Psychiatric Ontology

I think most psychiatric disorders exist on a spectrum from mostly-tradeoff to mostly-failure (what we might call “high-functioning” and “low-functioning” versions of the same phenotype).

Mostly-tradeoff ADHD looks like someone who is adventurous, likes variety, and thrives in high-stress situations, but is also bad at tolerating boring situations.

Mostly-tradeoff schizophrenia (which might be schizotypal personality disorder, or a subset of it, I’m not sure) looks like someone who is creative, attuned to interesting patterns, and charismatic, but also a bit odd and superstitious.

Mostly-tradeoff OCD (which might be obsessive-compulsive personality disorder) looks like somebody who’s responsible and perfectionist, but has trouble letting things go.

I think Cluster B personality disorders are already tradeoffs; adding failures just make them less effective ones. For example, tradeoff-antisocial-personality is a con man who uses unethical means to get ahead (and sometimes succeeds); tradeoff-plus-failure-antisocial usually ends up in prison very quickly and never gets out.

Leave a comment