[FRIAM] differential diagnosis of psychopathic vs spiritual experiences

Tue Aug 6 14:09:57 EDT 2024

Re self-identification.  We adopted our daughter in Mexico and moved from
Pittsburgh to Santa Fe about a year later.  When she came home after her
first day of kindergarten at E. J. Martinez I asked her if there were other
Hispanic kids in her class.  She said, "I dunno".

Based on the kids who became her friends I'd say they were oblivious to
ethnicity.

---
Frank C. Wimberly
140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
Santa Fe, NM 87505

505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

On Tue, Aug 6, 2024, 8:30 AM glen <gepropella at gmail.com> wrote:

> I'm in an ongoing argument with some of my salon goers about identity.
> People seem to straddle its multiple meanings for rhetorical (or
> confirmation biasing) purposes, fluidly switching one context/meaning for
> another so often and so fluidly as to prevent me from understanding
> whatever it is they're saying (or trying to avoid saying).
>
> Introspection is rife with such problems, including a six year old coming
> to some self-identification/registration as a member of some crisp
> class/category. The most recent Bad Faith rhetoric about identity had to do
> with "neurodivergent". There seems to be a trend amongst "the kids these
> days" to identify as autistic or ADHD. I mean, I was clearly "different"
> when I was a kid. We had identities like "head" (kid who does lots of
> drugs), "jock" (kids who spent lots of time in organized athletics),
> "brain" (kids who spent time doing chess, math, ...), etc. There was also a
> name for the [metal|wood|…] shop kids. But I've forgotten it.
>
> Some of us were diagnosed with various labels including some words we're
> not supposed to say anymore. Many of my friends had such conditions. But
> none of us *identified* as those diagnoses. The diagnoses seemed almost
> orthogonal to the identities/tribes. (I happened to be a member of the
> heads, jocks, brains, and "band nerd" tribes; that multi-tribe crossover
> was part of what made me feel "different".) And each group had its share of
> the same diagnoses.
>
> It seems to me that our tech-associated, individualistic, isolation has
> driven "the kids" to over-emphasize their diagnoses, to adopt them as
> identities/tribes, identifying from the inside->out; whereas we (can't
> speak for anyone else, really) mostly identified from the outside->in. We
> were sorted by society. The kids these days seem more self-sorted. On the
> one hand, that could feel like increased liberty and free association. But
> on the other hand, it's like everyone is a home-schooled weirdo these days
> and nobody knows how to, for example, bite their tongue or avoid picking
> their nose in public.
>
> Not everybody needs to be a Hunter S Thompson, "neurodivergent", or
> whatever. Some of us should be allowed to identify as "normal".
> Introspection is a sickness.
>
> On 8/5/24 17:01, steve smith wrote:
> > I jumped straight to the Artistic meaning of /frottage/ as coined
> originally by Max Ernst and while not as an act of psychopathy, it does
> have strong implications for the psychological/subconscious implications in
> this context?
> >
> > In any case, I find it a compelling opening line of the /call me
> Ishmael/ caliber.
> >
> > On 8/5/24 10:04 AM, Prof David West wrote:
> >> This is very interesting, and timely. I am completing an
> autobiography/essay/monograph for which this will be quite relevant. The
> opening lines of the work:
> >>
> >> /"An act of frottage triggered the self-recognition that I was a
> psychopath. I did not, of course, know either term or their meanings./
> >> /
> >> /
> >> /I was six." /
> >>
> >> davew
> >>
> >> On Thu, Aug 1, 2024, at 11:03 AM, glen wrote:
> >> > Progress or Pathology? Differential Diagnosis and Intervention
> Criteria
> >> > for Meditation-Related Challenges: Perspectives From Buddhist
> >> > Meditation Teachers and Practitioners
> >> > https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7403193/
> >> >
> >> > Based on our conversation attempting to identify behavioral markers
> for
> >> > consciousness, I thought this paper might give some insight into
> Dave's
> >> > straddling of mystical and materialistic descriptions of experiences
> he
> >> > marks as conscious. In the paper, they lay out 11 levers for making
> the
> >> > distinction:
> >> >
> >> > • Circumstances of Onset
> >> > • Control
> >> > • Critical Attitude
> >> > • Cultural Compatibility
> >> > • Distress
> >> > • Duration
> >> > • Functional Impairment
> >> > • Health History or Condition
> >> > • Impact
> >> > • Phenomenological Qualities
> >> > • Teachers’ Skills or Resources
> >> >
> >> >  From my perspective that consciousness is a kind of fusion function,
> >> > Control, Critical Attitude, Distress, and Functional Impairment are
> >> > primary and the rest are secondary. The ability to (change one's)
> focus
> >> > of attention is a hallmark of consciousness, and those 4 levers
> >> > direclty target one's ability to focus. Duration may well be secondary
> >> > and the rest tertiary, I guess. Because there's something like a
> >> > half-life of controllability. If, say, you're a conspiracy theorist,
> >> > and you *entertain*, say, flat earth for long enough, maybe you'll
> lack
> >> > the ability to re-focus and don a critical attitude. Similarly, if you
> >> > embed into, say, procedural programming long enough, maybe you'll lose
> >> > the ability to re-focus and think functionally ... a kind of
> Functional
> >> > Impairment (sorry for the polysemy of "functional", there).
> >> >
>
>
> --
> ꙮ Mɥǝu ǝlǝdɥɐuʇs ɟᴉƃɥʇ' ʇɥǝ ƃɹɐss snɟɟǝɹs˙ ꙮ
>
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