A Psychological Experiment

I took the junk psychology test here, answering all questions as untruthfully as possible. Not easy, as the truthful answer to most questions is 'it depends'.

The 'diagnosis' of my antiself is
Paranoid: Low
Schizoid: Low
Schizotypal: Low
Antisocial: High
Borderline: Low
Histrionic: High
Narcissistic: Moderate
Avoidant: Low
Dependent: High
Obsessive-Compulsive: Low

So the real me is highly sociable but hates other people, self-sufficient and amazingly calm but worried and suspicious all the time, and overdramatic but quiet. Good, I'm glad that's all sorted out.
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The media have decided that a 'homegrown cell' in Yorkshire planted the bombs in London. Translation: There is an 'enemy within', easily identifiable with antiwar thinkers but switchable to any other group, who could be anywhere and must be stamped out. Paranoid: High

Among people I've spoken to, opinion varies as to the public reaction. Blair and ID Cards are as unpopular as ever, mosques have been attacked but seemingly individual muslims are't targeted, far right groups haven't made headway and the left is still considering it's tactics. Histrionic: Low.
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Interesting discussion with Paul T about the limits of progressive bourgois thought. It all seems to share two common features. First, it's concentration on what is socially desirable coupled with it's vagueness on how to achive it. And second, it's tendency to fold when it comes to the crunch.

The first feature consists in a general approval of such notions as personal freedom and autonomy, education as a good thing in itself, and the avoidance of violence. But with either a vague hope that these 'good things' will come about through 'wise guidance', 'strong but compassionate leadership' or 'moderated market forces' (the Michael Foot view), or with no real idea how they could be achieved (the Tony Benn problem).

There are a few hopeful individuals who delude themselves into believing that enough compromises with the right will produce an eventual left result. That the reason privatisation of the health service has degraded service is that there's not enough privatisation.

The second is demonstrated in, for instance, opposing all war, except the war the country happens to be fighting at the moment. Or opposing erosion of human rights, except in the current 'exceptional' circumstances which merit some 'temporary and regretable abridgement' of rights for the proverbial greater good, and the long term maintenence of these rights.

The principles are for these people eternal, but the current circumstances always exceptional, the current threat always extra-special and extra-evil. We're talking about people who talk a good fight, then sell out under pressure.

We spent four hours applying the idea to allegedly progressive writers - mainly Anthony Burgess, Vladimir Nabokov, and Thomas Mann. Doing some extra research on Nabokov, I'm intrigued by the proto-postmodernism of his 'Pale Fire' novel.

Postmodernism of course was the ultimate pseudoprogressive irrationalism. It took the shortest route to all-embracing political defeatism - epistemological solipsism - while claiming to subvert authority and create the preconditions for a genuine ethical individualism.

And to think I spent over a decade studying that junk.