--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB <no_re...@...> wrote: > > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Sal Sunshine <salsunshine@> wrote:.
> Gotta agree with Sal's assessment here. Judy > not only (as you suggested, Curtis) tried to > divert attention away from the real topic > (Maharishi and his NPD) and onto you personally, > she mainly succeeded. > > I strongly support your challenges to her to > deal with the real topic. If she is so confident > that she can address each of the traits associated > with Narcissistic Personality Disorder and show > why they *don't* apply to Maharishi, I recommend > that she do it. With all the talk here sometimes of "epistemology" I'm surprised that "Narcissistic Personality Disorder" is getting such a free pass (except I think from Mr Tart Brain). What's *really* going on when someone claims MMY has NPD? It seems to me that some folks here rightly and regularly point to the fallacy in seeking out "confirmations" in astrological predictions (as opposed to highlighting the failures). But now those SAME folks are asking us to "find confirmations" in some pseudo-scientific list (the NPD list for MMY). And why? If you think MMY was unnaturally grandiose, with delusions of being the bees knees, why not just SAY so? You already know it (believe it), so what does calling it NPD *do*? It reminds me of discussions of abortion: If the the foetus is a person everything else follows: If not, it doesn't. Did MMY have an over-inflated sense of achievement? If yes, go to square NPD. If not go to square "highly creative, accomplished individual". Then again some folks here rail against "book learning" and the appeal to authority that that might seem to imply. But those same folks seem quite happy to swallow some half-baked, untestable, misleadingly authorative "list" that is supposed to define a personality disorder (and what exactly IS that when it's at home anyway?). At least they do so when it suits ;-) Perhaps books CAN teach us something. I'm thinking Orwell and Popper. "We all have personality disorders now" http://www.newstatesman.com/200507110021
