Athena, you are a patient woman. Reading the “highlights” of this study of bad studies makes me think of Existential Philosophy but instead of Hell being other people with nothing to say to each other, it is a place where people take stupid, meaningless research seriously.
This type of research is almost as fraudulent as modern politics.
Plus, they use a descriptive definition of BPD and apparently do not understand that BPD instability largely is due to a lack of whole object relations and splitting, which is fixable with psychotherapy. This clearly differentiates BPD from psychopathy as does common sense.
What's the point of making everything the same thing? Are they pursuing a Unified Theory of Psychological disorders so that they can prescribe a single drug or something?
having read the whole study... you know when you are writing an essay and have run out of things to say but still have a word count to hit so you just repeat nonsense in hopes no one will notice? that's what it was like reading it
I always love it when your articles begin with, "Once again, I have not read this study and my reactions will be in the moment of my writing. Shall we then?"
This is going to be a wild ride, and no, I haven't read this article - yet.
OK - I made it to, "You see, this is what happens when too many drugs are used by researchers when doing their work." Can't stop laughing. Years ago I managed a (rather well known) statistical research lab in the Dept. of Psychology at UCLA. Like - the research was published in Elsevier. One of the professors would consistently bring me manuscripts to proof with red wine stains on the pages. Had to blur my eyes to make out the words, symbols, whatever.
The possibility of men being under diagnosed with BPD remind me of a friend of mine who admitted that throughout his life, he only allowed himself to feel anger. When he went to therapy and finally allowed himself to feel other emotions, he could not identify what those emotions were.
Our society has royally fucked over men’s mental health. Having emotions is considered “feminine” therefore they’re “unmanly”. I call bullshit on the idea that men are stoic pillars of logic, as compared to women who are just so emotionally illogical.
My sperm donor will go through periods where he’ll disown me and say he never wants to see me, and then next week he’ll say about how proud he is of me and that he wants to see me. Is this suppose to be the masculine logic everyone’s talking about?
So if a man gets drunk, then goes home to beat up his wife and kids, he’s demonstrating his superior unemotional manly logic. Let’s also not forgot those other unemotional men who commit mass shootings. Those are clearly examples of high logical intelligence.
Jokes aside I do find this discrepancy between the genders when it comes to BPD diagnoses interesting. It should be something that is looked into with future research. At this point however, I’m inclined to believe that the discrepancy in diagnoses is due to societies influence rather than biological influence.
i have to laugh. i lived with a pwBPD for 4 years and i WISH she hadn't been able to experience the intensity of emotional experiences that she projected onto me. it was a nightmare. who even signs off on these studies? good lord.
Looking at the nature of both conditions, I think it’s clear as to why both of them tend to be over diagnosed.
With psychopathy, people take the lack of empathy symptom and apply the label of psychopath to anyone who appears to have a lack of empathy.
With BPD, it appears as if they’re taking the intense unstable emotions symptom and applying the BPD label to anyone who appears to have these types of mood swings.
The thing is both symptoms alone can apply to a number of neurological/psychiatric conditions and I can imagine those two symptoms easily over-lapping in a person.
Just as you have talked about how a lack of empathy can be caused by a number of things, so too can unstable emotions. Anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder, even things like PMS, grief, ADHD, autism can cause intense unstable emotions.
I feel like this is the source of where the conflation is coming from. I’m sure it’s much more complicated than that, you are after all making this into three parts, but this over-simplification of both conditions most likely contributes to the idea of there being an over-lap of both conditions.
Hi Athena, I'm interested in reading the text, but both of the first two links refer to your article from January 26, 2022. Could you please provide the link? I might not be able to wade through it, but I'd like to try. Thank you!
"they need to get into the MRI machine themselves, because I think that their brain has gone on vacation without them" -- Totally awesome. You have outdone yourself here.
"All right, being more fair to this paragraph, what does it actually say? It states that they took the factor two traits of the PCL-R *who didn’t see that coming* and then looked to see how often those traits present in BPD studies. The factor two traits from the PCL-R have nothing to do with psychopathy. They have to do with antisocial behavior."
Athena, maybe they mean factor 2 psychopathy (sociopathy) traits rather than those from the PCL-R, (which I've admittedly not read):
"This review suggests an association between borderline personality disorder and the factor 2 of the concept of "psychopathy", but not between BPD and factor 1."
I would think that BPD does share traits of sociopathy (factor 2 secondary psychopathy), and in fact, I often think that it is really close to being the same thing, or quite similar. I am totally confused.
