Quite a few years ago I had a step son, he’d be an adult now of about 26. Maybe he has a family of his own and he’s as happy as can be, don’t know, I don’t often think about him. The point is I once had a son, so I kind of know, think I know, that what I am about to say is not as remote, nor merely theoretical, as it may seem on first read. I am sure I’m wrong this time, I’m always willing to be. So, make sure not to take anything I speculate on too seriously. Also, if I offend you know that I don’t give a fuck, that’s your issue, I’m not accusing anyone of anything, I’m just asking a question.
Is a diagnosis a positive thing?
What I mean when I ask that question is that my boy was once diagnosed as having dyslexia, and I happened to know the woman that performed his test. In confidence, and I can say this because it was 15 years ago and she is now deceased, she told me that everyone that gets tested turns out to be dyslexic by the metrics involved. It struck me that the test was somehow designed to validate the resources that the government had provided to carry it out on so many people. I wondered if this is what happens when something needs to have a sort of high-level hit rate to survive potential funding cuts and the emerging needs of other trending policies, and maybe even the people involved end up being participants in what then looks like a bit of a con? Well he was dyslexic, and so he was afforded certain considerations; those had implications to the public purse also.
His mum, my wife at the time, was dyslexic also. Of course she was.. because whatever it was useful to have, whatever gained attention, garnered sympathy, or was fashionable to be saddled with, she had it, caught it, suffered it, or was the hero of bearing it. I didn’t believe a word, but I went along because that’s what you do, you humour the people you care about because it’s them, you somewhat humour your friends, and you are harder on people you do not know. That’s the abstract, the opinion without knowledge, from afar, I hope mine is not that. To my estimation she was just not very bright (my ex-wife), and why should she need to be? As far as I know it’s no crime to be dim (though it may be to be foolish, that one’s me). She had a great figure and a pretty face. She’d never done a days work in her life as far as I could tell, and she never would as long as she stayed pretty and there was a capable guy standing nearby. I’ll admit that sounds cruel, but it’s a demonstrable reality that small pretty women rarely work that hard if they don’t wish to and if they have enough confidence to flirt a bit. She was, and I suspect this is still her tactic in getting by easily, a past master at playing the role of a woman in need of being rescued.
So what am I getting at?
You can hate your weaknesses, or you can embrace them. My grandfather apparently didn’t like the idea of being a diabetic so it’s possible that he did not take it seriously enough, but a guy I know loves how he, now that he has a diagnosis, can use his diabetes to force himself into living a healthier life than before. “Now everything makes sense”, can represent a light-bulb moment for the newly diagnosed guy with a psychological prognosis that admonishes all past mistakes and bad decisions. Maybe some folks don’t quite realise that none of us have all the answers, we all make mistakes, and we’re all just struggling along doing our best to look like we’re not amateur actors in our own drama. Those that have a diagnosis though, they get to stop speculating on the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, they have their answer and life is made easier by it. Everything is easier explained when you can always reach for and point to a diagnosis, and maybe you can then, once the label is administered, tag everything that is sub-optimal on? Why do I keep biting people? It’s my condition. Why am I cruel to women? Mummy didn’t hug me enough. Why do I hate cheese? Daddy made you eat wotsits for your lunch every day.
You see it’s not my position that these maladies, these quirks, cannot be explained sufficiently, I think maybe they can, but not fully, and not always professionally with the moral caveat also applied that psychology is not a science with fixed answers. I just wonder what is achieved by explaining them and bringing the reasons into the light, making it foremost in the mind of the sufferer. Is it always so, that to know the self better is to reconcile the self with the demons of the self? Maybe a healthy dose of delusion could be a better strategy? Ignore and suppress feelings, keep the anger in or vent it out in some other way, turn it into a boxing career or become an extreme sports participant. What is it that drives us to need the explanation for everything, and once armed with that explanation do we then make excuses for who we are and what we do rather than trying to change our selves and grow?
