“Aspire to be like Mt. Fuji, with such a
broad and solid foundation that the strongest earthquake cannot move
you, and so tall that the greatest enterprises of common men seem
insignificant from your lofty perspective. With your mind as high as
Mt Fuji you can see all things clearly. And you can see all the
forces that shape events; not just the things happening near to
you.”
Miyamoto Musashi
The book you hold in your hand may be the most
important book you will ever read; in fact, it will be. No matter who you
are, what your status in life, what your age or sex or nationality or ethnic
background, you will, at some point in your life, feel the touch or
relentless grip of the cold hand of Evil. Bad things happen to good people,
that’s a fact.
What is evil?
Historically, the question of evil has been a
theological one. Generations of theological apologists have written entire
libraries of books in an attempt to certify the existence of a Good God that
created an imperfect world. Saint Augustine distinguished between two forms
of evil: “moral evil”, the evil humans do, by choice, knowing that they are
doing wrong; and “natural evil”, the bad things that just happen - the
storm, the flood, volcanic eruptions, fatal disease.
And then, there is what Andrew Lobaczewski calls
Macro-social Evil: large
scale evil that overtakes whole societies and nations, and has done so again
and again since time immemorial. The history of mankind, when considered
objectively, is a terrible thing.
Death and destruction come to all, both rich and poor, free and slave, young
and old, good and evil, with an arbitrariness and insouciance that, when
contemplated even momentarily, can destroy a normal person’s ability to
function.
Over and over again, man has seen his fields and cattle laid waste by
drought and disease, his loved ones tormented and decimated by illness or
human cruelty, his life’s work reduced to nothing in an instant by events
over which he has no control at all.
The study of history through its various disciplines offers a view of
mankind that is almost insupportable. The rapacious movements of hungry
tribes, invading and conquering and destroying in the darkness of
prehistory; the barbarian invaders of the civilized world during medieval
times, the bloodbaths of the crusades of Catholic Europe against the
infidels of the Middle East and then the “infidels” who were their own
brothers: the stalking noonday terror of
the Inquisition where martyrs
quenched the flames with their blood. Then, there is the raging holocaust of
modern genocide; wars, famine, and pestilence striding across the globe in
hundred league boots; and never more frightening than today.
All of these things produce an intolerable sense of indefensibility against
what Mircea Eliade calls the Terror of History.
There are those who will say that now this is all past; mankind has entered
a new phase; science and technology have brought us to the brink of ending
all this suffering. Many people believe that man is evolving; society is
evolving; and that we now have control over the arbitrary evil of our
environment; or at least we will have it after George Bush and his Neocons
have about 25 years to fight the Endless War against Terror.
Anything that
does not support this idea is reinterpreted or ignored.
Science has given us many wonderful gifts: the space program, laser,
television, penicillin, sulfa-drugs, and a host of other useful developments
which should make our lives more tolerable and fruitful. However, we can
easily see that this is not the case. It it could be said that never before
has man been so precariously poised on the brink of such total destruction.
On a personal level, our lives are steadily deteriorating. The air we
breathe and the water we drink is polluted almost beyond endurance. Our
foods are loaded with substances which contribute very little to nourishment
and may, in fact, be injurious to our health. Stress and tension have become
an accepted part of life and can be shown to have killed more people than
the cigarettes that some people still smoke to relieve it. We swallow
endless quantities of pills to wake up, go to sleep, get the job done, calm
our nerves and make us feel good. The inhabitants of the earth spend more
money on recreational drugs than they spend on housing, clothing, food,
education or any other product or service.
At the social level, hatred, envy, greed and strife multiply exponentially.
Crime increases faster than the population. Combined with wars,
insurrections, and political purges, multiplied millions of people across
the globe are without adequate food or shelter due to political actions.
And then, of course, drought, famine, plague and
natural disasters still
take an annual toll in lives and suffering. This, too, seems to be
increasing.
When man contemplates history, as it is, he is forced to realize that he is
in the iron grip of an existence that seems to have no real care or concern
for his pain and suffering. Over and over again, the same sufferings fall
upon mankind multiplied millions upon millions of times over millennia. The
totality of human suffering is a dreadful thing. I could write until the end
of the world using oceans of ink and forests of paper and never fully convey
this Terror.
