It's not completely irrelevant, but it's easy to tell what the "right" answer is, and therefore is easy to manipulate. Of course it does not try to determine whether your condition is environment based (something you can change if you try hard enough) or a true mental disease. Obviously the results do not have "scientific" merit; they do, however, give you something to research if you think you are a bit peculiar.

For example, I definitely fit the literal definition of a Schizoid (although I don't consider myself Paranoid or Narcissistic at all, despite what the quiz said), but it is most likely something I brought upon myself by an excessive time spent by myself in front of a computer. As such, I believe I could undo most of the negative traits by forcing myself to spend time doing other things. And it is my opinion that most anti-social computer nerds are much like me in that regard.

It's not by itself. It's not until you develop irrational "people phobias" that it is something to be concerned about.

Yes, and I agree. This particular quiz is just looking for symptoms and not looking for causes. Nor does it determine exactly how severe the symptoms are. The quiz is really nothing more than going through each of the listed conditions and checkmarking which symptoms you have.

Disorder:             Rating
Paranoid:             edited
Schizoid:             edited
Schizotypal:          edited
Antisocial:           edited
Borderline:           edited
Histrionic:           edited
Narcissistic:         edited
Avoidant:             edited
Dependent:            edited
Obsessive-Compulsive: edited

(edited: on second thought, i dislike the idea of showing that to anyone)
Is that test some sort of competition on whose brain was in the heat the longest?
Damn, i answered all the questions honestly but i can't see anything wrong with me aside from being unemployed and spending 15 hours a day in front of the computer, checking a.cc and other sites every so and so many minutes and yeah, talking about me again(like i seem to do very often)... i have answered yes to all those "seek attention" questions.

What? It's society that has a social disorder, not we here.

Those tests are a joke. Probably designed by a collective of teenagers in a move to self-diagnose themselves with numerous disorders to appear 'deep and meaningful'.

I find that that statement is more true than one might think.

These definitions of disorders and diseases are a bunch of nonsense. A person isn't like a machine or program where you can easily identify something as a bug. A person is a human being with their own personality traits, own biological structure, etc.

I think for the most part it's entirely up to the person to decide for themselves what they want to be. If they don't like the way they're acting they can choose to go seek "treatment". But no one else should say they have to act one way or another, nor consider them sub-human.

Right then, moving on. Lenny, how about this. Establish a new pattern while following the same old pattern. If I were in your shoes I'd start listening to music while I go to the cafe to get a drink. Then when the cafe shuts down you can fall back to your new ritual. That way the loss of the full ritual won't be as severe.
It isn't a perfect solution, but better than nothing. And you've got about a month to establish this new ritual, right? That should be enough.

You could also rally people together and attempt to save the cafe. Explain to people how much you would hate to see this cafe disappear, since you really enjoy their coffee. Get them dedicated to going there.
That or spread exciting rumors about the cafe. Like how [insert celebrity] goes there regularly. Or how [insert type of specific coffee] from there cures cancer.
Yup, quite devious.

The real problem with trying to daignose mental disorders from symptoms is that most disorders share common symptoms. Also when you ignore the types of disorders that have purely psychological grounds - usually depression, post-traumatic stress disorder or specific phobias - and look at cases where there is an underlying medical condition, whether it be chemical or caused by brain damage, you often find more than one type of disorder. The Personality Disorder test fails to take this into account.

As Matthew has always pointed out, it does not take into account the causes of behavioural patterns. Take for example the question 'Do you prefer to be alone rather than in the company of others?' There are several reasons why one might answer yes to this question: a) the person might well be schizoid, and they simply like being alone. b) the person may have Asperger's, and while they want to be social, attempts to integrate with others (or rather the failure of such events), can cause so much anxiety that it is easier to be alone. c) feeling isloated, which can occur with many disorders - since you know you are different - mean that you feel more alone around others then when you are on your own (you need to differentiate the difference between being on your own and being 'alone'), so it becomes more 'pleasant' to be alone. Ecept for the first example (the schizoid individual), everyone else would be deemed, by that test, to simply have an 'avoidant personality disorder'. This label is simply too broad to be of any use.

