Anhedonia and It — "The authoritative term psychotic depression makes…"
The authoritative term psychotic depression makes Kate Gompert feel especially lonely. Specifically the psychotic part. […] One of the least pleasant things about being psychotically depressed on a ward full of psychotically depressed patients is coming to see that none of them is really psychotic, that their screams are entirely appropriate to certain circumstances part of whose special charm is that they are undetectable by any outside party. Thus the loneliness: it’s a closed circuit: the current is both applied and received from within.
Context
The two-screamers analogy (trimmed): one tortured with visible electrodes, one without, only the second called psychotic — the diagnosis itself as isolation. The closed-circuit sentence gives the theme its electrical figure: current applied and received from within, nothing for any outside party to detect.