Doctors Herding Cats:

[wolfdaughter]

Sharing to let others know about this article, "Doctors Herding Cats: The Misadventures of Modern Medicine and Psychology with Nonhuman Identities".

[wolfvanzandt]

Thanks, there have been several articles recently like this and I'm trying to keep up with it.

[Lunar Flare]

Just finished reading this. Was a hard read with me having to google many of the words, and then just glossing over words I didnt know. I'm sad he missed out the werecommunity name, but its ok I guess.

I didnt really find anything too insightful myself, but I think this could be great for people who are not familiar with these concepts for sure.

[Pedro Feijo]

Hey there,
Sorry it was a hard read, it was not on purpose! What do you mean about the werecommunity name?

hope you're all well *

[wolfvanzandt]

Actually, Fodor may have been reacting as much to contemporary lycanthropy as much as ancient lycanthropy. The study reported by Harry Senn (Werewolves and Vampires in Romania) makes it plain that the "ancient" werewolf lore in Eastern Europe continues into modern times.

I despair of keeping up with research on therianthropy. I have a flag on Google Scholar and I pour over every resource I can find, yet I look at WolfDaughter's work and repeatedly say, "How did I miss that?" And I look at your article and constantly say, "How did I miss that?." Are we really that rare?

I note that this article is primarily about otherness identities and I don't mind so much the lack of identification of a were community. I can't speak for Lunar (although we have communicated a lot) but, to address my own perspective and other in the Were community, even Orion Scribner in his Directory states that the Were community developed independently of the Otherkin community and rightly observes that many Weres (and Vampires and Dragons, etc.) resent that their separate communities are often equated with the Otherkin community. Two serious problems are that confusing the communities also confuses their separate worldviews and their separate needs.

Almost as soon as Weres began realizing, on the Internet, that there were other Weres, they were off the Internet in Howls. It's almost as if there are two Were communities. I will certainly admit that the online community often looks a lot like the Otherkin community as there is considerable overlap. The offline community, on the other hand, looks much less like the Otherkins. One reason they avoid Internet sociality as Weres is to distance themselves from such confusions.

The other serious problem with conflating the communities is that it makes it more difficult for practitioners to parse out the distinctive needs of each of the communities. There is significant indications that Weres are Weres physiologically - not just psychologically or spiritually (whatever that means). There is a solid history of physical complaints such as autoimmune diseases and autism-like conditions in the Were community.

We are certainly concerned with the needs of others. I know that both Lunar and I are very much concerned about the needs of at least one other fringe community (because we are both members). In addition, I have given a large part of my life in providing for the needs of the Mainstream community (in my professional vocation) and crossover association with the Vampire, Goth, Wicca, and other communities. But Weres need answers to many very distinctive questions - for instance, how should doctors approach cases of autoimmune diseases that obviously cause debilitating symptoms but don't show up in any of the traditional immunological profiles, and are the doses prescribed to Weres actually appropriate for Weres since they were developed using Mainstream subjects?

We'll never have the answers we need as long as people keep confusing us with other demographics.

On the other hand, your article deals with a factor that should be of major concern for counselors and psychologists who must deal with Weres (and they all must whether they know it or not - we're not that rare), and that is the factor of identification. It, at least is a constant through the various kinds of Otherkin - Weres as much as anyone else. Saying that it's also a factor in Mainstream humanity may not be enough since we certainly fall outside the 2nd standard deviation of what most practitioners would consider "Normal".

Being a psychologist myself (in profession until I retired and in training), and specifically a social and industrial psychologist, I have always felt that eufunctionnal variants aren't studied nearly enough. For instance, there are psychopaths (or sociopaths, if you prefer) that carry on very normal, beneficial lives, yet have pretty much the same core mental dynamics as those that end their horrific careers in prisons and mental institution, never to reemerge into society. What are the differences and do they bare answers for dealing with the devastating effects that a criminal psychopath can have on society.

In point, are clinical lycanthropes really that much different from Weres. Might the first simply be the result of the second with the added burden of unallied mental illness. And one studying one offer real answers for the distinctive problems of the other. I don't dismiss the clinical lycanthropy studies as irrelevant to the Were community and I suspect that it would be dangerous to do so.