The latest thing.

All the bloggers seems to be doing this personality disorder test, and who am I to resist the latest fad? It says I'm paranoid:

Paranoid personality disorder is characterized by a distrust of others and a constant suspicion that people around you have sinister motives. People with this disorder tend to have excessive trust in their own knowledge and abilities and usually avoid close relationships with others. They search for hidden meanings in everything and read hostile intentions into the actions of others. They are quick to challenge the loyalties of friends and loved ones and often appear cold and distant to others. They usually shift blame to others and tend to carry long grudges.

All of this is a pretty accurate assessment, but what pisses me off (apart from the obvious fact that someone fed my IP address to the site's webmaster so that they could rig it in advance to give me that result) is their contention that it's some sort of personality disorder. It's a simple case of learning from experience. Failure to do that would be a personality disorder.

I distrust others. I used to be very trusting towards everyone, and can count on the fingers of one hand the times that that trust has not been abused. So I don't do it anymore.

I suspect that people around me have sinister motives. I used not to, but the overwhelming majority of people I have met have had.

I do not have excessive trust in my own abilities, but I know from experience that they are the only abilities on which I can rely. Whenever I have relied on anyone else's abilities, they have let me down.

I read hostile intentions into the actions of others. I used to think people were generally nice, and was so adamant in that belief that I had to be royally fucked over a few more times than should have been necessary for me to learn that lesson.

I avoid challenging the loyalties of friends, because such challenges have almost always resulted in disappointment, not to mention disaster: most of the friends I've had in my time have had no loyalty to me whatsoever.

I sometimes do appear cold and distant. I used to be friendly and affable to everyone I met, but stopped, because I have managed, against the odds, to acquire a tiny handful of friends I can trust, and have no desire to make any more friends, when I know from experience that they would almost certainly screw me over.

I never shift blame. As mentioned above, I prefer not to delegate tasks to anyone else in the first place, because I know they will let me down. I prefer not having anyone to blame.

I do carry long grudges, but, again, that's simply a matter of learning from experience. Someone screws me over, I forgive them, they screw me over again, I forgive them, they screw me over again... eventually, I learn, and I never again have anything whatsoever to do with them. People who complain about grudge-bearing are one of my pet hates, actually. They don't like being reminded of what utter bastards they are. They want to be able to treat people like shit without their victims having the temerity to mention it. When a man uses the phrase "He really bears grudges" as a criticism, be very wary of him: he is certainly the one who gave the object of his criticism the grudge to bear in the first place.

This is my big problem with psychoanalysis: it assumes that everyone's simply lovely, so any bad feelings one might have towards other people are irrational. My paranoia isn't a personality disorder: I have bad feelings towards other people because I've met them.