Abstract

Querulous paranoia was once of considerable clinical and academic interest in psychiatry. Over the last 40 years, however, it has virtually disappeared from the professional landscape. This decline occurred at the very time that a proliferation of complaint organizations and agencies of accountability were drawing more and more people into asserting their individual rights through the pursuit of claims and grievances. Querulous behaviour, as a result, far from declining, is on the increase, bringing with it suffering for the querulous and disruption to the organizations through which they seek their vision of justice. This article examines querulous behaviour in the vexatious litigant and in abnormally persistent complainants and petitioners. The phenomenological and nosological issues are outlined and the risks of the emergence of threatening and violent behaviour is emphasized. Threats should not be ignored, for a variety of reasons. Approaches to managing querulous behaviour in the courts and the complaint organizations are discussed, together with the utility of individual therapy. Querulous behaviour should once more take its place among the legitimate concerns of mental health professionals. Those caught up in a querulous pursuit of their notion of justice are amenable to management that can ameliorate their suffering and reduce the disruption they create.

Table 1. Anomalies found frequently in written communications from the querulous
Form 

• Curious formatting. 
• Many, many pages. 
• Odd or irrelevant attachments—e.g., copies of letters from others and legal decisions, UN Charter on Human Rights etc., all usually, extensively annotated. 
• Multiple methods of emphasis including highlighting (various colours) underlining capitalization.
  
• Repeated use of ‘‘’’, ???, !!!. 
• Numerous foot and marginal notes.

Content 

• Rambling discourse characterized by repetition and a pedantic failure to clarify. 
• Rhetorical questions. 
• Repeated misuse of legal, medical and other technical terms. 
• Referring to self in the third person. 
  I
• nappropriately ingratiating statements. 
• Ultimatums. 
• Threats of violence to self or others. 
• Threats of violence directed at individuals or organizations.

They differed from most controls in pursuing retribution against not only those they believed had injured them initially, but often a range of people who they believed had obstructed their pursuit of justice.Typically they wanted specific individuals dismissed or criminally prosecuted and organizations closed down or made to pay punitive damages. Virtually confined to the unusually persistent was the demand for public recognition not only of the justice of their claims but of their struggle on behalf of the rights of all. They seemed often to see themselves as champions of the common man, whose grievances had transcended the personal to become of national, or even international, import. In short, the unusually persistent were seeking retribution and personal vindication; aims that are incompatible with the objectives, and the powers, of the agencies of accountability to which they brought their complaints.

"Many of the litigants and complainers also attempt on occasion to exhort support from public figures. senior politicians...tend to respond with bland and standard expression of interest...their responses are often treasured by their recipients as clear expressions of support for their cause.

Those who deal with the querulous become used to having these standard letters... waved under their noses as the ultimate proof of the justice of the cause."

The authors describe one case as "a man of destiny fighting forces of national and international corruption" who is "increasingly convinced he is being persecuted and spied upon." He becomes "increasingly fixated on grievance" to where his "pursuit of justice subordinates all other concerns" and "his business begins to fail as his attention moves to grievance," eventually leaving him "alone" and "destitute."

That article is from 2006, but it perfectly describes Taitz and perhaps Strunk in esse. Trust Orly to work that research into her master plot of conspiracy to install Pres. Obama in the Oval Office.

Through a friend on another forum, and it may have been linked to here as well, I would like to draw your attention to this article, which I as a Psych minor found quite interesting.:
"Vexatious litigants and unusually persistent complainants and petitioners: from querulous paranoia to querulous behaviour."

I think I could grow quite fond of that word. And wow! does the description ever fit Orly.

Think of the cognates and derivatives yet to be invented. As a starter, there's querile, quackulous, quer-head, quirther, querwolf, querrules, querulacity, querulee, querulogatories...so many possibilities.

I rather like "quackulous"

Hey!!!

Wow. Someday someone will do a thesis on Orly. She'd once again be famous-ish.

Wow. Someday someone will do a thesis on Orly. She'd once again be famous-ish.