(Pictured: Joan Crawford in 1947’s ‘Possessed.’ Though the term had not been coined at the time, Crawford’s character suffered from what we now know as Borderline Personality Disorder with heavy dissociative features and at least implied dissociative fugue.
My diagnosis list is almost identical to yours. Swap out Sleep Terror Disorder for #4. And I agree with you. They're not discrete. Child abuse is the reason for all of it. I am deeply and profoundly fucked up because my brain marinated in cortisol from birth until I escaped in my late teens, and my "self" was formed with trauma as a major ingredient to the recipe. Depression is a consequence of perceived powerlessness, which I still perceive now, even when it's false, because it was a simple, factual truth for so long. Panic disorder is a consequence of having had *very good reasons* to panic, over and over. OCD is an attempt to grab control of life, which is fundamentally uncontrollable. I have Sleep Terror Disorder because of all the times that a parent violently woke me up from a nightmare, often a nightmare about them being violent, which made my brain unreliable about telling sleep from wakefulness. TLDR; the first four diagnoses are all subsets of the fifth.
The increasingly fine sifting of “mental illnesses” is simply to pull more people into the basket of available clients, for pharma mostly, but also for clinicians. One cannot enjoy the fruits of one’s “expertise” unless you have patients, which is why the DSM keeps getting larger. Transgenderism is also a “boutique mental illness” that parents can be proud of. A little bon Munchausen by proxy.
Absolutely, I came to that revelation some time ago that children being put up to transitioning by a parent (usually mother) were Münchausen syndrome by proxy victims & in a sane country parent would be prosecuted for child abuse. And child counseled for their gender dysphoria.
Bingo. I think you're right, and it's similar to something I've heard other people say too - e.g. their alcohol disorder, mental health problems etc were not several separate issues but all part of the same issue, a reaction to trauma. It makes sense and it is a discussion going on in clinical settings too. E.g. mental health and alcohol - other countries' health services have treatment plans that treat both issues concurrently, as one larger problem, with the same root cause. It's something being debated in the UK still where we generally have separate treatment plans e.g. one service for addiction, one for mental health.
It would seem to me that although an individual might just have one mental health issue, e.g. depression, if they have more than one e.g. depression and anxiety, they're really more symptoms with the same root cause (often trauma). But I am absolutely a lay-person and I forgot my own phone number today, so don't take me too seriously.
I dont know if you ever checked out Richard Grannon of this subjects? He has several videos with content extally pondering qusteions like this, and I think he have some great ones (and have been following him for years). Unfortuanally I do not remember the name of the videos that mostly popes to mind, but they are defintly in there amongst his videoes somewhere, with some great reflections.
I do, wholeheartly, agree with you..! ..and have had most of the same diagnouses that on your list too. except that they «landed» mine on PTSD, instead of cptsd, and I am pretty sure you almost cant have one without the other too...I think its like you say; all the talk and much of the genre are the coughs and sneezes of an underlying trauma-thing.😀👍🏻
Thank you for all your nice and thought-wakening writings too!!🙂👍🏻I love the show, but I am indeed very happy that you find the time to write too, I very much enjoy and appriciate! I am bad with saying so and to join in with commenting and praise. Its not because I dont want to, but english is my second language (Im from Norway), and I feel bad about my english. I understand a lot, but i have a much harder time expressing myself, especially in writing.
I hope all is good, and i do wish for a wonderfull summer day for you! 🙂 Love, all the best and Greetings from Anlaug.
Never feel bad about your English. You speak and write more than one language. Like most Americans, I'm mono-lingual. I couldn't begin to say in Norwegian what you can say in English.
Thank you so much! 🙂 I have a brother in the States, and have been visiting many times, I just love it there, and does consider Gloucester, his hometown, my second home too, so i feel that my english should be much better. But i loose it in between my visits, cause i dont use it. So, Thanks to your kind words, I will reply some more. I really, really enjoy reading, and sometimes wieving the discourse, and i while its great listening to and watch wise and fun people saying things in it self, sometimes its tempting to join in. At least to say how much I like and appricate all the good thoughts, and how it regives me hope in humanity, to see kindred spirits.
The deep dive into faux nuance and pointless specificity in diagnosis we are asked to believe in which leads exactly no where seems to foment ( imho) a kind of sanctioned cultural schizophrenia. If people are kept from seeing the whole and are forever spinning in the compartmentalized parts they will never become sane . Or most importantly a threat to those who would control them. This is what gaslighting on a cultural scale looks like . It’s the ultimate divide and conquer when the individual’s cognition and perceptions are shattered into pieces.
