Hidden personalities

[SarahtheBoring]

Thanks, Rozard. Much better than I could've put it. I couldn't remember the new name for multiple personalities.

Schizophrenia also encompasses paranoia, btw, if that wasn't mentioned. And I don't mean mild paranoia, either. The "won't go out of your house because you think the feds are lurking in the bushes" kind of paranoia.

The problem with any mental disorder is that many of the symptoms are so vague and depend on the individual case - so lots of people see them and go, "Hey, that sounds kinda like..." without realizing the big caveat that hangs off nearly every psychiatric question -

"...enough to prevent you from going through your daily routine"

or "...bad enough that you go way out of your way to avoid [xyz]"

or generally, "enough to stop you from having a normal day-to-day life."

I used to go through psychological profiles and such as a test subject, from high school on - not a bad gig, I got about $100 per session. (Only once a year or so, though, so.) Anyway, in every interview, if I said I thought I matched one of the "weird" questions, they would WITHOUT FAIL ask, "Does this keep you from keeping up a regular routine?", I would say no, and they would change my answer to no.

This is, for the most part, serious stuff. The range of what is normal is MUCH wider than most people realize. Maybe we could fault overly restrictive definitions of what "normal" is - but in the end, really, most people are normal. Honestly. They may have issues, but they're not ill.

Not to mention my own personal neck of the woods, the gray and unsexy area of the mild personality disorder. We are clinically slightly annoying. Badly adjusted, but able to function. For every disorder there is usually a gray-area diagnosis to go with it - bipolar disorder has cylothymic disorder, depression has dysthymic disorder - and even the worst cases of what most people know would only fall into one of those.

I could also rant for about six hours on the impression that being disturbed is "edgy" or "interesting," including a large paragraph on my deep and lasting hatred for that Girl, Interrupted flick. (Which convinced my best friend that he had borderline personality disorder, because he wasn't very emotional. No, dude, you're not crazy; you're just really, really dull. Sorry.)

But I'll spare you all that rant.

[Kamoc]

god isn't a personality though; it's an idea. whether you create the distinction in your head is up to you and the asian muppets. dance frugle, dance.

all this newfound 'logic' being based off of small bits of skeptism and angst is really pissing me off. "oh no, the matrix is out to get me! THERE IS NO SPOON!" by letting yourself fall into the mental state of skeptism is to let your mind wander about in the unmaterialistic world: the world you don't live in. "if a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?" when you think to yourself, does that mean you thought at all? can you prove to anyone else what you just thought? what's the point in making trees fall if no one hears them? what's the point in thinking if no one else knows you do it? and don't give me that "my thoughts create ideas which create words" bullshit: that's the end of the means, and to accept that point of view is to accept the fact that when you go back to that tree in the forest, you'll see it fallen over: dignifying the fact that it had to have made a sound since you could just as easily knock down another and hear the sound it makes.

skepticism is a funny thing: a thought process based on questioning what's not real for a society that could just as easily be defined as unreal. it's like pessimism in the fact that they should just go the whole nine yards and say "nothing's real" and every bit as hypocritical.. except to go the whole nine yards with pessimism probably means you lying in a bathtub with your wrists slit while listening to motly crew.

being 'general' isn't always a bad thing: this isn't orwell's version of a prolistic state of mind. superficialities aren't always bad. they're not always good, either. just like god: he created everything. nothing is something too. he created white and black, hot and cold. god represents both sides of the spectrum: to believe in god is to believe in everything. and since everything's situational, i'd imagine that the people who choose to believe in god choose to believe in all the good things that have happened to them (or will happen) and build a faith upon that thought process.

one of the things that i find great is the need for the individual mind is to take a good idea and put some sort of individualistic spin on some fine details just to somehow dignify their existance with that immortal thought. well, either gaining acknowledgment from the people around you or having sex with your mother. damn you freud.

as for the MPS debate, i say you guys watch Session 9 or play Silent Hill 2 for all the good stuff on that matter.

