Narcissistic men have raised cortisol – or physiological stress — from being these bully-others sorts. But women do not? Hmmm.
A narcissist is somebody who puts their needs above yours in any relationship. I can count on one hand the times I have seen them in treatment. They are “bullies” and we usually see their victims.
Cortisol – commonly known as the “stress” hormone — can be accurately measured with a mouth swab. Because of this, people can do research — many of whom appear to be a great deal more open minded than doctors. Read more on Physiological Validation of Narcissism…
Filed under Diagnosis, medicine, Personality Disorders, Psychology by on Jun 7th, 2012. Comment. 
We did not really know where this patient was at. I figured out he was some kind of bipolar, because he talked about mood swings.
When I first saw him, he seemed to have a delusional system that had something to do with idealizing a woman pharmacist and feeling he had offended her and thinking obsessionally about her.
He was starting to idealize me, and commenting on my hair and clothes, and I will admit that I wanted to fix this guy as quickly as possible, so I would not get incorporated into one of what sounded like a series of delusional systems. He had come into the clinic several times, usually with sequentially weakening delusions — always an idealized woman. He gave the impression of being gay — always wearing at least one piece of jewelry that I would have expected to see on a woman. Read more on How To Shock Your Doc — New Uses For A Medicine Bottle…
Filed under medicine, Personality Disorders by on Jan 5th, 2011. Comment.
My weakness for the “classical arts,” in a world where “beats” pass for music and random words pass for poetry, is known to anybody who knows me. There are a couple of people who discuss classical arts with me in secret, at work or play. Like the opera “Carmen.” I think it is the favorite of a lot of people. Even though it was written in French by Georges Bizet, the use of traditional Spanish musical songs and dances gives it more snappy tunes than even George M. Cohan could cram into one show.
I was minding my own business and singing the habanera to myself. “For love is like a gypsy child/ who has grown up without any rules…”
I told a counterpart in my own profession. “Carmen is a model to all Spanish borderline personality disorders. A perfect model.” Read more on Borderlines In Song And Story…
Filed under Diagnosis, Personality Disorders by on Nov 11th, 2010. Comment.
We can’t pick our diagnoses like we pick what outfit we are going to wear.
I remember an encounter where the psych symptoms had political overtones, although I’ve handled plenty of other cases that had the same resistance to being diagnosed.
“I’m scared of this bipolar thing,” he said. “Everyone I know who has it is really sick — like crazy — and I’m not sure I want to take medication for it.” Read more on Great Manics of History…
Filed under Diagnosis, Personality Disorders by on Oct 28th, 2010. Comment.
I have been working with criminals longer than I care to admit. I suppose it is a condition of my accepting temporary consultation assignments, going where the need is greatest. A lot of work in prisons. Some with people later, during the parole process. Sometimes they are contrite — more often not.
I am still waiting to meet the smart criminal. The Moriarty to some law-enforcement-colleague Sherlock. The high IQ planner, the applied psychologist, the brilliant criminal.
Maybe they are so brilliant that they never get caught. Or – if crime truly does not pay – maybe they are the ones who go to those so-called “Country Club Prisons” after they have become wealthy from stock market schemes. They might get “classier” psychiatrists, males with receding hairlines and goatees who wear neckties. I know they don’t get better ones. Read more on Santa Claus, Tooth Fairy And Smart Criminals — All Myths…
Filed under Personality Disorders by on Sep 16th, 2010. 3 Comments.
Most of the really effective compulsive lying folks are not patients. Such people, if ever seen as patients, do not stay as patients very long.
I remember a young woman, the daughter of a woman scientist who befriended me in France. She was beautiful, I could tell from her photographs, in a way I knew I would never be beautiful. Sometimes a poet, sometimes a singer, more often, this young woman in her late twenties, was manipulating (sleeping, I think) her way into bit parts on the Paris stage. We were interested, her mom and me, in the manifestations of the powers of the brain, ranging from raw intelligence, which we both knew we had, to the sort of metaphysical magic her daughter, who was calling herself LaFleur at the time, definitely had. I remember we knew someone who allegedly read photos. He was a “serious” person, an effective hospital administrator in one of the larger Parisian hospitals. Among his occult practices, he read photos. We asked LaFleur to submit him one, with no information other than her age (28 at the time) and name. She gave us a photo. It was one of the strangest photos I had ever seen. The lens distorted her myopic gaze in the vague direction of the camera. She wore some kind of soft cloth that descended low enough to reveal a single nipple and not the other. Of course, the “reader” declined the photo. He said a simple photo that would be used for a passport or drivers’ license would be helpful. LaFleur never submitted one. Read more on My Own Breakfast At Tiffany’s…
Filed under Personality Disorders by on Jul 8th, 2010. Comment.
I saw him at a public clinic back in the days when I usually just took care of renewing people’s prescriptions. He seemed rather average for someone in his forties who lived on the streets and looked like he did. But he seemed to want me to know that he was “special,” that there was more for him than just coming in for a prescription refill.
He told me that he was related to a well-known television star currently starring in a popular series. This was Southern California, after all, and I have been involved in more than one case where these relations were real. Sometimes I even get phone calls from celebrities to confirm relations, although more often, I get to see signed pictures. This patient did not have any. I admitted that I had never heard of either the star or the series, which caused this patient a bit of distress.
He started telling me about horrible things his dentist had done to him. Given the state of his dentition, it was likely that he had never had so much as a check-up or teeth-cleaning in his life. Read more on A Biological Cause For Lying?…
Filed under Personality Disorders by on Mar 4th, 2010. Comment.
Query: Why won’t Santa’s elves work now that Santa has lowered wages and they have hastened the assembly line and there are no cookie breaks?
Answer: They all have low elf-esteem.
No I don’t know the origin of the above joke. I don’t even know about low elf-esteem, as Santa must be referring his (psychologically) non-functional elves to someone that takes his insurance.
I do know that the knowledge of “low self-esteem” as a problem has entered the language and the culture with an enthusiasm and vengeance reserved only for high-frequency psychobabble which has been divorced so completely from its academically-derived meaning that it was possible for me not long ago, when walking dangerously close to a Starbucks, to overhear two people saying it was the cause of their woes.
Our friends at Wikipedia define it as a term used by psychologists, an enduring aspect of personality encompassing beliefs, emotions and behavior.
Read more on Low Self-Esteem — Not Worth Much As A Diagnosis…
Filed under Personality Disorders by on Dec 23rd, 2009. Comment.