The beast of arbitrary calamity has always been
with us. For as long as human hearts have pumped hot blood through their
too-fragile bodies and glowed with the inexpressible sweetness of life and
yearning for all that is good and right and loving, the sneering, stalking,
drooling and scheming beast of unconscious evil has licked its lips in
anticipation of its next feast of terror and suffering. Since the beginning
of time, this mystery of the estate of man, this Curse of Cain has existed.
And, since the Ancient of Days, the cry has been: My punishment is greater
than I can bear!
It is conjectured that, in ancient times, when man perceived this
intolerable and incomprehensible condition in which he found his existence,
that he created cosmogonies to justify all the cruelties, aberrations, and
tragedies of history. It is true that, man, as a rule and in general, is
powerless against cosmic and geological catastrophes, and it has long been
said that the average man can’t really do anything about military
onslaughts, social injustice, personal and familial misfortunes, and a host
of assaults against his existence too numerous to list.
This is about to change. The book you hold in your hand is going to give you
answers to many of the questions about Evil in our world.
This book is not just about macrosocial evil, it
is also about everyday evil, because, in a very real sense, the two are
inseparable. The long term accumulation of everyday evil always and
inevitably leads to Grand Systemic Evil that destroys more innocent people
than any other phenomenon on this planet.
The book you hold in your hands is also a survival guide. As I said above,
this book will be the most important book you will ever read. Unless, of
course, you are a psychopath.
“What does psychopathy have to do with
personal or social evil?” you may ask.
Absolutely everything. Whether you know it or
not, each and every day your life is touched by the effects of psychopathy
on our world. You are about to learn that even if there isn’t much we can do
about geological and cosmological catastrophe, there is a lot we can do
about social and macrosocial evil, and the very first thing to do is to
learn about it. In the case of psychopathy and its effects on our world,
what you don’t know definitely can and will hurt you.
Nowadays the word “psychopath” generally evokes images of the barely
restrained - yet surprisingly urbane - mad-dog serial killer, Dr. Hannibal
Lecter, of Silence of the Lambs fame. I will admit that this was the image
that came to my mind whenever I heard the word; almost, that is. The big
difference was that I never thought of a psychopath as possibly being so
cultured or so capable of passing as “normal”. But I was wrong, and I was to
learn this lesson quite painfully by direct experience. The exact details
are chronicled elsewhere; what is important is that this experience was
probably one of the most painful and instructive episodes of my life, and it
enabled me to overcome a block in my awareness of the world around me and
those who inhabit it.
Regarding blocks to awareness, I need to state for the record that I have
spent 30 years studying psychology, history, culture, religion, myth and the
so-called paranormal1.
1 I have
never received any academic degrees, so I am not a “professional”, in that
respect.
I also have worked for many years with hypnotherapy -
which gave me a very good mechanical knowledge of how the mind/brain of the
human being operates at very deep levels. But even so, I was still operating
with certain beliefs firmly in place that were shattered by my research into psychopathy. I realized that there was a certain set of ideas that I held
about human beings that were sacrosanct – and false.
I even wrote about this once in the following
way:
…my work has shown me that the vast majority
of people want to do good, to experience good things, think good
thoughts, and make decisions with good results. And they try with all
their might to do so! With the majority of people having this internal
desire, why the Hell isn’t it happening?
I was naïve, I admit. There were many things I
did not know that I have learned since I penned those words. But even at
that time I was aware of how our own minds can be used to deceive us.
Now, what beliefs did I hold that made me a victim of a psychopath? The
first and most obvious one is that I truly believed that deep inside, all
people are basically “good” and that they,
“want to do good, to experience good things,
think good thoughts, and make decisions with good results. And they try
with all their might to do so….”
As it happens, this is not true as I - and
everyone involved in our research group - learned to our sorrow, as they
say. But we also learned to our edification. In order to come to some
understanding of exactly what kind of human being could do the things that
were done to me (and others close to me), and why they might be motivated -
even driven - to behave this way, we began to research the psychology
literature for clues because we needed to understand for our own peace of
mind.
If there is a psychological theory that can explain vicious and harmful
behavior, it helps very much for the victim of such acts to have this
information so that they do not have to spend all their time feeling hurt or
angry. And certainly, if there is a psychological theory that helps a person
to find what kind of words or deeds can bridge the chasm between people, to
heal misunderstandings, that is also a worthy goal. It was from such a
perspective that we began our extensive work on the subjects of narcissism,
which then led to the study of psychopathy.
