I understand the point about negativity, but that is more a reflection of my general outlook than an intended image of people.
Especially, in the last 30 or so years, psychologists have been creating, then claiming to treat an increasing number of conditions.
These conditions have become increasingly popular as people adopt them as an explanation for problems they believe they have.
SAD, BDD, ODD are but a few. All seem to have snappy sounding titles and tend to explain, as illnesses, problems which are really just part of life.
Example.
Up till about 4 years ago, many parents of wayward children would obtain, from a psychologist, for a small fee, a diagnosis for their children of ODD. In recent years, courts have been less willing to accept it as any sort of mitigation.
The history of this is interesting.
In the late 80s there lived a family, in a trailer park in Texas. The father was a huge man, almost 6 feet tall, with shoulder about as big. He was known as gruff and aggressive. He had hands like shovels.
His wife was a dumpy woman, about 5 feet tall. Caring of her family and defencive to aggression.
They had 3 sons, an older boy and twins, about 9 years.
Then, one day, the man decides he is a woman and starts to wander around the trailer park wearing a dress.
The family were quickly chased away. The boys were left with the mother's parents, in a fairly nice house, while the parents moved to Chicago.
After almost a year, the boys were sent to Chicago.
They arrived at a large group house, in a run down area, with a banner outside proclaiming Gay Pride.
Needless to say, the boys found themselves fighting with other children, partly because they were outsiders, but also against taunts relating to their parent's lifestyle and their home.
at 11 years, one of the twin boys was caught breaking into a house. He was actually going after another boy who'd been taunting him.
He was summoned to court. Before he went, he was seen by a psychologist who knew and support the local gay, transgendered community. He was given a diagnosis of Obedience Deficit Disorder.
An 11 year old boy, who had been chased off a Texas trailer park, dragged to the other end of the country and who's father wears dresses while looking like a gorilla, is odd!
A few hundred years ago, in Europe, the Church was supreme. The individual priests, had their basic ideas of human reality, which they combined, with their personal comprehension of the local society. They would council and support distressed parishioners, who in turn, would receive considerable benefit. The primary function of the church was to support, guide and nurture local communities.
The medieval priests reformed individuals and society, because their pronouncements were taken as reality. The submission by ordinary people, to the will of the priests, was done, not through fear of penalty, but for the reward of social acceptance, by society as a whole. For the majority, even minor rejection is sufficient to encourage conformity. This is apparent in the tendency of many young men to join with others in celebrating almost fanatical support and loyality for a sports team. Their collective attitudes toward supporters of opposing teams demonstrates that their entire behaviour is irrational. But failure to participate in this behaviour, at least to the same extent as others, leads to rejection from the peer group. Social conformaty is the membership fee.
This was the basis, of the remarkable success, of the Church, for almost 1000 years, in that it attempted to embrace all the various cultures, within a frame work. A subjective framework, whose strength, was the belief of the parishioners, in the unconditional, reliability and superior understanding of the priests. It is also interesting to note that, this framework, began to break down when, through improved communications, the contradictions, then anomalies, between the different branches, became apparent.
But while it continued, it functioned as intended. Unifying society. People accepted its pronouncements and followed its dictates because these fitted into their perceptions of reality. Control group testing is a modern measure but it is conceivable that it would have produced positive results.
Today, medicine and especially psychologists have replaced the first estate as the moral guardians. They relieve us of any guilt over our personal conduct and failings with snappy diagnoses of mysterious illness.
Most people feel depressed in winter. It's generally cold and wet limiting opportunities to socialise, to be creative and be alone. Fresh foods are limited. The shortening days undoubtedly have an affect upon all of us. Together with the stupid custom of altering clocks, we often feel tired, a little depressed and a little miserable.
Yet psychologists have come up with a snappy sounding illness for this. SAD. Seasonal Affective Disorder.
If you stop and think about it, what these people are really doing is making fun of us.
This isn't science. This is an utter joke.
