Progressive Personality Disorder

Still wading through the early days of the blog, and not finding much that sets my thigh a-tinglin'. However, as a general rule, the posts that I regard as mere trifles generate the most traffic. It seems that people come for the insultainment but never stay for the laughty revelations.

The following post is a case in point. According to my site meter, hardly a day goes by that someone doesn't find their way to it. It also occasioned our very first persistent troll, L.A. Larry, and a record number of comments at the time, the majority of which were deleted. Back then, I was naive enough to think that the best way to deal with a troll was to engage them, which only results in repetition compulsion, AKA the Eternal Return of the troll's weird fixations and willful disunderstanding. Yes, the cause of trolls is paying attention to them, as you will learn today.

I just clicked through from one of Larry's comments to his now abandoned blog, and his last posts from 2006 indicate that he was obsessing over telephone surveillance of terrorists and the omnipotence of Karl Rove. Something tells me he's not currently obsessing over telephone surveillance of terrorists and the omnipotence of David Axelrod.

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The following is based on a perceptive post by someone named John Moore, which I found through a link to a link on Dr. Sanity's grand rounds of the psychosphere.

It looks as if it were hastily composed in a manic burst of inspiration, but it's so accurate that it deserves wider dissemination. I've taken the liberty of cleaning it up, editing it, adding a number of criteria, and putting it in the actual format of the DSM (the diagnostic manual for mental health practitioners).

I've also taken the additional liberty of altering the name of the condition, from his "Cognitive Disorder of Progressives" to "Progressive Personality Disorder." This is because Moore's nomenclature implies that this is an Axis I condition. These disorders generally involve a short-term change in functioning, such as a time-limited anxiety or depressive disorder. In short, Axis I conditions usually involve temporary states, whereas Axis II conditions involve quasi-permanent traits.

Axis II is primarily reserved for the Personality Disorders, which are much more difficult to treat, as they involve enduring patterns of maladaptive thought, behavior or emotion that lead to either significant functional impairment or subjective distress -- for example, Paranoid, Narcissistic, or Borderline Personality Disorders. When a person suffers from a personality disorder, much of their condition involves acting out in the world rather than harboring internal "neurotic" conflict within oneself.

As often as not, the person with a personality disorder causes as much or more pain and difficulty for those around them than they do for themselves. Furthermore, it is fair to say that most people with a personality disorder don't ever recognize that they have one. When they come in for treatment, it is usually for some ancillary problem that is caused by the personality disorder, such as difficulty forming stable relationships, identity disturbance, poor self esteem, impulsivity (e.g., with regard to sex, drugs, spending, etc.), sexual identity confusion, meaninglessness, depression, etc.

Ultimately their problem doesn't revolve around the "content" of their mind so much as its very structure. Typically, an individual with a personality disorder has damaged psychological structure as a result of early childhood experience. And the damaged structure typically takes the form of inability to auto-regulate in one or more areas, such as emotion, self-esteem, impulse control, mood, or identity. Rather than treat their condition, such a person may demand that it be regarded as "normal," and that people adapt to them.

For example, in California, it is against the law to discriminate against men who want to pretend they are women, which means that the state forces us to accept the abnormal as normal, the perverse as healthy, and to propagate this lie to our children. But anyone who thinks it is appropriate to expose children to such perversity shouldn't be allowed around children, let alone run the educational establishment

But personality disorders virtually always involve inducting others into the patient's psychodrama as an intrinsic part of their condition. Therefore, politics is the ideal forum for anyone with a personality disorder. In the field of politics, such individuals are given sanction to act out various conflicts in an entirely insight-free way -- indeed, as an alternative to insight. Remember, their mission is to force others to regard their abnormality as normal, e.g., the intrinsic absurdity of "homosexual marriage."

Politics truly is a sort of show business for the unattractive -- the psychologically unattractive. And you can well understand why the Democrat party would attract such people, because unlike conservatism, it does not mainly consist of ideas but of promises made to various constituencies of dysfunctional losers, weirdos, cranks, misfits, and malcontents. It is the party of the Unhappy who imagine that the state can make them happy.

But obviously it never works. Rather, because that breast doesn't actually produce milk, it only provokes more greed and envy toward the breast. So it is no surprise that Obama is in the process of creating the largest breast that has ever existed. But if it actually succeeds in appeasing the hungry mouths of the left, I promise to stop blogging forever.

