The Political Inquirer

America’s leading organization of clinical psychologists announced Saturday an updated list of newly identified mental illnesses.  Democrats made the list.  So did McCain supporters. 

In a bold move that already has stirred much controversy inside and outside of the medical community, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) has made sweeping changes to its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the main reference work for psychotherapists and the profession’s Leviticus of mental hygienics.  Due for release in June, the DSM V, as it already is known, will be shortened from 886 pages to 92 pages.  The new edition will include a detailed profile of Compulsive Civil Control Psychosis, or CCCP, the medical term for the newly discovered disorder that causes symptoms of what is commonly called “liberalism”.  The spokesperson for the Association, Dr. Margaret Kincaid, explained this morning that the APA Board’s unanimous decision to include CCCP in the new diagnostic guidelines was motivated in part by “the recent pandemic outbreak diagnosed by member psychotherapists nationwide.”

According to the federal Centers for Disease Control (CDC), in Atlanta, CCCP is a highly specific psychopathy that nonetheless afflicts 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.

“The chief hallmark of CCCP,” stated Dr. Kincaid,  ”is of course the patient’s inexhaustible and excessive involvement in endeavors aimed at managing the lives, lifestyles and worldview of others.”  In answer to questioning, she explained further that 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”, the CDC has found, 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.

 The psychiatric association plans to co-sponsor a crash research effort, led by a university consortium formed by the Centers for Disease Control, to find reliable treatments for CCCP.  A spokesperson for the federal centers stated last week that the mood in the new consortium is one of ”confidence that reliable treatments are at hand,” and may be available in time for the November election.