[FRIAM] differential diagnosis of psychopathic vs spiritual experiences

[steve smith]

I tend to (mildly?) dismiss the "kids these days" self-identification as 
a variant on what I remember back when I was one... and my experience 
aligns somewhat with your own the the nuance that there was some 
holonomic overlap..  Our Jocks sometimes were also Honor's students and 
sometimes even Stomps (cowboy/FFA) for example.  The wood/metal shop 
crowd was significantly Stomps and Heads for very different reason but 
being co-housed with the Print Shop there were Honor's Students and 
Band/Thespian types (with a big overlap amongst those two).

I do think that identifying with one's diagnosis is a somewhat new 
thing.   I do have anecdotal evidence of members of my generation and 
that of my parents aggressively identifying with something like a 
diagnosis, maybe not DSM-style diagnoses, but more by their 
"problems"...   it felt to me like a way of trying to re-appropriate an 
accusation as an identity to be proud of. I think we have a LOT more 
crisply named such things (evidenced by the nuanced variants?)  Or maybe 
I am just a "grump old get off my lawn man" now and that is my lazy way out.

I still submit that the pithy "I am who you think I think I am" covers a 
reat deal of the space.

noveau-tribal, freshly coined categories have been around for a very 
long time, most obviously to me in sweeping cultural movements... in the 
arts one might be a classical, romantic, realist, impressionist, 
dada-ist, modernist, postmodernist painter,photographer,sculptor, 
playwright, poet, novelist, etc...

- Steve

> 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).
>>> >
>
>