Chris and mental healthcare

Chris has a troubled relationship with psychology. He claims that he was held down by the school psychologist at grade school while his screams were recorded (most likely over dramatic bullshit), and was forced to see a psychologist for anger management classes after being kicked out of Piedmont Virginia Community College. Chris currently refuses to see a psychologist, opting to see a pastoral counselor instead.

The problem(s) with Chris

In his own mind

Chris claims to be autistic, homophobic as a genuine phobia, and a victim of noviophobia, a made-up phobia of boyfriends. He also diagnosed himself with dissociative identity disorder in the August 30th Captain's Log, although he later revealed in Mailbag #4 that it was "a lie to momentarily derail the trolls." (Once again, Chris proved that he had no understanding of how serious mental disorders can be. Pretending to be crazy is an odd sort of Catch-22.)

Chris also seems to be at a level of incompetence that prevents him from realizing how incompetent he is. A Cornell University psychology journal details this phenomenon:

“	…when people are incompetent in the strategies they adopt to achieve success and satisfaction, they suffer a dual burden: Not only do they reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the ability to to realize it.	”
A disturbingly accurate account of Chris’s reaction to reality

The 2004 survey

The psychiatrist who compiled a survey of Chris's issues following his troubles at PVCC in 2004 echoed the diagnosis of autism that Chris received some time in his youth, and took note of "an obsessional quality to his preoccupation with finding a girlfriend." He also administered a Folstein test, a brief questionnaire designed to detect cognitive impairment — Chris racked up a perfect score, indicating no problems with his memory or basic information processing abilities. On the Global Assessment of Functioning, the doctor rated Chris a 70, roughly halfway in between an average adult and someone with socially debilitating mental illness.

The trolls' perspective

The rest of the human race believes that Chris has way more than autism to worry about. Popular theories mark him as a psychopath and/or a pathological narcissist, for instance, and also point towards what seems like a paranoid streak (as when Chris proposed that the Greene County school board has conspired over a period of decades to make him miserable). Since the only available view is from a distance, though, there's no way anyone can know for certain if Chris's brain is garlanded with healthy chunks of the DSM-IV-TR or if he's merely a gullible idiot with a terrible upbringing and worse personality (and autism).

Until Chris gets some sustained professional attention, most of the speculation about his issues remains exactly that. Which leads to a larger problem...

Professional help?

One of the most frustrating elements of Chris is his adamant refusal to take help from any source. In the aftermath of his suspension from PVCC, his evaluators repeatedly recommended further counseling and psychiatric treatment, but Chris and his parents refused. It seems that Bob and Barbara think that the world of mental health hasn't evolved past the turn-of-the-century treatment of strait jackets and lobotomies. The only thing close to therapy that Chris has ever been in was a compulsory anger management class, and we all know how much good that did. About the only authority figure he listens to is Rocky Shoemaker, his pastoral counselor; he claims that he has no need for psychotherapy because his pastor is better at helping him than anyone with, you know, years of training and experience in helping people with psychiatric problems. He's shown repeated disregard for the authority of health professionals. It is suspected that, even if Chris received professional help, he would disregard most of it and undermine the therapy.

It would be likely that he could seek the help of a professional for little or no cost, as his monthly tugboat in the form of SSI does offer basic psychological services that would allow him the ability to talk to a board-certified counselor and get the help he does need. It's likely though he doesn't even know this service is available, as he only regards his SSI check as income or a cheap means of getting PS3 games, LittleBigPlanet or Guitar Hero DLC, and sex toys rather than a reassurance that he is covered under federal Medicaid or the equivalent state Medicaid program offered by the Commonwealth of Virginia.

It seems Chris only acknowledges his personal flaws if they get him pity or used to demonstrate that he's beaten them already. Notice how often Chris claims to have won the battle over autism, only to fall back on "I have autism!" as an excuse. Similarly, he wrote Nintendo Power Magazine to tell them he conquered his noviophobia, only to say later that his fear "came back like a boomerang."

Chris refuses to get help because he doesn't think he needs any, and because he has better things (games, anime, porn) to spend his money on. Regardless of how blatantly stupid his actions are, regardless of how often trolls (including a thirteen-year-old) trick him into doing horrible, horrible things, regardless of how any mental health worker worth his salt would pin Chris down like a butterfly to get a chance to crack open his impenetrable shell of fail, Chris will carry on as usual, justifying away everything that would inconvenience him even slightly.

