~This is a place for hyperthymics to feel at home, understood and appreciated as they would in few other places.

 

 

“The saints differ from us in their exuberance, the excess of our human talents.  Moderation is not their secret.  It is in the wildness of their dreams, the desperate vitality of their ambitions, that they stand apart from ordinary people of good will.”~Phyllis McGinley

 

able of Contents

Have you ever noticed that some people have an extra warmth and sparkle that most people don’t have?

 

My My Story webpage, giving my own personal experiences with growing up and living my life like this, very earthy and flourishing, and doing my best to share this

My About Us webpage gives more practical information, which one could use to recognize this and give people help recognizing what’s going on.  This includes some particulars on how I used the case of OJ Simpson to recognize what was going on with someone

More from my About Us page, recognizing more chaos, as well as the fact that those attracted to the positive side of these personalities would tend to end up with a lot of people who have the negative side, so may seriously be treated as if they have a codependent attraction to the negative side

Also, knowing what this negative side looks like, and if someone is lacking some depth then chances are that psychologists aren’t going to provide it.

My The Romance of Hassidism webpage, about Hassidism, the ecstatic mystical sect of Judaism, which includes its own wild music!

Then there’s my web page showing how much more likely men are than women to kill themselves just because of the ending of one marriage or romantic relationship, and this is something that I take seriously.

And then there’s my On Doping webpage, very relevant to hyperthymic personalities.  They can often have exactly the distortions in thinking that could lead to lethal drug abuse, and neither the old~fashioned approach of throwing them in prison nor the modern approach of sending them to treatment would make much difference, since neither makes much difference to the sort of impulsive person who, any spouse or lover of such a person would be told, hasn’t been persuaded to stop either through controlling tactics or by warm humanistic approaches, so why would these lovers or spouses be able to change someone that intractable?

 

 

            his is a summary of my other web pages on hyperthymic personalities, which are the opposite of dysthymic or chronically depressed personalities.  Hyperthymic personalities are attractive for all the reasons that are the opposite of the reasons why many find dysthymic personalities unattractive, and for plenty other reasons as well.  These webpages are my My Story, and About Us.  Also somewhat related to this is my The Romance of Hassidism webpage, which consists of excerpts from that book, by Jacob S. Minkin, about how wild many of the founders of Hassidism, the ecstatic mystical sect of Judaism, which has its own wild style of music, got!  Also, Men Dying for Love webpage, which is basically an appendix of a book on suicide, consisting of random suicide notes written by both men and women.  Despite the traditional stereotypes, several of the men killed themselves because of the ending of just one romantic relationship or marriage, while the only woman to do this was a lesbian.  The main reason for this summary is to put something on hyperthymic personalities onto search engines, so that those who have them could feel more comfortable with them and so that anyone could learn how to recognize them in others which could give them answers that would help them.  This webpage could also serve as a streamlined summary.  The documentation is on these other web pages.

            ave you ever noticed that some people have an extra warmth and sparkle that most people don’t have?  These people could be described as perpetually enthusiastic and outgoing, so they’re exactly the sort of person you’d want to surround yourself with. This is the sort of spark that either you’ve got it or you don’t; you can’t fake it. You also may have noticed that these people tend to be not only smarter than most, bright brilliant and sharp, but they also tend to have both a warmth and a deep-level awareness that most people are clearly lacking, so these people could seem unusually idealistic and cosmopolitan.  They could also be unusually successful in life, as enthusiastic bright people tend to be.  You may have wished that you could be like that, or maybe, perhaps, you are.  Maybe you’ve always felt that compared to you, most people seem dull, square, obeisant, unimaginative, and basically half dead, and you just couldn’t figure out why.  Well, this may be it.  Our thinking can be so profound that you might not believe that the source of it can be this simple and sometimes problematic, but what makes us different is that we have what could be called chronically manic personalities, just as those who are mildly chronically depressed but within the normal range are called chronically depressed.  (If you’ve seen the selfish short-sighted tendencies of enough of us, the extent to which they’re basically diluted versions of the impairments of judgment that manic episodes are known for, might stun you.)  As Aristotle Onassis said, “The secret of success is to know something nobody else knows,” and you’d be amazed how few people know about hyperthymic personalities, though many of them are easy to recognize, and hyperthymics tend to be successful, impressive, people.

In essence, what hyperthymics tend to look like, is the celebrities who attract hordes of groupies, charismatic smart creative and idealistically caring, but also tending to have plenty of artistic-temperament-style behavior problems, such as boozing, doping, irascibility, flamboyant eccentricities, and irresponsibility.  If you surrounded yourself with all of the celebrities who attract hordes of groupies, you sure would tend to associate with people who have artistic-temperament-style behavior problems, so you could very easily seem to have a subconscious codependent attraction to artistic-temperament-style behavior problems.  Yet the only groupies who are attracted to the boozing and doping, are those who want to share the booze and dope.  It might seem strange that the very same hyperthymic person who’s very attractive most of the time,

 

could also be very problematic some of the time,

but that’s the reality.

In essence, we tend to fit both the positive (very caring) and the negative (very uncaring) stereotypes of artists, though these might look like exact opposites of each other.  Yet it’s amazing how destructive a little bit of momentary impulsivity could be.  Also, the “love” as in “peace and love,” is certainly a lot colder than the committed romantic love that those who insist on their independence, would likely be very hesitant, even phobic, with.  Yet this is the kind of love that “Love conquers all,” refers to.  One sort of situation where hyperthymic impulsivity and shallowness are the most dangerous, is the sort in which all the person has to do is say, “Sure, I made that commitment then, but you’ve got to understand that it’s no longer right for me!”, “I no longer feel right with this,” etc., and you’d seem draconian, manipulative, etc., if you expected him to keep it.  In a self-reliant society, any acceptance of those who might be controlling, manipulative, etc., would be a moral hazard that could be very powerful, very forceful and compelling, and one can’t defend himself against it without looking as if he’s re-victimizing victims.  Just think of all that those controllers and manipulators would then be able to get away with!  It seems that we must fear the untermenschen and their victim-power, and mustn’t fear the übermenschen and their freedoms.