Child abuse seems to be the common denominator in much mental health illness. One avenue of that abuse is turning babies, even newborns, over to daycare centers. Lara Wylie Haynes has a guest post on the substack Year Zero "Universal Early Childhood Daycare Has Been Proven to Damage the Children Who Have Been Through It And may be at the root of the ongoing and growing child mental health crisis" that goes into this at length. https://wesleyyang.substack.com/p/universal-early-childhood-daycare?sd=pf
"Mothers and mothering matter to babies: even babies adopted at birth can suffer a sense of deep shock from the loss of their biological mother, whose body they have lived inside for nine months, hearing the soundtrack of her heartbeat and voice, feeling the shake of her laughter and the familiar rhythm of her gait. This sensory bond is formed well before birth. Without either denigrating or excusing fathers, or the myriad alternative arrangements in which individuals have been able to thrive, there can be no perfect substitute for that unique bond. Our language should not seek to euphemize this reality away."
Babies need their mothers, not a caretaker, no matter how attentive the caretaker might be, which a day care cannot provide. A grandmother or aunt might be a sufficient replacement for the mother, but ideally, it is the mother who has the central and most impact, good or bad, upon the future mental health of her children.
I was just about to link to this article on daycare as well! The common denominator I see is a very turbulent or abusive childhood or demeaning adolescence that bubbles over to psychological manifestations to cope. It’s very sad. Many people have not had the loving support, correction, and encouragement of a mother (or father) so they are adrift without the necessary self-regulating processes for their strong (natural) emotions. They also often lack the bridge of imagination that an involved, playful mother has so they can become constantly fantastical in their thinking or flat in their affect.
I don’t suffer from mental illness myself, but as an older millennial, I’ve noticed that, uh, almost all of my peers do. I agree that the underlying reason is likely child abuse, and this very much includes putting your kids in daycare and endless cycles nannys, after school care, public schools. I certainly noticed that was how most of my classmates grew up. I think people don’t want to confront it because it’s painful to see that your parents preferred work/status over spending time with their kids as children, and because of the rah rah women can do everything brainwashing (“I LIKED daycare because I could see that my mom was happy and fulfilled after being able to work!” Uh, yeah right.)
I recently read a book about the importance of regular sleep for babies and young kids- you can’t really “make up” for lost naps or late bedtimes, and the author believes that cognitive damage results from missing sleep. I’m sorry, but there is no way that kids in a daycare center are getting good quality sleep (to mention just one possible way mental health problems could be related.)
I 100% agree with you. I worked as the assistant to the administrator of an upscale daycare for about 5 years. Costs for one child (this was over 10 years ago) were in excess of $1100.00 a month, and infant care was an additional 1300.00/mo. Parents arrived with their young by 7:30 am and returned for them ~ 5:30 pm, if they weren't late, and the often were. Additionally, these parents participated in extras like Friday night slumber parties, and other events, like Parent's Night Out that the center provided for extra cost to essentially take the kids off their parents hands. I'm guessing that many of these parents spent at best less than 4 hours a day wake time during the week with their children, and only a little more on the weekends.
And yes, regular sleep schedules are very important to the health and well-being of babies and young children. Implementing that is the sole responsibility of the parents, not left to the child to decide.
That was a fascinating, and terrifying, read. Makes a lot of sense. Just the thought of separating in that way from my tiny babies and children has always sent a chill down my spine, and this helps explain why.
I also wonder what affect it has on mental illness in the mothers. Obviously the kids have it way, way worse, but my chills at the thought of daycare are for myself as well as my children. If I’d had to separate from my infant a few weeks after giving birth, it would have torn a hole right through my psyche.
Yes, KBD, the same for me. I was fortunate to be a stay at home mom to my only son, and I can't tell you how happy and relieved I am that my two grands have never been in daycare, were nurtured by their parents from birth, were trained, gently and without any trouble, to meet bedtime with equanimity and in fact, enjoyment, and so far at the ages of 8 and 12 both of them are happy, well-and self-regulated and a pleasure to be with.
