[at-l] Psychopathology of Hiking

[David Addleton]

## Most people consider hiking to be a form of "recreation" that borders on
psychopathology.

Under which rubric would you place hiking qua pathology?

Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition
(DSM-IV) is here

    http://allpsych.com/disorders/dsm.html


And remember the cynical dissembling that must always accompany the
commercial motive, aptly described here
   http://allpsych.com/disorders/dsm.html

I'll start by suggesting Dissociative Fugue [
http://allpsych.com/disorders/dissociative/fugue.html ] ::>
  << The primary feature of this disorder is abrupt travel away from home,
an inability to remember important aspects of one’s life, and the partial or
complete adoption of a new identity. >>
  The fact that its etiology suggests a prior episode of accute stress such
as occurs in wartime or natural disaster fails to account for accute
stresses found in everyday modern life as evidenced by PTSD diagnoses
proliferating among civilians secondary to, for example, motor vehicle
accidents and domestic violence.
   #1 -- abrupt travel away from home always characterizes the hiker's
behavior
   #2 -- an inability to remember important aspects of one's life also
characterizes hiker behavior: many reference the forgetting of day-to-day
life as a major rationale and motive for hiking
   #3 -- Hikers tend to shed their identities in the wilderness and take on
new names; many notice that urban social or economic stratification has no
meaning in the wilderness and the shedding of such identities provides a
commonly reported motivation for hiking

I'm looking for (1) a shrink who will find me appropriately disabled under
this (or another) diagnosis and (2) a lawyer, perhaps from Bender and
Bender, who will assist me in obtaining disability Social Security benefits
so that I can further my ascent into my dissociative fugue (or other
diagnosis) on a full time basis.
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