An anonymous reader pointed out that I should not have equated "psychotic" and "murderous".
Absolutely correct; that was insensitive and gave you permission to make the same association, which of course you should not.
In my mind I never thought of them as equivalent, but wanted to use the word murderous journalistically. It sounded good in the sentence. Interestingly, there was a ping in my head that said, take that back, and I didn't listen, thought, well, they know I don't really mean it that way. Denial.
But I take it back!
FYO
We use the word psychotic to define a certain class of disorders in which an individual suffers from one or more of the following features:
1) delusions
2) hallucinations
3) disorganized speech (e.g. frequent derailment or incoherence)
4) grossly disorganized or catatonic behavior
I define them in the post below.
We do not include a symptom if it is a culturally sanctioned response pattern.
The type of psychotic disorder, an actual diagnosis, depends upon its duration, how it presents, if it is in the context of a close relationship with another person who has an already-established delusion (a Folie a Deux), if there is a medical condition that causes the symptoms, or if it is induced by substance abuse or marked stress.
Humbly yours,
therapydoc
3 comments:
Not that anything can take away the horrific events at VA Tech, but having you help us look into the mind of a disturbed individual helps to make it more understandable. It's just all so sad.
This is the anonymous poster from before. Thanks for admitting your error, it takes a big person to do that.
Cheers.
I wish I were a much bigger person. I really do like it when I have a chance to have an intellectual dialogue with folks (and even not-so-intellectual dialogue, honest, just, let's talk). And I certainly made a terrific error using that word that way. So thanks Anon.
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