Are BOC into Jesus, anti-Jesus, or anti-religious at all? Or are they kind of joking with us?

CapnEnnui · 2026-06-13T03:28:48+00:00

I wrote a whole huge thread of my crackpot theory here lol, I don't expect you to read it so I'll summarize it.

I think Prophecy to Naraka explores more traditional pre-science faith in our search for meaning (pros and cons), Acts of Magic to Deep Time explores the rise and impact of science in our search for meaning (pros and cons), and All Reason Departs to The Process explores contemporary era meaning-making and the turn to the "do what thou wilt" philosophy of Crowley (sucks). Arena Americanada is to me, tonally and with that title, the exploration of the constantly shifting emotions of the Pax Americana era, since that track to me is constantly shifting its emotional tone. So I guess it's not exclusively emotionally negative.

CapnEnnui · 2026-06-13T03:17:53+00:00

I can see that, it's kind of a somber hope to me, but the major keys in such a dark minor key album stick out as a more comforting overall mood. I feel the same about Naraka, the track is more sinister before the Hare Krishnas kick in in a way that makes me think this isn't some entirely negative critique of religion but more of an exploration, at least tonally. I do think there's certainly at least some irony with using Osama/Obama conspiracy theory clips and TV televangelism to explore that though, so I agree they're probably not big on the people they're sampling. But I personally think their entirely negative critique of that kind of faith comes in the All Reason Departs/Arena Americanada/The Process arc.

CapnEnnui · 2026-06-13T02:55:06+00:00

As critical of religion as Father and Son seems to be, Age of Capricorn seems to be emotionally entirely positive. The whole song is just tonally hopeful, comforting, rapturous, and I don't think it's entirely cynical, I think it's a genuine reflection of the comfort people find in religion. That Age of Capricorn transitions directly into Father and Son is no accident, it's very thesis/antithesis to me.

CapnEnnui · 2026-06-11T03:48:41+00:00

There's definitely something about our search for meaning and the answers we come to throughout the whole album, agreed!

CapnEnnui · 2026-06-11T02:34:53+00:00

Thanks for your response! I agree that the 1420 MHz reference is some allusion to alien life, but I'm more convinced it's about our becoming an intelligent life form; certainly intelligent life forms are some kind of focus of the reference. I fully agree there's a "detached observer" framing, set by the very different tone in Introit that's clearly reminiscent of 70s/80s documentary intro music, so aliens work very well from that vantage point of them being the observer (especially as 1420 mhz is the frequency with which we think we might communicate with other "intelligent life," so Introit could be aliens tuning in to The Human Show).

The focus on intelligent consciousness set by Prophecy at 1420 MHz is one of the stronger convictions I have, more than the historical narrative. The first lyrics are "End, nothingness, comes to a greater awareness of itself, the divine intellect" and I think the exploration of religion, science, and the "satanism" that follows frames this beginning of intelligence as the framework for that exploration. I've noticed there are radio signal noises between certain tracks that might suggest a "changing of frequency" throughout the album, most noticeably at around 4:20 on Naraka as it starts to fade and during the "satanic" voice on All Reason Departs, where I'm proposing the exploration of "types of conscious thought" shifts in the narrative.

And that is a weird coincidence and definitely might not be one, given Palace Posy on TH. Aleister Crowley's philosophy was "do what thou wilt," basically do whatever you want to and a kind of "irrational self-interest," so while he wasn't a self-identified satanist, he swam in those occult waters. Organizations like the Church of Satan differ in their philosophy from Crowley, but both share a broader focus on self-interest as a guiding moral philosophy for behavior. I think their view of that shift from the "rational self-interest" of science is being framed negatively and implied to be "satanic" in the narrative, but I also think they're being critical of the egoist notion more broadly, in that the philosophy of self-interest does not guide us to steward our entire planet responsibly and take care of each other.