Chris has no problem telling other people to seek professional help, however. In the Mailbag, he has occasionally responded to his detractors with retorts like "Go See a Psychiatrist." Funnily enough, were Chris to ever see a psychologist, he or she would probably see this as classic Freudian projection.

Defense Mechanisms

In Freudian theory, defense mechanisms are the way the brain lessens the difference between reality and one's internal self-image. To use blunt terminology, they're how people cope with the fact they subconsciously know they're not as wonderful as they see themselves. While virtually all human beings will use defense mechanisms to an extent, Chris reads like a catalog of them.

Level One: Pathological Mechanisms

Pathological mechanisms allow someone to alter their perception of reality. Sometimes called delusional responses, a frequent abuser of pathological defenses will begin to appear disconnected from reality (sound familiar?).

• Denial: Chris will adamantly refuse to accept basic facts if he doesn't want to acknowledge he is wrong. He will often bluntly deny a fact then refuse to hear any more on the subject to avoid weakening his denial.
• Delusional Projection: Chris holds dear to the idea that trolls are grossly flawed individuals. He often demands things of them (like "getting a life" or "seeing a therapist") that he himself needs.
• Extreme Projection: Chris routinely acts as if his own autism is barely debilitating and quickly jumps on concepts related to autism he can use to glorify himself (such as savantism) all while hating other autistic individuals and calling them "windows into Hell".
• Distortion: Chris will disregard reality as it stands any time it suits him to.
• Splitting: Chris views the world in a very tribal fashion, grouping people into inherently good and inherently evil groups. You're either a friend/fan/heartsweet he trusts explicitly, or a villainous troll/homo fit only for extermination or re-indoctrination.

Level Two: Immature Mechanisms

Immature responses, while possible in adults are best known for being "gateway" mechanisms for more serious neurotic issues, especially if used in excess and untreated during adolescence. Such conditions often beget worse conditions by creating alienation and other social detachment concerns, leading to the growth of worse conditions.

• Passive Aggression: When Chris can't directly act out (such as when he used to deal with his father), he does so via passive-aggressive means. Procrastination is also an element of passive-aggression, one Chris often uses to get back at his fanbase and trolls by blaming them for his slow comic progress.
• Fantasy: Perhaps one of Chris's most developed mechanisms, CWCville is a textbook perfect example of a fantasy defense mechanism: a world where he can right wrongs done to him and wield the sort of absolute power and affection he craves.
• Idealization: One of the reasons Chris is so easy to troll using fake girlfriends is that when Chris is in one of his many sweetheart flings, he strains logic to make the object of his affection perfect in his mind, disregarding evidence that he's being duped because his 'perfect' woman would never be a troll.
• Somatization: Aggravation at the people he interacts with often cause Chris stress reactions far worse than most people experience. While the validity of such statements may be questionable, Chris has remarked that various offensive images made him physically ill. In a conversation with the sysop of Cwcipedia Chris invoked near-death imagery to describe his reaction to seeing pickles on the front page.
• Acting Out: Chris routinely does socially unacceptable things. In some cases he's directly tried to justify his acting out with counters like his virgin with rage status, as if such factors made them reasonable.

Level Three: Neurotic Mechanisms

Neurotic mechanisms represent the bulk of defenses that cause problems for the user. Neurotic defense often require treatment and have been referred to as "invisible scars" do describe their severity. While many adults (indeed possibly most) utilize a neurotic mechanism or two, the danger is in constant reliance on them.

