 I'm wearing a mask. Is this a delusional act? Am I delusional? There are quite a few people who deny the existence of the virus, or even that there is a pandemic going on. And the vast majority of humanity would disagree with them, and so they would consider people who take off their masks to be delusional. Where do we draw the line? How can we tell the difference between delusion and belief? Delusion and hope. Delusion and optimism. How do we know what is normal and what is abnormal? Is it a spectrum? Are these discrete states easily distinguishable? Hope and optimism, for example, should be derived from reality testing from a realistic assessment of the environment, human environment, and natural environment. If hope and optimism and belief derive from a delusion, never mind how widespread this delusion is, then they are pathological. They are unhealthy. And so today I would like to discuss everyday life. Phenomena in everyday life, which could easily be cast as psychopathologies, as mental illness, as forms of sickness, and then ask the question, why do we exempt these behaviors? Why do we as psychologists exempt these behaviors? Why do we give them a pass? Why when we see similar behaviors in other settings, in other cultures, in other contexts, we pathologize them? But we don't when it is in our culture, for example. It's a complex issue and a very touchy and controversial one, and I hope you stay with me to the end because it's going to be a bumpy and ego-dystonic right, guaranteed. Where do we draw the line? Normal people adapt themselves to their environment, human environment, natural environment. Abnormal people, people with mental health problems, do exactly the opposite. They try to adapt the environment to themselves. They don't want to change, they don't change, or they are incapable of changing. So they expect the environment to change. Society, friends, family, the workplace. They have idiosyncratic needs, a unique profile, and they expect everyone around them to mold themselves to fit this profile, like a key and a lock. And when these sick individuals succeed, when they do transform their environment, human environment, their society, or natural environment, when they do this, everything is pathologized. Consider for example Nazi Germany and Adolf Hitler. Adolf Hitler was a very sick man. Nazi Germany was a very sick society. Why? Because it had adopted itself to the profile of Adolf Hitler. So what's the difference between Adolf Hitler and other movers and shakers in human history? What's the difference between him, for example, and Napoleon? Why don't we castigate Napoleon in the same terms that we castigate Adolf Hitler? Where do we draw the line? Before we start, starting with Sigmund Freud and his disciples, there was a new trend, trend of sociobiology. We started to medicalize. We started to pathologize. What was hitherto known as sin, wrongdoing, misbehavior? You see, psychology succeeded religion. Before there was psychology, there was religion. And religion provided inner peace. Religion provided and gave healing. Religion fostered an engendered peace of mind. Religion was a form of impromptu psychology or psychiatry or therapy. Religious was a form of psychotherapy. And so here came Sigmund Freud and he absconded with religions, artifacts. He invaded the territory of religion and he medicalized sin, wrongdoing, and misbehavior. And as the vocabulary of public discourse shifted from religious terms to scientific terms, offensive behaviors that constituted transgressions against the divine or against the social order, these transgressions have been re-labeled. So for example, self-centeredness, disempathic egocentricity, they are known today as pathological narcissism. Criminals used to be criminals, but now they are no longer only criminals. They are also psychopaths. Their behavior, though still described as antisocial, is now attributed to their deprived childhood. It is the deterministic outcome of some genetic predisposition of brain biochemistry, which can arise. And in all this medicalization and pathologizing, it casts in doubt the very existence of free will and free choice between good and evil. Narcissists can say, well, I'm a narcissist. You know what can I do? Psychopaths can say, forgive me, I'm a psychopath. That's who I am. It's my nature. I'm like a virus. I don't mean ill, but I kill. It's very bad for morality. The contemporary science of psychopathology or clinical psychology now amounts to a godless variant of Calvinism, a kind of predestination by nature or predestination by nurture. So what I want to do in today's lecture is to examine five everyday phenomena and how psychology took over and pathologized this phenomena and how it refused to pathology, declined to pathologize. Other phenomena which definitely are pathological and should have been pathologized. And start, of course, how else? With religion. Here's a question. What constitutes an established institution, a religion? And what's the difference between a religion and a cult? Or a cult and a sect? Is it the quantity or the number of followers? Because if it is, we are in trouble. The Mooneys, the unification church, they had four million followers at the peak. That's a big number of like-minded people, all of them adhering to the same tenets. And yet, no one would say that the unification church was a religion or even a religious establishment. They were regarded widely as a sect. So what's the difference? Is it historical precedent, like tenure in a university? The longer you are around, the more a religion you become. I mean, the longer the period, the more you are