 

 

     

 

And in case “mood disorders” sounds rare and aberrant to you, on my Making the Political, Personal webpage,

I have plenty of quotes from antidepressant ads, guides on how to treat depression, etc., which tell of America’s outstandingly high rate of depression, as if this is just one of the biological diseases that are parts of the natural order, such as the Learning About Depression webpage on the Zoloft website, “If you have depression, this sad mood along with other symptoms can last weeks, months, or even years if not treated.  Depression isn’t a sign of weakness or a character flaw.  It’s a real medical condition, but there are ways to successfully treat depression....  Depressive disorders affect about 34 million American adults.”  (If instead, this were treated as a social problem in the same way that many social movements in the 1960s treated social problems, it would seem very strange to talk about millions of Americans suffering from depression, as millions of Americans who’d better get fixed through antidepressant medication, cognitive therapy, etc.  Just imagine what the 1960s would have looked like if, instead, these social movements had said, “If racism, sexism, etc., bother you, then go to a cognitive therapist and learn how to think more optimistically about the opportunities that people have.”)  Mood disorders aren’t anything unusual.  And you should ask yourself whether this could really consist of quirks that are that self-destructive, inside of that many people.

 

Dr. Peter Kramer, in his book Listening to Prozac, wrote, “Psychiatrists have begun to recognize a normal or near-normal condition called ‘hyperthymia,’ which corresponds loosely to what the Greeks called the sanguine temperament.” The Merriam Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary defines sanguine as: “having blood as the predominating bodily humor; also : having the bodily conformation and temperament held characteristic of such predominance and marked by sturdiness, high color, and cheerfulness.”  Sounds exciting, don’t it? Dr. Kramer goes on, “Hyperthymia is distinct from mania or hypomania, the disorders in which people are grandiose, frenetic, distractible, and flawed in their judgment. Hyperthymics are merely optimistic, decisive, quick of thought, charismatic, energetic, and confident.”  The list of adjectives describing hyperthymics from Dr. Hagop Akiskal, that Kramer gives, is, “‘irritable,’ ‘cheerful,’ ‘overoptimistic,’ ‘exuberant,’ ‘overconfident,’ ‘self-assured,’ ‘boastful,’ ‘bombastic,’ ‘grandiose,’ ‘full of plans,’ ‘improvident,’ ‘impulsive,’ ‘overtalkative,’ ‘warm,’ ‘people-seeking,’ ‘extraverted,’ ‘overinvolved,’ ‘meddlesome,’ ‘uninhibited,’ ‘stimulus-seeking,’ and/or ‘promiscuous.’ They are habitual short sleepers, even on weekends.”  In other words, we’re basically attractive, very alive people, though some of us (certainly not all) have, to varying degrees, impairments of judgment that become very familiar to those who find everyone else half dead.  (Since our human nature is very intensified, and while some of us are unusually selfish, for the most part we tend to be warm and what most would call “idealistic,” this gives me confidence in human nature.)  Because of our increased creativity, what’s known as the “artistic temperament” is actually a part of the negative side of the hyperthymic temperament.  As you could see from this, we could be warm cold or both depending on what we feel like at the moment, deep shallow or both depending on what we feel like at the moment, etc.

 

 

 

Hyperthymic Temperament, from the University of Pittsburgh, says:

These attributes are not episode-bound and constitute part of the habitual long-term functioning of the individual:
 

• Cheerful and exuberant
• Articulate and jocular
• Overoptimistic and carefree
• Overconfident, boastful, ang grandiose
• Extroverted and people seeking
• High energy level, full of plans and improvident activities
• Versatile with broad interests
• Overinvolved and meddlesome
• Uninhibited and stimulus seeking
• Habitual short sleep (less than 6 hours/night)

 

The On Being Bipolar - Home Page describes hyperthymics as “bright, intelligent, intuitive and creative creatures. My psychiatrist jokes that people wish that they could experience hypomania so they could feel the energy that oozes from you,” so we tend to really make a mark in society.  Panache, scientific innovation and similar problem-solving have an intuitive quality to them.

As Arthur Schopenhauer, philosopher of the Romantic era of central European culture, in the beginning of the 19th Century, which included Sturm und Drang literature, wrote in The World as Will and Representation, “Learning does not take the place of genius, because it also furnishes only concepts; the knowledge of genius, however, consists in the apprehension of the (Platonic) Ideas of things, and is therefore essentially intuitive,” so such intuition could play a big part in any great thinking, especially that based on flashes of insight, such as panache.  A hyperthymic friend of mine referred to the sort of basic idea that hyperthymics have a special sense for understanding and working with, as the “crux” of things.  Martin Buber, in Ecstatic Confessions, his collection of quotes from the followers of various mystical religions describing mystical experiences, uses the German word

to describe the ineffability of mystical experiences, a word that also means flash-of-insight thinking.

A CNN special on genius, ended with Dr. Sanjay Gupta saying, “The German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer once said that talent hits a target that no one else can hit, but genius hits a target that no one else can see.”  Here you could see both creative thinking, and flash-of-insight thinking.  This must be what “flash of genius” means.

R & B singer Teddy Pendergrass, in his autobiography Truly Blessed, wrote of how some artists he worked with found it only natural that they could read each other, “The [Philadelphia International Records] magic was simple: Gamble, Huff, Bell, all the arrangers, musicians, and singers knew one another so well that in the studio they communicated almost telepathically—or, as we called it, vibing....  It wasn’t long before the PIR musicians were able to lay down tracks that anticipated my phrasing and dynamics and those track-closing ad libs.”

Just in case you think that “Platonic idea” sounds too philosophical and theoretical, a hyperthymic friend of mine called what hyperthymics tend to have a sense for recognizing, the “crux” of things.

George Becker wrote about the Romantic era, “The aura of ‘mania’ endowed the genius with a mystical and inexplicable quality that served to differentiate him from the typical man, the bourgeois, the philistine, and, quite importantly, the ‘mere’ man of talent; it established him as the modern heir of the ancient Greek poet and seer and, like his classical counterpart, enabled him to claim some of the powers and privileges granted to the ‘divinely possessed’ and ‘inspired.’”

Victor Hugo described genius as, “A promontory jutting out into the infinite,” and this is what this intuition feels and works like, not like the stereotypically feminine stereotype of intuition being a sensing of something that you can’t validate but trust anyway, but a sensing of something that you can validate but couldn’t have recognized in the first place without flashes of insight that really do feel like jutting out into the infinite.

As Van Wyck Brooks wrote about his wife, in Days of the Phoenix, copyright 1957, “Or feeling the earth move under her, with a furious secret rush through space, for she shared Whitman’s ‘cosmic’ intuition.”

Yet many of us also have artistic-temperament-style behavior problems.  The web page “What Is Alcoholism?: Basic information about alcoholism - what is it, what causes it, and who is at risk,” had said under the heading Personality Traits, “Studies are finding that alcoholism is strongly related to impulsive, excitable, and novelty-seeking behavior, and such patterns are established early on, if not inherited.”  The webpage Factors Contributing to the Development of Pathological Gambling, now says basically the same thing about addictions in general, in more depth.  This is what a lot of hyperthymics look like, which is why so many, including many groupie-attracting celebrities, are addicted to something or other.