[Lone Wolf]

Wow...this is one of the first actual serious, well-thought-out discussions I have ever seen here at the Org. I think this is awesome.

Allah, Buddah, and God are whatever you want them to be: If you want them to be figures of how to live life, if you want them to be imaginary or real people to use as a foundation for faith and strength, etc.

I love psychology and existentialism (A philosophy that emphasizes the uniqueness and isolation of the individual experience in a hostile or indifferent universe, regards human existence as unexplainable, and stresses freedom of choice and responsibility for the consequences of one's acts.) Things like this are what made Neon Genesis Evangelion and others so incredibly popular.

Like I said before, a long time ago, I developed what I call "Squall Syndrome" (for the ignorant, Final Fantasy VIII's main character has a philosophy that if he doesn't get involved in other peoples' lives, he won't have to feel the emotional pain later on if the people he cared about died or something else). I MUST SAY, from personal experience, this philosophy WORKS. You have to sacrifice a lot of opportunities to have fun and make friends, but in the end, your world won't come crashing down on you.

Sometimes, I like to sit back and ask myself questions about what is going on around me. This makes me become more focused as to what's happening. I wouldn't go so far as to say I'm having conversations with myself.

Speaking of which...WHY THE HELL DID I JUST DO ALL THAT CRAP ABOVE?!

[jonmartensen]

cogito ergo sum

all this newfound 'logic' being based off of small bits of skeptism and angst is really pissing me off.

It's not new, and it has a name...methodological doubt. It's purpous is not for one to continually wonder what is "real", it is used as a way to find undeniable "truths" and give a base to reality. Interestingly enough, it was initially brought about to prove (rather than "despite science", it was done in a manner that was "due to science") God "exists", and create an atmosphere condusive to the teachings of religion and science (seeing as this was at a time when science and religion were deemed incompatable)

And you got it wrong, the full acceptance of Methodological doubt is living, the act of disproving it is killing ones self.

[Lyrs]

Wow...this is one of the first actual serious, well-thought-out discussions I have ever seen here at the Org. I think this is awesome.

me too. from what i've read, i'm clearly ignorant of MPD.

/end

[Rozard]

Thanks, Rozard. Much better than I could've put it. I couldn't remember the new name for multiple personalities.

I should be able to explain this better than others here, seeing as I'm having an exam on it in 3 hours But yeah, I forgot to say anything about paranoia because it's linked to the delusions and hallucinations, and because it's a subtype of schizophrenia. The five subtypes are: Paraniod (Preoccupation with delusions or hallucinations), Disorganized (Disorganized speech or behavior, or flat or inappropriate emotion), Catatonic (Immobility [or excessive, purposeless movement], extreme negativism, and/or parrotlike repearing of another's speech or movements), Undifferentiated (Many and varied symptoms), and Residual (Withdrawal, after hallucinations and delusions have disappeared).

Like I said before, a long time ago, I developed what I call "Squall Syndrome" (for the ignorant, Final Fantasy VIII's main character has a philosophy that if he doesn't get involved in other peoples' lives, he won't have to feel the emotional pain later on if the people he cared about died or something else).

Isn't that much like Hedgehog's Dilemma, as portrayed in NGE?

[Lyrs]

Isn't that much like Hedgehog's Dilemma, as portrayed in NGE?

i don't think so. hedgehog's is more of a hypothesis for why we don't get close to people.

I think lone wolf is talking about feeling pain when people die.

/end

[Kamoc]

cogito ergo sum

all this newfound 'logic' being based off of small bits of skeptism and angst is really pissing me off.

