Examining the Learnt Helplessness of Richmond, Collingwood, Fremantle, St Kilda and Footscray AFL Fans

In his book, The Psychopath Test, Jon Ronson introduces his readers to the DSM-IV-TR (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders). It's an 886 page compendium which lays out every psychological condition known to man, so far. I say so far because the book keeps expanding to include new and elaborate conditions, with version five of the DSM now running to 947 pages.

After painstaking research I am looking to have four football conditions registered in version VI of the manual. Those conditions are of a group nature, specific to the historical conditions and isolation of Australia and afflict, so far as we can ascertain, every football fan. There are four broad conditions but this week we will focus on the first and perhaps most debilitating condition, 'Chasteneditis'.

Chasteneditis, or learnt helplessness, is a neurotic social malady which afflicts fans from Collingwood, Richmond, St Kilda, Footscray and Fremantle football clubs and indeed anyone who has any association with those organisations.

Sufferers may be in the midst of conditions which, to well-adjusted people, would ordinarily lead to enjoyment and heightened arousal but invoke in the sufferer feelings of mortal dread—like a dream state which turns to a nightmare and in which they have no control over the physical world as they are descended upon by some malevolent force, over and over, week on week.

These feelings are often irrational but there is usually some life event whose trauma was so great it has permanently discoloured their weltanschauung, like a grey filter.

'Kevin', a 59 year old Collingwood supporter from North-East Melbourne, is a chronic sufferer of Chasteneditis and has been—unbeknownst to him—since the 1970 Collingwood Grand Final loss to Carlton. The conditioned manifested itself quite mildly at first, with clammy palms and the occasional eyebrow furrow, but after Grand Final losses in 1977, 1979, 1980 and 1981 Kevin's condition had deteriorated to such an extent that he often became maudlin and despondent not only at games he attended but in the shower or at the butchers.

'Fuck this' and head shaking are common responses and can strike from nowhere. The condition is most acute at the stadium from which the sufferer, despite the debilitating feeling induced every time, cannot seem to extricate themselves, returning week after week. Even when the game is 'in the bag', sufferers refuse to believe they are not perhaps the victim of a calamitous hoax and tend to distrust their sensory perceptions. Only after they see a success validated in writing or other forms of media 4 or more times do they begin to accept that they have indeed 'had fun', albeit by proxy, but the feeling is best described as ephemeral because no sooner has the last result been computed, than the cycle begins again with the sufferer agonising over the next round of football.

There exists also a variation of the condition in which the subject does not even dare to imagine that their life could be fulfilling, so bereft have they been of success. This condition is most prevalent amongst Footscray, St Kilda and more recently, Fremantle supporters.

'Joy', used here for ironical purposes, is a 35 year old, 3rd generation St Kilda supporter from South East Victoria who is in denial about her condition, which is of course one of the major symptoms, as are violent mood swings. Her father 'Ray' witnessed St Kilda's one and only Grand Final victory but he does not trust his memory given that the iconic photo of that Premiership shows Darrel Baldock wearing a Collingwood jumper.

Joy will often turn to her football companion at a game and say 'oh well' or playfully roll her eyes as though to suggest the game is inherently enjoyable and results don't matter. Joy must carefully select her football companion because if they are not a co-conspirator in this delusion and suggest that 'it's all about premierships at the end of the day', Joy can spiral into a deep funk which may include sobbing in toilets, snapping at customers and hectoring her dog about what a disappointment he's been.

Richmond supporters slipped into Chasteneditis around 1982, and moments like this one has kept them there ever since.

The case of Richmond supporters provides an interesting variant. We believe Richmond supporters once suffered from Triumphalatitis—a narcissistic condition afflicting Hawthorn, Carlton, Essendon and Melbourne supporters which we will explore next week—but slipped into Chasteneditis around 1982. The Richmond descent into Chasteneditis has been gradual and many older patients, suffering from grandiloquent hallucinations, often consider themselves a chance, almost an unstoppable force which would be a healthy outlook for many people if it weren't such a grotesque caricature of reality. In these patients the 'reality principle' is severely atrophied and in some cases non-existent.

But for young subjects like 13 year old 'Cade' who inhabits inner Melbourne with his single, sometimes Carlton supporting mother, Chasteneditis has already set in and is exacerbated by his mother's frivolous comments and easy goading. Cade's tantrums are really the outward expression of a deep melancholy related to a broader cultural outlook toward Richmond that has now deeply embedded itself in joke culture. Cade refuses to incorporate the number 9 in his schoolwork and is prone to deep bouts of nihilistic despair, leavened only by increasingly unrealistic fantasies about imminent Richmond success. Cade is typical of the post 1980 Richmond supporter who sees but cannot taste success other than through fantastical projections about the past or future.

As with most psychological conditions the first step to recovery is acceptance but really there exist no remedies at present for Chasteneditis.

Diagnosis: fucked

David Latham is not a qualified psychologist. Follow him on Twitter.