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Culture War Roundup for the week of November 11, 2024

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For reading purposes I'd recommend just looking at DSM criteria or searching pubmed and finding what seems to be a reasonable review article.

Correctly making these diagnosis can be hard, and many cases seem obvious but aren't. While Borderline (BPD) is more common in women we find that Antisocial (ASPD) is over-diagnosed in men (not all criminals have it but...) and under-diagnosed in women. Borderline is the opposite (just because this dude murdered someone doesn't mean he isn't borderline). People with disordered personality who hurt people almost always get an ASPD diagnosis but people with severe BPD often hurt others. Impulsivity is a cardinal symptom in both (contra organized serial killer stereotypes). Often the dx just gets thrown out on gender lines, which is sometimes accurate but not always.

ASPD can be thought of us being a fucking asshole in mild to moderate cases and evil in moderate to severe cases (as demonstrated by disregard for the rights of others).

People with BPD in contrast care too much about others to some extent. There's been an attempt to rebrand it as "Emotional Dysregulation Disorder" which is instructive. Impulsive, passionate, lots of relationships that end abruptly, things like "I LOVE YOU, I HATE YOU" (splitting). For most they'll pattern match to a moody teenager, but in an adult body.

This is also a core part of what Cluster-B disorders often are, over expression of immature coping mechanisms aka acting like a kid. Also one of the reasons why they often burn off with age.

Severe borderline looks like psychosis (inability to determine what's real) and that's what the border in borderline is named for. There's an attendant identity instability which sometimes leads to being trans. Severe antisocial is lizard people types.

Histrionic is less interesting, you can call it stereotypical energetic Italian disorder if you like and wouldn't be too far off.

Narcissistic is simple at a basic level - Trump often gets accused of this (although I'm not sure I buy that). It gets pretty complicated if you look deeper though, most mass shooters are a subtype of this and not ASPD.

People often overweight anger in antisocials, it is often present but the lack of emotion is frequently more startling - lack of remorse, lack of respect for others, lack of love for partners). Often violence, anger, and intimidation happen because they are cheat codes towards getting whatever utility they are seeking, not because of investment leading to anger.

Most mental health conditions have heritable elements and we suspect that ASPD and BPD are two-hit situations (lived experience and genetic predisposition). Raisedby types may have it themselves, and failing that some shit happens with mothers and daughters - boys will just leave or pushback physically and be able to protect themselves, would be my guess.

In contrast crazy bitch exes are of interest to men because a lot of borderline traits are desirable (most stereotypical: abundant, quality sexual activity) and unlike mothers, exes can be more easily a legal or financial threat.

Uhhh that rambling went on longer than I thought it would, sorry. Everything I said is shortcuts/oversimplification.