Mind Control Delusions and the Web 631
biohack writes "An article in the New York Times provides interesting insight into online communities of people who believe that they are subjected to mind control. 'Type "mind control" or "gang stalking" into Google, and Web sites appear that describe cases of persecution, both psychological and physical, related with the same minute details — red and white cars following victims, vandalism of their homes, snickering by those around them.' According to Dr. Vaughan Bell, a British psychologist who has researched the effect of the Internet on mental illness, '[the] extent of the community [...] poses a paradox to the traditional way delusion is defined under the diagnostic guidelines of the American Psychiatric Association, which says that if a belief is held by a person's "culture or subculture," it is not a delusion. The exception accounts for rituals of religious faith, for example.'"
Article isn't very insightful or correct (Score:5, Informative)
The article is incorrect in one person quoted therein that a delusion is not a delusion if it's commonly held by its culture or subculture. That's not what the definition of delusion says in the manual. It says that one's culture should be taken into account when making the diagnosis, that's all.
And you're in a logical circular loop if you start saying that a person's disorder is a legitimate "subculture." It is indeed a group, but an entire culture or subculture? I don't think so.
Read more observations about the article here:
http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2008/11/13/shedding-light-on-a-dark-side-of-online-community/ [psychcentral.com]
Re:All about politics (Score:4, Informative)
But the broader psychological community regular engages in what is little more the pseudo-science.
So how many psychology classes have you taken? Yeah, I thought so.
There's a huge difference between an emerging scientific field—where the subject matter is extremely complicated—and pseudoscience. You don't give physicists a bad rap because they once believed in aether, do you?
There are many people out there doing scientific studies of human behavior. They're working against thousands of years of assumptions, some right, some wrong. It's going to take some time.
Re:Paranoia (Score:4, Informative)
To use your sideburns example above, you stated that you heard, "The guy with the sideburns" and knew somebody was talking about you. The problem with the paranoiac is that they hear something like "The guy with the sideburns..." and they fill in the blanks with their perception of the world. Sometimes there's no way to tell if the passerby said, "The guy with the sideburns is one cool stud" or if they said, "The guy with the sideburns has funny teeth and tonight we will slash his tires..."
Re:Filed Under the NYT's "Fashion & Style?" (Score:5, Informative)
I'm pretty sure the cult preys upon folks in Hollywood because they're loaded with money and are potentially insecure or can be swayed more easily by their emotions because they're artsy people. I believe that some people who have participated in many great films like John Travolta and Tom Cruise are the victims here, not to mention all the other, less profitable victims outside Hollywood. The people doing the scamming do not want to be in the spotlight the way those actors are.
Re:Jung Figures into This (Score:5, Informative)
This kind of thing is much more common than the story suggests. Much like other myths, people connect to and share some illusion or story. Much of which is culturally driven. So there are *shared* stories about black helicopters, red and white cars, virgin births, etc.
Actually, the black helicopters are real.
Each year there are several JSOC exercises that simulate things like grabbing high-level officials from hotels. They pick a U.S. city, tell only a few city officials like the mayor and the chief of police, put the "target" in the local Hilton and have the special operations guys go snatch him. They usually do a helicopter extraction from a nearby park. Guess what color those helicopters are... black.
What do people in and around the area see? They see a black helicopter circling overhead, land in a park, a guy in a suit thrown into the back, the helicopter takes off and the guys on the ground drive off in vans or SUVs. Then, they check the papers the next day and there is nothing about it. So, they start thinking: Conspiracy!
Now, I don't know if these operations are the basis of the Black Helicopter Conspiracy, but it makes more sense than anything else I've heard. Well, except for the Illuminati being behind it. With those guys, anything is possible.
Re:Filed Under the NYT's "Fashion & Style?" (Score:5, Informative)
I wonder if I could make a product selling an aluminum-lined series of hats - look fashionable on the outside, but protect you from mind control on the inside
So does this guy. [lessemf.com]
Re:Politics (Score:3, Informative)
Uh, there's nothing in that definition about everybody else believing it. According to the definition, you're deluded if you persist in believing in something despite indisputable evidence to the contrary. Now, I expect that whoever wrote that didn't really mean "indisputable" in a rigorous sense, but rather something like "overwhelming" or similar. There's actually nothing that's "indisputable."
The DSM definition of delusion-based disorders likely includes something about how popular the belief is so that there aren't any convenient, APA approved excuses to commit every religious person. That means they're not clinically deluded, by APA standards, but they still match the non-clinical definition of deluded just fine, even if their delusion is shared (in some form) by 90% of the population.
Re:Okay doctor, how about this... (Score:4, Informative)
Their culture is totally irrelevant -- what IS relevant is if they're in pain, if their life is significantly impacted, and there is a medical treatment or cure available that could help them. THAT is where the focus needs to be, and culture only plays a role insofar as how to reach out to the patient and contextualize what's happening. disclaimer: not a doctor.