What Dr. Louis Bisch’s Be Glad You’re Neurotic, from 1936,

has to say about neuroses, sounds like it means largely hyperthymic personalities, “So famous a psychologist as Jung has said that all neurotics possess elements of genius.”  The book proceeds to describe these neurotics, as: having a “tremendous dynamic force and purpose,” having very fruitful imaginations, that without neurosis Bisch wouldn’t “possess the ambition or energy to write,” that this has “enriched my life and given a zest to what would otherwise be a routine existence,” “he breathes more quickly, his blood races faster, and the vitality and flow and sparkle of sheer living are in him,” sensitively concerned with what’s really morally right, having “sparkle” and “flair,” “dynamic,” etc.

 

My Men Dying for Love webpage has a book’s collection of the suicide notes from 1983-1984, in which several of the men, but none of the straight women, kill themselves because one romantic relationship ended.  The other women killed themselves for broad, all-encompassing reasons.  One of these men’s notes comes across as typically hyperthymic, in that even in his suicide note he was trying to look lively and hip.  “You may also have the musical instruments that I once had.  Do with them as you wish.  Yes, Yes, any books you want you may have.  See Ya Around, Bill.”  All the artsy eccentricities that he bubblingly listed, sound like la vida maníaca, the sort of flamboyantly eccentric (unlike the eccentric old hermit) lifestyle that many hyperthymics live, astoundingly similar to each other, yet each of these people obviously think that they’re so different, free-thinking, etc.

With both good features and bad ones like these, going on in the same person, you could have situations like that of one of those who told his own story in the handbook of Gamblers Anonymous, “In the time of my own deep suffering and despair, my soul had cried out to comprehend the mystery of life, but the only certainty I could understand was that I live for a short time, in the very center of an eternity that had already passed, and an eternity that would never end.  How could a man cast away his chance to share, with those he loved, this miracle of life, in the full expression of love, hope, peace, joy and beauty, living upon the earth?  Yet still—I COULD NOT STOP GAMBLING.”  Add this to the fact that some times, the impulsivity leads to alcohol and/or drug abuse, which could be called a form of unintentional suicide.

Michael Craig, Miller, MD, the Editor in Chief of the Harvard Mental Health Letter, wrote in the February, 2006 issue, “Genes shape temperament: People who are impulsive, take risks, and habitually seek new experiences are more likely to become addicted.”  The same article also says that one of the way in which genes “influence the brain’s susceptibility to addiction,” is in “the prefrontal cortex, which organizes our responses to the environment,” and that this is the same obliviousness that constitutes an effect of booze: “Addictive substances may also cause the prefrontal cortex to work at low power—one of the reasons addicted persons often deny that they have a problem.”  This is also the reason why booze, which is a depressant, feels like a stimulant.  Other genetic effects, such as that drugs feel unusually good to some people, wouldn’t lead to addiction in those who have a strong enough awareness that no matter how good they feel now, overusing them would have the dangers of addiction.

The webpage of the GP Notebook, Hyperthymic Personality Disorder, says that those who have HPD, “tend to be rash and show poor judgement,” the sort of rashness and poor judgment that you’d expect of someone impaired by disinhibiting uppers, not the sort you’d expect from an unimpaired person.  This radical obliviousness of consequences that also has some aggressive impetus behind it, is also what an addictive personality looks like.  HPD means that the person has basically the same rashness and poor judgment that you’d expect from functional alcoholics.  If someone who doesn’t realize that another is a functional alcoholic sees him acting rash and disinhibited, this could seem to be just slightly excessively normal human imperfection, and the same goes for HPD.  It’s the only personality disorder that, for the most part, could be excused away with, “Oh, well, everyone makes mistakes,” though since HPD is diluted mania, it’s actually a lot more selfishly impaired than are most personality disorders.  As Frank Schirrmacher wrote in the Frankfurter Allgemeine about the Great Crash of 2008, “There must be some madmen walking around who up until Monday had not been spotted because their madness was identical to the logic of the established system.  They destroyed fortunes equivalent to entire national budgets....,” but that could also look like just slightly excessively normal human imperfection.  Paulson said on September 23, 2008, in front of the Senate Banking Committee, “Some said we should just stick capital in the banks, take preferred stock in the banks.  That’s what you do when you have failure.  This is about success,” as if he based his incautious overly-optimistic decisions on being about something “positive.”

Unlike the distortions in thinking that depression could lead to, the distortions in thinking that HPD could lead to could seem to fit the American norm, maybe even seem attractive in a daring sort of way.  As Barbara Ehrenreich wrote in The Power of Negative Thinking, a September 23, 2008 Op-Ed for the New York Times about the 2008 economic crisis, the optimism that our culture encourages could make one believe, “You will be able to pay that adjustable-rate mortgage or, at the other end of the transaction, turn thousands of bad mortgages into giga-profits if only you believe that you can.”  Also, “Everyone knows that you won’t get a job paying more than $15 an hour unless you’re a ‘positive person,’ and no one becomes a chief executive by issuing warnings of possible disaster.”  Even after we’ve seen the dangers of this, it would probably continue to seem attractive.  The same would go for plenty of cowboy-type behavior, which would also be typical for HPD. At the very least, objections to Wall Street greed that wouldn’t seem unambiguously bad, could seem judgmental and opinionated in a whiny sort of way.

As Vincent Bugliosi wrote in The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder, “As the court said in a 1963 Illinois case, People v. Coolidge: ‘Since every sane man is presumed to intend all the natural and probable consequences flowing from his own deliberate act, it follows that if one willfully does an act, the natural tendency of which is to destroy another’s life, the irresistible conclusion... is that the destruction of such other person’s life was intended.’”  While it would take some pretty extreme HPD to recklessly put others’ lives in danger (though who knows how many drag racers, etc., have HPD), it would very easily lead to plenty of other obliviousness regarding the natural and probable consequences flowing from one’s own deliberate acts.  This could have to it a quality that could be called insane, though, especially in situations where selfishness, impulsivity, etc., would seem very natural, it could also seem to be just slightly excessively normal human imperfection.