I had therapy, it gave me reasons for sure, but I’m not repaired and will likely never be because I don’t know who I would be if I didn’t have the anger that I’ve had for what seems to have been my entire life, I’m just aware of what I cannot move past, and brings it’s own issues because it’s no longer in the background and partially suppressed, now I have to actually deal with it!
The self is this despairing relation. You can’t be cured of it. You are it. You can’t go to the psychologist and go “I am in despair, fix it” in this sense, because that would be to obliterate your self that’s built in this despairing relation – Roderick on Kierkegaard
It is my suspicion that there is something compelling in being diagnosed with some fashionable malady. So much so that people may wish it upon themselves quite frequently, especially since a lot of old stigma has been replaced by badges of honour in recent times. It has many benefits, one of which is to remove the responsibility of the person to have to fulfil certain normative criteria, and that is problematic for all because it provides a ready made raft of excuses that can be drawn upon in many situations. Might not have to obey the law, may not have the rules applied to you, don’t have to be a participant when you don’t wish to be, we all know the guy that uses these tactics, and maybe shouldn’t (in our limited estimation). When we have expectations about people in situations, and these expectations are for the good of the larger group, then maybe they should not be so easily violated by so many people with a diagnosis? Maybe there should be a tighter criteria or we will all grab at the easiest of excuses?
Let’s also say that if there is a diagnosis, and that I am a person that struggles with some of the social and financial pressures upon me, maybe I’m struggling to go to work for instance. I may really welcome the label and the power I then gain, to not work. I would argue that I know very few people who like going to work, and I know quite a few people who hate their workplace or their boss, and I also know quite a few people around my age that are just sick of the drudge. Would any of these people, otherwise normal we might contend (a hard term to define), welcome anything that meant they might then sit at home and have the same quality of life provided to them from another source, the government, that they would have had if they had been exchanging labour for wage? I suspect this could be a large demographic. I’ll add that I don’t know many people who play this tactic though, simply because a capitalist society tends to let people know themselves by no other means than what they do for a living, but that’s another argument.
There are three aspects that make a person enjoy their involvement, other than a remunerative reward – Autonomy, Mastery, and Purpose. To feel you are in control of your own participation, though that may be an illusion, to feel that you are able to do what you are doing sufficiently and with enough expertise, and to feel like what you do actually matters to someone even if it is yourself. Without these a person is likely to not enjoy their job, or their hobby, or their relationships, in full. I love my job helping people to achieve their goals, I am fulfilled by making things work better, I always have been interested in improving efficiency and simplifying complexity. Yet I also utterly hate my job for many structural reasons, ones that I cannot go in to on a public forum. If I focus on the bits I do not like then I will be mentally weakened by them, if I focus on the fact that I basically ‘help people’ and ‘make things function correctly’ then I can feel good about turning up every day. I could quit or look elsewhere, I am under a lot of what I consider to be unnecessary pressure, but I’m pretty sure that’s everyone now that there are no unions and no labour focussed politicians in Britain any more. I wonder does anyone but me suspect that this, along with economic factors few can avoid, is is one of the underpinning reasons of the mental health crisis we seem to be experiencing? That being employed is not as used to be, it’s not stable nor does it seem to have any meritocratic aspects. Even social aspects of the newer economies appear to be merely a grab at greater wealth by chumocracy organisations underpinned by existing wealth. It is not a structure that provides.
Please realise that although I may be starting to sound like a man with no sympathy, a right wing type, nothing could be further from the truth. I assure you I am not about to start voting for swine no matter what party they’re currently occupying. I do not agree with the current trend of political actors that label people as workshy excuse-gluttons, unworthy of what we have come to label as benefits. I’m just pointing out that if I can think this out and have suspicions, then so can they (well their think tanks can). The difference is I’m exploring an idea and asking questions, I am not making policy. I just wish to know if we are seeing a rat-tail problem….
There is a rat issue in the city. The government tries to solve it by paying people to kill rats, and they say to bring the tails to prove the deaths. Newly Incentivised into bringing rat tails and being paid for them, the people start breeding rats, thus increasing the rat problem.
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