Aginners

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This cognitive disorder is characterized by a refusal to accept propositions founded in expert knowledge. Those exhibiting this disorder are often embittered individuals with a pronounced tendency to attach inappropriate blame for their personal misery onto authority figures. Their anger and bitterness is typically displaced from the actual root cause of their discontent. "Aginners" lack insight into their own dysfunctions or exhibit denial concerning their emotional dysfunctions.

Aginners are typically passionate and obdurate concerning their mistaken beliefs and inaccurately regard their alternative thinking as indicative of their superior intellect, insight, intuitiveness, or spirituality. In fact, Aginners are typically poorly educated and ill-informed. They exhibit a clear preference for biased information and adopt opinions selected for anti-authoritarian content. Having adopted an ill-informed opinion, Aginners resort to vehement denial of any facts that run counter to their ill-founded beliefs and/or employ illogical arguments to dismiss facts and justify their mistaken beliefs. Aginners commonly resort to blanket ridicule of the experts whose opinion they wish to deny.

Aginners are often socially inadequate and have a history of failed relationships. As with their other cognitive errors, Aginners blame their social difficulties on others, taking no responsibility for their own contribution to relationship difficulties.

Motto: "If an expert states something, I'm against it."

Needless to say, Aginner Syndrome is not listed in the DSM-IV R. The syndrome, as I have encountered it, and as I describe it above most closely resembles Schizotypal Personality Disorder, which is a "pattern of acute discomfort in close relationships, cognitive or perceptual distortions, and eccentricities of behavior." However, Aginners, infuriating though they can be, do not necessarily exhibit overtly bizarre behaviour or suffer discomfort in close relationships. Rather, others may suffer discomfort in contact with their bitterness and cognitive errors and Aginners fail to recognize that their negativity has driven others away.