Of course, we didn’t start out with such any such “diagnosis” or label for
what we were witnessing. We started out with observations and searched the
literature for clues, for profiles, for anything that would help us to
understand the inner world of a human being - actually a group of human
beings - who seemed to be utterly depraved and unlike anything we had ever
encountered before. We found that this kind of human is all too common, and
that, according to some of the latest research, they cause more damage in
human society than any other single so-called “mental illness”.
Martha Stout, who has worked extensively
with victims of psychopaths, writes:
Imagine - if you can - not having a
conscience, none at all, no feelings of guilt or remorse no matter what
you do, no limiting sense of concern for the well-being of strangers,
friends, or even family members. Imagine no struggles with shame, not a
single one in your whole life, no matter what kind of selfish, lazy,
harmful, or immoral action you had taken.
And pretend that the concept of
responsibility is unknown to you, except as a burden others seem to
accept without question, like gullible fool.
Now add to this strange fantasy the ability to conceal from other people
that your psychological makeup is radically different from theirs. Since
everyone simply assumes that conscience is universal among human beings,
hiding the fact that you are conscience-free is nearly effortless.
You are not held back from any of your desires by guilt or shame, and
you are never confronted by others for your cold-bloodedness. The ice
water in your veins is so bizarre, so completely outside of their
personal experience, that they seldom even guess at your condition.
In other words, you are completely free of internal restraints, and your
unhampered liberty to do just as you please, with no pangs of
conscience, is conveniently invisible to the world.
You can do anything at all, and still your strange advantage over the
majority of people, who are kept in line by their consciences will most
likely remain undiscovered.
How will you live your life?
What will you do with your huge and secret advantage, and with the
corresponding handicap of other people (conscience)?
The answer will depend largely on just what your desires happen to be,
because people are not all the same. Even the profoundly unscrupulous
are not all the same. Some people - whether they have a conscience or not
- favor the ease of inertia, while others are filled with dreams and
wild ambitions. Some human beings are brilliant and talented, some are
dull-witted, and most, conscience or not, are somewhere in between.
There are violent people and nonviolent ones, individuals who are
motivated by blood lust and those who have no such appetites. [...]
Provided you are not forcibly stopped, you can do anything at all.
If you are born at the right time, with some access to family fortune,
and you have a special talent for whipping up other people’s hatred and
sense of deprivation, you can arrange to kill large numbers of
unsuspecting people. With enough money, you can accomplish this from far
away, and you can sit back safely and watch in satisfaction. [...]
Crazy and frightening - and real, in about 4 percent of the
population....
The prevalence rate for anorexic eating disorders is estimated a 3.43
percent, deemed to be nearly epidemic, and yet this figure is a fraction
lower than the rate for antisocial personality. The high-profile
disorders classed as schizophrenia occur in only about 1 percent of [the
population] - a mere quarter of the rate of antisocial personality - and
the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say that the rate of
colon cancer in the United States, considered “alarmingly high,” is
about 40 per 100,000 - one hundred times lower than the rate of
antisocial personality.
The high incidence of sociopathy in human society has a profound effect
on the rest of us who must live on this planet, too, even those of us
who have not been clinically traumatized. The individuals who constitute
this 4 percent drain our relationships, our bank accounts, our
accomplishments, our self-esteem, our very peace on earth.
Yet surprisingly, many people know nothing about this disorder, or if
they do, they think only in terms of violent psychopathy - murderers,
serial killers, mass murderers - people who have conspicuously broken
the law many times over, and who, if caught, will be imprisoned, maybe
even put to death by our legal system.
We are not commonly aware of, nor do we usually identify, the larger
number of nonviolent sociopaths among us, people who often are not
blatant lawbreakers, and against whom our formal legal system provides
little defense.
Most of us would not imagine any correspondence between conceiving an
ethnic genocide and, say, guiltlessly lying to one’s boss about a
coworker. But the psychological correspondence is not only there; it is
chilling. Simple and profound, the link is the absence of the inner
mechanism that beats up on us, emotionally speaking, when we make a
choice we view as immoral, unethical, neglectful, or selfish.
Most of us feel mildly guilty if we eat the last piece of cake in the
kitchen, let alone what we would feel if we intentionally and
methodically set about to hurt another person.