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DSM-IV 301.95 PROGRESSIVE PERSONALITY DISORDER

A. A pervasive pattern of progressive political thought and action, rooted in discredited leftist (neo-Marxist) beliefs, beginning in early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts, as indicated by at least five of the following (individual must be at least 18 years of age to qualify for the diagnosis of Progressive Personality Disorder, as many of the criteria are age-appropriate for adolescents):

1. Utopian thinking: A delusional belief that there exist simple, linear, side effect-free solutions to all social problems. (Note to clinician: please differentiate between mere historical ignorance, e.g., a doctorate in history from an elite university, vs. psychotic delusions of grandeur or adequacy.)

2. Anthroplastic ideation: The delusion that behavioral conditioning performed by the government or some other collective will cure all behavioral and social problems, rooted in denial of fixed human nature. Implicit in this delusion is the idea that human beings are infinitely malleable and subject to behavioral manipulation leading to perfect control and predictability. Free will, personal conscience, and objective morality are denied, devalued or denigrated.

3. Anti-theistic rebellion: An emotional antagonism to the Judeo-Christian tradition, rooted in an abnormal persistence of adolescent rebellion (may also be related to the need to avoid counter-arguments that would question utopian, anthroplastic ideation). This behavior ranges from a mere antagonism to Christianity to a hatred of all forms of religion. The rejection of religion leads to a deep longing for a messiah and master. (Generally the more Western a religion is, the more it is despised. Thus, these patients may openly accept more primitive pantheistic, neo-pagan, or animist belief systems, such as Wicca or fraudulent "new age" philosophies, e.g., Deepak Chopra, Tony Robbins, etc.)

4. Naturist delusion: The belief that mankind is evil and nature is benign. The incidence of this symptom is inversely related to practical knowledge and experience of nature. Collective self-hatred is a feature in this area, paradoxically existing side by side with egomaniacal omniscience, e.g., ability to accurately predict weather 100 years into the future. Typical thinking includes the paranoid belief that mankind is a cancer on earth and that the planet (subjectively felt as a "feeling being") will "retaliate." The naturist delusion includes considerable cognitive dissonance, since the typical Progressive Personality is a believer in natural selection, which has resulted in untold suffering and cruelty, mitigated only by mankind's presence.

5. Environmental spasm: Chaotic, unreasonable, or incoherent episodes of manic activity on behalf of the environment or "mother nature." The delusional nature of this activity is evidenced by the misanthropic attacks on all works of man, and also by the manic focus on visible or totemic biological objects of little actual worth. The patient is typically obsessed only with cute or cuddly creatures, often a displacement of the nurturing urge (which is not infrequently unfulfilled due to abortion). Such patients may show more concern for the President swatting an insect than waving aside the concerns of millions of human beings living under tyranny and crying out for help.

6. Control obsession: The tendency to strive for excessive control over others through state intrusion. A contemptuous projection of the unconscious oral envy into anonymous others (the mythic "little guy"), which is subjectively experienced as "compassion." Through the magic of this unconscious mechanism, the very people who want the state to appropriate your wealth can imagine themselves to be generous and "compassionate," irrespective of how they actually treat real human beings.

7. Racist/feminist hypocrisy: Passionate advocating of government-enforced discrimination based on sex or race, while aggressively proclaiming opposition to policies which are "racist" or "sexist." Obsession with conformity of thought within a racially diverse population. For example, such a person might favor seating a racist on the Supreme Court, so long as the person is of the "correct" race.

8. Overemotional perception: Excessive concern with how a social action "looks" or "feels," to the exclusion of actual effects in the real world, in particular, any effects beyond the immediate. Resistance to, and denial of, objective evidence proving the adverse consequences of progressive policy. Superficial cognition about most matters of significant import, as the progressive personality relies on the "feel" of issues rather than truly understanding them. Obsession with "fairness" or "social justice" as opposed to what actually works.

9. Sexual dysfunction: Significant anxiety about sexual matters, manifested as:

a. Obsession with sexual and gender roles.

b. Passionate celebration of nontraditional sex roles and preferences.

c. The compulsion to define individuals by their "sexual preference" and to design social policy as if all individuals share the obsession.

d. An inordinate interest in preserving inappropriate, lewd, perverse, or antisocial forms of sexual expression.

e. Fascination with immature or deviant expressions of sexuality; reduction of human sexuality to animal sexuality.

10. Replacement of patriotism with matriotism: Unwillingness to defend country when attacked or threatened. Allied with inability to name or recognize evil. General devaluation of the masculine virtues.

11. Cultural and moral relativism: The fervent belief that all cultures are beautiful except one's own, and that it is immoral to judge another's morality unless they are conservative.

12. The belief that an eagle egg or four-toed salamander is entitled to more legal protection than a human baby.