considered a religion. Is this it? Religious people display manifest signs of addiction. The religion caters to numerous elements in the addictive personality. I could safely say that religious people are junkies. They're not junkies of substances, they're junkies of narratives, of signs, of symbols, of miracles, and ultimately of delusions. And we are trying desperately to avoid this discussion in psychology. Why? Because religious people are very powerful. Very powerful, because they're very numerous. And because they're very numerous, they have political might. And they can leverage this political might and the money that stands behind it to destroy, exterminate psychology. Bear in mind that most universities in the world rely on state finance. And in most countries in the world, religion has a pronounced political role. So it's like taking on the Republican Party. You wouldn't want to do that. Psychologists, therefore, are politically correct, as we will see. Every diagnosis in the diagnostic and statistical manual hastens to say, no, this is not about religion. Let me read to you the text. An individual, I'm reading from the diagnostic and statistical manual edition five. An individual's cultural and religious background must be taken into account in evaluating the possible presence of a delusional disorder. Really? Why? The content of delusions also varies across cultural contexts, you don't say. That's a politically correct statement. It's a message that the community of psychologists is sending to religion, to institutional religions. Don't worry. We're not going to attack you. We're not going to pathologize you. We're not going to encroach on your turf and enter your, invade your territory. To each his own, we are not going to declare that religion is a delusional disorder. That's not okay. That's intellectual dishonesty. Because if you look at the definition of delusional disorder and the diagnostic features of delusional disorder, as they are embedded in the diagnostic and statistical manual, the first thing that comes to mind is religion, not the second, the first. It's a perfect encapsulation, description, and capturing of the essence, the quiddity of what it is to be religious. And now to explain what I'm referring to. If you believe that the scriptures, scriptures of every religion, Old Testament, New Testament, Quran, Buddhist writings, Vigveda, whatever, if you believe the scriptures, religious writings, are beautiful literature, I'm all with you, never surpassed. The best there is. You know, so, so lifting if we had a soul. If you believe that religious writings are allegories of the human condition, of history, I'm all with you. I'm all for it. Religious writings are wise, sagacious. They are distillations of millennia of human experience. They should be studied thoroughly, absolutely, mandatorily. But if you believe that the events described in religious writings have happened, had actually happened, that they are real, that they are a form of history, something is seriously wrong with you. You're mentally ill. What is your mental illness? Delusional disorder and the psychiatric establishment and the psychologists all over the world, they're terrified of religious people. They don't want problems. They don't want their budgets cut. They don't want to be decapitated. They don't want any trouble. So they stay away from religion, which is intellectually dishonest. A while back, it was suggested that religion, mysticism, and more generally spirituality are actually genetically determined. It was known as the God-Gene hypothesis. And it proposes that spirituality is influenced by heredity. And there's a specific gene. It's called the vesicular monamine transporter, VM82. And this gene predisposes humans towards spiritual or mystical experiences. The first to propose this idea was a geneticist, actually. His name was Dean Hamer. In 2004, he published a book called The God-Gene, How Faith Is Hardware Into Our Genes. And the hypothesis is based on a combination of behavioral, genetic, neurobiological, and psychological studies. And the arguments of this hypothesis are the following. Number one, spirituality can be quantified, can be measured by psychometric tests. Number two, the underlying tendency to spirituality is partially heritable, genetic. Number three, part of this heredity can be attributed to a specific gene, VM82. Number four, these gene acts by altering monamine levels. Number five, spirituality provides an evolutionary advantage by providing individuals with an innate sense of optimism and hope. And it is this last point that I dispute. Optimism and hope grounded in a delusion, grounded in a falsification of reality. Optimism and hope grounded in impairment of reality testing, grounded in fake, false data and information, misinformation. This kind of hope, this kind of optimism are pathological. They're ill, they require help and treatment. And no amount of political correctness in the DSM or out of the DSM could change this. Delusions are defined in the DSM as fixed beliefs that are not amenable to change in light of conflicting evidence. So if you believe that something had happened and there's a preponderance of a well-meaning preponderance of evidence that nothing like this can happen in principle and you still believe it, you need help. You need therapy, you need treatment or in many cases medication. Delusional disorder, diagnostic criteria, diagnostic and statistical manual, edition five, 2013. Criterion A, the presence of one or more delusions with a duration of one month or longer. Criterion B, noschizophrenia present. Criteria C, apart from the