Very insightful. Both my parents were mental health professionals, so for many decades I have pondered this basic tension between "complexity" and "reductionism" with regards to mental health diagnoses (and other stuff!). I laud your reclaiming of the value of reductionism--it is how we understand our world and respond. It is part of the purpose of language, to give us boxes to put things in so we are not overwhelmed. When we have a "reason" that is defined for something, we can take better action to improve our lives. I definitely agree about the co-morbidities point re: transgenderism. The gender activists claim the "co-morbidities" are the result of the person not being affirmed or allowed to be his/her "authentic self." They have switched it around and the result is destroying people's lives.
At the same time, I do think it is important to hold these labels we create gently, and to continually question whether they are the best approximation of the issue as we learn more. The truth is, life IS complex, bodies are complex, and our psyches are complex. A person can have health symptoms that come from more than one accurate and helpful diagnosis. For example, I have been on a quest for years to understand why I have chronic chest congestion. I have been diagnosed with GERD, sleep apnea,, allergies, and a deviated septum. It's been somewhat helpful to look at and address each of these discrete conditions, but the symptom persists. I may need surgery. In our current medical system, different doctors don't talk to each other very well. Patients need to be resourceful and put the pieces together. I actually think that's what works best for me in my life--going back and forth between being reductionist and holistic, like changing the distance focus on a camera, changing the context to get the insights I need.
I used to have choking episodes and was diagnosed with GERD and I had the esophagus expansion operation, it only took about an hour, and the choking episodes are gone, I recommend it.
Thanks! I haven't heard about that. I don't usually talk about details of my boring medical problems on forums like this, but I have also found that regular people need to help each other, share advice and insights and wisdom I find out as much from friends (or strangers like Mr. Raven!) as I do from doctors.
“I was taught that being ‘a reductionist’ was an epistemological sin. Really, it was a moral sin, but this was never admitted. The liberal academy must see itself as pursuing ‘truth,’ not adherence to moral dogma.” – I went to a college much like yours, Josh, and for decades taught in an 'elite' humanities program where nuance was next to numinousness: the demi-deities of ambiguity received daily genuflections. I value nuance, actually, in the arts – in poems, classic novels, good movies, theater, brilliant acting – where it belongs. And in some healthy family, or neighborly, negotiations. Where dominance and dysfunction are not the daily dinner fare, a little friendly gnawing of gristle, patient mincing of overly hasty reductionism, may be normal and nourishing for the group’s mental health. Knowing when to split hairs and when to yank off the wig and mangle it is a fine art (for another classic-movie ‘borderline’ case: cue clip of Anne Baxter after her failed play for Bette Davis’s guy, in "All About Eve"). Too often, as you rightly argue, the snuggly feel of “now, let’s not reduce things to black-and-white thinking” is a gaslighting cover story for the unspeakable shock of truth: “someone here is ill and damaging.” As in many upbringings, mine was a charade of the ‘niceness’ of nuance until the borderline parent hits tantrum-level dis-regulation: then the world gets very black-and-white indeed, and the puzzled child on the receiving end of the detonation grows up clinically ‘depressed.’ Much later, someone mentions ‘cPTSD,’ and a light dawns.
Boy are you right. Discernment is what we need. When to reduce, and when to complicate.
I say that I am a reductionist specifically because I believe reductionism needs to aggressively demand more space in the public conversation. It is not that I don't recognize that there are areas where nuanced approach is necessary. I do recognize.
But being nuanced does not need a publicity or awareness campaign. It is already disproportionately dominant.
Absolutely -- I take your point, Josh. The flagpoles (and front yards in my Northeast neighborhood) are aflutter with 'nuance' pennants, signs boasting what 'We Believe.' They purport to cheerlead for every stripe of open-armed tolerance, but they're not exactly invitations to a discursive seminar -- more like conversation-stoppers: long may they wave heretics away. Today's Substack includes a vital point: beware hectoring cries for 'nuance' that are ingenious sheep's clothing for the wolfish absolutisms du jour. I think I've fallen for that ruse too often in the past. This column is a keeper, thanks! (Your work in the podcast illustrates appreciation for nuance in the right places, every week, for sure -- as in the exacting explications of lax legalese and sketchy news-writing, brilliant and often hilarious dissections, as you lever up the boilerplate phrasings so we can see what's crawling under them.)
CPTSD is often misdiagnosed as BPD, NPD, etc etc. As you state, they are all just variations of the same thing: a distorted sense of self and the world due to severe and prolonged child abuse.
I have CPTSD, too. Like a f'n anchor around the neck.
Hello Josh, although I'm not in a position to make a financial contribution at present please know that your work is much appreciated.
