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Health & Fitness

Another Slight Diversion: The Perverse Imp

Have you ever been in a very formal situation and felt the urge, the almost unbearable urge, to yell out something totally inappropriate?

Have you ever been in a very formal situation and felt the urge, the almost unbearable urge, to yell out something totally inappropriate? I mean really inappropriate.

I have and it’s always at weddings or funerals and during the most solemn part.

I kept this a secret for years. I was afraid something was seriously wrong with me. After all, I thought only a deranged person would do such a thing.

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Just by chance I stumbled across the term “perverse imp” and (hallelujah) I learned that these impulses are normal and most people have them. Wow! I wasn’t nuts (at least not in that way).

The “perverse imp” refers to a small demon that sits on our shoulder and whispers these kinds of thoughts in our ear: 

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“Do it, you know you want to. Come on, it will be fun to see how surprised the bride will be. Do it, do it, do it!”

After I started talking about my impulses, people I knew admitted to the same thing. They were also afraid people would think that they were nuts.

The term “perverse imp” comes from the Edgar Allan Poe story “The Imp of the Perverse,” where the main character dooms himself by blurting out something he knows he shouldn’t, but yet cannot help doing so.

The same term also has been applied to the feelings people often get standing on the edge of a precipice where they have the strong urge to jump off. Or, how often have you passed a fire alarm and had the imp try to push you into pulling it?

Well—I hope this helps all those people (like me) who can now rest assured that they are (also) not deranged (unless you actually let the “imp” talk you into it).

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