impact of the delusions or its ramifications, functioning in daily life is not markedly impaired. Behavior is not obviously bizarre or odd. The delusional person appears to be totally normal. It is only when we talk to the delusional person and he says something that we know is, we know to be not true. We know to be false. We know it's impossible. And then he insists on it. It is only then that it becomes clear that the person suffers from delusional disorder. Hallucinations, if present, are not prominent and are related to the delusional theme. So hallucinations like, you know, miracle working and all this, they are related to the delusional thing. Criterion E, the disturbance is not attributable to the physiological effects of a substance or another medical condition and is not better explained by another mental disorder such as this or that. Delusions of bizarre content. Delusions are deemed bizarre if they are clearly implausible. Now the DSM uses the word implausible. I go one further. What about impossible? Like let me rephrase this sentence. Delusions are deemed bizarre, ultra bizarre, insane, if they are clearly impossible. Not understandable. I'm continuing with the DSM. Not understandable. Not derived from ordinary life experiences. So these are bizarre delusions. And delusions are continuous as the DSM. Symptoms fulfilling the diagnostic symptom criteria of the disorder are remaining for the majority of the illness course with sub threshold symptom periods being very brief relative to the overall course. So religious skepticism would be a break in this delusional disorder, but it would be brief. And if it's not brief, it's healing actually. Now what about the people who are people who have religious experiences, mystical experiences, including the founders of all the major religions all over the world? What about these people? They not only suffer from delusional disorder, but they are in all likelihood psychotic. They have had psychotic disorder. And their psychotic disorder was coupled probably with dissociative identity disorder. So the people who spawned, who gave rise to religions all over the world, especially religions which are delusional, religions which rely on events or history, which is utterly impossible. So these kind of people, they not only had delusional disorder, which is clear because they came up with these delusions, and they believed in the veracity of these delusions. They had experienced these delusions as real. The reality testing was short, but they had two other probably co-occurring mental illnesses. Psychotic disorder, and remember psychotic disorder is when you externalize internal objects. When you hear voices talking to you, or you see visions which are actually internal objects, elements of your own mind, you just don't know the difference. You can't tell the difference. So elements of your mind look to you to be real and outside you. That psychotic disorder, we call this process hyperreflexivity. But they had another thing, which is dissociative identity disorder. I would like to read to you the diagnostic criteria for dissociative identity disorder. A. Disruption of identity characterized by two or more distinct personality states, which may be described in some cultures as an experience of possession. This is the DSM, not some vacuum. The disruption in identity involves marked discontinuity in sense of self and sense of agency, accompanied by related alterations in affect, behavior, consciousness, memory, perception, cognition, and or sensory motor functioning. These signs and symptoms may be observed by others or reported by the individual. C. Recurrent gaps in the recall of everyday events, important personal information, and or traumatic events, that are and when these gaps are inconsistent with ordinary forgetting. C. The symptoms cause clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning. D. The disturbance is not a normal part of a broadly accepted pattern. E. The symptoms are not attributed to the physiological effects of a substance or another medical condition. And here's what they have to say in the diagnostic in the in the clinical features, in the diagnostic features. Possession form identities in dissociative identity disorder typically manifest as behaviors that appear as if a spirit, a supernatural being, or outside person has taken control over the individual, such that the individual begins speaking or acting in a distinctly different manner, speaking in tongues. For example, an individual behaviors, say the DSM, may give the appearance that her identity has been replaced by the ghost of another person who had committed suicide in the same community years before, speaking and acting as though she were still alive. Or an individual maybe or an individual continues the DSM, may be taken over by a demon or a deity that's as close as they get to admitting that religion is a form of sickness. As close as they get, I read this to you again, it's a very courageous sentence, very brave, buried of course as deeply as possible in the DSM, but it's still there. Let me read it to you again. An individual says the DSM, an individual may be taken over by a demon or a deity taken over in quotes and quotes by a demon or a deity resulting in profound impairment and demanding that the individual or a relative be punished for a past act followed by more subtle periods of identity alteration, etc. So they admit, they come very close to admitting that what religious people consider as demons or angels or god or deity, god or his relatives, all this is a case of dissociative identity disorder. Do you know what's the previous name of