Similarly the question 'Do you have intense feelings of inadequacy and helplessness?'... this is a symptom of Social Phobia and Depression as well as most eating disorders, where the underlying condition is one of distorted personal image. It is very hard to pinpoint a specific personality trait that causes these fellings. As an example, consider two anorexic patients. The first, was originally obese, and had no lifetime or genetic history of mental disorder. However constant taunting about her (I'm using the female gender for this example as anorexia occurs almost exclusively in women, though it would make no difference if the individual was male) weight becomes too much and she becomes depressed, which when it is not picked up and she starts obsessing on the object of her depression she transitions into fullblown Anorexia. The second patient has a genetic history of psychosis, and as she undergoes the hormonal shifts that occur when we pass from adolecence into adulthood, she develops chemical imbalances and loses her ability to grasp reality and rationalize her thaughts. She starts to (with no reason whatsoever) perceive herself as a demonic amorphous blob, while all around her others are transformed into angelic waifs. As her psychosis deepens, she sees herself more and more as societies antagonist, and in an attempt to redeem herself she vows she will shed her demonic form and revert to the angelic form she once was. She meticulously tests every type of food to determine what is holy and what is forsaken. Eventually she decides that only drinking holy water can shed away the fat and sve her. Every minute of waking day is devoted to weighing herself to see how much of the demon she has exercised. She is now not only psychotic, she is also anorexic. Both women eventually die, essentially from self inflicted starvation. At this point what does it matter what 'personality type' they had?

I'm glad my experiences can be of help to others. Even if you eventually decide that no, that's not exactly how you are, self examination is rarely a bad thing, so long as you can do so objectively.

The clinical term 'disorder' is often misunderstood. Take just about any human being and give them a list of the symptoms of Anxiety Disorder or Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder, and they will be able to identify with most of the symptoms. We are all at some time in our lives moody, or easily distracted, or worried about something irrational. Usally this is caused by things such as fatigue, side effects of drugs - whether recreational or pharmaceutical, a sequence of incidents that are purely bad luck, work related stresses (eg. half the plant is going to be laid off, is it me?), etc. Simply having these symptoms does not mean you have a disorder.

It is considered a disorder when it can be clearly shown that there has been a continual and detrimental effect in two of the three following areas: Social Life, Work Life and Home Life.

I agree with this for the majority of cases. The exception of course is when the individual has become delusional and fails to see that their actions are harming themselves or others. Manic people for example often start exhibiting the behavioural patterns of small children. It's all about instant gratification as well as a desire to be 'free'. They will give up their jobs, walk out on their spouces; their children, simply to be the perosn they want to be NOW, with no consideration for the future. Anyone who tries to point out the fallicies in their thinking is simply trying to bring them down; stop them from being free; and to hell with that. As terrible as it may seem to them, the only real things the people who love this individual can do are either watch them spiral into self-destruction or have them commited against their will to a psychiatric facility, where they can be medicated and rehabilitated. Hopefully.

This is another very good idea. Anyone wanna contribute to the 'Buy lennyLen an iPod' fund? Sadly my venerable portable CD player, which I've had since 1992, and have had to resucitate after several deaths already has finally died completely and it's beyond my abilities to repair. I'd much prefer an MP3 player though, as I have only about 20 CDs left that work, and about 5,300 MP3s on my PC.

Based purely on the above paragraph, that sounds more like Social Phobia than Asperger's. People with Asperger's (which I'll refer to in future as Aspies) usually have Social Phobia, but for very good reasons.

The 'symptoms' of Asperger's simply do not lessen, they are there for life. Aspies simply have to learn how to make up for their deficiencies. Luckily, most Aspies are very intelligent and observant, so learning the social skills that most people have instinctively, isn't too much of a problem.

There is no 'mental block' to being social which can be overcome for Aspies. In fact, most Aspies have a great desire to be social beings. Unfortunately, they simply do not have the mental faculty for it. It's like being born without a visual cortex - you can learn to live without sight, but you're blind for life (I'm ignoring technology here).

Aspies also have no anxiety associated with trying new things (unless they have developed Social Phobia). At least not more than anyone else would.

The following passages, which I copied from here descibe what Asperger's is very well:

If you can't get an iPod, here's some options:
Get a broken iPod. Usually the battery has died, and people put them up on eBay or another place for cheap. You can buy that, buy a replacement battery, and you're set.
$20-$50

Get a cheap MP3 player. If you don't care too much about audio quality (especially on cheap earbuds) you can get 512 minutes of audio out of a 512mb MP3 player made in China or Taiwan

Get a CD-MP3 player. A CD player which will play MP3s off the CDs. That way you can burn your MP3s to a CD.
$40+

Yeah, stupid Starbucks.

lololol @sympathy for AS

AS is often considered to be a gift rather than a curse. Attempting to "cure" AS is actually quite insulting to individuals with AS since it is part of their personality and who they are.

I think the more important issue would be to recognize it early in childhood that so that "aspies" can have methods to cope. Another issue is to educate the "normal" children/people as well as educators.

That page was written just to get a rise out of people wasn't it? Just like most of Yves and co's OT posts? Seems to be written with the same degree of intelligence.