Demons

"If you speak the demon's name, it cannot harm you." or something like that. It's an Irish proverb that I heard on Star Trek (which is where I know all of my Irish proverbs from). It applies to the new psych-speak that we've applied to our vocabulary lately. I've never heard so many people diagnosing their own (and others, of course) depths of dysfunction.

That we even use the term dysfunction in daily speech. If anyone actually has spent longer than 5 seconds reading up on the Eriksonian postulate I'd be impressed (I just memorized the chart for class, so I'm including myself). Somehow, if I can identify the "co-dependant" things that those around me are doing, or better yet, that I have done in the past, I'm suddenly immune to my enablers. How many times have you refered to someone as "anal retentive" or "orally fixated". We even dose out prescriptions of Paxil or Prozac for our unstable friends. We go around tossing out words like latency and residual conflict trying to sound like we have some power over our own flawed psyche because we share our doctor's epistemology. Are we not just "speaking the demons name"?

The thought of being the one under the microscope has always troubled me. I'd hate to be the archetype for any of Freud's studies. Heck, I'd hate to neatly fit into any of Jung's archetypes. While we'd like love to come with a users guide, a two word explanation of us would make our existence in this world seem rather trivial ("mostly harmless").

However, when ever we must explain someone's actions, I find it remarkably easy to relegate their behavior to this new short hand that the educated elite share. It serves to make me sound so much more intelligent, and very quickly communicate what I believe to be wrong with person in question.

I think it rather important for us to embrace our dysfunctions, rather than explain them. It's like being in Alcoholics Anonymous, only without the sponsor and the 5 week chip. "Hi, my name is Robert, and I'm all those people that I make fun of, objectify, and place in nice neat little zip-lock containers." Being found out to be one of the people that you so don't respect, you know, discovering that you're one of the weird kids, is traumatic. Alcoholics talk about the depth of despair that they fall into the first time they truly admit that they have a problem just like that loser at the bar who can't stop drinking. Accepting that your are screwed up takes placing yourself on a plane with people that you use as examples of what not to do. It's not easy. But it's better than being one of those people and not accepting it. You see, you can change when you know both the demons name and where he lives.

Of course, if I know of this dysfunction, I must be immune to it, for how could someone allow themselves to behave suffer from that which the uneducated proletariat wallow in. Not that I'm implying you're in the proletariat or anything, or gosh, part of some stuck up elite either. Of course, I'd be comfortable telling you if I really felt like that, but I might not because I really want you to like my site and keep reading my cleverly written articles week after week. So why do you keep pushing me and expecting so much and complaining when I only write like an article ever two weeks. You're just like my dad! Leave me alone, I'm so sick of you people, gosh.