dissociative identity disorder? Multiple personality disorder. The majority of possession states around the world they immediately retreat, the DSM immediately realize, they realize what they've done and they become immediately politically correct. The majority of possession states around the world are normal, usually part of a spiritual practice and do not meet criteria for dissociative identity disorder. Sheer, unmitigated nonsense, result of fear, terror of religious people, they are afraid to confront them. The identities that arise during possession form dissociative identity disorder present recurrently are unwanted, involuntary, involuntary, cause clinically significant distress or impairment and not a normal part of broadly accepted cultural or religious practice. So if you are possessed by a demon or talk to a deity on intimate terms and it is a part of the mental illness known as your religion, you're okay, everything is fine. But if you do this and you're in atheism, you'll be placed in a mental asylum. Simple. Something's wrong with that, even religious people shouldn't admit that something wrong with this. In 1907 Freud wrote the first of many books about religion. He ended up writing about seven, I think, maybe eight books about religion. In 1907 he wrote the first book. It was titled Obsessive Actions and Religious Practices. And he suggested that religion and neurosis, mental illness, are similar products of the human mind. Neurosis, he said, has compulsive behavior. It's a form of individual religiosity. Remember what I keep saying, narcissistic personality disorder? It's a private religion. Freud said it before me, much better. He said neurosis is individual religiosity. And what about religion? Freud said religion with its repetitive rituals is a universal, obsessional neurosis. Where are the brave psychologists that existed a hundred years ago? Of course, Karl Marx, who was not a psychologist and not a religious person to use a British understatement. He was a 19th century philosopher and the founder of Marxism. He viewed religion as the soul of soulless conditions, the opium of the people. A form of protest by the working classes against their poor economic conditions and their alienations. All modern religions and churches are organs of bourgeois reaction used for the exploitation and stupifaction of the working class. Let me translate it to you. He says that established institutional religion is there to take your money. It's a self-enriching, narcissistic, con artistry form of organization. And I fully concur. So does Dawkins, by the way. Okay. You know, homosexuality was considered a mental illness until 1973. It was included in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. And now it is not. Now it is common accepted practice. Not even stigmatized anymore. And definitely not a mental illness by any definition of the word, by any stretch of the word. So if mental illnesses and mental disorders can make exits and entrances, you know, into the DSM and out of the DSM, because for example, sadistic personality disorder disappeared from the DSM, masochistic personality disorder, disappeared from the DSM. Are these real entities? Are these real disorders? Are these real illnesses? Are these clinical entities akin to cancer or diabetes? I mean, it's unthinkable of publishing a textbook about medicine without diabetes or cancer. But here is the DSM dispensing of dozens of diagnoses in and out, like, not a park, like a theme park, you know, and it's very disorienting, because it's not clear what are the, what are the ideological intellectual criteria and foundation for inclusion or exclusion. Even giants of the field like Theodor Millen, they argue for the inclusion of certain mental health, mental health personality disorders, sadistic, masochistic, negativistic, passive-aggressive, also not in the DSM. So there's a huge debate among the giants of the field, among the most prominent scholars as to what should be and shouldn't be. Malignant narcissism, Kernberg was an advocate of malignant narcissism. It's not in the DSM. So no one knows. It's totally not transparent. No one knows. The minutes of the committee, the DSM committee are not published. No one knows why certain disorders make it and others become apocrypha, apocrypha. It's a, this flux renders the whole profession of psychology and psychiatry very suspect. And this is why even theoreticians, even psychologists, even, you know, they are free to take on everyday phenomena, such as religion. Because if they pathologize religion and it's reverted, like in Wikipedia, you know, revert vandalism. It's reverted tomorrow. How are they going to look? So the DSM is much about exclusions, about inclusion. It tells you if it's culturally accepted, it's okay. If it's a religious practice, it's okay. If it's relevant to the period in history, it's okay. I mean, they are very wary to take a set of principles, set of diagnostic criteria and apply it fearlessly and rigorously to observable phenomena of human conduct and misconduct, which leads me to conspiracism. Conspiracy theories, the people who believe in conspiracy theories and what is their psychology or psychopathology. Conspiracism is the propensity to believe in unproven and unverified, often repeated conspiracy theories, urban legends, myths, and patent falsehoods, usually involving an evil intent of a cabal to abuse, manipulate, and exploit the unsuspecting masses. And I'm not talking only about the well-known conspiracy theories because, for example, the whole empath movement online is a conspiracy theory with a narcissist in the role of the evil, demonic