Aspie1 wrote:
NorthWind wrote:
Perhaps they do, but the extent to which most people do it, isn't a psychological disorder and a lot of people don't primarily laugh out of malice or to put others down.
Not out of malice? Then what? Those laughter examples were most certainly malicious! They were laughing either at my misery or an honest mistake. Or it was a "WTF!" laughter, like those old ladies who heard me talk about winds on Neptune. And when I told my therapist about those people, she laughed at me too. I wonder if she had katagelasticism.
It all gave me massive trust issues and social anxiety. The latter is resolved. The former, I'm just now getting handled.
I wasn't referring to those examples you mentioned as I obviously wasn't present during those four situations. It is well possible that you were subjected to a lot of malicious laughter during your childhood.
In your post you said things like 'I'll be damned! It seems like everyone and their brother has katagelasticism.' Which made me think you were speaking about people in general and not only about those four examples - which do not prove much about people in general.
The first example could have been laughing because they thought what you said was cute - at least if you were a small child. People don't necessarily think negatively of a young child that makes mistakes that are typical for young children. Not all small children are hurt by adults laughing about something they do or say (laughing about something also doesn't have to be the same as laughing at someone). Some small children try to repeat those 'cute mistakes' to make others laugh. However, it doesn't mean that it wasn't unemphatic or mean of those adults to laugh about/at you when it distressed or upset you. It also doesn't mean that those adults didn't have mean intentions.
In the next two examples your parents were nasty. The guests were likely also nasty. Reasons other than enjoying to hurt someone's feelings in situations similar to those are nervousness or peer pressure - at least the later is still a nasty reason, but doesn't have to entail enjoying the situation. However, it is well possible and likely that in those particular situations it was just schadenfreude.
The last example is just weird but it's them who were being weird and not you.
So if the whole point of your thread is that you were treated badly as a child - yes, that is likely true.
If the point is actually that almost everyone has katagelasticism - that doesn't seem true to me. I only have the wikipedia article to go by as there doesn't seem to be a lot of information on katagelasticism. To me it seems to describe a psychological disorder - disorder implies that it is not something everyone has. There are also some statements in the wikipedia article that are definitely not true for most people.
'Katagelasticists actively seek and establish situations in which they can laugh at others (at the expense of these people).' Quite a few people do this occasionally, but not excessively.
'They would be of the opinion that laughing at others is part of the daily life and if others do not like being laughed at, they should just fight back. For the katagelasticists it is fun laughing at others and there is almost nothing that might hinder them from doing so.' That implies that katagelasticists tend to be bullies and more so the kind that initiate the bullying instead of acting on peer pressure. Bullies are not a rarity, but not nearly everyone is.
But especially "This condition often makes it difficult for sufferers to gain and maintain acquaintances and romantic partners". How could something make it difficult to gain and maintain interpersonal relationships, that applies to almost everyone? A lot of people don't particularly struggle with relationships and struggling with something like relationships is often seen as how well you do compared to the average person - and the average person can't do worse than the average person.
If the point was that most people at least occasionally laugh at or about someone and that verbal bullying exists and is not rare - then obviously yes, but there's not really a need to bring some fancy word into it. Just because katagelasticism is a condition that makes people excessively enjoy laughing at others doesn't mean everyone who ever laughed at or about someone has this condition. It's like claiming that everyone who drinks alcohol on occasion is an alcoholic or that everyone who experiences anxiety sometimes has an anxiety disorder. If that were the definitions of these words then katagelasticism, alcoholism and anxiety disorder would truly be useless terms. Katagelasticism may be a useless term anyway, or at least not nearly as useful as alcoholism and anxiety disorder, but for another reason.
03 Oct 2019, 5:31 pm
