About a quarter of the conditions in the DSM-IV seem to be charismatic conditions. Like charismatic megafauna. The stuff that people like to self diagnose and other-diagnose both close-up and at a distance. And construct pop narratives around.
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This is a version of the arguments proposed by RD Laing, Foucault & the old left “anti-psychiatry” movement. They added that the pathologization of these traits was (nothing but) a repressive effort to impose bourgeois behavioral & cognitive norms on all, masquerading as science.
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Yeah I’m familiar with that reading but I think I give the profession the benefit of doubt overall as genuinely describing and treating real conditions. Charisma is an additional reading rather than a substitute reading for me.
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This is almost certainly true. It is most obvious with the "personality disorders" - the parallels with Big-5 traits or whatever lens you want to use are clear.
A lot of them are quite useful in certain situations, they're just hyper-specialized and not always useful.
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yep. if you just stop to think about it anything that isn't within a very narrow set of social norms is abnormal behavior.
abnormal behavior is often perceived as very disruptive and potentially dangerous--in reality it is usually harmless and marginal
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I really like the word "neurodiversity", & the argument that this carries from it, that "neurotypical" doesn't exist, and we instead live with a broad spectrum of larger & smaller gradations of difference in brain architecture.
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It may be slightly out of date, but take a look at John Ratey's "Shadow Syndromes."
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Well, plenty of physical traits expressed to some extreme degree are, or would be (if sufficiently extreme expression was "out there in the wild") deemed pathological, so I see no particular problem there