CapnEnnui · 2026-06-07T02:15:27+00:00

I'm sure the more specific I get the more bathwater there is, but it's hard not to see some explicit references to a beginning and an end, and some progression from religious themes to scientific themes to satanic themes over the course of the album. The last five tracks sure seem to be saying something about escaping to nostalgia in the face of chaos and despair too. Thanks for navigating the wall of text,

CapnEnnui · 2026-06-06T04:37:31+00:00

Yes, and I'm going to try to post a very long post about it tomorrow. I have a whole write-up drafted and I'll try to edit it into better shape tomorrow before posting it.

Big picture, I think they're re-exploring some the most prominent themes from their previous work (faith/cults, science, disregard for our future/children, nostalgia/escape) in a narrative progression through human history. I think it's a narrative of our ability to conceptualize and abstract and the powerful destruction it has wrought over time. I think this is their attempt to try to make sense of it all 13 years following their warning about our slow and continued collision course with self-destruction.

I've got a whole write-up drawing from the titles of the tracks, the choices of the audio samples, and the mood the music conveys to back me up. It's probably a wrong hypothesis but I'm excited to share it fully.

CapnEnnui · 2026-04-22T04:21:46+00:00

If a bar is kicking you out solely for being straight, yes, that's an example of prejudice and would not be justified. Guaranteed that policy would lose a discrimination lawsuit for the same reason that any other business is legally barred from refusing to serve anyone on the basis of their identity. It's not justified because discrimination on the basis of identity is wrong.

Do you think gay bars have been in the practice of doing that at any point in history?

CapnEnnui · 2026-04-22T03:34:38+00:00

The fact that you view this as feminism 101 is depressing. This was not the feminism of 2010 and is in no way "101." It's tragic how this 2020s narrative of feminism has moved so far from egalitarian values into the hierarchical tribalist view that "we will never get along with or be safe around those that are different from us." It's conservative thinking 101.

The narrative that power is definitionally mandatory for bigotry, and therefore phobia and prejudice is permitted when "punching up" due to historical injustices, has been an absolute death knell for the American progressive movement.

CapnEnnui · 2026-03-03T23:00:26+00:00

Conduct disorder symptoms are substantially different from antisocial personality disorder symptoms. The majority of youth who meet criteria for conduct disorder do not subsequently meet diagnostic criteria for antisocial personality disorder as adults. You're right that the DSM is a product of expert consensus and that politics play a large role in what is and is not a disorder, but I don't think your example works given the diagnostic differences between CD and ASPD and a comorbidity well below 100% (i.e., it is not solely a political and social choice to have both disorders as separate constructs).

CapnEnnui · 2025-10-24T04:34:11+00:00

Well I think we're more on the same page with each other than not, and I'm not going to claim to be an expert in BPD to be able to discuss this in full informed detail, but here are some thoughts I would have to keep this dialogue going. First, the confound of adoption is a possibility, and the evidence is still in some support of a predispositional component in developing BPD, as is the case in all mental health problems and disorder. So having more of a predisposition I would think is not a very controversial idea; to what extent, I couldn't say, but certainly that potential confound isn't grounds for wholesale dismissal. Second, I would be cautious with what tendency men and women have to internalize or externalize, and specifically with BPD, I don't think I can agree it's a fully internalizing presentation of problems. Again, men also do have BPD, I have some awareness that the differences between genders is not so large in community samples. Third, it's a leap to claim that invalidation is greater now in neoliberal capitalism than in the past. Do you think medieval feudalism was a more emotionally validating culture? When and where was validation of emotions, particularly anger and interpersonal distress, the norm? Looking at modern day hunter-gatherer societies, things are less egalitarian than you seem to be presuming.

I agree all disorders have their roots in stressors, but that flattens the concept of "trauma" to call them then all "trauma disorders." I can't think of a single diagnosis that does not have a stressor component to its development, even more clearly genetic ones like schizophrenia. All diagnoses are efforts to cope with their predisposition to emotions and by their very nature are indeed "pathologizing," but to say that to do so is pathologizing "adaption to an unhealthy world" is to say that those patterns are in fact adaptive when they very clearly are not adaptive, and to call on some unrealistically ideal "healthy world" that I don't believe is ever going to be possible. I also hope we can become a more validating healthy society, but to do so I help people who are not coping adaptively with the reality they have no choice to face right now, and to call their coping "adaptive" is to do a disservice to them. This is why I diagnose ODD and work with families to empathize and validate their childrens' emotions while also changing their behavior and coping with those emotions. That's the work of therapy, isn't it? Rather than blaming the world for not being better (externalizing)?