Athena, you are a patient woman. Reading the “highlights” of this study of bad studies makes me think of Existential Philosophy but instead of Hell being other people with nothing to say to each other, it is a place where people take stupid, meaningless research seriously.
This type of research is almost as fraudulent as modern politics.
Plus, they use a descriptive definition of BPD and apparently do not understand that BPD instability largely is due to a lack of whole object relations and splitting, which is fixable with psychotherapy. This clearly differentiates BPD from psychopathy as does common sense.
It's almost like they wrote the conclusion first and back tracked from there
Something has occurred to me.
What's the point of making everything the same thing? Are they pursuing a Unified Theory of Psychological disorders so that they can prescribe a single drug or something?
having read the whole study... you know when you are writing an essay and have run out of things to say but still have a word count to hit so you just repeat nonsense in hopes no one will notice? that's what it was like reading it
I always love it when your articles begin with, "Once again, I have not read this study and my reactions will be in the moment of my writing. Shall we then?"
This is going to be a wild ride, and no, I haven't read this article - yet.
OK - I made it to, "You see, this is what happens when too many drugs are used by researchers when doing their work." Can't stop laughing. Years ago I managed a (rather well known) statistical research lab in the Dept. of Psychology at UCLA. Like - the research was published in Elsevier. One of the professors would consistently bring me manuscripts to proof with red wine stains on the pages. Had to blur my eyes to make out the words, symbols, whatever.
The possibility of men being under diagnosed with BPD remind me of a friend of mine who admitted that throughout his life, he only allowed himself to feel anger. When he went to therapy and finally allowed himself to feel other emotions, he could not identify what those emotions were.
Our society has royally fucked over men’s mental health. Having emotions is considered “feminine” therefore they’re “unmanly”. I call bullshit on the idea that men are stoic pillars of logic, as compared to women who are just so emotionally illogical.
My sperm donor will go through periods where he’ll disown me and say he never wants to see me, and then next week he’ll say about how proud he is of me and that he wants to see me. Is this suppose to be the masculine logic everyone’s talking about?
So if a man gets drunk, then goes home to beat up his wife and kids, he’s demonstrating his superior unemotional manly logic. Let’s also not forgot those other unemotional men who commit mass shootings. Those are clearly examples of high logical intelligence.
Jokes aside I do find this discrepancy between the genders when it comes to BPD diagnoses interesting. It should be something that is looked into with future research. At this point however, I’m inclined to believe that the discrepancy in diagnoses is due to societies influence rather than biological influence.
i have to laugh. i lived with a pwBPD for 4 years and i WISH she hadn't been able to experience the intensity of emotional experiences that she projected onto me. it was a nightmare. who even signs off on these studies? good lord.
Looking at the nature of both conditions, I think it’s clear as to why both of them tend to be over diagnosed.
With psychopathy, people take the lack of empathy symptom and apply the label of psychopath to anyone who appears to have a lack of empathy.
With BPD, it appears as if they’re taking the intense unstable emotions symptom and applying the BPD label to anyone who appears to have these types of mood swings.
The thing is both symptoms alone can apply to a number of neurological/psychiatric conditions and I can imagine those two symptoms easily over-lapping in a person.
Just as you have talked about how a lack of empathy can be caused by a number of things, so too can unstable emotions. Anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder, even things like PMS, grief, ADHD, autism can cause intense unstable emotions.
I feel like this is the source of where the conflation is coming from. I’m sure it’s much more complicated than that, you are after all making this into three parts, but this over-simplification of both conditions most likely contributes to the idea of there being an over-lap of both conditions.
Hi Athena, I'm interested in reading the text, but both of the first two links refer to your article from January 26, 2022. Could you please provide the link? I might not be able to wade through it, but I'd like to try. Thank you!
"they need to get into the MRI machine themselves, because I think that their brain has gone on vacation without them" -- Totally awesome. You have outdone yourself here.
"All right, being more fair to this paragraph, what does it actually say? It states that they took the factor two traits of the PCL-R *who didn’t see that coming* and then looked to see how often those traits present in BPD studies. The factor two traits from the PCL-R have nothing to do with psychopathy. They have to do with antisocial behavior."
Athena, maybe they mean factor 2 psychopathy (sociopathy) traits rather than those from the PCL-R, (which I've admittedly not read):
"This review suggests an association between borderline personality disorder and the factor 2 of the concept of "psychopathy", but not between BPD and factor 1."
I would think that BPD does share traits of sociopathy (factor 2 secondary psychopathy), and in fact, I often think that it is really close to being the same thing, or quite similar. I am totally confused.