Paired obsessions yet again...
Apr. 7th, 2005 01:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gaudiorSo as a first-year graduate student of psychology, I seem to have two choices: apply what I'm learning by trying to analyze either real people around me or fictional characters. I suppose I also have the third choice of just letting my head fester and explode, but it seems unwise.
As does trying to play shrink for people I know and with whom I have an actual relationship, so fictional characters it is. Specifically the characters from Yami no Matsuei which is, for those of you just joining our program, about my favoritist anime ever. Hisoka was pretty easy. He has Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).
Hisoka's Diagnostic Criteria for PTSD
A. The person has been exposed to a traumatic event in which both of the following were present:
*the person experienced nad witnessed events that involved death, serious injury, and threat to the physical integrity to himself or others
*the person's response involved intense fear, helplessness, and horror.
B. The traumatic event is persistently reexperienced in the following ways:
*recurrent and intrusive distressing recollections of the event, including images, thoughts, and perceptions.
*recurrent distressing dreams of the event.
*acting or feeling as if the traumatic event were recurring (includes a sense of reliving the experience, illusions, hallucinations, and dissociative flashback episodes).
*intense psychological distress at exposure to internal or external cues that symbolize or resemble an aspect of the traumatic event, physiological reactivity on exposure to internal or external cues that symbolize or resemble an aspect of the traumatic event
C. Persistent avoidance of stimuli associated with the trauma and numbing of general responsiveness (not present before the trauma), as indicated by the following:
*efforts to avoid thoughts, feelings, or conversations associated with the trauma
*feeling of detachment or estrangement from others
*restricted range of affect (e.g., unable to have loving feelings)
D. Persistent symptoms of increased arousal (not present before the trauma), as indicated by the following:
*irritability and outbursts of anger
*hypervigilance
(Not to mention the technicalities:
*inability to recall an important aspect of the trauma
*sense of a foreshortened future (e.g., does not expect to have a career, marriage, children, or a normal life span))
And it lasts more than a month, and it decidedly impairs his social functioning. I mean, honestly.
Tsuzuki was a little tougher, but I think I've got him pegged as having Borderline Personality Disorder.
Tsuzuki's Diagnostic Criteria for BPD
*recurrent suicidal behavior
*affective instability due to a marked reactivity of mood (e.g., intense episodic dysphoria, irritability, or anxiety usually lasting a few hours and only rarely more than a few days)
*transient, stress-related severe dissociative symptoms
*impulsivity in at least two areas that are potentially self-damaging (e.g., spending, alcohol abuse, binge eating, running off half-cocked whenever your stalker shows up (that part's not actually in the DSM.)
*chronic feelings of emptiness (more my interpretation, but...)
*a pattern of unstable and intense interpersonal relationships, and a markedly and persistently unstable self-image or sense of self
And I actually find this very reassuring. Because... well, Tsuzuki and Hisoka are, honestly, two of the fictional people I love most in the world. They have so much strength and beauty and just plain coolness, and I respect them a lot. And I think that it will be very good for me, as I go off and do therapy with people with these diagnoses, to have in mind that they are diagnoses which also apply to people (fictional, but people nonetheless) whom I love and respect. Especially Tsuzuki. People with borderline personality disorder get a bad rap-- some feminists complain that it's actually just the label given to women who aren't willing to sit down and shut up. While I, having worked with some such people, would disagree, I do think that they have a bad reputation. My supervisor (who has worked very successfully with some clients who have it) complains that other psychologists' attitude tends to be "Oh, not another borderline!"-- that these people are a pain in the ass to work with because they really need support, a lot of it. Because, my excellent professor points out, they're in a fuck of a lot of pain-- they're in a world where people have just not really been there for them, where they have not been able to trust anyone to care for them or stay with them. They're lonely, they don't trust easily, they've often been badly abused. They hurt.
And it is good to think of them that way, I think. I'm not assuming that I understand anyone else with this disorder just because I think I get Tsuzuki pretty well. Everyone is different, after all, and he in some ways acts very differently than some of the cases I've read about or worked with. (Actually, it's odd-- he fits one theoretical orientation of BPD, but not others. But he does fit the diagnostic criteria well enough, I think, that that's how he'd be labeled if he were hospitalized here and now.) But... still. It is good to know that the people I will work with have this in common with someone I love. I think that will make me better able to see through the sort of prejudices about them in the psychological community, and better connect with them. I hope.
--R
As does trying to play shrink for people I know and with whom I have an actual relationship, so fictional characters it is. Specifically the characters from Yami no Matsuei which is, for those of you just joining our program, about my favoritist anime ever. Hisoka was pretty easy. He has Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).
