Self-Delusion Regarding Special Paranormal Abilities

[TjW]

Upon further consideration, this is not limited to just the paranormal. Consider, if you will, the physics cranks over in the Science forum. These people people they know things that nobody else knows. They believe they are right and that all of mainstream science is wrong. I'm not sure I've even seen one with a degree in the subject, much less being involved in using this information as part of their career.

Like with paranormal claimants, they lack the ability to state their positions clearly. They ignore tests that prove them wrong. They get very aggressive about it. They see conspiracies to keep this information suppressed. And they come into the lion's den and seem to believe they are shaking up the establishment when in fact nobody is giving them any respect at all. The more they are dismissed, the stronger the attacks. We also see that these people repeat the same pattern on multiple forums, sometimes getting banned before moving elsewhere. Many have done it for years.

I like being right as much as the next guy. I, too, would love to prove the establishment wrong. So would any physicist. Clearly there is some fundamental difference between people like myself and these other people. I really wonder from where it comes.

Yes, it's certainly not limited to just the paranormal. Virtually everything you've mentioned here could be applied to some of those posting in Conspiracy Theories.

 

[Marduk]

What's the psychological diagnosis for someone who feels the need to continue to engage the woo, depsite knowing full well that the engagment serves nothing but to reinforce the woo's delusion, providing him/her with attention and a sense of importance (which is acknowleged above as one source of the delusion in the first place!)?.

Narcissism

 

[Uncayimmy]

What's the psychological diagnosis for someone who feels the need to continue to engage the woo, depsite knowing full well that the engagment serves nothing but to reinforce the woo's delusion, providing him/her with attention and a sense of importance (which is acknowleged above as one source of the delusion in the first place!)?

It was obvious from the start that VFF could easily have proven a paranormal claim from the outset, so clearly she had none. It was also quickly apparent that no amount of argument from the skeptics was going to convince her otherwise, it just made her all the more adamant. So why the urgent need for the skeptics to engage her time and time again? That is at least as worthy of study as VFF's psychological state!

Just leave her alone, maybe when there is no one to answer to but her own conscience, something will click and 'recovery' will be possible.

I encourage you to start a new thread about this subject, but it's off topic for this thread. When you do, I hope you provide some real life examples supporting your last paragraph. And while you're at it, you may want to expand the thread to include discussing those who don't offer anything productive other than to say that those in the game aren't doing it right.

 

[Uncayimmy]

What's the psychological diagnosis for someone who feels the need to continue to engage the woo, depsite knowing full well that the engagment serves nothing but to reinforce the woo's delusion, providing him/her with attention and a sense of importance (which is acknowleged above as one source of the delusion in the first place!)?

I think you owe me $100.

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=4326156#post4326156
Wow, 20 new posts since my last 2 hours ago. At this rate, should hit about 200 pages for this thread by next month, and i gaurantee nothing will have been accomplished. Which makes me wonder, who is really the "delusional" or "mentally ill" person here? Attention feeds delusion. That's the last time i'll say that, since im done with this silly train wreck, and unlike others who have made that promise, if i break mine please call me on it and i will send you $100 via paypal. That should keep me honest

Should I send you a PM to collect?

 

[scarlettinlondon]

I like being right as much as the next guy. I, too, would love to prove the establishment wrong. So would any physicist. Clearly there is some fundamental difference between people like myself and these other people. I really wonder from where it comes.

The difference is in their inability to separate their claims from themselves. You will hear inklings of this from time to time, about how being psychic (or whatever) is the 'innermost part of their being' or other such waffle. (how the power 'comes from within')

To repudiate their claims feels like cutting a bit of themselves off.

If a normal person was found wrong, they may be a bit peeved/embarrassed or they may go, oh hey, that's interesting. They wouldn't feel violated.

separate the claim from the claimant and they will be able to give it up with less personal sacrifice.

In the meantime I am off to New York this morning. Hooray!

 

[blutoski]

Not at all. See the Mayo Clinic site on Narcissistic Personality Disorder.

UncaYimmy: differential psychiatric diagnosis is difficult to do even when you have the patient present - it is virtually impossible to do through an anonymous online forum. Cultural aspects always need to be taken into account as well, and this requires structured questions.