We keep hearing about how pathological gamblers are passive helpless victims of compulsions, so they’re basically not guilty by reason of insanity.  A CNN webpage about pathological gamblers on the Net, quoted a gambler as saying, “I was ill with a compulsion, even though I was losing $5,000 and $10,000 and $15,000.”  Yet that same webpage began by saying about the same guy, “He dreamed that with the next game, the next jackpot, the next click of his mouse, he would solve all his problems.  But as he got sucked deeper into the anonymous world of online gambling, his problems only got worse.”  On one hand, if someone has optimistic delusions which can’t be stopped by learning from experience, he’d be a passive victim of those, too.  On the other hand, they’re different from compulsions, and don’t sound as fearsome. (If I kept thinking that there was a good possibility that the next time I gambled I’d hit the jackpot, I’d probably feel compelled to keep going for that money, too!)

The first page of the fourth chapter of AA’s Big Book give as an informal description of addictive personalities’ thinking, “To be doomed to an alcoholic death or to live on a spiritual basis are not always easy alternatives to face,”

                 

                 

even though AA’s spirituality is largely the pain-transcending amoral spirituality of the Serenity Prayer, which says absolutely nothing about the serenity courage and wisdom to take moral responsibility.  One might find it strange that  the habitual long-term functioning of some individuals includes such self-destructive tendencies, but impulsivity can be very self-destructive.  The whole reason why the thinking of codependents seems self-defeating, is that some people are so lacking in self-regulation, that the tenderness that tries oh so dedicatedly and desperately to persuade them into stopping that self-destruction, doesn’t work.  Anyone who does this this seems to want to go on codependent “rescue missions.”

One’s wildest dreams could be that since addiction depends so much on choices made at different time, the addicts whose lives would be in danger don’t really have to die.  To those who look at this through the sociological model as well as the medical model, this wouldn’t look like a wild dream.  As Pathways from the Culture of Addiction to the Culture of Recovery, by William L. White, a Senior Research Consultant at Chestnut Health Systems/Lighthouse Institute says, “The term ‘culture,’ as used in this text, encompasses classic definitions that examine customs, traditions, language, artifacts, institutions, religion, social relationships, and values shared in common by a group of people,” and culture doesn’t encourage any other disease.  Addicts could reframe their lives through a “treatment milieu.”  Cultural pressures, whether pro-drug or anti-drug, do make a difference!

 

 

And the addictive personality looks amazingly like hyperthymic personalities.  In the Shadow of Chance: The Pathological Gambler, by Julian Taber, Ph.D, tells of an addiction where the addictive personality plays an unusually great role, since no psychoactive chemicals are impairing the addicts’ consciences.  As this book says, “Pathological gambling, the invisible mental disorder, is more common than many better-known diseases and mental disorders, and it is far more costly....  Keeping in mind that we are only making estimates, if we multiply the conservative yearly minimum loss figure of $10,000 per gambler by the conservative estimate of 5 million pathological gamblers nationwide, we get a figure of $50 billion lost annually,” much of which wasn’t earned, but was conned or pilfered from others.  Yet this same book also says, “‘He had a way with words,’ said Bill’s uncle.  ‘He could charm the venom out of a snake.’...  He was a good-looking, self-confident young man whom everybody liked right away.  He was an easy talker, a charming listener, and oh, so very sincere....  Life without the gamblers was suddenly dull and depressing....  Like it or not, call them what we will, these gamblers—these charming, intelligent, energetic people—are, in common language, crazy....  He was a rascal: charming, talkative, witty, ruthless, lovable, impulsive, flirtatious, unreliable, manipulative, and risk-loving....  They can be witty, charming, devoted, and generous....  His strengths were killing him!...  Like many gamblers, Alma seemed bigger than life....  Gamblers are unpredictable, loveable, childish, frustrating, charming, risk-loving, and often romantic....  Most problem gamblers—and alcoholics, too—have a streak of compulsive generosity....  This attraction, this bright potential that acted as an irresistible lure to those around Vincent, is not an unusual trait in problem gamblers....  His self-confidence made him easy to trust in his little southern hometown.... Once you get used to gamblers, they’re hard to let go of.”  Even some pretty destructive versions of la vida maníaca could, at times, look very attractive!  Of course, any woman who described men who crazily caused that much grief, as charming, likeable, attractively energetic, witty, lovable, bigger than life, romantic, compulsively generous, irresistibly alluring, easy to trust, and hard to let go of; especially if she used the word “charming” that repetitiously, would seem to have very codependent attractions!

Typical of the destructive tendencies that seem easy to excuse in those who actually have them, but hard to excuse when women seem to “let themselves in for” the destruction, is the following: “So great was my emphasis on helping my patients become normal that the gamblers at the hospital sometimes called my group therapy ‘Nerd Training,’ and called the sane ordinary people I referred to ‘Taber’s nerds.’...  The truth is, it’s just as hard for a pathological gambler to adopt the values and habits of the normal nerd world as it would be for me to adopt the values and habits of the Amish world.”

If your typical psychologist were to talk with a married couple in which the husband decided that he had to get a divorce though his wife did nothing to deserve it, since white-picket-fence domesticity is right for normal nerds but not for him, then telling him that he should become normal would probably seem too judgmental, repressive, controlling, unrealistic, etc.  Rather than being unambiguously bad, that strong incompatibility with the normal “nerd” lifestyle could be called a reluctance to be trapped.  His getting married despite that could be called a “mistake.”  Even Situation Ethics, which Fundament Christians hate because it gauges moral responsibility according to the predictable consequences of any behavior rather than according to what any holy book says about it, would seem too draconian.  Yet if you assessed how she might have “let herself in for trouble” by getting married to someone that destructive, then taking seriously those consequences and how she could try to prevent something like that from happening to her in the future, would benefit her.  She couldn’t get away with, “Don’t blame me for the fact that my life is now out-of-control, since when I chose to marry that man who just left me, all that I did was marry someone who loves freedom and made a mistake.”  Preventing things like that from happening through Situation Ethics ethical responsibility seems counterproductive, while preventing them from happening by holding the victims responsible seems productive.  Sure, this would require some convoluted logic, victim-blaming, etc., but we all know the dangers of being repressive.
 

                   

The classic self-help book on pathological gambling, When Luck Runs Out by Robert Custer, MD and Harry Milt (which also says that, unlike the alcoholic, “The compulsive gambler does not have a foreign substance in his body that acts on the brain to paralyze the conscience.”), describes the lifelong personality of the typical pathological gambler as:

He is a friendly sociable fellow, cheerful and enthusiastic, generous and full of good will.  He is clever, energetic, hardworking and he generally does successfully whatever he undertakes.  In social, organizational and business situations, he is confident, assertive, persuasive; he moves spontaneously and naturally into the role of leadership.  Restless, hyperactive and easily bored, he is in constant need of stimulation, excitement, change.  Bland, predictable situations with an assured outcome don’t interest him.  He thrives on challenge, adventure, risk.  The key to his personality is competitiveness.  He needs to contend, to win, to be better than everybody else, to be Number One.

