But there's another side to Marnie's affliction — her extreme aversion to sex, to a man's touch, and to Mark's touch in particular — and that's double trouble, because, in order to help her, Mark has also married her.
Yes, there are divergent communities in Los Angeles of extreme wealth and poverty, but this affliction of extremes isn't endemic to L.A. It's endemic to our world.
The lesson is clear: only someone plagued by mental afflictions would take such extreme steps to subvert the power of the US government.
In extreme cases, prosopagnosia can be a socially debilitating affliction: a mother tries to retrieve the wrong child from day care because she does not recognize her own baby; a patient is shown a photograph of a woman and wonders who it is, only to be informed that she is looking at a picture of herself.
The elderly and the infirm, as ever, are most vulnerable, but anyone who labours in extreme conditions can succumb to heatstroke or other afflictions complicated by dehydration or exhaustion.
When a child exhibits both extremes, he deserves a thorough study of his affliction.
"These are the most common afflictions of children and women living in extreme poverty, and the reason they can't escape poverty long-term," Peter Hotez, the president of the Sabin Vaccine Institute, the dean of the First National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor University, and a founder of the Global Network, told me recently.
Manic depression, or bipolar affective disorder, is an affliction of mood that switches the sufferer between extreme highs and lows of emotion, or "affect".
The case marks the first successful UK prosecution for crimes linked to "hurtcore" – an extreme form of porn focusing on the non-simulated, hardcore affliction of pain, torture and humiliation, mainly on children, including toddlers.
Specifically, "the autism parents' literature of miracles," which "in its most extreme form … describes beautiful boys and girls emerging from their affliction as if it were a passing winter frost.
