self-torment

Mr. Smith’s subject is revealed to be obsession and self-torment, not least a father’s rabid overinfatuation with a child he cannot possess romantically.

Among the radical or progressive left, those people most likely to take a critical view of American policy and power, this bipolar disorder has produced many varieties of arcane self-torment and infighting over the years.

Was then not all sorrow in time, all self-torment and fear in time?

Add self-torment to that list of emotions she understands.

The play’s first line of dialogue — the witch’s query “When shall we three meet again?” — is in this version also its last, as the limp, exhausted man onstage begins his elaborate ritual of self-torment anew.