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.<\/p>\n
One of the nonspecific, vexing maladies that’s been identified – or “identified”, at any rate – lately are the various “personality disorder” mental illnesses.\u00a0 Starting about a decade or so ago, the industry started recognizing the existance of these conditions:\u00a0 Personality Disorder, Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD), Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD), as well as Histrionic, Antisocial, Paranoid, Avoidant, Dependent and other flavors of Personality Disorders.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0 Including, truth be told (and then moved on from) in my own life.<\/p>\n
And when you start reading more about this chain of disorders, things get depressing really fast.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
It’s brutally difficult for everyone involved – and not a little bit heartbreaking.<\/p>\n