Bullshit and Philosophy Read online

  Borderline personality disorder (erratic). The borderline personality is always riding some kind of roller coaster: her emotions, relationships, and self-image are all marked by wild instability. They can shift rapidly from idealizing to demonizing a partner or friend. They are terrified of abandonment, and can become very aggressive when they see it on the horizon. They are also prone to harming themselves in the face of real or imagined impending abandonment Suicidal gestures are common in this type; threats of suicide (“if you go, I’ll kill myself”) are still more common.

  Histrionic personality disorder (erratic). Histrionics are recognized by their frantic attention-seeking, inappropriate sexual provocativeness, and excessive displays of emotion. They are generally uncomfortable when they are not the center of attention. They are seductive and flirtatious in situations where such behavior is inappropriate—in professional settings, for instance. The textbook case is a female undergraduate who often visits male professors during office hours, devoting her time there to talking about herself in a general way, rather than to legitimate academic business.48 Histrionic women often wear too much makeup, and dress in clothes that are too sexy and bright. Histrionic men, for their part, are often hyper-macho, boasting of success at work or sexual exploits. Histrionics are shallow in various ways: opinions, friends, and projects may be taken up with great enthusiasm, then quickly dropped. But their enthusiasm can be magnetic: they often possess a kind of meretricious charm.

  Narcissistic personality disorder (erratic). The narcissist has an inflated sense of her own importance and accomplishments. Correspondingly, she undervalues the accomplishments of others. When their accomplishments threaten to outshine her own, she responds with violent envy. She has a strong sense of superiority, and she is elitist: the only people worthy to be her associates are those whose gifts and accomplishments are in the same exalted realm as her own. She requires admiration and special treatment from those around her. She expects lavish praise and recognition, and may angrily mete out punishment to those who deny her her rightful obeisance. Self-centered as she is, she has little attention left over for the needs and desires of others, into which she lacks insight. Narcissists are often wildly ambitious, and better-functioning ones can be quite successful.

  Avoidant personality disorder (anxious). Avoidant personalities have an inferiority complex. They believe steadfastly that they are inadequate. They cannot abide criticism—it calls attention to their shortcomings, which they imagine to be severe—and will go to great lengths to avoid it. This results in their leading very restricted lives: potentially rewarding activities and relationships are shunned out of fear that they will open the door to criticism.

  Dependent personality disorder (anxious). These individuals believe that they are incapable of taking care of themselves. They require constant reassurance from others, which makes it difficult for them to work independently. Since they depend so heavily on others, they will generally take a submissive line, suppressing any dissent they might feel, in order to keep the peace. In extreme cases this can lead to their withstanding physical abuse in order to hang on to a “caregiver.”

  Obsessive-Compulsive personality disorder (anxious). Obsessive-compulsives are preoccupied with order: rules, lists, schedules, and all manner of details are very often on their mental front page. Their perfectionistic pursuit of order leaves little time for relations with others, which relations are stunted by this neglect. Leisure activities have little appeal. Obsessive-compulsives are hard-working to a fault. Their own standards are so high that they have difficulty delegating tasks to others, who are likely to aim for a lower standard. They are generally very stubborn in their insistence on their own hyper-orderly way.

  Schizoid personality disorder (eccentric). Schizoids are intensely solitary, eschewing friendship, often drifting out of contact even with immediate family, and taking jobs that minimize their contact with others. Their emotional lives are very restricted: they come off as cold and affectively flat, and take pleasure in few activities (if any). Sexual relations with others hold no interest for them. They appear indifferent to praise and criticism: if reprimanded for some aspect of their job performance, for instance, they’ll return a “does not compute” sort of response.

  Schizotypal personality disorder (eccentric). Schizotypals are close relatives of schizoids.49 But while the schizoid is indifferent to the social world, the schizotypal regards it with suspicion and fear that verges into paranoia. This does not conduce well to social relations with others, which are generally absent from their lives. While the schizoid evinces no affect at all, the schizotypal tends to evince inappropriate affect: a smile in response to a sad story, for instance. Schizotypals are recognized by their odd beliefs and superstitions, clairvoyance and telepathy being special favorites. They often report unusual perceptual experiences, such as seeing the future.

  Paranoid personality disorder (eccentric). The paranoiac needs no introduction. Universal distrust is her signature. Utterly benign social gestures may be interpreted as insulting, threatening, or otherwise sinister. Imagined slights become the occasion for grudges that are held indefinitely. A paranoiac’s romantic partner has her work cut out for her, as she will often be the object of pathological jealousy. Those who question the irrational beliefs of paranoiacs generally meet with extreme hostility and combativeness, which may turn violent.

  This, then, is our cast of colorful characters. Notice that it is of the essence of a personality disorder to be rigid. Afflicted individuals will try the same strategy over and over, regardless of its success or failure in the past. Since the strategy is deployed reflexively, rather than with sensitivity to the situation at hand, it tends to fail. Thus for them life becomes like a “bad one-act play that repeats again and again” (Personality Disorders, p. 14).

