accounting is a sign of illness
well, sort of. According to the boston globe (you'll need to register [for free] to access this), Parkinson's patients "tend not to smoke, drink, or seek thrills. They work hard. They show up on time, keep their homes neat, and follow complex medical instructions to the letter. Doctors have noticed for decades that their Parkinson's disease patients often seem to share certain personality traits...If there is a Parkinson's type, it also implies that people with a shortfall of the brain chemical dopamine early in life may have certain personality characteristics, such as risk aversion. Those same people, as they age, may develop Parkinson's. So, complex traits that seem like integral parts of a person's identity might actually stem from the early effects of their disease....(the) list of traits associated with the disease include industriousness, punctuality, orderliness, inflexibility, cautiousness, and lack of novelty-seeking. Other doctors mention drive, ambition, altruism, cleanliness, and a tendency toward obsession with details... ''The feeling in the trenches is that there's definitely a personality," said Dr. Jang-Ho Cha, a neurologist at the Massachusetts General Institute for Neurodegenerative Disease. Parkinson's patients are ''music teachers or accountants or professors or bankers or lawyers."
posted by fend for yourself at 2:28 PM
2 Comments:
Fascinating and frightening. I am wondering then, whether all debilitating major diseases can be tracked back to stock personality tics like these. Say, if you tend to place less importance on details, and like to find yourself in new situations -- does that make you more likely to be the "Alzheimer's Type"? Or something. If they stretched it, they could probably come up with a whole set -- like the zodiac.
*shiver*
Off-topic: I've been meaning to comment here for a while now, and say hello. Yours is the first blog (that I know of, anyway) to link to mine based on The Randomness Of The Internet (and -- hopefully -- the quality of my blog). This, as opposed to all the others so far who have linked to me:
A - because they are my friends
B - because I bribed them
C - because I begged
D - all of the above
I *don't* know you do I? But, I like your blog. And am linking back. :o) Write me backchannel some time; would love to trade stories on The Professional Services Life in NYC. :o)
wow. i think i just realized who you are. hi! write me sometime! i hope you're well! i guess that's enough with the exclamation marks now!
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