[ExI] Reinforcing our Prejudices

[ablainey at aol.com]

What is wrong with Bipolar? I have been happily/sadly bipolar for many years ;o)
?"oppositional personality disorder" seems to me to be a product of either over diagnosis of normal childhood behaviour or possibly a symptom of other frustrations, possibly even due to high intelligence and alomost certainly due to social environment. To label such psychological traits as a disorder just smacks of enforced conformity to perceived societal norms. Norms which are more than likely or even provably way off what is actually in the normal spectrum. It would be fair to say that nearly all of the people revered by society have in fact fallen into the fringe regions of this normal?psychological spectrum.?Some have been far outside it.?Do we really want to label and medicate such minds? granted we do need to identify them,? should this identification be the limit of what we do?
Alex


-----Original Message-----
From: Rafal Smigrodzki rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com



On Fri, Apr 18, 2008 at 9:07 AM, Stathis Papaioannou <stathisp at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 18/04/2008, Lee Corbin <lcorbin at rawbw.com> wrote:
>
>  >  Perhaps reinforcing the researchers' own biases? At least
>  >  things along the lines of counting the political opposition
>  >  as retarded or mentally ill are less prevalent today. A huge
>  >  number of psychiatrists in the 1960s were willing to affirm
>  >  that Barry Goldwater was mentally ill for spouting his
>  >  "nonsense".
>
>  Mental illness is not a social construct any more than hepatitis or
>  renal failure is a social construct.
>
### Aside from schizophrenia, bipolar and a couple others, there is a
whole huge gray area, somewhere between barking mad and re-born Xian,
that is very much subject to a lot of social construction of ever new
nosological entities. Is "oppositional personality disorder" a mental
illness or just bad manners? Reasonable people could differ here.

Rafal
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