This, you have to admit, is quite an impressive personality portrait.  If you were to remove this composite picture from its context, present it to a group of people randomly selected and ask them what sort of a person this describes, they would probably say it describes the sort of person you would expect to find on leadership lists, on lists of the most successful.  And they would be absolutely right.  These are indeed the ingredients for success in our society.

If that is the case, why then do these people wind up instead as desperate, broken addicts?

                   

This chapter soon adds, under the heading “THE COMPOSITE PORTRAIT REVISED,” “We can still say that he is, in general, a friendly, sociable fellow, but we need to qualify that by adding that this demeanor is not consistent.  He isn’t always that way.  He can be sullen, irritable and withdrawn.  And he is given to sharp mood swings, from cheerful to sullen and back.”  When I was in elementary school, this labile temperament is what they told me an “artistic temperament” is.  This is what it looks like when someone fits both the positive, and the negative, stereotypes of artists at different times.  When a psychologist looks at someone who does, it might look as if he’s playing headgames, being insincere part of the time, not really that malicious when he actually is, etc.

These people have their hard-to-control addictive cravings for gambling, without either the intoxication or the chemical dependencies behind drug and alcohol addiction.  That’s one huge tendency toward impulsivity.

The same book also says about typical pathological gamblers,

Put them to the task of working out a practical problem or throw them into a brand-new situation, and you’ll see how quickly they come up with an answer, a solution, a way out.  It has less to do with abstract reasoning than it does with “figuring out the angles,” “getting the point,” “seeing the pitfalls and the advantages.”  They seem, also, to have an uncanny ability to know what is going on in another person’s mind, to anticipate what he is going to do and to plan their next move accordingly.

                   

The quick thinking is flash-of-insight thinking, which is very intuitive, as are panache and “reading” other people, sensing what’s going on in their minds.  Panache wouldn’t be panache if it came from “mere” talent, learning, prolonged thinking, abstract reasoning, etc.  And you’d be amazed how similar panache and verve are to scientific innovativeness, including the art of medicine.  “The point” of something, is the practical way of saying “the [Platonic] idea” of it.

Similar to “If that is the case, why then do these people wind up instead as desperate, broken addicts?”, is the following, from Addiction, edited by John Hoffman and Susan Froemke, based on the HBO series, regarding chemical addiction: “Jack was an exceptionally bright, handsome, and popular boy.  How often do we hear people who become addicted described like that—bright, handsome, successful, charming—the last people on earth you would ever expect this to happen to?”

And it doesn’t take a lot of malice to do a lot of damage.  Very destructive hyperthymic pathological behavior looks a lot like the behavior of someone who’s under the influence of uppers that have the same disinhibiting effects as booze.  The person acts like he has a tunnel vision that sees only what he feels like doing at the moment, and you’d be amazed how dangerous that could make one’s choices.  Essentials of Abnormal Personality, a textbook by Benjamin Kleinmunst, lists the traits of the Antisocial Personality Disorder as: “Inability to form loyal relationships,” “Inability to feel guilt,” “Inability to learn from experience, special attention, or punishment,” (I’d suspect that sociopaths do learn from experiences that didn’t result from their own behavior.) “Tendency to seek thrills and excitement,” “Impulsiveness,” “Aggressiveness,” “Superficial charm and intelligence,” “Unreliability and irresponsibility,” “Pathological lying,” “Inadequately motivated antisocial behavior,” “Egocentricity,” “Poverty of affect,” “Lack of insight,” “Casual but excessive sexual behavior,” and “The need to fail.”  A chronic drunk could be: unable to form loyal relationships (As the saying goes, “Alcoholics don’t have relationships.  They take hostages.”), unable to feel guilt, unable to learn from experience special attention or punishment, impulsive, unreliable and irresponsible, egocentric, lacking appropriate feelings, lacking insight, promiscuous, and self-destructive.  Those under the influence of uppers that have the same disinhibiting effect, could be all of these with even more motivation behind them, as well as thrill-seeking, aggressive, superficially charismatic, prone to pathological lying, and prone to anti-social behavior.  Though hit-man Richard Kuklinski, who was diagnosed with Antisocial Personality Disorder, was known as “The Iceman” partially because he could talk so coldly about killing people, his usual demeanor was animated enough, and his temper was hot enough, that you really couldn’t say that he was usually cold or cool.

On the CNN Head Line News’s Nancy Grace show of September 19, 2006, criminal profiler Pat Brown said about a woman who kidnapped another woman’s newborn and was hiding out very nearby, “Well, luckily, probably she thought she was going to get away with this, in spite of everything.  You know, the arrogance of a psychopath is amazing.  They only see themselves.  They don’t see other people.  So they’re thinking, ‘OK, well, they’re out there, but I’ll just hunker down here for a while.  I can do that.  And then they’ll just forget about it, and I’ll go on my way.’”  Drunks and those with similar disinhibitions may not seem evil, but they’d be just as oblivious.

Treating Substance Abuse, by Frederick Rotgers, John Morgenstern, and Scott T. Walters, says, “Estimates of lifetime drug use disorders comorbid with alcohol dependence are as high as 80% (Carroll, 1986; Ross, Glaser, & Germanson, 1988).  Comorbid antisocial personality disorder rates among male alcoholics range from 23% (Morgenstern & Langenbucha, 1994) to 53% (Ross, Glaser, & Stiasny, 1988), depending on the recruitment site (e.g., rates tend be higher in Veterans Administration populations) and the diagnostic instrument used.  For mood disorders, Ross, Glaser, and Germanson (1988) cited rates of 23% and 60% for depressive disorders and anxiety disorders, respectively, in men, and 35% and 67%, respectively, for women.”

This doesn’t say exactly how “antisocial personality disorder” was defined, so it could just as easily mean impulsive aggressive tendencies oblivious to consequences, that at least follow the same pattern as Hyperthymic Personality Disorder.