Those who have no conscience at all are a group unto themselves, whether
they be homicidal tyrants or merely ruthless social snipers.
The presence or absence of conscience is a deep human division, arguably
more significant than intelligence, race, or even gender.
What differentiates a sociopath who lives off the labors of others from
one who occasionally robs convenience stores, or from one who is a
contemporary robber baron - or what makes the difference between an
ordinary bully and a sociopathic murderer - is nothing more than social
status, drive, intellect, blood lust, or simple opportunity.
What distinguishes all of these people from the rest of us is an utterly
empty hole in the psyche, where there should be the most evolved of all
humanizing functions.2
2 Stout, Martha:
The Sociopath Next Door, Broadway. 2005
We did not have the advantage of Dr. Stout’s
book at the beginning of our research project. We did, of course, have
Robert Hare and Hervey Cleckley and Guggenbuhl-Craig and others. But they
were only approaching the subject of the possibly large numbers of
psychopaths that live among us who never get caught breaking laws, who don’t
murder – or if they do, they don’t get caught – and who still do untold
damage to the lives of family, acquaintances, and strangers.
Most mental health experts, for a very long time, have operated on the
premise that psychopaths come from impoverished backgrounds and have
experienced abuse of one sort or another in childhood, so it is easy to spot
them, or at least, they certainly don’t move in society except as
interlopers. This idea seems to be coming under some serious revision
lately.
As Lobaczewski points out in this book,
there is some confusion between Psychopathy and Antisocial
Personality Disorder and Sociopathy. As Robert Hare points out,
yes, there are many psychopaths who are also “anti-socials”, but there seem
to be far more of them that would never be classified as anti-social or
sociopathic!
In other words, they can be doctors, lawyers, judges,
policemen, congressmen, presidents of corporations that rob from the poor to
give to the rich, and even presidents.
In a recent paper, it is suggested that
psychopathy may exist in ordinary
society in even greater numbers than anyone has thus far considered:
Psychopathy, as originally conceived by
Cleckley (1941), is not limited to engagement in illegal activities, but
rather encompasses such personality characteristics as
manipulative-ness, insincerity, egocentricity, and lack of guilt -
characteristics clearly present in criminals but also in spouses,
parents, bosses, attorneys, politicians, and CEOs, to name but a few. (Bursten,
1973; Stewart, 1991).
Our own examination of the prevalence of psychopathy within a university
population suggested that perhaps 5% or more of this sample might be
deemed psychopathic, although the vast majority of those will be male
(more than 1/10 males versus approximately 1/100 females).
As such, psychopathy may be characterized ... as involving a tendency
towards both dominance and coldness. Wiggins (1995) in summarizing
numerous previous findings... indicates that such individuals are prone
to anger and irritation and are willing to exploit others. They are
arrogant, manipulative, cynical, exhibitionistic, sensation-seeking,
Machiavellian, vindictive, and out for their own gain.
With respect to
their patterns of social exchange (Foa & Foa, 1974), they attribute love
and status to themselves, seeing themselves as highly worthy and
important, but prescribe neither love nor status to others, seeing them
as unworthy and insignificant. This characterization is clearly
consistent with the essence of psychopathy as commonly described.
The present investigation sought to answer some basic questions
regarding the construct of psychopathy in non forensic settings... In so
doing we have returned to Cleckley’s (1941) original emphasis on
psychopathy as a personality style not only among criminals, but also
among successful individuals within the community.
What is clear from our findings is that,
(a) psychopathy measures have
converged on a prototype of psychopathy that involves a combination of
dominant and cold interpersonal characteristics;
(b) psychopathy does
occur in the community and at what might be a higher than expected rate;
and
(c) psychopathy appears to have little overlap with personality
disorders aside from Antisocial Personality Disorder. ...
Clearly, where much more work is needed is in understanding what factors
differentiate the abiding (although perhaps not moral-abiding)
psychopath from the law-breaking psychopath; such research surely needs
to make greater use of non forensic samples than has been customary in
the past.3
3 Salekin, Trobst,
Krioukova: (2001) “Construct Validity of Psychopathy in a Community Sample:
A Nomological Net Approach” in Journal of Personality Disorders, 15(5),
425-441.
Lobaczewski discusses the fact that there are
different types of psychopaths.
