So, as part of my personality assessment class I had to take a test known as the MCMI-3. The prof says this is to familiarize me with the test. I think its a means to profile students for 'psychiatric disturbance' but no one in a white uniform has come to cart me away yet so...meh.

Let me give you some background on this steaming pile of excrement that has been distilled into a psychometric instrument. It was designed by a man named Dr. Millon who literally wrote the book on personality disorders.  This test's claim to validity is that there is that several professionals on inpatient units agreed with the results of the test when it was applied to an inpatient 'population' (let it be noted that people on inpatient units can be considered a population in the same way that European Jews in ghettos can be considred a population). It occurs to me, however, that professionals on inpatient units are likely to believe any piece of paper they are given over any information gleaned from actually talking to a patient. But let me pass over the obvious flaws inherent in norming and validating a test like this, which defines its success by its ability to design questions that confirm a diagnosis with questions that directly relate to the symptoms and standards used to define said disorder thus using the diagnosis to define itself. Because what makes this all really amusing is what the test results say about your humble narrator.

According to the test, I have Schizotypal personality disorder and Depressive disorder, recurrent, severe, with psychotic features.  According to the test, I have poor ego boundaries.  According to R.D. Laing and myself, I have "successfully avoided ego-type adaptation" which allows me to be fluid, flexible, and to realize that I am not a skin-encapsulated ego, but rather a porous being that is capable of exchanging psychic energy with the world around me.  Also according to the test, I am a pathetic and empty being; I experience the world as vapid and flat.  It occurs to me, present company excluded, the world and the people in it tend to exhibit all of these qualities more often than not. 

The test also states that my tendency toward metaphorical thought, personal introspection and philosophical ruminations is the source of much of my psychological dysfunction.  You know, now that they mention it, I do find that thinking about the current state of the world is a depressogenic experience, but of course that has nothing to do with the world and everything to do with me. I should just have a full frontal lobotomy and be happy.

The most markedly erroneous claim made by this test was that I should be totally and completely unable to care for myself, have meaningful relationships and function above the level of survival.  Yet, here I am in school, in a loving relationship, taking part in a community (that's you guys) that I both value and feel is part of a step to be part of something greater than myself.  Yes, yes, I am just helpless and lost without the psychiatric and psychological community to save me from my empty and meaningless self. 

Morons.