According to Wikipedia Ron Luce has both a bachelors and masters degree in psychology. Now, I have absolutely no training in that field (although I’ve been to my fair share of counseling because of Teen Mania’s influence) but why would he name his ministry Teen Mania? Mania is not a desirable psychological condition, and as someone with his education, he would be very familiar with the concept of mania.
The Counseling Resource website provides information on mania and even has a quiz to help you determine if you are manic. I took this quiz while trying to answer from my Teen Mania intern state of mind – and I scored severely manic! I find it quite humorous that “having grandiose plans for the world” is one of the symptoms of mania. Is there an intern who doesn’t have grandiose plans? It would be really interesting to see a psychology study on current interns.
Symptoms of a manic episode include:
- inflated self-esteem or grandiosity
- decreased need for sleep (e.g., feels rested after only 3 hours of sleep)
- more talkative than usual or pressure to keep talking
- flight of ideas, or subjective experience that thoughts are racing
- distractibility (i.e., attention too easily drawn to unimportant or irrelevant external stimuli)
- increase in goal-directed activity (either socially, at work or school, or sexually) or psychomotor agitation
- excessive involvement in pleasurable activities that have a high potential for painful consequences (e.g., engaging in unrestrained buying sprees, sexual indiscretions, or foolish business investments)
Actually, after reading this list, I’m wondering if Ron Luce is manic.