One type, in particular, is the most deadly of all: the
Essential
Psychopath. He doesn’t give us a “checklist” but rather discusses what is
inside the psychopath. His description meshes very well with items in the
paper quoted above.
Martha Stout also discusses the fact that psychopaths, like anyone else, are
born with different basic likes and dislikes and desires, which is why some
of them are doctors and presidents and others are petty thieves or rapists.
“Likeable”, “Charming”, “Intelligent”, “Alert”, “Impressive”,
“Confidence-inspiring,” and “A great success with the ladies”. This is how
Hervey Cleckley described most of his subjects in
The Mask of
Sanity. It
seems that, in spite of the fact that their actions prove them to be
“irresponsible” and “self-destructive”, psychopaths seem to have in
abundance the very traits most desired by normal persons. The smooth
self-assurance acts as an almost supernatural magnet to normal people who
have to read self-help books or go to counseling to be able to interact with
others in an untroubled way. The psychopath, on the contrary, never has any
neuroses, no self-doubts, never experiences angst, and is what “normal”
people seek to be. What’s more, even if they aren’t that attractive, they
are “babe magnets”.
Cleckley’s seminal hypothesis is that the psychopath suffers from profound
and incurable affective deficit. If he really feels anything at all, they
are emotions of only the shallowest kind. He is able to do whatever he
wants, based on whatever whim strikes him, because consequences that would
fill the ordinary man with shame, self-loathing, and embarrassment simply do
not affect the psychopath at all. What to others would be a horror or a
disaster is to him merely a fleeting inconvenience.
Cleckley posits that psychopathy is quite common in the community at large.
His cases include examples of psychopaths who generally function normally in
the community as businessmen, doctors, and even psychiatrists. Nowadays,
some of the more astute researchers see criminal psychopathy - often
referred to as anti-social personality disorder - as an extreme of a
particular personality type. I think it is more helpful to characterize
criminal psychopaths as “unsuccessful psychopaths”.
One researcher,
Alan Harrington, goes so far as to say that the psychopath
is the new man being produced by the evolutionary pressures of modern life.
Certainly, there have always been shysters and crooks, but past concern was
focused on ferreting out incompetents rather than psychopaths.
Unfortunately, all that has changed.
We now need to fear the
super-sophisticated modern crook who does know what he is doing ... and does
it so well that no one else knows.
Yes, psychopaths love the business world.
Uninvolved with others, he coolly saw into
their fears and desires, and maneuvered them as he wished. Such a man
might not, after all, be doomed to a life of scrapes and escapades
ending ignominiously in the jailhouse. Instead of murdering others, he
might become a corporate raider and murder companies, firing people
instead of killing them, and chopping up their functions rather than
their bodies.
[…T]he consequences to the average citizen from business crimes are
staggering. As criminologist Georgette Bennett says,
“They account for nearly 30% of case
filings in U.S. District Courts - more than any other category of
crime. The combined burglary, mugging and other property losses
induced by the country’s street punks come to about $4 billion a
year. However, the seemingly upstanding citizens in our corporate
board rooms and the humble clerks in our retail stores bilk us out
of between $40 and $200 billion a year.”
Concern here is that the costume for the new
masked sanity of a psychopath is just as likely to be a three-piece suit
as a ski mask and a gun. As Harrington says,
“We also have the psychopath in
respectable circles, no longer assumed to be a loser.”
He quotes William Krasner as saying,
“They - psychopath and part psychopath -
do well in the more unscrupulous types of sales work, because they
take such delight in ‘putting it over on them’, getting away with it
- and have so little conscience about defrauding their customers.”
Our society is fast becoming more
materialistic, and success at any cost is the credo of many businessmen.
The typical psychopath thrives in this kind of environment and is seen
as a business “hero”.4
4 Ken
Magid and Carole McKelvey: The Psychopaths Favorite Playground: Business
Relationships.
The study of “ambulatory” psychopaths - what we
call “The Garden Variety Psychopath” - has, however, hardly begun.
Very little is known about subcriminal
psychopathy. Some researchers have begun to seriously consider the idea that
it is important to study psychopathy not as a pathological category but as a
general personality trait in the community at large. In other words,
psychopathy is being recognized as a more or less a different type of human.
Hervey Cleckly actually comes very close to suggesting that psychopaths are
human in every respect - but that they lack a soul. This lack of “soul
quality” makes them very efficient “machines”.