• Withdrawal: Chris's first response to negative stimuli is to run away from it, in most cases by temporarily leaving whatever online outlet is causing him issues.
• Displacement: Chris attempted to decapitate the clown doll to vent his frustration at Clyde Cash. He used a picture of Adam Stackhouse for target practice. The in-comic villains based on real people act as displacement targets as, compared to their real-life inspirations, they are powerless victims for Chris to vent his anger at their real-world counterparts on.
• Regression: If a defense mechanism can be thought of as a drug, then regression is the one Chris mainlines 24 hours a day through an IV. Chris essentially lives in a permanent state of self-imposed childhood. His room filled with toys, games and cartoons acts as a sort of time capsule in which he can live without progressing.
• Isolation: (Chris lives in a state of near-literal isolation, but psychological isolation could be described in layman's terms more as 'detachment'). Chris reacts to things like death or causing a suicide with a sort of cold removal, though his outward mourning of his dog indicated Chris is capable of grief. It is alternatively possible that what appears to' be an isolation mechanism is actually an autistic lack of correct emotional response.
• Disassociation: One of the precious few neurotic mechanisms Chris doesn't engage in extensively, but one he has invoked (see above). While Chris's tomgirl person represents a strong outward shift, his personality has only shown slight alteration. That said, 'tomgirl Chris' has demonstrated a degree more control and confidence than his traditional norm. It is unclear if this confidence stems from his new pseudo-persona or if is just hubris from his recent attempted blows against his trolls.
• Reaction Formation: Chris spent an inordinate amount of energy combating homosexual claims leveled against him while wearing a bra in public. He now engages in crossdressing, an act socially regarded as partially homosexual if not blatantly so.
• Rationalization: Chris is virtually the patron saint of making excuses for himself. He also tends to rationalize disagreements people have with him as being misinterpretations. He could not accept that making porn of Megan was wrong so he interpreted her disgust as a lack of experience with pornography.

Level Four: Mature

Mature reactions represent correct, (usually) healthy responses. Mature defenses represent lower level, unhealthy defenses that have been adjusted over time to be pleasurable as well as socially acceptable. Unsurprisingly, Chris demonstrates marked deficiencies in mature reactions.

• Altruism: Chris is incredibly greedy and cannot comprehend giving without receiving. During the BlueSpike saga, Chris could not work out whether he wanted to be with a woman who was in love with him or getting his PSN account back.
• Anticipation: Despite viewing various major events as inevitable (finding true love, Sonichu becoming a media empire) Chris cannot muster the will to put any work into either, instead letting anxiety consume him.
• Humor: Chris cannot take a joke, nor can he make fun of himself. Rare attempts at self-critical humor in the comic are padded with displays of god-like power to render them moot. When he does use humor to counter a threat, he does so by trying to mock or insult the threat.
• Identification: Chris admires few people and those he does he admires for narrow traits rather than the person as a whole. He instead considers himself a paragon: not to be modified, but emulated by others.
• Introjection: Chris rarely adopts a concept so wholly that it becomes part of his being. The few times he has done so, he is more motivated by the potential the concept or object has to provide him with excuses than he is with the concept itself. For example, Chris cherishes his identity as a high-functioning autistic and all the excuses his status gives him, but refuses to learn anything about the condition. He has open disdain for LGBT culture, but enjoys the support he gets online when he discusses his "discrimination" as a tomgirl.
• Sublimation: Chris rarely rechannels negative energy in a positive fashion. Negative reinforcement generally causes him to shut down and positive reinforcement (like online girlfriends offering affection for various acts) have no psychological inertia. For example, Chris became cleaner, calmer and less spastic with Ivy's encouragement only to slide back down the moment the relationship ended.
• Thought Suppression: As is common in autistics, Chris rarely suppresses what's on his mind to suit social norms. Instead he expects society to adapt to his demands.

History of medication

According to the 2004 psychiatric survey, at some point in his life, Chris was prescribed the antidepressant medication Imipramine. It's not clear when he was prescribed the drug, or for what exact reason, but it was likely sometime in his younger days. Since the advent of more sophisticated antidepressant drugs like Prozac in the late 1980s, the use of Imipramine to treat depression and other psychological disorders has grown less and less common. More recently, however, Imipramine has commonly been prescribed to patients who have urinary problems.

The same document notes that, as of 2004, Chris had been taking the antidepressant Paxil for four years in order to deal with his stress and anger issues. One of the survey's recommendations was an increase in his daily dose of the drug, but it's not clear how long Chris continued taking it afterward.

Chris continues to take antidepressant medication to this day. In Mailbag #13, he explained that he switched to a different medication in order to avoid some of Paxil's side effects, the ones that "only hit adults." However, in his eleventh call with Kacey Chris said that the drug he switched to from Paxil is Paroxetine. Since Paxil is just one of Paroxetine's several trade names and not a different drug, it seems that Chris is still taking the same medication only under a different title.

