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Originally Posted by Martian
Chronic depression is not cured by therapy, it's treated by therapy. And medications, such as Xanax, the ever-popular Prozac or other mood stabilizers. Same goes for bipolar disorder, which is related. Neither one of these is curable, at this point.
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You never specified
chronic depression, did you? And besides that, as a treatment or a cure, therapy is more effective.
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As for your other point, you're mistaking the symptom for the cause. Sociopathic tendencies are generally caused by a deep-seated rage combined with a lack of ability to feel guilt or remorse. The over-inflated ego is a manifestation of the rage; the sociopath believes himself to be above the human swill, because he hates them so much.
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First, you use the term "over-inflated ego"; if ego is akin to self-esteem, does that not mean that one can have too much of it? And even if you deny that, would it not be easier to execute anti-social behaviours if one has incredibly high self-esteem?
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Again, life is not a contest and if you're talking about value as related to others you're missing my point. My sense of self-worth has nothing to do with anyone else; I don't put myself on a ladder with the rest of the entire human race. It comes from knowing that I do have talents and abilities and I am valuable in my own right. It's not an issue of 'more' or 'less', it's simply recognizing that I have worth as a human being. Stemming from that is my acknowledgement of what I can and cannot do. I have valuable technical skills and a high aptitude for such. This makes me well suited to be an engineer, mechanic or technician. I have Crohn's disease, which makes me poorly suited for the military, police forces or other emergency services. So rather than beat my head against a brick wall trying to get into the police force, I do the best I can at being a technician. Unsurprisingly, I excel.
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I said nothing about a contest, and it isn't for everyone; it's not for me. Everyone assigns value to everything, including other people. If you are an average person, you assign more value to your friends than to strangers, more value to humans than to insects, more value to your job than to your lawnmower, and so on. In this system, you assign value to yourself. If the value assigned to yourself is extremely high compared to that assigned to other people (such as the way most people assign their value compared to an insect's), then it would become significantly easier to act in the manner of a sociopath.
Saying that all you do is go "I have worth" is a cop-out. Worth and value, although vague concepts, are still heirarchies; you have created your own heirarchy and exist within it whether you are willing to admit it or not.