I'm not a doctor either, but I do know enough to at least comment on this; you, in all your ignorance of the subject, probably shouldn't be.
Part of the diagnosis for a psychological disorder uses culture as a context because culture sets the stage for what a person is likely to believe (as people are group animals, after all), what a person is likely to fit into their cognitive schema for how the world works. Diagnosing delusional beliefs isn't perfect, and it's certainly not based on what is objectively true because that's both impossible to determine.
Another dimension IS whether their "condition", if you call it that, is negatively impacting their life, or those around them. That is, personally distressing. You do not fit in with that criteria. You would never be diagnosed by a competent clinician simply because of your Wiccan beliefs because of this fact. You are not impinging on the lives of others, like, say, an antisocial or narcissistic person would, either. You do not fit the criteria for a delusional disorder in this context. Quit your bellyaching.
As psychological disorders has, in the scheme of things, been only very recently scientifically investigated, it's quite imperfect, especially since there is great difficulty investigating the neurological roots of many mental disorders. For example, schizophrenia, which can include, obviously, delusion and hallucination, is related in some ways to the dopamine neurotransmitter.
Wiccans always amuse me because they often feel they have a good opinion on something, when in fact they believe in a made-up religion less than a century old. Unlike Wicca, psychology is based on science--sometimes shoddy science, but that's true in all science. Good psychology, unlike Wicca, is NOT made up and so you do not really have a good foundation to be complaining here until you have done at least some cursory reading on clinical psychology and its methodology.
If you don't like this, you can always cast a spell for the Mother Goddess and perhaps she will use her magickal nature to change things.
Probably not.
Re:Filed Under the NYT's "Fashion & Style?" (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Filed Under the NYT's "Fashion & Style?" (Score:5, Informative)
I find it very interesting you conclude, "no reason at all", because there is a reason, but unfortunately most people have not learned to see the reason, why some people behave this way towards others. When someone harasses someone else, there is always a reason, and that reason is always some form of personal gain from the harassment.
In a way, I find it both good and bad that a lot of people can't think of a reason, why someone would behave this way towards other people. Its good, in that most people clearly don't think (and so don't behave) this way towards others, which is very encouraging for all of us. But unfortunately is also bad, in that if more people learned to think like this, then fewer people would become the victims of this kind of treatment.
Everyone who continuously harasses, manipulates or ruthlessly exploits other people, for their own gain, is demonstrating a very strong sign of a cluster B personality disorder trait. One event of this kind of behavior, isn't enough to predict a person is this way, but a continued treatment of others by harassment, manipulation or ruthless exploitation, is a clear indicator of cluster B personality disordered behavior. But their behavior is not the reason why they are this way.
Here's a quick cut and paste from a previous post...
"The world will never change until everyone worldwide realizes that people who constantly seek power over others have a recognizable cluster B personality disorder. All cluster B personality disorders are ultimately driven by fear. And the ones with the disorder constantly seek to control that fear and control everyone around them based on their fear. (There are multiple fears, two examples are lack of attention and another is fear of lack of power. (There are also other fears). The attention seekers want more attention (they were deprived of parental attention as children. The ones who want power seek to prevent anyone ever having power over them again, the way they were treated unfairly as children)."
Cluster B disorders are only a minority of the population, but thought out our lives, we all meet multiple examples of these kinds of people in our lives. (To give an indication of the kinds of numbers of these people around, for example, its estimated that over 80% of people in prison have some form of cluster B disorder. Also there are many cluster B disordered people who are not in prison, but continue to treat others around them badly. (At times horrifically). Some are even in high positions. (They seek positions of power over others, sometimes relentlessly seek high positions of power over others). Also some of these people can be extremely convincing, as they spend years learning how to manipulate others. Some are almost like they are acting a role as they manipulate others and they can get very good at it).
Re:Paranoia (Score:3, Informative)
Really?
If you're infantry (or were) it seems unlikely that your hearing is still that good. By the time I got out (almost 5 years with some time in the sandbox) I had about a 20% hearing loss in my right ear (eardrum, meet 5.56 round and associated sharp sound) and tinnitus in both.
But maybe they're not issuing those little orange "don't do squat" earplugs anymore?
Re:Filed Under the NYT's "Fashion & Style?" (Score:4, Informative)
Tell me, which exact branch of science deals with meaning and makes such statements?
Science has nothing to say about meanings and values.
If science existed in a vacuum, then that would be true. However, science interacts with our lives and we use it to ask "why?". It's cause and effect. You can show how evolution leads to certain behavior traits, like cheating. People dying in car accidents were considered "acts of God". Then they used science to improve the chances of surviving an accident. Everything we know about consciousness is tied to the physical brain.
So, when posed with the question: Why do these things happen? Is there life after death? Science plays a role in the answer. That's why religion has been constantly shrinking in the face of science. It has shrunk so much that people pretend science and religion don't overlap, but that's just revisionist history.