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In Reply to: Re: Zerby's Brain Pathology posted by Doc Reallynow on September 16, 2005 at 15:45:19:
I totally agree with you about diagnosing. Surprised? Of course I'd actually have to actually examine her to accurately diagnose her psychological problems. I don't know the human being "Karen Zerby." I know a fictional character who appears in comics & speaks her mind in MLs. As a diagnostician, I've taken the position that Zerby is a cartoon character and that analyzing her wacky persona & thought processes through the application of various psychodynamic theories can be enlightening.
Rather like Kent's psychological autopsy on Berg in "Lustful Prophet." Of course it's fraught with methodological limitations.
Philosophically, I disagree with your following statement:
"It could be much of this behavior is a result of long term involvement in a secluded spot at the top of a f'ed up cult."
This is one of those chicken-or-the-egg debates, which I think are a waste of time. To ask whether Zerby was born that way or learned to be that way over time overlooks the explanatory power of person-environmental fit. She "fit" Berg and the development of a f*ed up cult and therefore she grew into who she is. You will, however, find extensive references to her extreme shyness and reclusiveness going back to the 1970s.
Very few people could have stuck with Berg the way she did. Not many mothers raise children who hate them enough to commit a murder/suicide. Clearly, she's special.
Regardless of how Zerby's messed-up thought processes and coping style came about, she appears to have reached a very interesting state of psychopathology. Some people seem to be interested in understanding Zerby's psychosocial functioning, so I thought I'd post a few ideas that fit the published evidence better than Aspergers. "Inverted narcissism" is an interesting concept that explains a lot of behavior in the Zerby cartoon series, imo.
Kent did a seminal piece on misattribution and social control in TFI, which is not an easy concept to understand if you haven't spent lots of time analyzing the communication of cognitive distortion. I thought referencing some of Zerby's thought processes as "personalization" or "attribution" problems might be helpful to understanding classic Zerbyisms like, Hurricane Katrina is God's judgement for the U.S. media's slander of us over Rick's murder/suicide.