It's not new, and it has a name...methodological doubt. It's purpous is not for one to continually wonder what is "real", it is used as a way to find undeniable "truths" and give a base to reality. Interestingly enough, it was initially brought about to prove (rather than "despite science", it was done in a manner that was "due to science") God "exists", and create an atmosphere condusive to the teachings of religion and science (seeing as this was at a time when science and religion were deemed incompatable)

And you got it wrong, the full acceptance of Methodological doubt is living, the act of disproving it is killing ones self.

but to deny it proves that i'm thinking.

"i think, therefore i am"

cogito er non dormio. methodological doubt contradicts itself in the fact that you cannot observe the fact of someone dreaming. i took rene decartes' idea into thought as i was contemplating my response, hence the fact that i reference his theory of 'god' in a later sentance. rene didn't want to prove the existance of a theological 'god', therefore making it far less 'interesting' than you might believe. his god was used as a way to bind all his efforts together: his system (coherence theory of truth) used this 'god' so that if someone asked him "well, you can prove without a doubt that something's wrong, but can you prove without a doubt that something's right?" he wouldn't be slapped around like an idiot. it was the 'balance beam' refered to earlier, and all his god was created for was so that he could continue to deny everything that ever existed.

"I must inquire whether there is a God as soon as the occasion presents itself; and if I find that there is a God, I must also inquire whether He may be a deceiver; for without a knowledge of these two truths I do not see that I can ever be certain of anything." - rene decartes

this 'perfect idea of perfection' was just used to create more a priori (innate) ideas and justify an elusive think. he merely subjected himself to an ontological argument (believing in the definition of god rather than theological distinctions) and refused to question physicalities, when, of course, "THERE IS NO SPOON".

and what i meant by the 'newfound' crack was supposed to be a clearer reference to the popularity of the matrix: a mass market tool that contained many allusions to rene's work (well, by definition, atleast. coincidentally, they didn't take into account rene's 'physical' distinctions). using angst to appeal to a greater audience of people who would otherwise be incapable of defining said ideas clearer than mere thought and stimulating them to teenagers who, quite frankly, are mind-sponges to anything even remotely angsty.

as for cartesian dualism, consider what pierre gassendi said about it's unclear distinction between the mind and body:

"Here I confess that I have been suffering from a deception. For I believed that I was addressing a human soul, or that internal principle by which a man lives, feels, moves from place to place and understands, and after all I was only speaking to a mind."

[RadicalEd0]

Like I said before, a long time ago, I developed what I call "Squall Syndrome" (for the ignorant, Final Fantasy VIII's main character has a philosophy that if he doesn't get involved in other peoples' lives, he won't have to feel the emotional pain later on if the people he cared about died or something else). I MUST SAY, from personal experience, this philosophy WORKS. You have to sacrifice a lot of opportunities to have fun and make friends, but in the end, your world won't come crashing down on you.

NO! bad! fuck you

yeah well.. doing that when other people still care about you is bad, because then they end up fucked.
Hedgehog's dillemma is defined as the condition of being unable to get close to another because you know that it will cause you pain. "Squall syndrome" and hedgehogs dillemma are, at least at core, the same idea.
Of course, in doing this, one forefeits the chances for happiness that come from connecting with others and instead lives a neutral life, finding only happiness or depression in one's own flaws and accomplishments. It's to live the life of one person alone in the world internally, while still living in a world full of people externally. [personal opinion] Essentially it's also to deny the purpose of our very existance by becoming neutral on so many levels, when we exist in nature to experience as much duality and differentiation as possible. Neutrality is for the dead. While I don't want to put down individuality, I don't agree with taking it to the extreme of isolation.[/personal opinion]

With your description, I can now see where Sam's logic went to shit. She made the mistake of referencing her father's death while arguing with me, and with that the system is tied together. Someone dealing with so many strongly-felt connections, who has been let down by them time and again, decided after I finally stopped talking to her that it was better if she never fell into the foolish trap of caring again. It's quite possible the temporary MPD or schizophrenia came from the burial of her old, strongly-held beliefs and emotions.

[fyrtenheimer]

Sam just didn't want you anymore. God damn.