Oral Sadism and the Vegetarian Personality

Yes, it’s a joke. Oral Sadism and the Veg­e­tar­i­an Per­son­al­i­ty was an arti­cle pub­lished in the Jour­nal of Poly­mor­phous Per­ver­si­ty, which was sort of like Mad Mag­a­zine for men­tal health pro­fes­sion­als. Here’s an excerpt from the arti­cle, sup­pos­ed­ly a direct (but bad­ly mis­trans­lat­ed) quo­ta­tion from some Ger­man-speak­ing author­i­ty:

The man who kills ani­mals for meat gives the pur­sued ani­mal a chance to escape. How more and more sadis­ti­cal­ly cru­el is the non-meat eat­ing man. The keen the­o­reti­cian must him­self this ques­tion deeply ask—What is the like­li­hood that the tran­quil car­rot from its vicious preda­tor suc­cess­ful­ly out­run can?

The arti­cle points out that in para­noid per­son­al­i­ty dis­or­der, there is, by def­i­n­i­tion, per­va­sive and sys­tem­at­ic dis­trust of peo­ple, while veg­e­tar­i­an per­son­al­i­ty dis­or­der involves mis­trust specif­i­cal­ly relat­ed to the con­tent of the din­ner plate:

Indi­vid­ual thinks that there are pieces of dead ani­mals on his plate…. In advanced stages of the dis­or­der, indi­vid­ual sus­pects that there are minus­cule ani­mal by-prod­ucts mixed with his food.

Some of the great­est hits from the jour­nal have been pub­lished in two books: Oral Sadism and the Veg­e­tar­i­an Per­son­al­i­ty and More Oral Sadism and the Veg­e­tar­i­an Per­son­al­i­ty. Enjoy!