(NPD criteria snipped)

I'm not saying any one of the claimants has this disorder, but the similarities are striking.

The PDs in the DSM have a lot of similar characteristics to one another - that's why they're clustered into one section. If you select any one of them, you'll find the 'similarities are striking' with any person you're hoping to diagnose. The differences are somewhat matters of degree.

A proper differential diagnosis benefits from starting with the patient's factors, and finding which diagnosis fits best, not picking a diagnosis and making the patient's attributes fit.

Here: look at one I left out of my previous list: [schizotypal personality disorder]:

• Ideas of reference (excluding delusions of reference)
• Odd beliefs or magical thinking that influences behavior and is inconsistent with subcultural norms (e.g., superstitiousness, bizarre fantasies or preoccupations)
• Unusual perceptual experiences, including bodily illusions
• Odd thinking and speech (e.g., vague, circumstantial, metaphorical, overelaborate, or stereotyped)
• Suspiciousness or paranoid ideation
• Inappropriate or constricted affect
• Behavior or appearance that is odd, eccentric, or peculiar
• Lack of close friends or confidants other than first-degree relatives
• Social anxiety that tends to be associated with paranoid fears rather than negative judgments about self

Understanding the disorder might help us deal with these people better.

That is precisely why I advise against armchair diagnosis.

For example, the attention seeking in the lion's den makes a lot more sense when you look at it from the perspective of it being used to reinforce the belief that "I am worthy of attention of skeptics." Spending little if any time on woo sites makes more sense in that "I am not like these other psychics - I'm special."

Perhaps. But all these are equally consistent with several other diagnoses, and actually also make complete sense for a perfectly healthy but woefully misguided person.



ETA: basically, what I'm saying is that there are a lot of pathologies and also healthy behavior that contributes to frustrating interactions between skeptics and true believers. The diagnoses are not limited to NPD, and in fact, the one property that contraindicates NPD is that these individuals appear to harbour delusions or hallucinations. That's more a sign of schizoid or a more organic issue like schizophrenia proper.

If you want an example of somebody I personally armchair diagnose as a good example of NPD, I'd nominate KevinTrudeau and Sylvia Browne. The key is that they probably don't believe a word of what they say, as opposed to the cited applicants, who often appear sincerely deluded.

 

[blutoski]

What's the psychological diagnosis for someone who feels the need to continue to engage the woo, depsite knowing full well that the engagment serves nothing but to reinforce the woo's delusion, providing him/her with attention and a sense of importance (which is acknowleged above as one source of the delusion in the first place!)?

[OCPD].

My personal opinion is that OCPD is disproportionately represented in the skeptical community.

 

[Uncayimmy]

UncaYimmy: differential psychiatric diagnosis is difficult to do even when you have the patient present - it is virtually impossible to do through an anonymous online forum. Cultural aspects always need to be taken into account as well, and this requires structured questions.

I said as much in the OP. Nobody is making a diagnosis - that happens in the medical world. If we all proclaimed that this was an Official Diagnosis, it would have no medical value. The best we can do is say, "based on what you've said and what we've read, you should see a professional about this." This is something people do all over the Internet including to themselves.

A proper differential diagnosis benefits from starting with the patient's factors, and finding which diagnosis fits best, not picking a diagnosis and making the patient's attributes fit.

Wow! I never would have thought of that. Do me a favor and keep your straw men in the garden.

That is precisely why I advise against armchair diagnosis.

Why do you keep throwing around the word diagnosis? What I said was that learning more about certain behaviors can help us deal with people exhibiting those behaviors.

Perhaps. But all these are equally consistent with several other diagnoses, and actually also make complete sense for a perfectly healthy but woefully misguided person.

And nobody has said otherwise. Mental illness is but one possible explanation as is being woefully misguided, sincerely mistaken, a deliberate fraud, or someone just pretending to believe things in order to troll.

 

[blutoski]

I said as much in the OP. Nobody is making a diagnosis - that happens in the medical world. If we all proclaimed that this was an Official Diagnosis, it would have no medical value. The best we can do is say, "based on what you've said and what we've read, you should see a professional about this." This is something people do all over the Internet including to themselves.

Why do you keep throwing around the word diagnosis? What I said was that learning more about certain behaviors can help us deal with people exhibiting those behaviors.

