Memetic narratives, imaginary friends, and timely updates to the DSM

It has to be the case that the professoriate and committee governing the DSMV thinks that admitting that adults with imaginary omnipotent friends are essentially mentally ill is not timely from a cultural and social perspective, since adults with imaginary omnipotent friends are clearly unequivocally mentally ill.

If an adult lives their life concerned about the impositions, will, actions, and desires of a fictional and imaginary all-powerful superhero type of being and a fictional supernatural enemy - to the extent that they not only change their behaviour but expect others to do so: then they're also unequivocally paranoid delusionals and are exhibiting all of the important indicators of a personality disorder and of being split from reality. That such persons are subject to the influence of a widely available and influential set of megacult memetic narratives does little to alter validity of this analysis.

It is 2021, not 1421, and the scientific revolution and information age are both more than mature (the information age is very epistemically and technologically fastmoving, with technology itself as a feedback multiplier of progress). We have multiple available rational, scientific epistemes that are accessible even to less educated and less well resourced individuals.

To be an adult in the West who has an imaginary, male, anthropomorphic, omnipotent friend (which fictional friend would, if real, be committed by any reasonable psychiatrist as a psychotic with a serious and quite dangerous personality disorder) is to be ill. Denying this requires the most specious of special pleading and is, I suggest, no longer timely (and has been neither timely, nor scientifically sound, for some time!)

I once had a relationship with a woman who was schizophrenic. She would sometimes tell me that if an advertising billboard was a certain colour that it meant that she should go back to China. This is one of the behaviours that helped get her committed to a psychiatric ward on at least one occasion (I had nothing to do with that, except that her GP - whom I suspect wanted or had a sexual relationship with her - took a profound dislike to me. Although she was ill, I regard his actions towards her as unnecessary, malicious, as malpractice, and illegal.) Theist megaculitists frequently have exactly this kind of ideation about certain books, events, and experiences. They also both fear, and dramatically alter their behaviour because of, their imaginary power friends (and imaginary enemies).

The global effort to 'protect' these megacultist patients from an appropriate clinical classification has to stop, because, among other things, they are still being elected to positions of authority in government where they can affect military, geostrategic, and geopolitical outcomes. This is just one of many dangerous and socially inappropriate outcomes of the current status quo regarding the DSM and psychiatric science.

Trait disorders (personality, anxiety, depressive, etc.) usually exist on some kind of spectrum, and doxastic commitments of both individual and group agents are likewise variable in terms of strength and content. There is little doubt that the issues around these matters are complex and require significant care and subtlety, but having world leaders who feel they are guided in their personal lives by the Dark Ages equivalent of Marvel characters is ridiculous, socially deleterious and undeniably dangerous.

---