  Some of the disorders are diagnosed more frequently in men, others in women: thus diagnosed antisocials are much more likely to be men, dependents and histrionics to be women. But it is not clear that these patterns of diagnosis reflect the truth, since the evidence regarding the epidemiology of personality disorders is questionable.50 Also, at least some of these patterns are changing: diagnoses of antisocial personality disorder in women appear to be on the rise. For these reasons I have chosen to treat the disorders as gender-neutral.

  Some Examples of Bullshit in Personality Disorders

  Recall that bullshit of both the types I’ve identified may be directed to others or to oneself. I’ll lay out examples of other-directed bullshit first, then move on to the self-directed variety.

  Other-Bullshitting. I’ll start with the first type of bullshit I identified, in which the bullshitter contrives some indirect means of implicating, by word or deed, the contrary of the target truth that she would like to hide. The glib charm typical of the antisocial provides an especially dangerous example. Her charm tends to lead people to believe that she is a nice person, while she is in fact a dangerous, nasty piece of work. She does not come right out and say “I am not a nasty piece of work,” of course; her charm is what leads her hapless victims to believe that, and to implicitly trust her. This makes it easier for her to take advantage of them.

  The suicidal gestures of borderline personalities provide a second example. Consider the standard case, in which a suicide attempt is provoked by a real or imagined threat of abandonment by a romantic partner. With this maneuver, the borderline seeks to make her partner believe something like: my relationship with you in particular is so important to me that life without it is not worth living for me. The partner who believes that would presumably be less likely to leave. The truth is that, since borderlines often vacillate between idealizing a romantic partner and holding him in contempt, the person who is supposedly so important as to be utterly indispensable may be ridiculed and rejected shortly thereafter. And the relationship is not likely to last; the partner will likely soon be replaced with another, with whom the pattern will be repeated.

  Histrionic personality
disorder is marked by “shallow opinions.” A typical histrionic may, for instance, declare a certain writer to be brilliant, despite having little knowledge of her work. Easy come, easy go: she’ll relinquish the opinion before too long. In an unwary audience, such declarations might implant the belief that the histrionic is a deep thinker, while she is in fact the opposite.

  The case of narcissism is a bit trickier than the others in the Erratic cluster, but a certain sub-type of the disorder, compensating narcissism, provides an illustration. While the pure narcissist has a genuinely high opinion of herself, this type seeks to conceal a core of low self-esteem with a charade of superiority. She will, for instance, tirelessly inflate and call attention to her own accomplishments, but unlike the pure narcissist she lacks the conviction that they amount to such a big deal. She depends on accolades from others to counteract her own self-doubt. Thus her charade of superiority, her demands for obeisance and special treatment, can be seen as indirectly implicating the contrary of the painful target truth: that she is not such a grand personage. She generally has some glimmering of her own modus operandi; this painful truth is something she tends to be dimly aware of.

  As for bullshit of the distracting variety, the sexual provocativeness of the histrionic furnishes a clear illustration. By such means as revealing clothing, body language, eye-batting, veiled invitations, flattery, or coy double-entendres, the histrionic distracts attention from her own flaws. The titillation she achieves in this way serves to blind her audience to the fact that she is getting more than her rightful share of attention—more than she would get if her audience saw things clearly. Unfortunately for the histrionic, this sort of behavior can make her especially vulnerable to sexual victimization.

  Self-Bullshitting. I’ll begin, again, with the falsehood-implicating type, which in the case of self-bullshitting is the less common variety. There is a type of paranoid known as a fanatic who is a close cousin of the compensating narcissist. They are described as having “run hard into reality,” a collision which shatters their narcissistic self-image. They cope with the pain that results by retreating into fantasy: they portray themselves as superheroes pitted against an evil world. Their target, then, is the fact that they are not extraordinary. The fantasies they construct contain implicit denials of this fact. The construction of such a fantasy can also distract them from a from harsh reality; thus both types of bullshit are perhaps combined in this instance.

  The self-bullshitter excels particularly at self-distraction. Two types of avoidant personalities supply illustrations. The phobic species of avoidant combines “pure” avoidant with some dependent features. Being dependent, she invests her trust and her sense of self in some significant other, and lives in terror of the loss of that relationship. The phobic strategy is to displace her anxiety from its true object—the significant other, possible loss of same—to some concrete object or situation: the dog next door, elevators, drowning, what have you. This distracts her from her real problem.

  The self-deserting avoidant deals with her intense social discomfort by retreating into fantasy. This allows her to escape from immediate discomfort, and when the strategy is deployed generally it allows her to escape herself, which she finds to be pathetically inadequate. Strangely, such avoidants are generally aware to some extent of using such tactics, and their use of fantasy gradually becomes less effective in shielding them from what they believe to be the painful truth of their inadequacy. Like the use of fantasy found in the fanatic paranoid, this one arguably combines both types of bullshit.

  Self-distracting is also popular with dependent personalities. For instance, in the interest of securing and maintaining a valued relationship, dependents of an accommodating sort contrive to distract themselves from any doubts or grievances they might have about the relationship, which would lead to inner conflict. So distracted, they are able to put a happy face on things, and avoid acknowledging the conflict.