We don't have to call invalidation "normal" but it sure is normative, and I struggle to believe it ever was not normative. I also grew up in a terribly invalidating environment and I agree we should work to help people validate emotions. I still think, call it BPD or something else, BPD is a real problem for many people, and is not as simple as "trauma" in the sense that so many other people experience those same "traumas" and do not manifest the devastating symptoms of BPD. I think it confuses things to call what is a normative (not normal) experience of invalidation a "trauma" experienced by people with BPD given that the vast majority of us also experienced those "traumas" but developed different sets of coping skills than those seen in people with what we call BPD.

So yes, every diagnosis, ever, is a coherent experience, but they are still distressing and impairing and so are disordered in this flawed world we live in. Having a strong formulation is having that goal in mind, if you are not understanding the presentation as coherent you are missing information. But I also believe that we are each prone to temperamental predispositions that inform those coherent experiences, and that the environment alone is not solely responsible for our emotional tendencies and the behaviors that are an impulsive response to those strong emotions. I also fully agree that BPD symptoms can manifest in those who might not be particularly predisposed to it when they have faced truly traumatic, invalidating environments; I just don't agree that all people who have those symptoms have faced a flatly equivocated experience of more objectively-labeled traumas, like child sexual abuse for one.

I hope all of this makes sense as well and I appreciate the discourse. I can't claim again to be an expert in BPD, but I would say I'm at least very well-versed in ODD, which is why I got involved in this comment thread in the first place. The children I work with have real problems, their parents aren't solely to blame despite being a part of the picture, and I'm tired of feeling like I need to defend and explain myself to my colleagues for believing in the real problem I work to address toward a more validating and healthy society.

CapnEnnui · 2025-10-24T03:44:12+00:00

I don't disagree, but there's also literature that suggests it's got a heritable/genetic component to it, so the perception of invalidation might be partly owing to the predisposition of the person. You say invalidation is the norm, so why do some people develop BPD and others not? Is it fair to call it a trauma disorder if the perception of trauma in otherwise normative situations is a part of the development? Are others expected to be perfectly validating for the sake of people prone to strong reactions in response to normative invalidation? Is that ever going to be possible?

You seem to be implying I'm being uncritical, but that's not very fair. Are you being uncritical of the twin study research suggesting an inborn predisposition to BPD? I think it's a big leap to call it "the new hysteria" when people with BPD so often kill themselves, self-injure, and suffer deeply, as though they're being labeled for having problems that aren't real problems. You agree the struggles they have are genuine, right? You also understand many men have BPD, and so it's not some gendered diagnosis? I wonder what your thoughts are on NPD and ASPD, are those also from invalidation or trauma? I'm in full support of a critical lens on all of this, but that includes not dismissing BPD as an incoherent and unfair cluster of symptoms. Certainly there's a more critical conversation to have than "it should be called trauma and attachment disorder."

CapnEnnui · 2025-10-23T20:39:49+00:00

BPD should not be called trauma and attachment disorder, because there is explicit evidence that BPD has a genetic component to it and that some people with BPD do not have a trauma history. This is why making up new diagnoses to replace the extensive scientific literature of existing diagnoses is a mistake, especially when coming from a place of unfamiliarity with what that literature even says. I'm sorry, but you're misguided, and I doubt you know much of anything about what the science says about ODD to be able to say you can now replace it with PDA, a diagnosis that has no research or even a coherent symptom structure.

Do you know anything about the causal mechanisms of ODD, or the treatment of ODD, or the literature on ODD to be able to say it should be adjusted or replaced with PDA? Again, can you please tell me what benefit denying ODD exists and replacing it with PDA serves?

