It's a rather self explanatory term, used to indicate that something has two distinct and - usually - opposite aspects.
It's also a diagnosis. Since the diagnosis has become popular, it seems that the word itself has suffered rather. I am, I should note, bipolar. What I am not is pathologically bipolar.
The distinction comes - as you must have known to would - in statistics. So we have to start by establishing our sample; the whole planet.
You see, to say that the whole planet is bipolar means more than that the Earth itself has both a North and South end (although being only barely off-spherical, the earth physically speaking does not really have poles... it's only because of the weather and magnetism that we can really identify the points of convergence of positively charged ions and lines of longtitude...
Where was I? Oh yes, the whole planet is bipolar. I refer here, in an intentionally confusing (and, if you think about it, rather inaccurate) manner, to the entire human population (although many of my arguments apply to a diversity of related lifeforms, too).
Humans, bags of meat, salt and water, exist in a state of "Homeostasis", and we are kept in this state by the fact that we die if we leave it. As such, evolution has prolonged the lives of humans that are better at maintaining homeostasis, with the result that we are, on the whole, now very good at it.
The only trouble about homeostasis is that it sounds as though we exist at a comfortable "zero deviation from ideal". In practice, we're almost never actually at zero, but, should we start sprinting away from it in any given direction, the various squidgy bits (technical term) inside us pull the other way with all their might, and we spring back with almost as much speed in the opposite direction, and then back again when our body corrects for that overshoot, in ever decreasing swings of the pendulum until something else sends us rocketing off in a new direction.
This brings me to an interesting point about hormones. They come, broadly speaking, in pairs: uppers and downers. Adrenaline and Noradrenaline (or Epinephrine/Norepinephrin if you really must) are the classic example (and, more to the point, the only two that I can confidently talk about. Physiology and Pharmacology was a LONG time ago). One brings you up and, to make sure that you don't do yourself too much damage, the other one sits in its receptors and says "No. This is an intervention. You're above normal levels, and I'm not leaving until you calm down."
Except without the speaking.
The point - which was supposed to be short - is that the way our bodies are designed means that they fluctuate around the ideal, and never really get time to settle on the ideal before something else comes along and sets us off.
As a result, an awful lot of human - and wider - traits are best defined by spectrums. If you want to be statistical about it - and I really do, because it's much easier than borrowing a psychiatry word that is designed to talk about light - a magical bell curve exists for every single trait. A lot like this:
And, to anyone who wishes to point out that Microsoft Paint has a handy function where you can write words in typeface on your bitmaps, I know. But I'm at the hardcore end of the pro-choice spectrum. Labelled here as "Really odd people".
The point - which is at the end of a very squiggly (another technical term) argument, is that for there to be a normal, there must be an odd and a really odd, and something in between.
In human traits, the things we diagnose are the "really odd", because they're either potentially dangerous (to society and/or an individual) or because we think they're really awesome and people should know that they're fanta-pants-fantastic (e.g. MENSA people).
This is why a lot of modern psychiatry scores people on a scale. Bearing in mind that I am a hypochondriac, I score:
43 on this bipolar depression test online (moderate to severe bipolar depression... but it's an online test, and like British meteorologists post Michael Fish, they tend to overstate. That's what I tell myself, anyway).
63 on the same websites depression test (severe depression).
37 on the Autism Quotient (very high).
Which are all some distance from the maximum, and some distance from the normal. Am I clinically any of these things? No. I am fully capable of carrying on functioning and, as much as I have bad days (emerging from the job centre and finding lying my head under the moving wheel of a passenger bus a comforting mental image), the chances of me harming myself or anyone else intentionally are at virtually nil.
I fall on the skinny-but-not-anorexic end of the bell-curve. (not bodywise. I fall on the healthy-weight-but-could-cut-down-on-the-starbursts end, there). If my traits were an actress, they'd be Cate Blanchett in Notes on a Scandal - thin, but not to such an extent that you wonder if they're skipping meals.
Which brings me - finally - to my ORIGINAL point (as opposed to the many little points that have popped up the whole way through): I am bipolar, autistic, and on occasion depressed, and I wish that psychiatrists could sodding well learn that when they diagnose someone with one of these, they mean that the person is CLINICALLY or PATHOLOGICALLY bipolar, autistic, depressed, etc. ...
BECAUSE WITHOUT THAT, THEY'RE JUST ADJECTIVES.
Adjectives that it is my human right (well... ) to use as appropriate.
And if one more person with a Clinically/Pathologically Bipolar, Paranoid, Depressed, Autistic - or other - friend or relative gets all antsy with me for describing myself as bipolar, paranoid, depressed or autistic, I will ask for their psychiatrist's number and verbally abuse the offending doctor.
Actually I won't because I'm non-confrontational.
To tell the truth, the majority of people who got antsy because I was "misusing" the adjectives were either a) My sister; b) people writing articles with the opposite message to this one; c) fictional characters in TV shows/films or d) my own fictional representations of the public. So it may be that I'm attacking a straw man.
Which is not the point.