They can write scholarly
works, imitate the words of emotion, but over time, it becomes clear that
their words do not match their actions. They are the type of person who can
claim that they are devastated by grief who then attend a party “to forget”.
The problem is: they really do forget.
Being very efficient machines, like a computer, they are able to execute
very complex routines designed to elicit from others support for what they
want. In this way, many psychopaths are able to reach very high positions in
life. It is only over time that their associates become aware of the fact
that their climb up the ladder of success is predicated on violating the
rights of others.
“Even when they are indifferent to the
rights of their associates, they are often able to inspire feelings of
trust and confidence.”
The psychopath recognizes no flaw in his psyche,
no need for change.
Andrew Lobaczewski addresses the problem of the psychopath and their
extremely significant contribution to our macro-social evils, their ability
to act as the éminence grise behind the very structure of our
society. It is very important to keep in mind that this influence comes from
a relatively small segment of humanity. The other 90-some percent of human
beings are not psychopaths.
But that 90-some percent of normal people know that something is wrong! They
just can’t quite identify it; can’t quite put their finger on it; and
because they can’t, they tend to think that there is nothing they can do
about it, or maybe it is just God punishing people.
What is actually the case is that when that 90-some percent of human beings
fall into a certain state, as Lobaczewski will describe, the psychopaths,
like a virulent pathogen in a body, strike at the weaknesses, and the entire
society is plunged into conditions that always and inevitably lead to horror
and tragedy on a very large scale.
The movie, The Matrix, touched a deep chord in society because it
exemplified this mechanistic trap in which so many people find their lives
enmeshed, and from which they are unable to extricate themselves because
they believe that everyone around them who “looks human” is, in fact, just
like them -emotionally, spiritually, and otherwise.
To give an example of how psychopaths can directly affect society at large:
the “legal argument” as explicated by Robert Canup in his work on the
Socially Adept Psychopath. The legal argument seems to be at the foundation
of our society. We believe that the legal argument is an advanced system of
justice. This is a very cunning trick that has been foisted on normal people
by psychopaths in order to have an advantage over them.
Just think about it for a moment: the legal
argument amounts to little more than the one who is the slickest at using
the structure for convincing a group of people of something, is the one who
is believed. Because this “legal argument” system has been slowly installed
as part of our culture, when it invades our personal lives, we normally do
not recognize it immediately. But here’s how it works.
Human beings have been accustomed to assume that other human beings are - at
the very least - trying to “do right” and “be good” and fair and honest. And
so, very often, we do not take the time to use due diligence in order to
determine if a person who has entered our life is, in fact, a “good person”.
When a conflict ensues, we automatically fall into the legal argument
assumption that in any conflict, one side is partly right one way, and the
other is partly right the other, and that we can form opinions about which
side is mostly right or wrong. Because of our exposure to the “legal
argument” norms, when any dispute arises, we automatically think that the
truth will lie somewhere between two extremes. In this case, application of
a little mathematical logic to the problem of the legal argument might be
helpful.
Let us assume that in a dispute, one side is innocent, honest, and tells the
truth. It is obvious that lying does an innocent person no good; what lie
can he tell? If he is innocent, the only lie he can tell is to falsely
confess “I did it”. But lying is nothing but good for the liar. He can
declare that “I didn’t do it”, and accuse another of doing it, all the while
the innocent person he has accused is saying “I didn’t do it” and is
actually telling the truth.
The truth, when twisted by good liars, can always make an innocent person
look bad, especially if the innocent person is honest and admits his
mistakes.
The basic assumption that the truth lies between the testimony of the two
sides always shifts the advantage to the lying side and away from the side
telling the truth. Under most circumstances, this shift put together with
the fact that the truth is going to also be twisted in such a way as to
bring detriment to the innocent person, results in the advantage always
resting in the hands of liars - psychopaths. Even the simple act of giving
testimony under oath is a useless farce. If a person is a liar, swearing an
oath means nothing to that person. However, swearing an oath acts strongly
on a serious, truthful witness. Again, the advantage is placed on the side
of the liar.
It has often been noted that psychopaths have a distinct advantage over
human beings with conscience and feelings because the psychopath does not
have conscience and feelings. What seems to be so is that conscience and
feelings are related to the abstract concepts of “future” and “others”. It
is “spatio-temporal”.