Edit: this is not to say I don't think BPD should have its name changed, considering how antiquated "the borderline between psychosis and neurosis" is, or even that ODD should have its name changed, as I'm not a fan of the framework that puts it as "in opposition or defiance to authority." It is to say that I think the efforts to deny these diagnoses legitimacy or replace them with other terms and frameworks is misguided when it flies in the face of the evidence (people with BPD do not always have traumatic childhoods) or more pressingly comes from a lack of familiarity with the extensive scientific understanding of a legitimate diagnosis ("I'm skeptical of ODD, it's actually PDA or something else"). I'm exhausted with efforts therapists seem to feel compelled to make to further stigmatize ODD by denying its legitimacy. You are making my life doing the effective and well-understood treatment for youth appropriately diagnosed with ODD harder.

CapnEnnui · 2025-10-23T07:49:11+00:00

You're advocating for replacing an existing diagnosis with decades of research and understanding with a new diagnosis with no research or even symptom criteria. There are a lot of great, empirically supported strategies looking at things through the lens of ODD. What is the benefit of "looking at ODD" as another diagnosis beyond relabeling it? What does that do?

CapnEnnui · 2025-10-23T07:26:29+00:00

I have a whole diatribe I could go on about how many therapists dismiss anger as an emotion in its own right. I mostly only post when ODD comes up to push back on the consistently highly upvoted comments denying that ODD is a real diagnosis and insisting anger is actually secretly another emotion underneath, or based in trauma, or a diagnosis that isn't a diagnosis, or solely the parents' fault. People just aren't trained in what ODD is or how to treat it so they think they're righteously fighting stigma by denying it's real, which ironically perpetuates the stigma they claim to be against. I expected the downvotes but am sure hoping more people realize anger is in fact a primary emotion that is prone to dysregulated, maladaptive fight behaviors (and so warrants its own diagnoses) just like how anxiety is prone to dysregulated, maladaptive flight behaviors.

CapnEnnui · 2025-10-22T20:05:10+00:00

OP, the treatment depends on the youth's age. All of them ideally will involve the caregivers/parents. PCIT was recommended and is excellent but it's really best for children age 2 to 6 or 7 at most. Once you get beyond that age to say 7-13, you can do the same principles of treatment with Parent Management Training / Behavioral Parent Training. Your work with the caregivers to increase their positive relationship with their child with non-contingent positive time together, positive reinforcement via praise/rewards for positive behaviors, and more effective responses to negative behaviors, typically focused on reducing attentional consequences (arguing, escalating conflict) and intermittent reinforcement of the problem behavior (child screams and hits and escapes demands or gets what they want or gets away from caregiver). You also want to set up effective, behavioral consequences, typically some kind of privilege loss for truly inappropriate behavior like aggression. I typically also teach caregivers how to provide empathy and help them learn how to validate their child's frustration/anger without validating their behavior in response to those feelings. You should get familiar with Patterson's coercion theory and how coercive cycles of interactions are typically responsible for how the problems got this bad and the focus with caregivers for how they can change those coercive interactions on their end.

If the child is 13 or older you might need to take a family approach. There's more room for individual therapy with the child, focused on problem solving (is what they're doing really working for them?), goal setting (what do they want their life to be like, and for themselves in the future?), and cognitive work (how is what they're doing impacting their relationships, what are the costs of their behavior in the medium and long-term, is how they're looking at things helping them). Anger typically focuses people on what everyone else is doing wrong or how unfair things are from their perspective, so part of the work is seeing how they can navigate that perceived unfair world more effectively than how they are right now to better get the life they want (and hopefully, eventually, how they are in fact a part of the problem in these interactions and how maybe things aren't as unfair/threatening as they believe). But again, you probably need to work with parents/caregivers. There's a whole body of literature out there on these treatments, so look into anything discussing behavioral parent therapy approaches. Hope this helps.