Chris didn't specify what side effects Paxil caused him, but his language suggests some sort of a sexual dysfunction. Paxil may have been making it difficult for Chris to achieve orgasm; if his current antidepressant is still Paroxetine (or at least another SSRI) then it might explain why it took him around twenty minutes in order to climax when he cybered with BlueSpike.

Another of Paxil's more notable side effects is the potential for substantial weight gain, which couldn't have mixed well with Chris's diet and sedentary lifestyle.

Past instances of professional help (or lack thereof)

Nathanael Greene Elementary School

When Chris attended NGES, there was an incident where he was supposedly restrained or molested, depending on whom you talk to. It has been claimed by Bob that they wanted to send Chris to an "institution". What they meant was likely a place where Chris could see professionals who could work with Chris's problems as opposed to teachers who deal with normal students. What Bob probably thought is he would be sent to a nuthouse. Either way, something that could have done some good in his early development didn't happen.

Mary Lee Walsh

Although not a mental health professional, Walsh's experience at dealing with a large body of students and their individual problems makes her experienced on the issue. She has also written a book on coping with college life. Despite her advanced knowledge and experience, Chris chose the better path of cursing her and putting her low on his Scale of Respect.

Psychiatric Papers

Following his outburst towards Mary Lee Walsh, Chris was sent to a psychiatrist for evaluation. The resulting papers easily show a number of things, most of which can easily be told by trolls themselves. Another interesting thing is that, despite the encouragement to follow up on this, Chris's parents refuse to on the account of insurance problems.

The documents note that at some point, Chris received psychiatric evaluation at the Center for Learning Potential in Mt. Sidney, Virginia (a small town northwest of his home in Charlottesville). They don't say when this took place, but given the location of the Center, it was likely either during his elementary school years or sometime after the Chandlers moved back to Charlottesville in the summer of 2000.

Anger management and the shrink

Following his encounter with Mary Lee Walsh, he was ordered to take anger management classes. The only thing that seemed to arise from it were complaints that he had to pay to see a professional...and...well...he still can't control his anger. There's very little information about his anger management classes, as it occurred in the pre-ED days, and is only mentioned in a few old documents of Chris' that have surfaced. He's never really talked about it since, and it's never come up in comics or videos.

Rocky Shoemaker

Religious institutions are fond of providing counseling services to all members of their congregations, sometimes unwisely as a method of hammering them with doctrine to solve their problems, sometimes beneficially by giving them a person to talk to for free and referring them to a real professional if necessary. Whether Rocky is generally beneficial or harmful to the people who come to see her is uncertain, but she is certainly admired for her past work. What remains certain is that she is probably not the best solution for Chris because...

1. He considers her to be a perfect, all-encompassing alternative to a qualified professional.
2. He barely listens to anything she fucking says.
3. He misconstrues everything she says, accepting advice he likes and ignoring advice he doesn't like.

She has told him about his past habits being unacceptable, but Chris remains as determined as ever to be a total idiot. Although she has put a stop to trolling plans, his behavior remains the same. She also told him it would be a good idea to stop posting videos on YouTube, since they only feed the trolls.

That hasn't really worked out now, has it?

About the only thing that he has taken away from their sessions is that he can fuck someone before they are married.

Relationship Management Classes

Chris mentioned in a video from October 2009 and told Kacey in a phone call in September 2009 that he had been taking some relationship management classes. Undoubtedly, Chris felt that he had found some form of real life date ed. In reality, Chris came upon a class meant for couples who wanted to manage their already established relationships as opposed to finding out how to get into one.

White knights and trolls

It doesn't take a lot of effort for anyone to see that Chris has no common sense. Likewise, common sense being rather common, white knights and trolls alike are often quick to point out that most of what Chris does is stupid/insane/socially abnormal. He doesn't fucking get it. As a result, many trolls have become armchair psychologists pondering why exactly he doesn't get it. It doesn't matter what they come up with, the result is always that Chris doesn't listen to anyone if he doesn't want to. Some white knights like Vivian Gee have gotten so fed up with Chris's adamant refusal to improve himself or heed advice that they've moved on to becoming professional trolls.

See also

• Autism
• Autism papers
• Asperger's syndrome
• Dreams