Actually, I observed a mixed message. You said you weren't diagnosing anybody, but then went on to compare a particular individual's behavior a DSM diagnosis.

And nobody has said otherwise. Mental illness is but one possible explanation as is being woefully misguided, sincerely mistaken, a deliberate fraud, or someone just pretending to believe things in order to troll.

Then you'll have to ask a more specific question, because I'm not sure what you want out of this thread. Are you asking for general debating tactics?

 

[desertgal]

[OCPD].

My personal opinion is that OCPD is disproportionately represented in the skeptical community.

"Differential psychiatric diagnosis is difficult to do even when you have the patient present - it is virtually impossible to do through an anonymous online forum. Cultural aspects always need to be taken into account as well, and this requires structured questions."

 

[Uncayimmy]

Actually, I observed a mixed message. You said you weren't diagnosing anybody, but then went on to compare a particular individual's behavior a DSM diagnosis.

I cannot diagnose anybody. I'm not a doctor, and if I were, I wouldn't diagnose anybody without meeting them first. That doesn't mean I cannot compare my observations to a list of symptoms and try to gain some insight into the situation.

You proceeded to tell me that I stumbled across the wrong disorder. I have actually read up on quite a few different mental illnesses, and NPD stuck out like a sore thumb. I proceeded down the list of symptoms and indicated where they fit and didn't fit.

Then you'll have to ask a more specific question, because I'm not sure what you want out of this thread. Are you asking for general debating tactics?

Feel free to post whatever you want. It seems that every time I have engaged you in the past we ended up going in circles, so I'm gonna take a pass in this thread.

 

[Jungle Jim]

This is what I've come to call the herding mentality of human beings. I've come to believe that what human beings value is conformity, not individuality, because the individuality represents the unknown and therefore is possibly a threat. So people must be made to conform to the popular opinion and belief in any given group. It's just that people cannot really agree what to conform to.

You really should give credit to Friedrich Nietzsche for coining the phrase.

 

[blutoski]

"Differential psychiatric diagnosis is difficult to do even when you have the patient present - it is virtually impossible to do through an anonymous online forum. Cultural aspects always need to be taken into account as well, and this requires structured questions."

I am referring to 20 years of face-to-face work with skeptics, not about this forum.

(Skepticism exists outside the internet! It's true!)


Also: I'm concerned that I've been chastized in this thread first for advising against hack online diagnosis, and now I'm being chastized for contributing in the spirit of the original post.

("Damned if you do; damned if you don't.")

 

[blutoski]

You proceeded to tell me that I stumbled across the wrong disorder. I have actually read up on quite a few different mental illnesses, and NPD stuck out like a sore thumb. I proceeded down the list of symptoms and indicated where they fit and didn't fit.

Fair enough, but we'll just have do disagree on this one. As I warned: you will find a lot of 'fits' if you start with the diagnosis and just limit the exercise to confirmation.

The trick is to identify features that don't match and consider those as well. It's very important that delusion is not a diagnostic feature of NPD, but is a key feature of the alternatives I suggested. Based on the information you provided, I would have to say that NPD is incorrect.

However, I'm not just trying to convince you - there are other observers to these threads who may have followed the links and can weigh our reasonings on the issue.

Feel free to post whatever you want. It seems that every time I have engaged you in the past we ended up going in circles, so I'm gonna take a pass in this thread.

Well, I'm concerned, because my personal focus is the analysis of exactly the question you're asking in the opening post: how to navigate claimants' personality to make progress, and when to call it a day because the personality is too resistant. Furthermore: how to explain this decision to observers without posioning the process.

(A related issue is: how to manage skeptical groups, which have their own disproportionately represented personality quirks.)

To this end, I can only offer my personal advice as a person who has been observing the target population since 1986 - a person who has a psych degree and collaborates with psychiatrists on differential diagnosis on a regular basis (not to mention, being married to one).

If you don't people to give advice, don't ask for it.



ETA: I believe the overall topic of guessing when your opponent is probably pathological and when debate has been rendered counterproductive is very legitemate and worth discussion.

 

[Uncayimmy]

I think you owe me $100.



Should I send you a PM to collect?

I have sent the PM to Stanfr