Hisoka's Diagnostic Criteria for PTSD
A. The person has been exposed to a traumatic event in which both of the following were present:
*the person experienced nad witnessed events that involved death, serious injury, and threat to the physical integrity to himself or others
*the person's response involved intense fear, helplessness, and horror.
B. The traumatic event is persistently reexperienced in the following ways:
*recurrent and intrusive distressing recollections of the event, including images, thoughts, and perceptions.
*recurrent distressing dreams of the event.
*acting or feeling as if the traumatic event were recurring (includes a sense of reliving the experience, illusions, hallucinations, and dissociative flashback episodes).
*intense psychological distress at exposure to internal or external cues that symbolize or resemble an aspect of the traumatic event, physiological reactivity on exposure to internal or external cues that symbolize or resemble an aspect of the traumatic event
C. Persistent avoidance of stimuli associated with the trauma and numbing of general responsiveness (not present before the trauma), as indicated by the following:
*efforts to avoid thoughts, feelings, or conversations associated with the trauma
*feeling of detachment or estrangement from others
*restricted range of affect (e.g., unable to have loving feelings)
D. Persistent symptoms of increased arousal (not present before the trauma), as indicated by the following:
*irritability and outbursts of anger
*hypervigilance
(Not to mention the technicalities:
*inability to recall an important aspect of the trauma
*sense of a foreshortened future (e.g., does not expect to have a career, marriage, children, or a normal life span))
And it lasts more than a month, and it decidedly impairs his social functioning. I mean, honestly.
Tsuzuki was a little tougher, but I think I've got him pegged as having Borderline Personality Disorder.
Tsuzuki's Diagnostic Criteria for BPD
*recurrent suicidal behavior
*affective instability due to a marked reactivity of mood (e.g., intense episodic dysphoria, irritability, or anxiety usually lasting a few hours and only rarely more than a few days)
*transient, stress-related severe dissociative symptoms
*impulsivity in at least two areas that are potentially self-damaging (e.g., spending, alcohol abuse, binge eating, running off half-cocked whenever your stalker shows up (that part's not actually in the DSM.)
*chronic feelings of emptiness (more my interpretation, but...)
*a pattern of unstable and intense interpersonal relationships, and a markedly and persistently unstable self-image or sense of self
And I actually find this very reassuring. Because... well, Tsuzuki and Hisoka are, honestly, two of the fictional people I love most in the world. They have so much strength and beauty and just plain coolness, and I respect them a lot. And I think that it will be very good for me, as I go off and do therapy with people with these diagnoses, to have in mind that they are diagnoses which also apply to people (fictional, but people nonetheless) whom I love and respect. Especially Tsuzuki. People with borderline personality disorder get a bad rap-- some feminists complain that it's actually just the label given to women who aren't willing to sit down and shut up. While I, having worked with some such people, would disagree, I do think that they have a bad reputation. My supervisor (who has worked very successfully with some clients who have it) complains that other psychologists' attitude tends to be "Oh, not another borderline!"-- that these people are a pain in the ass to work with because they really need support, a lot of it. Because, my excellent professor points out, they're in a fuck of a lot of pain-- they're in a world where people have just not really been there for them, where they have not been able to trust anyone to care for them or stay with them. They're lonely, they don't trust easily, they've often been badly abused. They hurt.
And it is good to think of them that way, I think. I'm not assuming that I understand anyone else with this disorder just because I think I get Tsuzuki pretty well. Everyone is different, after all, and he in some ways acts very differently than some of the cases I've read about or worked with. (Actually, it's odd-- he fits one theoretical orientation of BPD, but not others. But he does fit the diagnostic criteria well enough, I think, that that's how he'd be labeled if he were hospitalized here and now.) But... still. It is good to know that the people I will work with have this in common with someone I love. I think that will make me better able to see through the sort of prejudices about them in the psychological community, and better connect with them. I hope.
--R
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(no subject)
Date: 2005-04-08 01:27 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-04-08 04:22 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-04-08 12:18 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-04-08 06:25 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-04-08 07:00 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-04-09 11:44 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-04-10 11:04 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-05-20 08:18 pm (UTC)Probably not real treatable, either... although that would certainly make an interesting fic...
(no subject)
Date: 2005-05-20 11:23 pm (UTC)I'm trying to decide if he would be a psychiatrist's nightmare or wet dream. I'm not quite sure yet.
...and personally, you've just set the idea of Muraki visiting a shrink in my head, and now, great, I see it as some kind of twisted SIlence of the Lambs thing, where Muraki gets into the other guy's head instead and starts Fucking Shit Up as only Muraki can do. *shudder*
SO not writing it. I'm NOT. NOT.
...and those are famous last words.
notorious big amare stoudemire
Date: 2012-04-27 07:12 pm (UTC)