The Political Inquirer

Were the field of clinical psychology ever to come under the dominion of conservative clinicians, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the profession’s Leviticus of mental hygienics, probably would be shorn of at least 800 of its present 886 pages (and counting).  Still, that reference work of the American Psychiatric Association would require at least one latter day addition: a detailed profile of Compulsive Civil Control Psychosis, or CCCP.

CCCP is a highly particular psychopathy currently afflicting more than a third of all adults in this country–no fewer than 80 million Americans: the 72 million affiliated with the Democratic Party and the 8 million who have cast their ballots for John McCain in this presidential election season.  No minor behavioral disorder, CCCP is a progressive illness that, left untreated, builds inexorably toward a debilitating state.

Although CCCP is often misdiagnosed as Quality Control Compulsive Disorder (QCCD), it is in fact far more aggressive and resistant to treatment.  Whereas those with QCCD have a pronounced need to locate and control quality in whomever they may find it, patients with Compulsive Civil Control Psychosis are impelled to control whole populations, as well as disaggregated demographic cohorts.  And while both pathologies are marked by compulsive disorder, it is CCCP which manifests the complete symptom complex classically associated with psychotic mania: the disordered thought processes and clouded judgment, the hyperactivity and impulsive spending, the grandiosity and overreaction grossly disproportionate to exogenous events, the exaggerated sense of persecution or victimization.

But the hallmark of CCCP is of course the patient’s inexhaustible and excessive involvement in endeavors aimed at managing the lives, lifestyles and worldview of others.  Those afflicted with Compulsive Civil Control Psychosis are almost always unaware that there is anything wrong with their behavior or attitude toward society.  On the contrary, they are most often impatient, intrusive, meddlesome and, when interfered with, threateningly irritable.  Whether they imagine themselves “independent” or “moderate”, in reality they brook no interference with the liberal indulgence of their overweening and debilitating impulse to human husbandry.

CCCP most commonly afflicts persons of high intellectual attainment and socioeconomic position.  High-functioning sufferers have been known to achieve great success in such fields as journalism, education and politics, and it is even conceivable that a Control Compulsive could rise undetected to high office.  Left untreated, however, the illness often progresses to a destructive and even deadly final stage.

Come that day when clinicians of genuinely conservative outlook assume leadership of the American Psychiatric Association, reliable treatments for CCCP will be at hand.  In the meantime it is unlikely that the APA would see fit to add the disorder to its already over-long diagnostic manual.

There is no point, after all, in trying to explain water to a fish.