We can feel fear, sympathy, empathy, sadness,
and so on because we can imagine in an abstract way, the future based on our
own experiences in the past, or even just “concepts of experiences” in
myriad variations. We can “see ourselves” in them even though they are “out
there” and this evokes feelings in us. We can’t do something hurtful because
we can imagine it being done to us and how it would feel. In other words, we
can not only identify with others spatially - so to say - but also
temporally - in time.
The psychopath does not seem to have this capacity.
They are unable to “imagine” in the sense of being able to really connect to
images in a direct “self connecting to another self” sort of way.
Oh, indeed, they can imitate feelings, but the only real feelings they seem
to have - the thing that drives them and causes them to act out different
dramas for the effect - is a sort of “predatorial hunger” for what they
want. That is to say, they “feel” need/want as love, and not having their
needs/wants met is described by them as “not being loved”.
What is more,
this “need/want” perspective posits that only the “hunger” of the psychopath
is valid, and anything, and everything “out there”, outside of the
psychopath, is not real except insofar as it has the capability of being
assimilated to the psychopath as a sort of “food”. “Can it be used or can it
provide something?” is the only issue about which the psychopath seems to be
concerned. All else - all activity - is subsumed to this drive.
In short, the psychopath is a predator.
If we think about the interactions
of predators with their prey in the animal kingdom, we can come to some idea
of what is behind the “mask of sanity” of the psychopath. Just as an animal
predator will adopt all kinds of stealthy functions in order to stalk their
prey, cut them out of the herd, get close to them, and reduce their
resistance, so does the psychopath construct all kinds of elaborate
camouflage composed of words and appearances - lies and manipulations - in
order to “assimilate” their prey.
This leads us to an important question: what does the psychopath really get
from their victims?
It’s easy to see what they are after when they lie and
manipulate for money or material goods or power. But in many instances, such
as love relationships or faked friendships, it is not so easy to see what
the psychopath is after. Without wandering too far afield into spiritual
speculations - a problem Cleckley also faced - we can only say that it seems
to be that the psychopath enjoys making others suffer. Just as normal humans
enjoy seeing other people happy, or doing things that make other people
smile, the psychopath enjoys the exact opposite.
Anyone who has ever observed a cat playing with a mouse before killing and
eating it has probably explained to themselves that the cat is just
“entertained” by the antics of the mouse and is unable to conceive of the
terror and pain being experienced by the mouse. The cat, therefore, is
innocent of any evil intent. The mouse dies, the cat is fed, and that is
nature. Psychopaths don’t generally eat their victims.
Yes, in extreme cases of psychopathy, the entire cat and mouse dynamic is
carried out. Cannibalism has a long history wherein it was assumed that
certain powers of the victim could be assimilated by eating some particular
part of them. But in ordinary life, psychopaths don’t normally go all the
way, so to say. This causes us to look at the cat and mouse scenario again
with different eyes.
Now we ask:
-
Is it too simplistic to think that the
innocent cat is merely entertained by the mouse running about and
frantically trying to escape?
-
Is there something more to this dynamic
than meets the eye?
-
Is there something more than being
“entertained” by the antics of the mouse trying to flee?
-
After all, in terms of evolution, why
would such behavior be hard-wired into the cat?
-
Is the mouse tastier because of the
chemicals of fear that flood his little body?
-
Is a mouse frozen with terror more of a
“gourmet” meal?
This suggests that we ought to revisit our ideas
about psychopaths with a slightly different perspective. One thing we do
know is this: many people who experience interactions with psychopaths and
narcissists report feeling “drained” and confused and often subsequently
experience deteriorating health.
Does this mean that part of the dynamic,
part of the explanation for why psychopaths will pursue “love relationships”
and “friendships” that ostensibly can result in no observable material gain,
is because there is an actual energy consumption?
We do not know the answer to this question. We observe, we theorize, we
speculate and hypothesize. But in the end, only the individual victim can
determine what they have lost in the dynamic - and it is often far more than
material goods. In a certain sense, it seems that psychopaths are soul
eaters or “Psy-chophagic”.
In the past several years, there are many more psychologists and
psychiatrists and other mental health workers beginning to look at these
issues in new ways in response to the questions about the state of our world
and the possibility that there is some essential difference between such
individuals as
George W. Bush and many so-called Neocons, and the rest of
us.
