House of Eratosthenes

An inexplicable fever that strikes people with formal training in behavioral and mental health, and the people who listen to them and read their books.

A human subject is identified, showing personality characteristics that are disliked (the “target”). A swelling encyclopedia of catalogued personality attributes is aggressively prowled, be it in paper or electronic form, in a diligent search of personality attribute packages matching the target’s.

When one is found, the associated bullshit alphabet soup acronym is produced (the “BASA”), and then the person who champions its use (the “sufferer”) throws it around in conversation as often as possible. PTSD. ADHD. OCPD. And, yes, in some cases, PDD-NOS. EIEIO.

If no such bullshit alphabet soup acronym is available, one will surely be invented.

Symptoms include:
1. Buying or borrowing coffee-table self-help and phony-medical books.
2. Dominating the conversation with discussion of the BASA, as if the sufferer personally discovered the associated disorder.
3. Persistent refusal to acknowledge that some people, for whatever reason, are simply born as freaks, weirdos or assholes.
4. Insistence on strict adherence to a narrow personality norm, by everyone with whom the sufferer comes in contact.
5. Engaging in an irrational debate about whether the disorder described by the BASA exists, if it is called into question whether or not it applies to a specific case.
6. Misuse of the past-tense verb diagnosed as if it referred, in the subject under discussion, to something hard and clinical — like a tumor or polyp.

Usually, the disorder described by the BASA will be a behavioral disorder. Behavioral disorders have it in common that their diagnostic methods exist entirely within the characterizations of the disorders. The diagnosis is, therefore, entirely opinionated. Laymen will consistently fail to understand this. The behavioral health professional will consistently fail to point it out.

The purpose is to provide a convenient excuse to everyone involved: To the target, for failing to behave according to expectations that are within his capacity but outside of his desires; and to those around him, to stop interacting with him in a normal capacity and continue these expectations.

The target is almost always under sixty-five; at least, he is when the diagnosis is first made. That’s because, in our culture, once you’re old, people are not forced to deal with you on a regular basis — therefore, the need to describe what there is about you that frustrates them, suddenly vanishes. The intensity of a OCBASASBDII fit is always determined by the sufferer’s (if the sufferer is not a professional) relationship to the target, since the cultural expectation that the sufferer interact regularly with the target, is what touches it off. It is most pronounced in spouses, mothers, teachers and family members living in the same household.

The neat thing about OCBASASBDII is that it’s just like the TLA (three letter acronym) — it is an example of itself.

Experts are divided on causes of the OCBASASBDII phenomenon. The science remains unsettled.

One of the more controversial theories is that it is linked to feminism.

Men and women are different, especially when it comes to organizing things. Men, naturally inclined to hunt, are pre-adjusted to the notion of confronting a disorganized environment. But they are inherently weak in the ability to organize things, limited either by scope of what is to be organized, and the extent to which things within that scope can be organized. Men don’t do it. They pick out their clean laundry by smelling paper bags of clothes to see which one is clean; they leave paid and unpaid bills in rumpled stacks of paper with no rhyme or reason to them; they eat out of the sink.

Women are far superior at separating things that “do not belong” from other things that do. However, in addition to being able to do it, the more aggressive women can’t really stop doing it — even when they deal with people.

The OCBASASBDII-outgrowth-from-feminism theory says, women insisted on not being sexually harassed at work — they sued — employers learned how not to be sued, and so the money dried up. Just about the time that was going on, people started being diagnosed with things. What was happening, in sum, was that our more difficult females were insisting everyone deal with them, they were at the same time insisting they didn’t have to deal with anyone they didn’t want to, and this is what OCBASASBDII is all about; making sure people don’t have to interact with undesirables.

Another theory, all-but-proven, is that it is financially motivated. A bunch of people show undesirable behavior and you notice it…no money. You attach a three- or four-letter acronym…money. As the libertarians say, “if you want less of something, tax it; if you want more of something, subsidize it.” We have subsidized OCBASASBDII through the federal treasury and through the self-help-book publication market, we are now drowning in it.

Experts say there is much you can do to fight OCBASASBDII. Do not argue with the person brandishing the new-found BASA; the BASA can be roughly compared to a child’s security blanket, and if they are forcefully separated from it, they find this traumatic. Instead, gently change the subject of the conversation every time they use it, until they get tired of it and move on to something else.

Adult Attention Deficit Disorder has always been a favorite of mine when “cited” as
an excuse for undesirable behavior justification.
I always ask “Well, do you mean air-head, pussy pass, or freakin’ schizophrenic?”

I usually go out of my way to fully cite, or spell out, acronyms, so everyone in the
conversation has the opportunity to actually question what is being disingenuously implied, or be reminded of the motives behind (ie) Not In MY Back Yard, Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, NAtionalsoZIalist, or North American Man/Boy Love Association.
- CaptDMO | 08/22/2008 @ 11:48
[…] Also up, is a delightful post about Hyperactive Presumptive Disorder Diagnosis Syndrome, which must be a first cousin to my own invention ofObsessive Compulsive Bullshit Alphabet Soup Acronym Shopping and Behavioral Disability Invention Imp…. […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 01/08/2010 @ 07:47

Leave a Reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Recent

Items of Interest

Monthly Archives

What They Say

Links

I Made a New Word XXIIFriday, August 22nd, 2008

I Made a New Word XXII
Friday, August 22nd, 2008