this post was submitted on 26 Jul 2023
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yeah i guess i did extrapolate that point out further than you meant it. my bad. i think that labeling people isn't really the point that i find aggravating, though. its applying clinical labels to people who don't necessarily have those clinical conditions. like, is psychopathy really what's going on here? can people really know that observing from afar? i don't think so, and i think its at least a little bit irresponsible to make those sorts of claims about people because they do bad things. there is nothing intrinsically pathological about causing harm to other people. like, the fact that you seem to think you can identify "clear patterns of harmful pathological behavior" is mostly the thrust of my resistance. it certainly is harmful behavior, and it may very well be pathological, but frankly neither you or i are well positioned to make judgements about the mental health of strangers, in the same way we aught not assume people have a specific physical illness.
i think its probably good to point out that people can do bad things because of their mental illness, but we don't have enough information to just say she has this specific mental illness because she did bad things. its kinda like speculating on the sexuality of public figures, or at least those two ideas feel similar in my brain.
It's not just that her behavior is harmful, it's that she's creating a whole false reality around it and controlling multiple narratives from every possible perspective. She created/co-opted a movement to go along with the Manson allegations, she moved across the country with her son to reinforce her narrative and used that as a way to hurt her ex husband, she used her power in the role of a child's mother to create a world in which there was a monster they must run away from at all costs to where the kid couldn't even play outside in Tennessee because of the monster in LA... And whenever she's confronted with the idea that what she's done is harmful to anybody she rewrites or reinforces the narrative that she's doing it for the right reasons and deflects any responsibility or awareness that she's done anything wrong (for example, when it looked like she was going to lose custody she suddenly decided it was in the child's best interest to go live with the father in LA, the very city she ran from in order to protect the very child she was taking away from LA).
I'm not saying everybody who hurts somebody is "pathological" or "psychotic". I'm saying ERW specifically exhibits a lack of capacity for empathy, a total lack of self awareness or awareness of the effects of her behavior, and has no concern or even acceptance of those effects as reality when confronted with them, and what she does and how she is is characteristic of ASPD.