ADVICE: Personality Disorder or Psychological Issue
QUESTION:
Does everyone have some sort of personality disorder or psychological issue if you look hard enough?
I'm not a misanthrope, but I think so. No one's perfect. And I've never really gotten to know someone well without seeing some sort of abnormality. That's what makes the world interesting.
REPLY:
That's a really good question that you asked.
The answer would be yes. In fact, that's how you get a lot of failed relationships because people try to make their significant others be a perfect fit.
However, since we all have our quirks, mannerisms, and personal issues that shaped who we are, there are things about us that some people wouldn't like.
For example, take this question that you asked. You have a whole bunch of people who have answered your question. Let's say you find a particular answer you like given by a person. If you search hard enough to look for some kind of flaw or something about the person to disqualify that that person as giving good or logical advice, you can create the same effect.
That effect is where you're not paying attention to the value of the answer provided and basing your decision on some character flaw about that individual thinking that makes the individual unqualified to be an expert.
Sometimes the flaws we find in others have nothing to do with the task at hand. People can develop prejudices that have no bearing or relevance to what is being asked or the task at hand.
The other thing that's bad about diagnosing people with Personality Disorders is that much of it is subjective.
They once had an experiment where they took test subjects that were clinically sane and secretly inserted them into various Mental Institutions to test to see whether the Psychiatrists at those Mental Hospitals could tell the difference between a sane and insane mental patient.
The experiment turned out horribly because the people who were sane and attempted to prove that they were sane were branded by the Mental Institution people as being ill and "thinking they were sane."
That's a really frightening or disturbing thought. It means that if you and I were clinically sane and thought we could pass through a Mental Institution with flying colors and a Clean Bill of Health, we probably wouldn't. We'd be dubbed as mentally ill.
Imagine if you're sitting there and sure you're mentally stable, but you're locked up in Mental Ward with a Psychiatrist who doesn't believe you and when you claim there's nothing wrong with you he says you're in denial.
Then when you get angry or show any sort of aggression, the Psychiatrist whips out his pen and paper and starts writing in his notes that you have "violent tendencies."
People should be very careful. A lot of people discriminate against people who come off as being mentally ill or unstable, but if they were ever subjected to conditions where their sanity was questioned, most people would fail and get a rude awakening to discover that there's a very thin line that separates sanity and insanity and people who claim to be qualified in determining who is and isn't sane sometimes can't.
The same thing goes for interrogating people whom they believe to be guilty of a crime who were actually innocent. If you lock someone up for 24 hours in an interrogation room grilling them, you can get an innocent individual to cave in and break down, start tripping over their words, and make them look like they're guilty.
A lot of people think they're sane, but it's really easy to nudge people off balance mentally if you push the right butons. Most people don't realize this.
Does everyone have some sort of personality disorder or psychological issue if you look hard enough?
I'm not a misanthrope, but I think so. No one's perfect. And I've never really gotten to know someone well without seeing some sort of abnormality. That's what makes the world interesting.
REPLY:
That's a really good question that you asked.
The answer would be yes. In fact, that's how you get a lot of failed relationships because people try to make their significant others be a perfect fit.
However, since we all have our quirks, mannerisms, and personal issues that shaped who we are, there are things about us that some people wouldn't like.
For example, take this question that you asked. You have a whole bunch of people who have answered your question. Let's say you find a particular answer you like given by a person. If you search hard enough to look for some kind of flaw or something about the person to disqualify that that person as giving good or logical advice, you can create the same effect.
That effect is where you're not paying attention to the value of the answer provided and basing your decision on some character flaw about that individual thinking that makes the individual unqualified to be an expert.
Sometimes the flaws we find in others have nothing to do with the task at hand. People can develop prejudices that have no bearing or relevance to what is being asked or the task at hand.
The other thing that's bad about diagnosing people with Personality Disorders is that much of it is subjective.
They once had an experiment where they took test subjects that were clinically sane and secretly inserted them into various Mental Institutions to test to see whether the Psychiatrists at those Mental Hospitals could tell the difference between a sane and insane mental patient.
The experiment turned out horribly because the people who were sane and attempted to prove that they were sane were branded by the Mental Institution people as being ill and "thinking they were sane."
That's a really frightening or disturbing thought. It means that if you and I were clinically sane and thought we could pass through a Mental Institution with flying colors and a Clean Bill of Health, we probably wouldn't. We'd be dubbed as mentally ill.
Imagine if you're sitting there and sure you're mentally stable, but you're locked up in Mental Ward with a Psychiatrist who doesn't believe you and when you claim there's nothing wrong with you he says you're in denial.
Then when you get angry or show any sort of aggression, the Psychiatrist whips out his pen and paper and starts writing in his notes that you have "violent tendencies."
People should be very careful. A lot of people discriminate against people who come off as being mentally ill or unstable, but if they were ever subjected to conditions where their sanity was questioned, most people would fail and get a rude awakening to discover that there's a very thin line that separates sanity and insanity and people who claim to be qualified in determining who is and isn't sane sometimes can't.
The same thing goes for interrogating people whom they believe to be guilty of a crime who were actually innocent. If you lock someone up for 24 hours in an interrogation room grilling them, you can get an innocent individual to cave in and break down, start tripping over their words, and make them look like they're guilty.
A lot of people think they're sane, but it's really easy to nudge people off balance mentally if you push the right butons. Most people don't realize this.