Yeah, I have known those types too. I always called them “control freaks”, not sure what the formal medical term would be.
What is gained by having some polysyllables to apply to this creepy person? You want to know in order to feel properly sympathetic and sorry for her because if she has a mental disorder it’s not nice to think of her as a creep? (not as kindhearted as it may look – it reduces her to being a creature incapable of volitional purposeful action, it turns her personality and behavior into symptoms) You want to know in order to know what’s likely to happen next? (the ability of the psychiatric and other related professions to make such predictions lies somewhere between the predicting acumen of sports columnists and that of professional tarot card readers) Or is it just ordinary intellectual curiosity, i.e., “gee, what causes that”? (the psychiatric professions et. al. don’t know that – etiology is still a black box, the psychiatric categories are categories of symptoms that appear to occur as semi-discrete constellations of behavior – what is really going on there and why is something none of us know)
Or, umm…do you want to know in order to get a sense of how to bring a forceful stop to the disturbing behavior, i.e., figure out in the name of what psychosis might she be apprehended by The Men in the White Coats?
In the absence of physical or convincing second-tier data reflecting structural problems of the brain, it’s all opinion, and opinion necessarily linked in my mind in a most nasty fashion to the ongoing politics of locking people up and forcing medication on them for being, in your (or someone’s) opinion, weird.
Got issues?
May I suggest a rant in the Pit regarding your concerns. I’m sorry if you feel that mental health and the behaviors related to disorders of the brain are simply opinions. To claim that psychology is some sort of voodoo or merely entertainment is an unfair analogy. I know of no professional health care practitioner that would claim to be able to predict the specific behavior of individuals.
Psychology is not a hard scientific field in all areas, but it has improved greatly in recent years and does in fact use many scientific means in its practice and applications.
You seems to have a rather harsh attitude in this regard. Most people who seek advice simply want to know what if anything can they expect…is violence a possibility and what can they do to deal with the situation.
Have a nice day. 
Yep. We got issues and we’re political about it.
I may do that on occasion, but I’ll post elsewhere whenever it appears relevant.
Violence is a possibility with any interaction with another person. There’s not much evidence indicating that the likelihood increases markedly if the other person bears a psychiatric diagnostic label, and still less indicating that either mental health professions or anyone else do a particularly useful job of predicting what folks can expect from them. And the “what to do with the situation” overlaps pretty quickly with the “issues” that I “got”, so my post seemed appropriate to this thread.
Have a nice day yourself.
I would find it quite interesting (see how sick I am) to try and muscle inbetween Jenny and Alice every chance I got just to see how mental Jenny would get.
She may have a clinical psychological problem, or it may be just shy of being ‘defined’, but either way it’s her problem and she should be told to take care of it. Once it’s mirrored to her, it’s her RESPONSIBILITY. Perhaps she’ll CHOOSE to work on it.
I am sorry my attempt to find out whether something wrong with this Jenny person ticked you off. Perhaps when there’s a somewhat creepy individual following a dear friend of yours around, you will then understand.
I’m curious about this too. I’m not sure in what ways a “diagnosis” might be helpful, nor do I really think one is possible in this forum. But I do think it’s legitimate to question whether a person’s behavior is within the usual social bounds, and if not, how far outside of the bell curve it lies. I don’t see why anyone would take offense at the question “Is this a serious and known problem/disorder, or is this person just a little clingy?”
Aren’t we allowed to just ask questions out of curiousity anymore? I think the discussion of the value of psych diagnoses is interesting, but belongs in another thread.
One of the reasons I’m curious is because I once dealt with a very extreme person who I can sort of see in your description. I met this woman who was taking over a job I was leaving, and I was supposed to “show her the ropes” before I left. After less than 24 hours of being acquainted, she referred to me in front of others as her “best friend” and became increasingly more intrusive to the point that I couldn’t get her to leave my BED in the evenings so that I could go to sleep.
It was a very odd circumstance, which was one reason that it was so difficult for me. I basically had to tolerate her and try to keep her calm until I could extricate myself. It didn’t work…she ended up in the psych ward and I ended up being interrogated by the police. Very scary.
The real answer, (IMHO) is that if someone makes you uncomfortable with their behavior, and if it seems like it’s escalating it IS “inappropriate behavior.” I hope your friend can get herself away from this young woman gracefully.
L
Not yet. My concern is she might become a stalker and do evil nasty things to Alice.
I hope she’s all right.
I hope Alice is all right, too, btw.
Quite aside from my, umm, hijack (sorry, I carry my soapbox wherever I go, I’m afraid), I think there’s a fundamental right to personal privacy, and even if it is poorly define in the law, violation of it is a real problem with real risks. In my experience (as a social worker for abused elders, actually, but applicable here I suspect) it is difficult to get an Order of Protection against a creepy nonrelative until and unless they inflict actual damages of arrest-worthy calibre. This is unfortunate. But knowing the limits of what the creepy person can do, and at what exact point creepy person crosses over the line and becomes a stalker or assaultive person would seem to be useful and important here.