presence and the empath in the role of the angel, angelic, blameless. So this is a conspiracy theory. Most people are gullible. They believe literally anything in anyone, a well-documented and thoroughly researched phenomenon known as the base rate policy. And then once they come to believe something, they defend their misconceptions fiercely, as they actively align themselves with other people, like-minded people, and signal their uncritical conformity in like-minded tribes and silos. Confirmation bias goes hand in hand with virtue signaling. I believe what you believe. I'm as virtuous as you are. Frequent exposure to these echo chambers, to this toxic nonsense, such exposure solidifies the belief in these outlandish and innate narratives. And this phenomenon is known as consistency, social media leverage consistency, as a grist to their perpetual mobile rumor and gossip mills. Other cognitive distortions feeding to conspiracism consider the proportionality bias, the erroneous conviction that great events are caused by commensurately massive reasons or plots or dynamic processes. This flies in the face of chaos theory and its butterfly effect. A lone grandiose gunman in Texas can rock the entire world with a single shot. We also find patterns where there are no patterns. Apophina, Pagedolia, these are the clinical names. We connect dots that should remain unconnected, discreet. We find continuities in the disparate and in the unrelated, including other people's actions, as related to their imputed motivations. And this is known as intentionality bias. Conspiracism is a personality trait. Even after a favorite conspiracy is debunked, there is a counterfactual residue left in the individual's mind. We call this the continued influence effect. The more you try to argue with a true believer in a conspiracy theory, the more entrenched this person becomes in his or her misinformation and paranoid skepticism. And this is known as the backfire effect. Conspiracies thrive on ignorance. We don't know what causes autism. So, anti-vaxxers enter the anti-vaxxers. There is a smidgen of grandiosity info, as people trust their gut instincts and consider themselves enlightened in the know superior to the sheep or adepts with access to arcane knowledge. And finally, conspiracy theories as wage reduce, ameliorate anxiety and depression. And the people who believe in conspiracy theories are again divided in two. They are those who apply critical thinking and rationality to conspiracy claims. And then they make up their mind. And they are those who adhere to conspiracy theories, believe in them, adopt them almost religiously, out of emotional reasoning. And these people are usually mentally unhealthy. And I would like to read to you the criterion of paranoid personality disorder and schizotypal personality disorder. Paranoid personality disorder first. A, a pervasive distrust and suspiciousness of other people such that their motivations are interpreted as malevolent, beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts. Suspects such a person with paranoid personality disorder, suspects without sufficient basis that other people are exploiting, harming or deceiving him or her. When I say other people can be institutions, there doesn't have to be other people. And these institutions can be hell bent on abusing and misusing a group of which that individual is a member. Number two is preoccupied with unjustified doubts about the loyalty or trustworthiness of friends, associates, other people. Number three is reluctant to confide in other people because of unwarranted fear that the information would be used maliciously against him or her. Number four reads hidden, demeaning or threatening meanings into benign remarks or events. Number five persistently bears grudges, is unforgiving of insults, injuries or slides. Number six perceives attacks on his or her own character or reputation that are not apparent to others and is quick to react angrily or to counter attack. Number seven has recurrent suspicions without justification regarding some issues like for example the fidelity of a spouse. Does not and all this does not occur exclusively during the course of schizophrenia. The polar disorder or depressive disorder with psychotic features or another psychotic disorder and is not attributable to the physiological effects of substance or some other medical condition. So this is paranoid personality disorder. You would immediately recognize of course many conspiracy theorists as having this paranoid personality disorder. But there's a personality disorder which fits people who believe in conspiracy theories even much better and it is the schizotypal personality disorder. Diagnostic and statistical manual edition five has this to say about schizotypal personality disorder. A pervasive pattern of social and interpersonal deficits marked by acute discomfort with and reduced capacity for close relationships as well as by cognitive or perceptual distortions and eccentricities of behavior beginning by early adulthood etc. Has the following ideas of reference exclusion deluding delusions of reference. In other words the idea that he's targeted somehow or that institutions or people do things act in certain ways because they want something from him that is somehow involved that's ideas of reference or referential ideation. Number two odd beliefs strange beliefs or magical thinking that influence behavior and are inconsistent with sub-cultural norms superstitiousness belief belief in clairvoyance telepathy or a sixth sense bizarre fantasies or preoccupations unusual perceptual experiences including bodily