Psychopath or Trauma Victim? Autistic or Schizoid? Borderline Anyone?

Even skilled diagnosticians find it difficult to distinguish between psychopathy (and Borderline), autism, schizoid personality, and C/PTSD. All four conditions involve extreme reduced affect display: no show of emotions, flat presentation of personal experiences, and reticent self-disclosure. All four types of patients use language in a highly idiosyncratic way: vulgar, putrid, ambiguous, non-committal, clinical, and impersonal. They corrupt language and render it circumspect and cynical. They are inaccessible, sealed off from the world, emotionally numb, incapable of true intimacy. They are … Self-loathing, self-trashing, self-hating, self-destructive in multiple ways. Their attitudes to sexual or intimate partners, to sex, and to their bodies are shocking, unsettling, horrifying, and gross. They are likely to engage in extreme and reckless sex from an early age, develop eating disorders, and suffer from body dysmorphia. They are deceitful and unfaithful (psy