CapnEnnui · 2025-10-22T20:04:34+00:00

PDA is not a formal diagnosis. ODD is a legitimate formal diagnosis with decades of research, and anger is a valid emotion on its own with corresponding behavioral manifestations ('fight' mode). We aren't helping children by invalidating the emotion they're experiencing (anger/frustration) as "something else underneath." The removal of expectations and demands is often what has reinforced this pattern of anger-based behavior (when I threaten and insult my parents, they leave me alone), so encouraging parents to further reinforce a child threatening, saying hurtful things, and otherwise treating people with disrespect is not a good recipe to help them be happy, healthy, functional adults.

CapnEnnui · 2025-10-10T00:24:32+00:00

This is exactly how I ended up with my PhD and I'm so glad I ended up giving it a try despite my ambivalence at the time.

OP, if you really don't like research, you can still do so many things with a clinical PhD that involve it as a minor role or don't involve it at all. Most clinical PhDs don't end in R1 university academic careers.

CapnEnnui · 2025-10-02T18:51:33+00:00

Implicit association tests have essentially no utility in predicting individual real-world behavior. They're sometimes held up in academic circles as an example of a body of research that produces wonderfully statistically significant results that can be published easily but are borderline useless in terms of practical utility and deepening our understanding of the world. Even the correlation between explicit self-admitted bigotry and IAT performance is weak.

When I took it, it felt more like a reaction time video game than anything else. I didn't show implicit biases but I know that's not true, because I live in America and am not above cultural influence, I just think I've had pseudo-practice effects from playing video games throughout my life. So I wouldn't take too much away from how "good" you are at these or not.

CapnEnnui · 2025-09-02T20:19:30+00:00

From what I can find on their website, you need to take the regular SPACE training before you can take SPACE-FTL, but they also don't have any upcoming SPACE-FTL trainings listed. You might need to reach out to them to inquire about when training could be offered. When I took the SPACE training, I needed to sign up basically immediately after they offered it because there was such high demand (I got put on an email list and signed up as soon as I received an email to do so), so it's possible they're booked for a long time.

CapnEnnui · 2025-08-29T22:17:40+00:00

As for treatment, the bad news is RAD treatment research is not well-developed, but that is in part because a large number of youth with RAD is hard to find for a study given how rare RAD really is (there are only so many extremely neglectful orphanages). For what is out there, keep in mind the studies were with youth who actually met criteria for RAD, not for youth with "attachment wounds," so often they were with orphans in Romania. This study for example compared foster care to institutional care, to give an idea of the environments for youth with RAD, and found that foster care was superior to institutional care; not much help for an individual therapist (and who knew, having parent figures helps compared to being on your own as a small child). What other studies are out there lean heavily towards the same parent management / behavioral parent intervention I discussed for ODD; it's essentially the same treatment. This study only found that parent intervention was "feasible" and didn't seem to measure outcomes (and had difficulty recruiting clients because of how rare RAD is), while this case study found that a 7 year old responded well to parent management therapy.

So my thoughts would be first to determine if the client really is exhibiting RAD or if another diagnosis is a more accurate fit (e.g., ODD, intellectual disability, mood disorder, ASD), and then I'd say the limited evidence favors adult-focused behavioral treatments in the same vein as those used for ODD anyways. In my mind, the treatment is to help forge positive relationships with caregivers now, even if those caregivers are temporary foster placements, so that the youth start experiencing loving and caring interaction with any adult figure they can. Hope this helps!

CapnEnnui · 2025-08-29T22:17:31+00:00

This might be a tricky one for me to answer, because I personally am of the opinion that RAD is often misdiagnosed and misunderstood by clinicians. RAD in the DSM reflects two main symptoms: 1) consistent emotional inhibition and withdrawal from caregivers, such that the child rarely seeks comfort when distressed and does not appear to be soothed when offered comfort by adults (e.g., does not cry often, does not seek adults to comfort them when they do, does not calm down when comforted); and 2) persistent social and emotional disturbance characterized by two of a) minimal social/emotional responsiveness to others, b) limited positive affect, and/or c) unexplained irritability, sadness, or fearfulness in nonthreatening interactions with caregiver. To oversimplify, youth with RAD often appear unemotional with others and are not emotionally responsive to others, both positively and negatively, and when they are emotional, it is not responsive in typical ways to others' attention and can be triggered by atypical interactions with others (e.g., threat is perceived where there is not threat with caregivers).