illusions odd thinking odd speech vague circumstantial metaphorical over elaborate or stereotype suspiciousness or paranoid ideation inappropriate constricted effect behavior or appearance that is odd eccentric or peculiar lack of close friends or confidence other than first degree relatives excessive social anxiety that does not diminish with familiarity and tends to be associated with paranoid fears rather than negative judgments about the self does not occur does not occur exclusively during the course of schizofrenia bipolar disorder depressive disorder with psychotic feature another psychotic disorder or autism spectrum disorder you see these two personality disorders put them together and you get the prototypical archetypical conspiracy theorist why don't we simply declare bravely and courageously that people who believe literally in the scriptures in religious texts are mentally ill and people who believe in conspiracy theories are mentally ill why don't we have this intellectual integrity the profession is prostituting itself in order to secure grants political support and not to confront two big portions of the population they're terrified simply fusillanimous cowards let's talk about defiance defiance and contumatiousness contumatiousness is when your hate authority and your natural reaction to authority is to challenge it donald trump is an example of defiance and contumatiousness combined drain the swamp so let me read to you the diagnostic criteria of two mental health disorders and you tell me if they don't capture perfectly the personality of someone like donald trump the personality of someone who is defined in your face hates authority contumatious impulsive and reckless let me read to you these diagnostic criteria listen well and tell me if they don't capture perfectly these people and if so why did no one come out and say this and these these and these politicians are mentally ill these and these people are mentally ill why are we so terrified of speaking our mind as psychologists oppositional defined disorder criterion a pattern of angry irritable mood argumentative defined behavior or vindictiveness lasting at least six months as evidenced by at least four symptoms from these categories and exhibited it during interaction with at least one individual who is not a sibling so someone with oppositional defined disorder has these angry irritable mood often loses his temper is often touchy or easily annoyed is often angry and resentful argumentative defined behavior often argues with authority figures or with adults if it's a trial often actively defies or refuses to comply with requests from authority figures refuses to comply with rules often deliberately annoys other people often blames other people for his or her mistakes or misbehavior vindictiveness has been spiteful of indicative at least twice within the past six months oppositional defined disorder it's a mental illness and yet few psychologists dare to speak up antisocial personalities or a pervasive pattern of disregard for and violation of the rights of others occurring since age 15 years as indicated by three or more of the following one failure to conform to social norms with respect to lawful behaviors as indicated by repeatedly performing acts with the grounds for condemnation or arrest number two deceitfulness as indicated by repeated lying use of aliases use of aliases or calling others for personal profit or pleasure number three impulsivity or failure to plan ahead number four irritability and aggressiveness as indicated by repeated physical fights or other fights and assaults number five reckless disregard for safety of self and others number six consistent irresponsibility as indicated by repeated failures to sustain consistent work behavior or honor financial obligations number seven lack of remorse as indicated by being in different two or rationalizing having hurt mistreated or stolen from another and so this captures perfectly certain individuals and yet we're very loath to speak out against them to diagnose them in public if they're powerful people if they're famous people if they're celebrities if they can do the profession of psychology harm we are terrified of interest groups we're terrified of of organized religion of institutions of establishments of organizations and so we keep twiddling our thumbs and producing politically correct work arounds just not to say it out loud and on the other hand we pathologize behaviors which should have never been pathologized consider for example seductiveness seductiveness flirtatiousness and promiscuity are features of histrionic personality disorder somatic narcissism and borderline personality disorder let me read you the criteria of borderline personality disorder a pervasive pattern of instability of interpersonal relationships self-image and effects marked impulsivity beginning by early adulthood and present in a series of contexts frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment do not include cell a suicidal or self-mutilating behavior which are covered in criteria and five number two a pattern of unstable and intense interpersonal relationships characterized by alternating between extremes of idealization and evaluation number three identity disturbance markedly and persistently unstable self-image or sense of self number four impulsivity in at least two areas that are potentially self-damaging example spending sex substance abuse reckless driving binge eating number five recurrence suicidal behavior gestures or threats or self-mutilating behavior number six effective instability due to a marked reactivity of mood intense