I don't feel bold enough to make any statements about my own psychopathologies, but I may be bold enough to make a little suggestion to you which could be helpful to you on your voyage, and therefore by extension, to us on ours as well.
You mentioned in a recent piece how you have to approach your psyche in an oblique fashion, not staring at it directly, like the astronomer uses only the shadow to see an eclipse. Now we can all use those old mechanical shadows, Moving Pictures. You are clearly an aficionado of classic cinema, and as we are all joined through the digital magic of the inter-tubes why not make a "Psycho-Drama Movie Club"? (Working title only).
You select the movie, give us all a week or so to watch it and get up to speed on the back story. Then write a piece or do a podcast with your psychological diagnoses and we can chime in from the peanut gallery.
With fictional characters, writers and actors who are long since gone there's much less heat and venom around so we're likely to be much cooler and rational examining them. The Johnny Depp/Amber Heard drama was an eyeopener, but so many people felt they had some sort of personal stake in that mess and so many became very hot indeed about this point or that. More heat, less light.
So some possibilities; "Gaslight" is now so well-known it's an eponymous phenomenon, so how about Elizabeth Taylor as Gloria Wandrous in "BUtterfield 8" ? I nearly choked on my coffee when I read that "Psycho-biddy" AKA "Hagsploitation" is a recognized horror sub-genre, the classic example is of course "What ever happened to baby Jane ?"
Our friend Sam just described this comparing autism and NPD. Most people forget that the DSM is a classification system aka a taxonomy meant for educators to try to clump behaviors and symptoms. However, it's still in the state evolution was before DNA. It's very hard to actually tell cause. Trauma to the brain can be from both neurological (developmental disorders) or from sociological causes. Like cancer, which may be from genetics or to much sun, it may show up as the same disease/symptoms.
DSM provides nothing more than a means to group clusters of symptoms together for purposes of research. The various misuses of it for legal, health care, educational, and financial purposes should be outlawed. Some clinicians say if cPTSD were added, the whole book could be reduced to pamphlet size. I agree.
My diagnosis list is almost identical to yours. Swap out Sleep Terror Disorder for #4. And I agree with you. They're not discrete. Child abuse is the reason for all of it. I am deeply and profoundly fucked up because my brain marinated in cortisol from birth until I escaped in my late teens, and my "self" was formed with trauma as a major ingredient to the recipe. Depression is a consequence of perceived powerlessness, which I still perceive now, even when it's false, because it was a simple, factual truth for so long. Panic disorder is a consequence of having had *very good reasons* to panic, over and over. OCD is an attempt to grab control of life, which is fundamentally uncontrollable. I have Sleep Terror Disorder because of all the times that a parent violently woke me up from a nightmare, often a nightmare about them being violent, which made my brain unreliable about telling sleep from wakefulness. TLDR; the first four diagnoses are all subsets of the fifth.
The increasingly fine sifting of “mental illnesses” is simply to pull more people into the basket of available clients, for pharma mostly, but also for clinicians. One cannot enjoy the fruits of one’s “expertise” unless you have patients, which is why the DSM keeps getting larger. Transgenderism is also a “boutique mental illness” that parents can be proud of. A little bon Munchausen by proxy.
Von, stupid auto correct.
Absolutely, I came to that revelation some time ago that children being put up to transitioning by a parent (usually mother) were Münchausen syndrome by proxy victims & in a sane country parent would be prosecuted for child abuse. And child counseled for their gender dysphoria.
Bingo. I think you're right, and it's similar to something I've heard other people say too - e.g. their alcohol disorder, mental health problems etc were not several separate issues but all part of the same issue, a reaction to trauma. It makes sense and it is a discussion going on in clinical settings too. E.g. mental health and alcohol - other countries' health services have treatment plans that treat both issues concurrently, as one larger problem, with the same root cause. It's something being debated in the UK still where we generally have separate treatment plans e.g. one service for addiction, one for mental health.
It would seem to me that although an individual might just have one mental health issue, e.g. depression, if they have more than one e.g. depression and anxiety, they're really more symptoms with the same root cause (often trauma). But I am absolutely a lay-person and I forgot my own phone number today, so don't take me too seriously.
I dont know if you ever checked out Richard Grannon of this subjects? He has several videos with content extally pondering qusteions like this, and I think he have some great ones (and have been following him for years). Unfortuanally I do not remember the name of the videos that mostly popes to mind, but they are defintly in there amongst his videoes somewhere, with some great reflections.
