> Personally, I have had an experience with an ex-partner who was diagnosed with autism but showed clear traits of narcissistic personality disorder.
so shocked. I'd reject the whole thing on principle. while autism and other neurological problems are real, personality disorders seem largely cultural.
usually, a psychopath is someone you got into a power struggle with, a sociopath is someone who doesn't share your values, and a narcissist is someone you felt insulted by. They didn't merely steal or cheat, but were surely afflicted by a mania, they don't have beliefs or experiences, but are in fact expressing a phobia, and they were not exercising agency, but responding to a trauma. to me the whole framework is intended to externalize your locus of control and it has the uncanniness of predation.
further, what people call "empathy," is a self-justifying shim for viewing people as subjects of external forces, of which your impact on them is just an indifferent and neutral one of many, which absolves either of you of moral agency.
I often object to the language of psychotherapy because it's the artifact of an inferior ontology- what you are left with when you don't have (or are deprived of) a sense of faith. these psychological tropes don't appear in alternatives like compassion, dignity, charity, faith, fraternity, which are ideas from better moral systems than psychotherapy. maybe instead of medicalizing and pathologizing our ex-es for political ends there is an opportunity for a more spiritual reflection.
there is value in therapy, and i see how it helps, but just as all medicine and care is predicated on consent, you can't ethically apply psychotheraputic criticism to someone you hate. we should challenge this stuff when we see it because it becomes a pernicious justification for darker things.
so shocked. I'd reject the whole thing on principle. while autism and other neurological problems are real, personality disorders seem largely cultural.
usually, a psychopath is someone you got into a power struggle with, a sociopath is someone who doesn't share your values, and a narcissist is someone you felt insulted by. They didn't merely steal or cheat, but were surely afflicted by a mania, they don't have beliefs or experiences, but are in fact expressing a phobia, and they were not exercising agency, but responding to a trauma. to me the whole framework is intended to externalize your locus of control and it has the uncanniness of predation.
further, what people call "empathy," is a self-justifying shim for viewing people as subjects of external forces, of which your impact on them is just an indifferent and neutral one of many, which absolves either of you of moral agency.
I often object to the language of psychotherapy because it's the artifact of an inferior ontology- what you are left with when you don't have (or are deprived of) a sense of faith. these psychological tropes don't appear in alternatives like compassion, dignity, charity, faith, fraternity, which are ideas from better moral systems than psychotherapy. maybe instead of medicalizing and pathologizing our ex-es for political ends there is an opportunity for a more spiritual reflection.
there is value in therapy, and i see how it helps, but just as all medicine and care is predicated on consent, you can't ethically apply psychotheraputic criticism to someone you hate. we should challenge this stuff when we see it because it becomes a pernicious justification for darker things.