I don't know what was up with me this morning. I was woken up with a tractor outside my window so I haven't slept well. But while waiting for this tractor to disappear I was doing some thinking.
Some people have heard of body dysmorphic disorder. It is occurs when a person believes their body is different than the way other people see it. While we may see a painfully thin (anorexic) body the person with the disorder sees nothing but fat. Other sufferers undergo dozens of surgeries to try to get their outside to match the image of the inside.
It has been suggested (by Oprah) that Michael Jackson might suffer from this disorder, hence all the facial surgeries.
We also know that as a young child he was pretty famous for singing with his brothers in the Jackson Five. AND he was a famous celebrety throughout his teens. His mother was a JW and Michael went to meetings and even door to door.
This was the pre-1975 days when JWs were told to leave everything behind because the end was coming so soon.
So here we have a kid who is riding the crest of the wave. People are screaming and yelling for him. He is selling millions of albums. He is a millionaire many times over.
What kinds of pressure would have been on him. Going to meetings and hearing them say not to be part of this world, the end is close, buy out the time.... all this crap he hears at the meeting. And he is on the top of his wave and all the time being condemned for his lifestyle. They wouldn't have had to even have those little back room chats with him. Just the literature and the talks would have created such a wide difference between what he was doing and what he was hearing he should be doing.
Let's add a couple of more things into the mix. There is practically no where this teen/young man could go without being mobbed. Screaming adoring fans willing to rip the clothes off your back kinds of faces that won't allow any kind of "normal" life. Heck the idea of changing the way you look would be a bonus if you could walk down the street un-noticed.
So here is a young man, who knows the way he looks draws attention. Tons of it. He know that when he goes to meetings his religion condemns the way he looks, his style of dress, his choice of music to play. In fact they condemn just about everything he does.
I think it would be an easy step to entertain the belief that if he changed the outside maybe he would be OK. (and don't we all know that the WTS is far more interested in the outside than what is on the inside).
And since the outside was never the problem (well maybe a bit but not the main part) it almost seems natural that he would develop body dysmorphic disorder.
OK I wrote the above and then went to find some info. Some info about BDD:
Body Dysmorphic Disorder, (BDD) is listed in the DSM-IV under somatization disorders, but clinically, it seems to have similarities to Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD).
