Saturday, July 29, 2006

Please refer to chart 3.1

I now work at the Tolman Education/Psychology library in Berkeley, so when I'm shelving, I get an idea of what books the faculty in psychology like to borrow. There's one book, it's kept behind the circulation desk, called the DSM and apparently it's the book of standards for psychologists. It outlines what they have agreed upon in various topics in psychology.

DSM-III diagnostic criteria for schizotypal personality disorder


At least four of the following:

  1. Magical thinking, e.g. superstitiousness, clairvoyance, telepathy, 'sixth sense', 'others can feel my feelings' (in children and adolescents, bizzare fantasies or preoccupations);
  2. Ideas of reference;
  3. Social isolation, e.g. no close friends or confidants, social contacts limited to essential everyday tasks;
  4. Recurrent illusions, sensing the presence of a force or person not actually present (e.g. 'I felt as if my dead mother were in the room with me'), depersonaization or derealization not associated with panic attacks;
  5. Odd speech (without loosening of associations or incoherence), e.g. speech that is digressive, vague, over-elaborate, circumstantial, metaphorical;
  6. Inadequate rapport in face-to-face interaction due to constricted or inappropriate affect, e.g. aloof, cold;
  7. Suspiciousness or paranoid ideation;
  8. Undue social anxiety or hypersensitivity ro real or imagined criticism.

Word? I have like 3 of thems. What does that make me? I always do things half-assed.

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