Yet a more thorough explanation, would be that HPD is a diluted version of mania, just as a chronically depressed personality is a diluted version of depression.  In 1809, John Haslam wrote, in On Madness and Melancholy, “The slighter shades of this disease [insanity] include eccentricity, low spirits, and oftentimes a fatal tendency to immoral habits, notwithstanding the inculcation of the most correct precepts, and the force of virtuous example,” and, “Madness has many colours, and colours have many hues;... it very frequently occurs that the descendents from an insane stock, although they do not exhibit the broad features of madness, shall yet discover propensities, equally disqualifying for the purposes of life, and destructive of social happiness.”  Whether this inculcation of principles included warnings about what’s fatal, or only warnings about what’s naughty, neither of these could have done any good.  Though “immoral habits, notwithstanding the inculcation of the most correct precepts, and the force of virtuous example” might sound like exactly the sort of Victorian inhibition that the typical person with HPD, thinking of himself as the “romantic renegade,” prides and justifies himself in rebelling against, in fact what these people could do would be “oftentimes fatal,” or maybe just very problematic for themselves and/or others.  Yet it seems more important that we not conform, be

Anxiety disorders could result from several causes, and some of them would be a high energy level that would make one less aware of the consequences of what they do.  And the average person who’d become addicted to illegal drugs, has got to be more impulsive than the average person who’d become addicted to booze!

That same book also says, “When compared to normal individuals, greater [tendency to devalue deferred gratification since it’s deferred] has been found among alcohol abusers (Vuchinich & Simpson, 1998), heroin addicts (e.g., Kirby, Petry, & Bickel, 1999), smokers (e.g., Mitchell, 1999), and compulsive gamblers (Petry & Casarella, 1999).”

Dr. Morris Fishbein, in Fads and Quackery in Healing, from 1932, wrote, “Leaders of modern cults are also the possessors of magnetic personalities that mark them early in their careers as not quite usual in their habits of thought.  The healer is likely to have a great deal of that quality that is called ‘it’ in Hollywood,” meaning an indefinable charisma.  If you look at the health cults of the twentieth century, you could see that they tend to be based on a faith in vitalism and monism, that nature as a whole tends toward healing, vis medicatrix naturae, the healing power of nature.  If one assumes that certain herbs are medically active, that would be a faith that another part of nature would take care of us.  This same book also says, “The word ‘nature’ is a term to conjure with in cultism,” though in the jazz age, closeness to nature certainly wasn’t trendy.

Yet in the same book Dr. Fishbein wrote, about a leader known for the “Body Beautiful,” “Strange how the same names recur again and again in these stories of the ghoullike activities of the harpies who live by exploiting the sick!”  Actually, if one is too impulsive, doesn’t reality-test enough, and glorifies the red-blooded übermensch approach to life, it’s all too easy to cause a lot of harm without being a malicious “harpy.”

This mystical faith in nature is rather typical of hyperthymics, as is a tendency not to reality-test assumptions that most people would.  Those who revere nature and believe what they want, would naturally believe that the human body should be allowed to take care of itself rather than having medicine take care of it.  This could feel good to anyone.  Naturally, we’d want an answer to the question of what could let us live longer and be healthier.  Yet some naturopaths respond to facts such as, “Depressive disorders affect about 34 million American adults,” not by asking how extreme their emotional injuries must have been that nature failed to heal that many people, but by recommending that they take St. Johns wort, since that’s part of the same nature.

Yet you could also see the positive side of the artistic temperament and its link to addictive thinking, in Abe Lincoln’s statement to a sobriety group in 1842, “I believe if we take habitual drunkards as a class, their heads and their hearts will bear an advantageous comparison with those of any other class.  There seems ever to have been proneness in the brilliant and warm-blooded to fall into this vice.  The demon of intemperance ever seems to have delighted in sucking the blood of genius and generosity.”

Al-Anon’s original handbook, The Al-Anon Family Groups, actually includes the following:

Alcoholics are likely to be persons of intense, if brief, enthusiasms.  They have a tendency to try to do too much too fast.  They are apt to demand perfection in themselves and in others, too.  When frustrated, they are likely to be over-depressed or over-aggressive.  Hence, they often lack the emotional stability to face life’s problems in a realistic manner.

Alcoholics are generally most attractive and intelligent people.  They may hold very high ideals, which they seem unable to practice in daily living.  Their attractive qualities account for the fact that so many non-alcoholics choose them as life partners.

That’s basically a description of hyperthymic personalities!  We Heard the Angels of Madness, One Family’s Struggle with Manic Depression, by Diane and Lisa Berger says, in its section on cyclothymia, “Someone with this disorder may be moody, irritable, antisocial, unstable, impulsive, and volatile.  The cyclothymic sometimes abuses drugs or alcohol.  He may have marital problems or be promiscuous; start projects or jobs that he never finishes; change jobs or homes constantly; argue loudly, then feel very contrite; swing between feeling inferior and feeling grandiose and superior; or go on spending sprees.”

 

 (Engineers and scientists aren’t a bunch of nerds.  This photo is of Nikola Tesla, born in 1856, inventor of the AC motor and plenty of other things, and was also known for his wild lifestyle.)

Just compare that to the usual Victorian-era portrait,

and you’ll get the idea.

Also, even in the 1950s, not every egghead considerably over the age of 30, was square.

Speaking of Victorian portraits, this is Clara Schumann, wife of composer Robert, who was one of Us:

 

If she were alive today and her portrait appeared on the cover of a heavy metal album, that would have conveyed exactly the right sort of dynamism!:

 

 

 DIG  IT!!!!!!!

 

Especially if this is your sort of person, all you’ve got to do is learn to recognize the signs of hyperthymic temperament, and you could very easily answer some of your friends’ biggest questions, why they tend to do certain things though they realize that they cause big problems, etc.

 

 

            n my My Story webpage, I tell basically of what it’s been like to grow up hyperthymic, always feeling different (Then again, since on my Scholastic Aptitude Test I scored in the top 1% of all graduating seniors, it’s no wonder I’ve always felt different.)  My sense of being different was a sense of having a personality that I later described as “primeval, deep, passionate, sensitive, and soulful.”  This came with an awareness that I’ve known some people who are kindred spirits, and that either you’re one of “Us” or you’re not.  As a teenager I noticed that I had a greater depth of insight than most people, and basically the sort of open-mindedness and “idealism” (which, compared to some of the short-sighted “realism” that I’ve seen, is more realistic in the long run) that would lead to a cosmopolitan attitude, and that while this certainly made my sort of people different, if everyone were like me we’d get along better and have a lot more fun doing it.  Then as I grew older, I wondered more why someone either is like this or isn’t, though you might think that personality characteristics this deep and profound would develop more spontaneously and freely.  I also had people tell me that the reason why I feel different is that everyone feels different.  Yet a boyfriend of mine said that he also noticed that people like us are different, and said that he thinks of our sort of people as “the beautiful people” because of our soulfulness, depth of insight, compassion, earthy folksy warmth, freedom of spirit, and the celebrating of all this by trying to share it with others.  I got more involved with wild earthy stuff like energetic folk-dance music such as Hassidic Klezmer though I’m not Jewish (Klezmer being traditional East-European Jewish music that’s anarchic like Dixieland jazz since it arose among itinerant musicians of the Middle Ages, and Hassidism being the sect of Judaism that’s along the lines of Pentecostal Christianity and Sufi “whirling dervish” Islam so Hassidic Klezmer tends to be the wildest) and hillbillies.

