I have BPD so I understand a little bit having the lows and highs.
It can be an amazing part of your life and then the next moment be almost dibilitating (sp?)
( TFD is sporting this season's finest necropants, Sat 30 May 2009, 4:13, archived)

Borderline Personality Disorder?
I probably have what is known as a Cyclothymic Personality Disorder, but I'm not going to tell people that until I've been properly assessed.

All that happened so far is that I've been given some of the medications used to treat Cyclothymia, but they haven't made any difference.

To me anyway, all that means is that I don't have a biological illness and nothing more. Proving a negative can't be used to proof a positive (i.e. that I definitely have CPD). That would make about sense as the statement, "you have four legs; two eyes; two ears, and don't eat meat. I've proved that you are an elephant; therfore, you are a giraffe".

I need to pester the psych. and ask him PDs of the less well known kind are diagnosed.

What did your undergrad degree focus on; what is mostly art history (love that, did some pre-honours courses at uni) or is there a practical element? I'm not that familiar with the Courtauld Institute (one of my older brother went to the RCA).
( custard, Sat 30 May 2009, 4:28, archived)

Yeah, it's a barrel of laffs.
But I don't have to have meds, apparently it's very tricky with PD people, some need meds, for others, as with me, it's worse than useless.

The Courtauld is awesome www.courtauld.ac.uk it's entirely academic though, no practical art but I do love it in a funny sort of way. What did you do in your art history courses?
( TFD is sporting this season's finest necropants, Sat 30 May 2009, 4:38, archived)

They were quite general, providing an overview of everything from cave paintings to comtemporary stuff
= a grounding for anyone wishing to switch their honours subjects (Scottish unis allow to you make some drastic changes subject wise if you want to; I applied to do English Lit., but I could have ended up with a degree in Art History or Economics or Modern Languages).

It's hard to describe what I like. As with music, I'm a huge fan of anything from the last 100 years and not so keen on the big players like the Renaissance lot (I prefer the earlier Renaissance/pre-Renaissance guys over heavyweights like Raphael etc.; nice technique, but Mossacio is more expressive).

I have a love/hate thing with contemporay art. I can appreciate the aesthetic value of anything (and the finish on professional contemporary art pieces is often extremely good), but I don't like the politics and the patronage and the confusion between subjectivity and objectivity etc. (if someone doesn't like X, then I'm the kind of person that is more interested in finding out why their opinion differs from mine instead of berating them for being ignorant and/or philistines because they don't like this so-called great artwork.)

Could go on forever etc.
( custard, Sat 30 May 2009, 5:00, archived)