![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Paired obsessions yet again...
Apr. 7th, 2005 01:31 pmSo 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). ( He's really easily diagnosable from the DSM-IV. ) Tsuzuki was a little tougher, but I think I've got him pegged as having Borderline Personality Disorder( , thusly: )
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). ( He's really easily diagnosable from the DSM-IV. ) Tsuzuki was a little tougher, but I think I've got him pegged as having Borderline Personality Disorder( , thusly: )
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