I do, wholeheartly, agree with you..! ..and have had most of the same diagnouses that on your list too. except that they «landed» mine on PTSD, instead of cptsd, and I am pretty sure you almost cant have one without the other too...I think its like you say; all the talk and much of the genre are the coughs and sneezes of an underlying trauma-thing.😀👍🏻
Thank you for all your nice and thought-wakening writings too!!🙂👍🏻I love the show, but I am indeed very happy that you find the time to write too, I very much enjoy and appriciate! I am bad with saying so and to join in with commenting and praise. Its not because I dont want to, but english is my second language (Im from Norway), and I feel bad about my english. I understand a lot, but i have a much harder time expressing myself, especially in writing.
I hope all is good, and i do wish for a wonderfull summer day for you! 🙂 Love, all the best and Greetings from Anlaug.
Never feel bad about your English. You speak and write more than one language. Like most Americans, I'm mono-lingual. I couldn't begin to say in Norwegian what you can say in English.
Thank you so much! 🙂 I have a brother in the States, and have been visiting many times, I just love it there, and does consider Gloucester, his hometown, my second home too, so i feel that my english should be much better. But i loose it in between my visits, cause i dont use it. So, Thanks to your kind words, I will reply some more. I really, really enjoy reading, and sometimes wieving the discourse, and i while its great listening to and watch wise and fun people saying things in it self, sometimes its tempting to join in. At least to say how much I like and appricate all the good thoughts, and how it regives me hope in humanity, to see kindred spirits.
As a fellow reductionist I applaud your self awareness. Being able to recognize patterns and trends is an important survival skill.
It is alarming to me how often intelligence and mental skills are discounted in this world.
Completely agree on every point.
The deep dive into faux nuance and pointless specificity in diagnosis we are asked to believe in which leads exactly no where seems to foment ( imho) a kind of sanctioned cultural schizophrenia. If people are kept from seeing the whole and are forever spinning in the compartmentalized parts they will never become sane . Or most importantly a threat to those who would control them. This is what gaslighting on a cultural scale looks like . It’s the ultimate divide and conquer when the individual’s cognition and perceptions are shattered into pieces.
Child abuse seems to be the common denominator in much mental health illness. One avenue of that abuse is turning babies, even newborns, over to daycare centers. Lara Wylie Haynes has a guest post on the substack Year Zero "Universal Early Childhood Daycare Has Been Proven to Damage the Children Who Have Been Through It And may be at the root of the ongoing and growing child mental health crisis" that goes into this at length. https://wesleyyang.substack.com/p/universal-early-childhood-daycare?sd=pf
"Mothers and mothering matter to babies: even babies adopted at birth can suffer a sense of deep shock from the loss of their biological mother, whose body they have lived inside for nine months, hearing the soundtrack of her heartbeat and voice, feeling the shake of her laughter and the familiar rhythm of her gait. This sensory bond is formed well before birth. Without either denigrating or excusing fathers, or the myriad alternative arrangements in which individuals have been able to thrive, there can be no perfect substitute for that unique bond. Our language should not seek to euphemize this reality away."
Babies need their mothers, not a caretaker, no matter how attentive the caretaker might be, which a day care cannot provide. A grandmother or aunt might be a sufficient replacement for the mother, but ideally, it is the mother who has the central and most impact, good or bad, upon the future mental health of her children.
I was just about to link to this article on daycare as well! The common denominator I see is a very turbulent or abusive childhood or demeaning adolescence that bubbles over to psychological manifestations to cope. It’s very sad. Many people have not had the loving support, correction, and encouragement of a mother (or father) so they are adrift without the necessary self-regulating processes for their strong (natural) emotions. They also often lack the bridge of imagination that an involved, playful mother has so they can become constantly fantastical in their thinking or flat in their affect.
I don’t suffer from mental illness myself, but as an older millennial, I’ve noticed that, uh, almost all of my peers do. I agree that the underlying reason is likely child abuse, and this very much includes putting your kids in daycare and endless cycles nannys, after school care, public schools. I certainly noticed that was how most of my classmates grew up. I think people don’t want to confront it because it’s painful to see that your parents preferred work/status over spending time with their kids as children, and because of the rah rah women can do everything brainwashing (“I LIKED daycare because I could see that my mom was happy and fulfilled after being able to work!” Uh, yeah right.)