Then, when I went to the university to study mechanical engineering, I spent a lot of my free hours giving moral support to a lot of chronically depressed guys with the spirit of a certain Bible passage, in Song of Solomon, starting out in Chapter 1 Verses 5 & 6, which tells of what the wife’s state of mind is:
 

I am black, but comely,
O ye daughters of Jerusalem,
as the tents of Kedar,
as the curtains of Solomon.
Look not upon me, because I am black,
because the sun hath looked upon me:
my mother’s children were angry with me;
they made me the keeper of the vineyards;
but mine own vineyard have I not kept.

And then here’s Chapter 2 Verses 8-15, my song:

The voice of my beloved!
behold, he cometh leaping upon the mountains,
skipping upon the hills.
My beloved is like a roe,
or a young hart:
behold,
he standeth behind our wall,
he looketh forth at the windows,
shewing himself through the lattice.
My beloved spake,
and said unto me,
Rise up, my love,
my fair one,
and come away.
For lo, the winter is past,
the rain is over and gone;
The flowers appear on the earth;
the time of the singing of birds is come,
and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land:
The fig tree putteth forth her green figs,
and the vines with the tender grape give a good smell.
Arise my love, my fair one,
and come away.
O my dove,
that art in the clefts of the rocks,
in the secret places of the stairs,
let me see thy countenance,
let me hear thy voice,
for sweet is thy voice,
and thy countenance is comely.
Take us the foxes,
the little foxes,
that spoil the vines;
for our vines have tender grapes.
 

That should basically tell you what my state of mind has been, what makes The Beautiful People tick.  My My Story webpage tells all about this, as well as my encounters with the very absolutist victim correction as a panacea of the Reagan/Thatcher era, as described on my Victim Correction as a Panacea Summary webpage, along with all my other web pages on victim correction as a panacea which this summarizes, Victim Correction as a Panacea, Message to Intellectuals in the Islamic World, Candace Newmaker’s Experience, and The Cigarette Industry and Victim Correction.  By victim correction as a panacea, I mean the attitude that we’re all response-able for our own welfare, so the results of destructive behavior are just hurdles to be surmounted by the victims, so it they don’t do this with enough self-efficaciousness it’s them who need to get fixed.  All those chronically depressed guys I knew, along with a realization of how high is the rate of depression, and the self-blame of the depressed, in the US, was what made me very aware of this.  It taught me that it’s the victim correctors who are the unrealistic idealists, since the expectations that victim correction as a panacea makes of people have no limits of severity so have absolutely no room for the limitations of human nature, such as the threshold of human endurance.

The My Story webpage also mentions that I’m not yet married because of the problems that I’ve had consistently enough with hyperthymic guys, consistently enough that I’ve seemed to have a codependent attraction to guys who cause the sorts of problems that the least malicious problematic hyperthymics cause.  The ideas on codependency include the fact that some people, such as many of those who’d get themselves addicted to something or other, are, even when clean and sober, unreachable by sincere emotional appeals which most people find vital to their own lives.  This really made me wonder if anyone has ever found out what could appeal to these people that could turn them around, other than something that would require too much sacrifice from others.  More about all that on my About Us webpages.  That victim-blaming is also what the quotes on my Making the Political, Personal webpage illustrate.  “Depressive disorders affect about 34 million American adults.”  So this obvious social problem seems to consist of either 34,000,000 rather severe character defects or 34,000,000 rather severe medical conditions, the “character flaws” that concern us about rampant depression are the weaknesses that the sufferers might have rather than the aggressive character flaws of those who trigger many of the depressions, etc.  Everyone knows that what’s at fault, is inside the millions of victims, as if the magnitude of this social problem could just be brushed aside.
 

            n my About Us series of webpages, I talk about things that I’ve learned both through practical experience and from reading plain ol’ over-the-counter books, and can serve as an instruction on how to recognize this stuff and what to expect.  This also tells of times in my life in which this knowledge has proven very useful, and certainly you’d have times in your life in which such knowledge could also prove useful.

1. First off, in the Introduction webpage, I give a more thorough summary than I do on this webpage.

2. Then, in the Historical webpage, I quote some vintage, even ancient, writings which expressed familiarity with the hyperthymic personality, one of them, from 1936, even saying about it, “Not only is the hypomanic disposition well known to be....”

3. Next, on the Commonalities webpage, I list all the similarities between full-blown manic episodes, and the quirks of hyperthymic personalities, of the sort to which the average modern Westerner would likely respond, “Oh, well, that’s just the way that some people are.  You can’t expect human nature to be perfect.”

4. Next, on the More Savvy webpage, I start going into how much you could help both others and yourself, simply by getting more savvy about this.

5. On the Biggest Question webpage, I go into how, by recognizing such things in people who don’t realize it, you could recognize the biggest questions they have in their lives.

6. Next, on the Recognizing webpage, I give some examples of people who did things that, at the very least, show characteristics typical of hyperthymic personalities.

7. On my Unambiguous webpage, I go into one of the times that I answered what was definitely the biggest question in someone’s life, by recognizing what’s certainly the most unambiguous sign of a hyperthymic temperament, which anyone with a good intuitive feel for what behavior does or doesn’t have the “idea” of normal behavior, could also recognize.

8. Next, on the My Normalized Experience webpage, I tell of how strange was an experience of mine, which others responded to as if the probably hyperthymic behavior that led to it, was just slightly excessively normal human imperfection.

9. Next, I have a webpage in which I go into how OJ Simpson showed several signs of a hyperthymic personality, major depression with a lot of psychiatric help just before the slow-speed chase, and, in his mugshot, the distinctive look of someone in the sort of depression that comes with bipolar disorder.

10. Next is the webpage in which I go into how I answered someone else’s biggest question, using OJ’s life as an example.

11. Next is a webpage on the criteria used to diagnose codependency, a subject very relevant to those who like the vivaciousness intelligence and creativity of hyperthymics, since if you’re attracted to them, you could easily seem to have a subconscious codependent attraction to the Hyperthymic Personality Disorder.

