Like Aaron's serpent, swallows up the rest

Sometimes it seems like there is more usable psychological insight in the classics than in the modern academic field.

From An Essay on Man: Epistle II by Alexander Pope. How is this for a description of monomaniacalism or fanaticism?

Pleasures are ever in our hands or eyes,
And when in act they cease, in prospect, rise:
Present to grasp, and future still to find,
The whole employ of body and of mind.
All spread their charms, but charm not all alike;
On diff'rent senses diff'rent objects strike;
Hence diff'rent passions more or less inflame,
As strong or weak, the organs of the frame;
And hence one master passion in the breast,
Like Aaron's serpent, swallows up the rest.

Aaron was Moses' brother. They both carried rods as a symbol of authority and power. From Wikipedia:

Aaron's rod, however, is cited twice as exhibiting miraculous power on its own, when not physically in the grasp of its owner. In Exodus 7 (Parshat Va'eira in the Torah), God sends Moses and Aaron to the Pharaoh once more, instructing Aaron that when the Pharaoh demands to see a miracle, he is to "cast down his rod" and it will become a serpent. When he does so, the Pharaoh's sorcerers counter by similarly casting down their own rods, which also become serpents, but Aaron's rod swallows them all.