Dr. Stout’s book has one of the longest explanations as to why none of her
examples resemble any actual persons that I have ever read. And then, in a
very early chapter, she describes a “composite” case where the subject spent
his childhood blowing up frogs with fire-crackers. It is widely known that
George W. Bush did this, so one naturally wonders...
In any event, even without Dr. Stout’s work, at the time we were studying
the matter, we realized that what we were learning was very important to
everyone because as the data was assembled, we saw that the clues, the
profiles, revealed that the issues we were facing were faced by everyone at
one time or another, to one extent or another.
We also began to realize that
the profiles that emerged also describe rather accurately many individuals
who seek positions of power in fields of authority, most particularly
politics and commerce. That’s really not so surprising an idea, but it
honestly hadn’t occurred to us until we saw the patterns and recognized them
in the behaviors of numerous historical figures and, lately, including
George W. Bush and members of his administration.
Current day statistics tell us that there are more psychologically sick
people than healthy ones. If you take a sampling of individuals in any given
field, you are likely to find that a significant number of them display
pathological symptoms to one extent or another. Politics is no exception,
and, by its very nature, would tend to attract more of the pathological
“dominator types” than other fields. That is only logical, and we began to
realize that it was not only logical, it was horrifyingly accurate;
horrifying because pathology among people in power can have disastrous
effects on all of the people under the control of such pathological
individuals. And so, we decided to write about this subject and publish it
on the Internet.
As the material went up, letters from our readers began to come in thanking
us for putting a name to what was happening to them in their personal lives
as well as helping them to understand what was happening in a world that
seems to have gone completely mad. We began to think that it was an
epidemic, and, in a certain sense, we were right. If an individual with a
highly contagious illness works in a job that puts them in contact with the
public, an epidemic is the result.
In the same way, if an individual in a
position of political power is a psychopath, he or she can create an
epidemic of psychopathology in people who are not, essentially,
psychopathic.
Our ideas along this line were soon to
receive confirmation from an unexpected source: Andrew Lobaczewski, the author of the book you are about to read.
I received an email as follows:
Dear Ladies and Gentlemen.
I have got your Special Research Project on psychopathy by my computer.
You are doing a most important and valuable work for the future of
nations.[…]
I am a very aged clinical psychologist. Forty years ago I took part in a
secret investigation of the real nature and psy-chopathology of the
macro-social phenomenon called “Communism”. The other researchers were
the scientists of the previous generation who are now passed away.
The profound study of the nature of psychopathy, which played the
essential and inspirational part in this macro-social psychopathologic
phenomenon, and distinguishing it from other mental anomalies, appeared
to be the necessary preparation for understanding the entire nature of
the phenomenon.
The large part of the work, you are doing now, was done in those times.
…
I am able to provide you with a most valuable scientific document,
useful for your purposes. It is my book “Political Ponerology – A
science on the nature of evil adjusted for political purposes”. You may
also find copy of this book in the Library of Congress and in some
university and public libraries in the USA.
Be so kind and contact me so that I may mail a copy to you.
Very truly yours!
Andrew M. Lobaczewski
I promptly wrote a reply saying yes, I would
very much like to read his book. A couple of weeks later the manuscript
arrived in the mail.
As I read, I realized that what I was holding in my hand was essentially a
chronicle of a descent into hell, transformation, and triumphant return to
the world with knowledge of that hell that was priceless for the rest of us,
particularly in this day and time when it seems evident that a similar hell
is enveloping the planet. The risks that were taken by the group of
scientists that did the research on which this book is based are beyond the
comprehension of most of us.
Many of them were young, just starting in their careers when the Nazis began
to stride in their hundred league jackboots across Europe. These researchers
lived through that, and then when the Nazis were driven out and replaced by
the Communists under the heel of Stalin, they faced years of oppression the
likes of which those of us today who are choosing to take a stand against
the Bush Reich cannot even imagine.
But, based on the syndrome that
describes the onset of the disease, it seems that the United States, in
particular, and perhaps the entire world, will soon enter into “bad times”
of such horror and despair that the Holocaust of World War II will seem like
just a practice run.
And so, since they were there, and they lived through it and brought back
information to the rest of us, it may well save our lives to have a map to
guide us in the falling darkness.