Psychology and psychiatry are, as they say, evolving; the innards of the human mind are less penetrable, so far, than the far side of the moon or the deepest parts of the ocean.

One of the nonspecific, vexing maladies that’s been identified – or “identified”, at any rate – lately are the various “personality disorder” mental illnesses.  Starting about a decade or so ago, the industry started recognizing the existance of these conditions:  Personality Disorder, Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD), Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD), as well as Histrionic, Antisocial, Paranoid, Avoidant, Dependent and other flavors of Personality Disorders.

Like much of what’s on the borders of the field, it’s all very ill-defined – and even less “treatable” in any miraculous sense.

But it’s helped a lot of people put a tag – sometimes rightly, sometimes as a stretch, like most amateur and, for the matter, professional mental health diagnostic art – on a lot of behavior that has made a lot of peoples’ lives very, very difficult.  Including, truth be told (and then moved on from) in my own life.

And when you start reading more about this chain of disorders, things get depressing really fast.  There’s no treatment – because getting the “patient” to recognize they have a problem is nearly impossible; a sociopath or narcissist will elude any culpability for his or her actions like Jackie Chan slipping a sloppy kick.

The only thing that remains is to try to learn to deal with the person with the disorder – or to accept the imperative of living without them.

It’s brutally difficult for everyone involved – and not a little bit heartbreaking.

One of the better pieces I’ve read about dealing with these various conditions is a piece, “20 Diversion Tactics Highly Manipulative Narcissists, Sociopaths And Psychopaths Use To Silence You” by Shahida Arabi.    In the world of internet popular psychology, it’s as good a summary of symptoms and coping tactics as I’ve ever seen.   It’s been a lot of help to a lot of people close to me over the past year or so.

But this article – series of articles, really – aren’t about coping with  abuse from mentally-ill people.

It’s about coping with abuse from half the population.

The Mind Politic And Its Illness:  I read Arabi’s piece several times by way of helping a few people who are close to me, before it occurred to me:  “This applies just as much to the way our dominant political and media culture treats the Great American Middle as it does to people with personality disorders”.

Starting tomorrow, I”ll be going through the entire article.