CAN WE 'LABEL' THE INDIVIDUAL PSYCHE?
When I was an actor I found human behavior fascinating. I still do. Sometimes I will watch television or a movie and really work on trying to 'get into the head' of one of the characters. Like Tony Soprano - a sociopath with a conscience. A study in opposites. I used to do this when I worked and I found many of the people around me terribly distrubing. I still do. The people I meet in my advocacy work often intrigue me. Unfortunately, I am so empathetic I feel far too deeply in many cases.
I have been in and out of some sort of therapy since about 1980. I know, I'm a stereotype. It was a huge stigma in my family to go. I never told my parents I was going. Besides, my narcissistic parent would have thought I was talking about them all the time. I have been with my current main therapist for over 10 years. I like her and she 'grows' along with me in a very non-judgmental sort of way. I have had other therapists whom I outgrew. I probably should have been in counseling when I was much younger, but my narcissistic parent would never have allowed it. They felt too much knowledge was a bad thing - especially when applied to them.
Almost 4 years ago I was sent to trauma counseling after being briefly hospitalized many times in a row for what my cardiologist called "Broken Heart Syndrome" and one counselor called "Narcissist Victim Syndrome." Severe PTSD exacerbated my cardiac & chronic pain issues and I thought I was having a heart attack a number of times. Projectile vomitting and finally self-harming after what was a deeply traumatic betrayal for me got me put into a clinic for almost 2 weeks. I still do long-distance counseling with the trauma counselors. I probably will for the rest of my life.
But can we really label the human heart or mind? Shrinks, psychologists and neurologists like to try. I would guess that it makes people more comfortable to have a name for the distress they feel. Or for people like me, who seem to have DOORMAT stamped on their head.
I had thought I was well past my triggers until the other day. I didn't even realize I was triggered until my dearest friend said to me, during an IM chat, that I had obviously been triggered. It took me a while to realize she was right. I wasn't past things at all. They were still there - barely under the surface. Lately I have been so engulfed in physical and psychic pain I can't even tell! I still believe I am nothing because I was treated like an object and dismissed so much its become part of who I am. I am moving forward but its clear I will never fully "get over it." Any of it. It was too profound. Too much irreparable damage done.
I wish I could be like the personality disordered that "can't feel." My life would be so much simpler.
One of my kids comes and sleeps with me on Shabbas evening every few weeks. When they want to. Often we stay up and I listen to her spill the contents of her head as she tries to understand the bullies and vaguries of people around her. But she's told me twice in the last few years, "Mom, do you know you cry in your sleep?" Yes I do. I often wake with a wet, face and a sore chest... knowing I have been sobbing in the night. I have woken up that way. I have even fallen asleep that way. For someone who rarely cried before I will even well up and weep now for no reason while blogging or making dinner. Buried feelings do eventually crawl to the surface. I'd be a liar to try to sell you the "happy ending" story.
I won't bore you with the aches in my soul. I don't do the drama queen stuff. I don't know how you'd 'label' me other than the old standards of being distraught, a nutjob, or whatever. My luck is monumentally bad... to the point that in my 1/2 century of life I have grown to expect the very worst for myself. I refuse to be a professional victim, though I do claim the term victim because I don't agree that victim is a bad word. It's truth and I always embrace truth.
Wonder what label that would make me?
Shoddy Science
by Kathy Krajco
It becomes more and more clear to me that, as a science, psychology is even worse than I thought it was. I am not being harsh: there is no excuse for such shoddy practices in studying a disease.
Worse, the so-called "authorities" seem unable to learn from their mistakes. For example, even though their method of treatment has thoroughly been proven to greatly INCREASE the recidivism rate, they continue on!
"Unable to learn from their mistakes." Ironic, since that itself is a telltale sign of mental illness.
One wonders how these people justify the means by which they study a personality disorder like NPD or psychopathy. They virtually do nothing but talk to the narcissists and psychopaths who who get FORCED to see them.
That's it. Jeez, folks, don't work too hard.
These patients are pathological liars by definition, and yet, their clinicians and researchers believe them! And it doesn't matter how often they are criticized for doing this, they continue studying these illnesses this half-assed way.
That ain't credibility.
An indication of how bad the science is is the theory of genetic inheritance. It claims to be based on "Mendelian genetics." But, as I posted earlier, not one jot of Mendelian genetics is in it. This "theory" (wrong - it's a hypothesis, an untested one) was proposed way back around 1990, and the scientist promoting it still isn't conducting any studies to show that malignant narcissism is inherited.
If it were inherited, that would be easy to prove. Find narcissists and test their families and offspring, duh.
Instead, this guy just "diagnoses" caricatures of long dead royals. Some dead for 500 years.
You diagnose people, not caricatures. And you don't pick royals as your test group. Especially for something like this.
Especially when they are that long gone. Especially when the chronicler you are getting your "evidence" from probably never even met the guy.
That's ridiculous. If the proponents of this haven't conducted any studies in all this time, I bet it's because they know the results would prove them wrong.
Do psychologists ever check up on what the N on their couch tells them? Do they ever interview family members, victims, and others who have had close day-to-day contact with narcissist and psychopaths for an extended period of time? Why not?
What more valuable information could they get? Don't they think first-hand experience and observation is worth anything? They think their divining is superior to FACTS these people can reveal to them? The hubris is breathtaking. They don't need facts, do they?
That's why they don't know that narcissists aren't touchy. That's why they don't know that N's just get madder when you try to appease them. That's why they seem oblivious to the fact that it's all about attention. They've never seen a narcissist go off, yet they think they know why he or she goes off. Sheesh.
They've never seen the mask switching so fast and and furious that you wonder if she has multiple personalities.
They've never seen how an N leaps like a tiger at tender vulnerability.
But they think they know what's going on. They think the N or psychopath on their couch is going to tell them.
They estimate the prevalence of personality disorder by statistics on the few patients who get treatment. Duh, that's no way to estimate the number of people who think they are perfect and never will admit there is anything wrong with them to get psychological help for.
The first real population survey (in 2004 - why not decades sooner?) found that around 15% of people could be diagnosed with a personality disorder - NOT counting borderline, schizotypal, and narcissistic disorders. Didn't that embarrass these folks who had always been guestimating less than half that much for ALL personality disorders?
Not at all. Mediocrity rules. They aren't embarrassed even when studies catch 60-90% of them misdiagnosing and misapplying the DSM criteria.
Their estimate of NPD is lower than that for for psychopathy. How can that be when all psychopaths are narcissists? Well, lets just confuse anti-social behavior with psychopathy to conceal the seriousness of psychopathy.
These people can't be serious. Here are some more documented examples of how shoddy the work of many "authorities" on the subject are:
Prevalence of NPD
A False Picture
NPD - A Male Disease?
and
Diagnostic Confusion.
That ain't credibility. They make scientists in other fields all look squeeky clean and conscientous by comparisson.
SOURCE: Shoddy Science
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