episodic dysphoria irritability or anxiety usually lasting a few hours and only rarely more than a few days number seven chronic feelings of emptiness number eight inappropriate intense anger or difficulty controlling anger frequent displays of temper constant anger recurrent physical fights number nine transient stress related paranoid ideation or severe dissociative symptoms now this is a pathology this is clearly a pathological state which requires help compare this to histrionic personality disorder which i'm about to read to you why do we pathologize histrionic behaviors common daily occurrences by billions of people so we dare to pathologize women mostly we dare to pathologize women with borderline personality disorder with histrionic personality disorder there's a gender bias we dare to pathologize women because they are they have been until now weak disorganized they didn't have a lobby they didn't have a movement they didn't have a they didn't have political power they didn't have corporate power so the dsm is rampant flooded with pathologized female behaviors yet when it comes to organize religion conspiracy theories etc no way it's it's okay it's not pathological it's culturally appropriate it's religiously appropriate it's spiritual it's any cop out in the book histrionic personality disorder listen well a pervasive pattern of excessive emotionality and attention seeking beginning by early adulthood is uncomfortable in situations in which he or she is not the center of attention interaction with others is often characterized by inappropriate sexually seductive or provocative behavior whatever that means displays rapidly shifting in shallow expression of emotions consistently uses physical appearance to draw attention to herself as a style of speech that is excessively impressionistic and lacking in detail shows self-romatization theatricality and exaggerated expression of emotion is suggestible easily influenced by other people or circumstances considers relationships to be more intimate than they actually are now this is not a pathology i don't know it's a personality style but it's not a pathology it's nothing pathological here some things are exaggerated some things are under emphasized for example one thing they forgot to mention is that actually histrionics are much a hypo sexual they don't like sex so compare borderline to histrionic and see how we pathologize behaviors trades lifestyle choices and personality styles that should never be pathologized let's take another example loners you don't like people you're like company you're like sex you don't like an internet to have an intimate partner you like being with yourself you like your own company you find it titillating and thrilling and perfect fun you don't need anyone you're loner oops encrypts schizoid personality disorder yes they have pathologized preference to being alone because it's a social there are echoes here of social control trying to tell you how you should behave how you should feel and who you should be determining your identity via the levers of the psychology of the professions of psychology and psychiatry psychology and psychiatry had placed themselves at the disposal of societies all over the world in communist countries psychiatrists would commit dissidents would commit opposition figures to mental asylum lock them up at the service of the communist regime something very similar is happening in the capitalist world if you don't behave in socially conforming ways you're pathologized you're declared mentally ill and then they can do anything to you literally anything so schizoid personality disorder a pervasive pattern of detachment from social relationships and a restricted range of expression of emotions in interpersonal settings neither desires nor enjoys close relationships including being part of a family how shocking almost always chooses solitary activities as little if any interest in having sexual experiences with another person takes pleasure in few if any activities lacks close friends or confidence other than first degree relatives appears indifferent to the praise or criticism of others good for him shows emotional coldness detachment or flattened affectivity does not occur exclusively during schizophrenia etc etc this absolutely there's nothing pathological in any of this it's a personality style perhaps even a regrettable personality style as far as the individual is concerned he's missing out on many things but it's not a pathology so either we refuse we decline to pathologize people groups and institutions because they're powerful and we are afraid of them or we pathologize pathetic groups like loners and minority groups like women because we can and we are not afraid of them they can do nothing to us it's an opportunistic profession and the dsm is an opportunistic tone it doesn't reflect any knowledge in the scientific sense it reflects social compromise it reflects lack of intellectual integrity it reflects fear and it reflects the need to secure funding the need to to the need for licensing in other ways it reflects the interaction between state and an academic profession there is no academic profession which relies more on the state than psychology and psychology funding is common in all academic disciplines but psychology and psychology are especially vulnerable and they did this to themselves by being inconsistent over the decades by compromising by faking by pathologizing and demonizing vulnerable groups they have acquired a horrible reputation and i know that as a professor of psychology we don't have a good reputation it's not too late though there's always the dsm 6