12. Next is a webpage on how celebrities tend to fit this pattern, in that the whole reason why they’re celebrities is that many find them attractive, yet celebrities are very likely to act out artistic-temperament-style behavior problems despite the fact that they have far more to lose than most people.  (The latest person whose biggest question I answered, really appreciates this last fact.)

13. The next webpage goes into the fact that our culture is very likely to side with those who want to get away with such behavior, as you could see in the Romantic Renegade, either because it seems romantically renegade, or, at the very least, because it seems that mature well-adjusted people wouldn’t get bitter and resentful at such things.  It seems that everyone knows that if you object to The Serenity Prayer then you must be pretty immature and maladjusted, and since the entire unredacted Serenity Prayer as originally written by Reinhold Niebuhr says, “God, grant me serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.  Living one day at a time, enjoying one moment at a time; Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace; Taking as Jesus did this sinful world as it is not as I would have it; Trusting that You will make all things right if I surrender to Your will; So that I may be reasonably happy in this life and supremely happy with You forever in the next—Amen,” there really are no limits on what realities neo-Buddhism would expect you to accept.

14. The next webpage goes into a suicide note with a very hip tone to it, as if being a romantic renegade was that important to the guy who wrote it.

15. The next webpage goes into the morally bankrupt specifics of my normalized experience on the above-listed webpage, that those who talked as if the recklessness of hyperthymic temperaments could seem to be slightly excessively normal human imperfection, had to be practicing a moral bankruptcy in the same league as, “Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace; Taking as Jesus did this sinful world as it is not as I would have it,” or the less explicit, “Do whatever it takes to courageously change whatever you can, and then serenely accept whatever you can’t.”

16. The next webpage is about this context in which some of those around us could seem to be “winners,” “losers,” “codependents,” etc.  Considering that what determines if someone (probably a woman) would seem to be codependent, is whether she seems to have had more bad experiences than she would have by chance, this really does require an accurate estimate of how many bad experiences she would have had by chance.  When you consider that, as that Zoloft webpage says, “Depressive disorders affect about 34 million American adults,” and that this certainly isn’t just one of those diseases that are parts of the natural order, what really is an average amount of helplessness is obviously a lot higher than what the conformists around us think is average.

17. Next, is a webpage on how normal the pathological behavior of hyperthymic personalities could seem, in that the effect of that tendency to normalize what causes that much devastation, would be combined with the fact that pathological hyperthymic behavior is close enough to the norm that it could simply be labeled as, “just the way that some people are,” “just the way that life goes sometimes,” etc

18. Next, a webpage Similarities and Differences with Sociopathy, which gives a section of an authoritative medical book from 1953, which attempts to demonstrate the differences between the more aggressive manifestations of Hyperthymic Personality Disorder, and sociopathy, though this ends up making clear just how similar the consequences of both could be!  That entire chapter is here.

19. The next webpage is about Addictive Personalities.  Certainly many women diagnosed as codependent have been told regarding men with addictive personalities, “You’ve just got to accept that that’s just the way that some people are.”  Yet though the impulsivity of addictive personalities might not look too different from ordinary impulsivity, it’s all too easy for too much impulsivity to cause big harm, which is why most people feel healthy inhibitions that keep them from causing too much damage.

20. This next webpage sums up how one could see all of this intuitively, by looking at such behavior and its consequences.

21. Then, this webpage goes into the recklessness, how easy it is to dismiss its consequences as just “accidents,” “mistakes,” or the like, which very much suits the logic of “You’re bitter, resentful, immature, and maladjusted if you don’t do whatever it takes to courageously change whatever you can and then serenely accept whatever you can’t,” but wouldn’t suit an intuitive look at how much of a mess our society would be in, if people didn’t take responsibility for resisting the temptations to act recklessly.

22. Lastly, my webpage on how to optimize a hyperthymic personality, despite the big ego that says that as long as one feels like doing something, others had better not try to control him.

   

            n fact, on my About Us webpages I talk about some instances of my recognizing chaotic lifestyles, a chaotic business, etc., and while recognizing this isn’t as unambiguous as is recognizing other signs, it still has a quality to it where you can’t imagine why someone would want to live like that, with all the harm this would do to people including himself, unless something was making him want something pretty unusual.  Once can recognize this best intuitively of the sort of intuition that Victor Hugo described.  Not only does it feel like the chaotic people must have something unusual going on to make them want that, but also after you sense it you could state the reasons objectively.  This is pretty much the character of a lot of the behavior problems that hyperthymics have, in that they could seem only relatively unusual, even slightly excessively normal.  And yes, this tends to include druggies, which means...

The only thing in connection with this that could seem unquestionably condemnable is that those who like the positive side of hyperthymic personalities, and who’d therefore keep getting involved with people who have both the constructive and the destructive qualities of hyperthymics, could seem unquestionably to have a codependent attraction to the destructive side.  This I know all about, since it happened to me.  My experiences with victim correction as a panacea, have taught me that as long as you follow victim blaming with, “and the victims should be optimistic and goal-oriented enough to realize that if they managed their lives better they’d fare a lot better,” this would seem to give a pragmatic, honorably self-reliant, and forgiving method of solving potentially all problems, so it seems that the more forcefully and more often you assert this, the better.  It’s pretty easy to make blaming the victims of hyperthymics who are usually pleasant, seem plausible, so those who like hyperthymics have probably OD’ed on the panacea.  This is to let you know that you’re not at fault.

            uch victim correction as a panacea could also mean an absence of anything that comes close to depth, exactly the sort of absence that hyperthymics tend to have, another fact mentioned on one of my About Us webpages.

The homepage of the Mental Illness—What a Difference a Friend Makes website, by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, says, “An estimated 26.2 percent of Americans ages 18 and older—about one in four adults—suffer from a diagnosable mental disorder in a given year.”  As the title suggests, this website is about getting the friends of the 26.2% of the American adult population, to support these people rather than stigmatizing them.  The ways in which one friend treats another, is one of the few sociological factors of this huge social problem, that we could honorably take seriously.  Few mention that these rates can’t be only natural, that they must be what economists call “unintended consequences” of our rules concerning what one person really has a right to expect from others.

If we take the other sociological factors seriously, we could seem to be trying to manipulate like untermenschen, and/or to restrict the übermenschen. A central concept to Nazism is that even the most sincere fights for what’s morally right, reflect the aggressive but insidious SELF-WILLS of those who fight for this, but to see even such sincerity as self-serving is usually tenable, and much more likely to get productive results than would be holding the morally responsible people, morally accountable.