost sight of it. Now I’m just comfortably numb to the world as a whole. Lost in the world, accepting it as reality, needing medication to ease the pain. ---
**Author:** ![deltasigma](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e5b9ba/32.png) [@deltasigma](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/deltasigma)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2013, 10:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-psychological-term-for-this-line-out-of-comfortably-numb/656429/25 "2013-04-23T22:44:37Z")
One strong intuition I had as a child (after the brain damage) was that I should be able to pass my hands through solid objects at will. This was in the mid 60’s or so and the only scifi I would have been exposed to would have been on tv at that point so it could have been an idea that was implanted, but it wasn’t something I just wished I could do but something that seemed unnatural by virtue of being unable to do it. Of course much later I learned that atoms are virtually all empty space and even the quarks that make up the protons and neutrons in a nucleus only account for [1% of the mass](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proton#Quarks_and_the_mass_of_the_proton). The rest comes from massless gluons morphing into sea quarks and being annihilated over and over again. ---
**Author:** ![Biffy\_the\_Elephant\_Shrew](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e47c2d/32.png) [@Biffy\_the\_Elephant\_Shrew](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Biffy_the_Elephant_Shrew)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2013, 10:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-psychological-term-for-this-line-out-of-comfortably-numb/656429/26 "2013-04-23T22:55:05Z")
> [@panache45](#): > > I once experienced this when hiking in a Southwest canyon. I was suffering from heat exhaustion, migraine, extreme fatigue, and other problems. I saw and heard people walking to my left and right, but they disappeared when I tried to look at them. T.S. Eliot alluded to a similar phenomenon in “The Waste Land”: _Who is the third who walks always beside you? When I count, there are only you and I together But when I look ahead up the white road There is always another one walking beside you Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded I do not know whether a man or a woman —But who is that on the other side of you?_ Eliot’s notes on the poem state that the passage was suggested by an Antarctic expedition whose members experienced a persistent delusion that there was an extra person in their party. ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2013, 10:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-psychological-term-for-this-line-out-of-comfortably-numb/656429/27 "2013-04-23T22:58:42Z")
> [@Tethered\_Kite](#): > > In the case of Pink Floyd, was the lyric by Syd Barrett? If so perhaps it was a precursor to his later mental health issues? No, it’s by Roger Waters. Comfortably Numb is on The Wall, which was released in 1979. Barrett was out of the band in 1968. ---
**Author:** ![sisu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/df705f/32.png) [@sisu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sisu)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2013, 11:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-psychological-term-for-this-line-out-of-comfortably-numb/656429/28 "2013-04-23T23:18:18Z")
Ok to be very boring here this is simply your peripheral vision evolving and your brain coming to terms with it. As a child our peripheral vision is weak, this is one of the reasons we see kids run out in front of fast moving things. ---
**Author:** ![whc.03grady](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/a6a055/32.png) [@whc.03grady](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/whc.03grady)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2013, 11:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-psychological-term-for-this-line-out-of-comfortably-numb/656429/29 "2013-04-23T23:21:17Z")
> [@sisu](#): > > Ok to be very boring here this is simply your peripheral vision evolving and your brain coming to terms with it. As a child our peripheral vision is weak, this is one of the reasons we see kids run out in front of fast moving things. I’m pretty sure that the lyrics are using the metaphorical sense of sight. It’s not about seeing something, literally, out of the corner of your eye. More like ‘seeing’ in the same way you ‘see’ that if a=b and b=c, that a=c. ---
**Author:** ![Enola\_Straight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/dec6dc/32.png) [@Enola\_Straight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Enola_Straight)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2013, 3:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-psychological-term-for-this-line-out-of-comfortably-numb/656429/30 "2013-04-24T03:36:30Z")
> **[Antigonish (poem)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antigonish_%28poem%29)** > > "Antigonish" is a poem by the American educator and poet, William Hughes Mearns, written in 1899. It is also known as "The Little Man Who Wasn't There" and was adapted as a hit song under the latter title. > Inspired by reports of a ghost of a man roaming the stairs of a haunted house, in Antigonish, Nova Scotia, Canada, the poem was originally part of a play called The Psyco-ed, which Mearns had written for an English class at Harvard University, circa 1899. In 1910, Mearns staged the play with... ---
**Author:** ![Tethered\_Kite](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/a5b964/32.png) [@Tethered\_Kite](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tethered_Kite)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2013, 3:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-psychological-term-for-this-line-out-of-comfortably-numb/656429/31 "2013-04-24T15:20:20Z")
> [@whc.03grady](#): > > Also, didn’t Plato basically think that babies are born with perfect knowledge of all things (or maybe just of the Forms) and that life’s experiences kind of beat that knowledge out of you? I remember when I had that idea for the first time. _There’s nothing new under the sun_ is tired, tiered, tried and true. Maybe it doesn’t make sense until it seems like its your thought first! It was in the Sixties when the term “psychedelic” was coming into play. Sometime, probably during experimenting with marijuana, it occurred to me that I was interpreting things differently. And I wondered if it weren’t a return to to a more pure childlike state. Chortling a bit now. All that stuff was in the air, both literally and figuratively, so it’s not surprising that I’d be picking up on it. But later, when I’d birthed two children I noticed their fascination with things that I didn’t notice, actually couldn’t see, until their little musings brought them to my attention. And upon tip-toeing into my daughters room, peeking over the top of the crib and seeing her mesmerized by her little mobile and the look of pure delight on her face I began to think in terms of “Children are born naturally psychedelic.” Deep, I know. 😛 It wasn’t too far a stretch from there to the regimen of schools (I was studying to be a teacher at that time) and the perceived necessity of erasing all that self-indulgent foolishness so that children could be taught. And isn’t that one underlying theme of _The Wall_? I love that album. Wasn’t introduced to it until the late 80s when my son gave me a copy. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-psychological-term-for-this-line-out-of-comfortably-numb/656429.md?page=1)