I recently read a book about the importance of regular sleep for babies and young kids- you can’t really “make up” for lost naps or late bedtimes, and the author believes that cognitive damage results from missing sleep. I’m sorry, but there is no way that kids in a daycare center are getting good quality sleep (to mention just one possible way mental health problems could be related.)
I 100% agree with you. I worked as the assistant to the administrator of an upscale daycare for about 5 years. Costs for one child (this was over 10 years ago) were in excess of $1100.00 a month, and infant care was an additional 1300.00/mo. Parents arrived with their young by 7:30 am and returned for them ~ 5:30 pm, if they weren't late, and the often were. Additionally, these parents participated in extras like Friday night slumber parties, and other events, like Parent's Night Out that the center provided for extra cost to essentially take the kids off their parents hands. I'm guessing that many of these parents spent at best less than 4 hours a day wake time during the week with their children, and only a little more on the weekends.
And yes, regular sleep schedules are very important to the health and well-being of babies and young children. Implementing that is the sole responsibility of the parents, not left to the child to decide.
That was a fascinating, and terrifying, read. Makes a lot of sense. Just the thought of separating in that way from my tiny babies and children has always sent a chill down my spine, and this helps explain why.
I also wonder what affect it has on mental illness in the mothers. Obviously the kids have it way, way worse, but my chills at the thought of daycare are for myself as well as my children. If I’d had to separate from my infant a few weeks after giving birth, it would have torn a hole right through my psyche.
Yes, KBD, the same for me. I was fortunate to be a stay at home mom to my only son, and I can't tell you how happy and relieved I am that my two grands have never been in daycare, were nurtured by their parents from birth, were trained, gently and without any trouble, to meet bedtime with equanimity and in fact, enjoyment, and so far at the ages of 8 and 12 both of them are happy, well-and self-regulated and a pleasure to be with.
Very insightful. Both my parents were mental health professionals, so for many decades I have pondered this basic tension between "complexity" and "reductionism" with regards to mental health diagnoses (and other stuff!). I laud your reclaiming of the value of reductionism--it is how we understand our world and respond. It is part of the purpose of language, to give us boxes to put things in so we are not overwhelmed. When we have a "reason" that is defined for something, we can take better action to improve our lives. I definitely agree about the co-morbidities point re: transgenderism. The gender activists claim the "co-morbidities" are the result of the person not being affirmed or allowed to be his/her "authentic self." They have switched it around and the result is destroying people's lives.
At the same time, I do think it is important to hold these labels we create gently, and to continually question whether they are the best approximation of the issue as we learn more. The truth is, life IS complex, bodies are complex, and our psyches are complex. A person can have health symptoms that come from more than one accurate and helpful diagnosis. For example, I have been on a quest for years to understand why I have chronic chest congestion. I have been diagnosed with GERD, sleep apnea,, allergies, and a deviated septum. It's been somewhat helpful to look at and address each of these discrete conditions, but the symptom persists. I may need surgery. In our current medical system, different doctors don't talk to each other very well. Patients need to be resourceful and put the pieces together. I actually think that's what works best for me in my life--going back and forth between being reductionist and holistic, like changing the distance focus on a camera, changing the context to get the insights I need.
I used to have choking episodes and was diagnosed with GERD and I had the esophagus expansion operation, it only took about an hour, and the choking episodes are gone, I recommend it.
Thanks! I haven't heard about that. I don't usually talk about details of my boring medical problems on forums like this, but I have also found that regular people need to help each other, share advice and insights and wisdom I find out as much from friends (or strangers like Mr. Raven!) as I do from doctors.
“I was taught that being ‘a reductionist’ was an epistemological sin. Really, it was a moral sin, but this was never admitted. The liberal academy must see itself as pursuing ‘truth,’ not adherence to moral dogma.” – I went to a college much like yours, Josh, and for decades taught in an 'elite' humanities program where nuance was next to numinousness: the demi-deities of ambiguity received daily genuflections. I value nuance, actually, in the arts – in poems, classic novels, good movies, theater, brilliant acting – where it belongs. And in some healthy family, or neighborly, negotiations. Where dominance and dysfunction are not the daily dinner fare, a little friendly gnawing of gristle, patient mincing of overly hasty reductionism, may be normal and nourishing for the group’s mental health. Knowing when to split hairs and when to yank off the wig and mangle it is a fine art (for another classic-movie ‘borderline’ case: cue clip of Anne Baxter after her failed play for Bette Davis’s guy, in "All About Eve"). Too often, as you rightly argue, the snuggly feel of “now, let’s not reduce things to black-and-white thinking” is a gaslighting cover story for the unspeakable shock of truth: “someone here is ill and damaging.” As in many upbringings, mine was a charade of the ‘niceness’ of nuance until the borderline parent hits tantrum-level dis-regulation: then the world gets very black-and-white indeed, and the puzzled child on the receiving end of the detonation grows up clinically ‘depressed.’ Much later, someone mentions ‘cPTSD,’ and a light dawns.