  Finally, one function of the obsessive-compulsive’s preoccupation with details, rules, lists, and the like is to distract her from her own anxiety about big-picture issues that might be the source of legitimate concern. By immersing herself in details, she distracts from larger issues: the compass of her anxiety is only as big as the niggling little thing she’s presently focused on. In this way she can lose the dangerous forest for the (relatively unthreatening) trees.

  Patterns in Personality Bullshit

  Here are some things to notice in this survey. I have identified an example of bullshitting for eight of ten disorders—multiple examples, in some cases. The bullshit-strategems I have described are, in most of the foregoing cases, defining characteristics of the personality disorder in question. That is, the glib charm of the antisocial, the provocativeness and shallow opinions of the histrionic, the obsessive-compulsive’s devotion to rules and details, etc., are all what you might call first-rank symptoms of personality disorders, and if I am right they may be understood in terms of bullshit. In the remaining cases the strategems identified are defining characteristics of one or more sub-types of the basic disorder.51 Thus, while “each of us contributes his share” (On Bullshit, p. 1) to the collective bullshit of our culture, as Frankfurt says, pathological personalities are notably reliable and generous in their contributions.

  However, bullshitting is notably absent from most of the Eccentric cluster. I can see no examples of either type, self- or other-directed, in the behavior of the schizoid or the schizotypal. 52 Happily, plausible explanations of this gap are not far to seek. First, in the case of the schizoid at least, there is a marked flatness of affect: she comes across as cold or emotionally absent. In all the cases of bullshit I’ve just described, the bull-shitter is motivated by a desire to avoid the pain she would feel upon meeting her target truth full in the face. If you lack the capacity to feel that sort of pain, then you have no motive for bullshitting. Second, successful bullshitting requires a certain level of “mindreading” facility: you need to have some capacity to predict what effects your words and deeds will have on the beliefs of your audience, and you need to choose words and deeds that will have the desired effect. Schizoids and schizotypals may lack the requisite mindreading facility: they may be too socially disengaged to bullshit.53

  Bullshitting of others is most characteristic of the Erratic cluster, while self-bullshitting is most characteristic of the Anxious cluster. The other-bullshitting is more likely to be of the falsehood-implicating type, while the self-bullshitting is more likely to be of the distracting type. This is not terribly surprising, since people don’t like getting bullshitted by others, and those in the Erratic cluster are easiest to dislike. That said, remember that a person with a personality disorder is afflicted; harmful and infuriating as her bullshit may be, it is also a personal tragedy for her.

  Perfect Partners: Bullshit and Distorted Social Perceptions

  The paranoiac imagines threats and insults where there are none; the histrionic inhabits a world full of ardent admirers; the borderline sees abandonment on the horizon; the schizoid seems not to understand praise and blame. Each personality disorder is marked by some distortion or other abnormality in the perception of the intentions, desires, and feelings of others—of social reality. Now, if your perceptions are distorted or otherwise inaccurate, or very dim, then you will be farther from the truth than you would be if you saw things clearly. Meanwhile, the bullshitter may put distance between herself and the truth intentionally, depending on how aware she is of her target and her interest in obscuring it. Thus impaired perceptions and bullshit both serve to distance one from the truth. Since both are characteristic of personality disorders, it’s natural to wonder whether these two ways of distancing oneself from the truth somehow reinforce each other. I think there is reinforcement in both directions.

  Poor social perception can increase one’s opportunities for relatively low-effort bullshitting, as follows. Owing to distortions, gaps, and other problems with her perception, the disordered personality sim
ply sees less of social reality than normal people do. Remember that on my story, the bullshitter may be clearly aware of her target, dimly aware, or quite unaware, and all grades in between. Recall also that in the first case the bullshitter is just like the liar in having a deceptive intention (though her method is different). Unless you are given to intentional deception, it is easier to bullshit if you are not aware of your target than if you are. For if you are not aware of it, you can frame distractions and ways of implicating the contrary without feeling the sting of conscience that willful deception would ordinarily provoke. (That is, anyhow, what it would provoke in the case of other-bullshitting. In the case of self-bullshitting, awareness of your target would tend to provoke cognitive dissonance, since what you are trying to hide from yourself is staring you right in the face.) Among the parts of the social truth the disordered personality does not see are parts that are potentially painful and inconvenient—parts that she might have an interest in obscuring. So she has more “easy targets” than a normal person would.

  In just the same way, it is easier to bullshit about something you are only dimly aware of than something you are clearly aware of. In addition to just missing parts of social reality to a greater-than-average degree, and to systematically distorting remarks, actions and gestures, it is common for disordered personalities to perceive only dimly those parts of social reality that they do see—to have glimmerings of the truth. Two instances of bullshit already discussed provide illustrations: the compensating narcissist has some glimmering that she carries on a charade of superiority, and the self-deserting avoidant has some glimmering that she is escaping into fantasy.