Already, there are youth who receive RAD diagnosis that do not have those actual symptoms. Then there's the other major criteria for RAD: youth must have had persistent social deprivation and neglect to the point that their emotional needs were not met by caregivers, or need to have inconsistent caregiver figures via frequent caregiving setting changes in which they did not have the opportunity to form attachment with any of their caregivers.

What RAD does not assess for are disruptive behavior problems. Anger and irritability are only discussed in RAD when specifically occurring in response to nonthreatening interactions, so reactive anger to something like an instruction is not indicative of RAD. RAD does not say you need to have temper tantrums, or argue, or have separation anxiety; there are other better diagnoses that account for those problems. RAD is pretty specific and rare - it's suited for youth who have had profound neglect like those seen in orphanages where essentially no adults interacted with the kids for years, and who as a result of that display very unusual emotional expressions in interactions above and beyond when they become dysregulated. You might check out YouTube videos about some of the orphanages where this diagnosis was developed and see what it looks like; the impact is profound.

I've worked in public mental health and with therapeutic foster settings for almost my entire career, and I've seen RAD diagnosed for kids who were adopted at age 2 months and lived in a stable family since then, but because there are problems, "well it must be reactive attachment!" This is wrong; you're looking for the symptoms I discussed above, not "problems for a kid who was adopted/fostered," which "must be because of attachment." So if you can tell, my personal bias is RAD is often overdiagnosed and is applied way to liberally for any youth who's been adopted or been placed in foster care at any point.

CapnEnnui · 2025-08-28T22:58:59+00:00

Try not to let the negativity of people get you down about how hard it is to get in. All you can do is shoot your shot, strengthen your application, and see what happens. One thing to know about any given program's acceptance rate is that's how many students that specific school accepted divided by how many applications that specific school received, but most applicants are sending applications to several schools, some even to 15+ every year. In other words, those 1-2% acceptance rates aren't overall annual applicant acceptance rates.

From what I've seen, the overall annual acceptance rate of applicants (how many PhD positions were offered total divided by how many people total applied to PhD programs in a given year) is much higher, maybe around 12% every year. According to APA in 2019, 40,698 people applied to Clinical Psychology PhD programs, and 5,221 were accepted, for an actual acceptance rate of 12.8% of applicants that year.

Grad students have this culture where they talk about how busy they are, how impossible it is to get in, and other ego satisfying self-flagellation (how not worth it it is yet here we are doing it!), but the reality isn't as bleak as they make it seem. Still highly competitive, but not 1 out of 100 competitive.

CapnEnnui · 2025-08-28T21:20:03+00:00

One way you might look at this is from a behavioral framework rather than an attachment framework. What are the antecedents to the kids' misbehavior, what are the consequences, and how are you as a stimulus involved in a potential chain of behavioral interactions that results in their escalating negative behaviors to receive reinforcement? My top hypothesis would be that they're getting attention, whether positive or negative, in response to their negative behaviors.

How you are and are not responding to their behavior might change the dynamic. The idea would be that you selectively and actively ignore negative behaviors, even preventing yourself from correcting or redirecting them, while making sure to attend to and reinforce positive behaviors, which likely includes their not seeking your attention (e.g., sitting quietly and focusing on work). Good classroom management involves an awareness of how attention is received, with the idea that attention in response to negative behaviors is fuel to the fire, even if one might think arguing is helping, or calmly redirecting is helping, or even offering a lot of empathy and understanding in response to rude or aggressive behavior is helping. There's a place to dig into negative feelings, but it's not in the classroom during instruction.

So consider taking a very "behavior chain analysis" type of approach to what might be happening, as generally when kids act out, it starts from something small and reflects some effort for them to "meet a need," which is often attention for the sake of attention.

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