Boy are you right. Discernment is what we need. When to reduce, and when to complicate.
I say that I am a reductionist specifically because I believe reductionism needs to aggressively demand more space in the public conversation. It is not that I don't recognize that there are areas where nuanced approach is necessary. I do recognize.
But being nuanced does not need a publicity or awareness campaign. It is already disproportionately dominant.
Absolutely -- I take your point, Josh. The flagpoles (and front yards in my Northeast neighborhood) are aflutter with 'nuance' pennants, signs boasting what 'We Believe.' They purport to cheerlead for every stripe of open-armed tolerance, but they're not exactly invitations to a discursive seminar -- more like conversation-stoppers: long may they wave heretics away. Today's Substack includes a vital point: beware hectoring cries for 'nuance' that are ingenious sheep's clothing for the wolfish absolutisms du jour. I think I've fallen for that ruse too often in the past. This column is a keeper, thanks! (Your work in the podcast illustrates appreciation for nuance in the right places, every week, for sure -- as in the exacting explications of lax legalese and sketchy news-writing, brilliant and often hilarious dissections, as you lever up the boilerplate phrasings so we can see what's crawling under them.)
CPTSD is often misdiagnosed as BPD, NPD, etc etc. As you state, they are all just variations of the same thing: a distorted sense of self and the world due to severe and prolonged child abuse.
I have CPTSD, too. Like a f'n anchor around the neck.
Some light reading:
https://pdfroom.com/books/complex-ptsd-from-surviving-to-thriving/qXgenKyX26P
Hello Josh, although I'm not in a position to make a financial contribution at present please know that your work is much appreciated.
I don't feel bold enough to make any statements about my own psychopathologies, but I may be bold enough to make a little suggestion to you which could be helpful to you on your voyage, and therefore by extension, to us on ours as well.
You mentioned in a recent piece how you have to approach your psyche in an oblique fashion, not staring at it directly, like the astronomer uses only the shadow to see an eclipse. Now we can all use those old mechanical shadows, Moving Pictures. You are clearly an aficionado of classic cinema, and as we are all joined through the digital magic of the inter-tubes why not make a "Psycho-Drama Movie Club"? (Working title only).
You select the movie, give us all a week or so to watch it and get up to speed on the back story. Then write a piece or do a podcast with your psychological diagnoses and we can chime in from the peanut gallery.
With fictional characters, writers and actors who are long since gone there's much less heat and venom around so we're likely to be much cooler and rational examining them. The Johnny Depp/Amber Heard drama was an eyeopener, but so many people felt they had some sort of personal stake in that mess and so many became very hot indeed about this point or that. More heat, less light.
So some possibilities; "Gaslight" is now so well-known it's an eponymous phenomenon, so how about Elizabeth Taylor as Gloria Wandrous in "BUtterfield 8" ? I nearly choked on my coffee when I read that "Psycho-biddy" AKA "Hagsploitation" is a recognized horror sub-genre, the classic example is of course "What ever happened to baby Jane ?"
I'm sure you can come up with many, many more.
Any way that's all for now.
Peace be with you.
Our friend Sam just described this comparing autism and NPD. Most people forget that the DSM is a classification system aka a taxonomy meant for educators to try to clump behaviors and symptoms. However, it's still in the state evolution was before DNA. It's very hard to actually tell cause. Trauma to the brain can be from both neurological (developmental disorders) or from sociological causes. Like cancer, which may be from genetics or to much sun, it may show up as the same disease/symptoms.
DSM provides nothing more than a means to group clusters of symptoms together for purposes of research. The various misuses of it for legal, health care, educational, and financial purposes should be outlawed. Some clinicians say if cPTSD were added, the whole book could be reduced to pamphlet size. I agree.
I absolutely agree. 90% of my client base would vanish if we could somehow wave a magic wand and prevent all forms of child abuse.