The Secret Conspirators

May 8, 2013 – 4:20 am

The Secret Conspirators

According to Politico, Nanny Reid’s staffers met with Nanny Bloomberg’s staffers recently. Nanny Bloomberg is spending $12 million of his own money to promote gun control. Imagine that, a Democrat spending his own money on a political issue. But I digress.

At any rate, Reid is worried because Bloomberg is producing anti-gun ads targeting Democratic Party senators who voted against gun control recently, upsetting and delaying Obama’s carefully laid plans to disarm the American people and leave them exposed to government tyranny. Government tyranny was the original reason for the Second Amendment, it was not about squirrel hunting. So, Reid wants Democratic senators to vote against their constituents in order to promote Obama’s gun control agenda, and Bloomberg takes a more pure and more destructive philosophical position.

What to make of this? There may be several irrational explanations for the Democrat’s self-destructive behavior, but there is only one rational explanation. Think back. Obama has proven himself to be the world’s greatest gun salesman. Obama deserves the Gun Salesman of the Year Award much more than he deserved the Nobel Peace Prize.

” Gentlemen may cry, “Peace! Peace!” — but there is no peace. The war is actually begun!” – Patrick Henry, March 23, 1775.

Since Obama took office, so many guns and so much ammo has been sold that there are shortages. Now Bloomberg is spending millions of dollars of his own money that will surely increase Republicans’ control of congress.

My thesis is that prominent Democrats have a personality disorder and are psychopaths. The first priority of a psychopath is to take control of your life, for as long as he can convince you to play his game. When you are no longer willing to play his game, the game is over. A second corollary of psychopathy is that psychopaths always fail. Psychopaths always fail after causing as much social and financial damage as possible. There are many examples of psychopathic failure; Hitler, the Soviet Union, Saddam Hussein, Charles Manson, Enron’s Jeff Skilling, Bernie Madoff, the Boards of Directos of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Why do psychopaths always fail? Typically, a psychopath was an abused child or a child who grew up in a dysfunctional environment, but there are other complicating factors. An abused child who becomes a psychopath sees himself/herself as a loser and expects to fail. A psychopath will control the narrative for as long as possible, but when the narrative fails, his only option is to cause as much damage as possible. That is where Obama, Bloomberg, and Reid are at this time.

On a historical basis, we will probably not repeat WWII because of a bunch of nutso psychopaths. The corporate psychopathic battles of the 1990s were fought in corporate boardrooms and court rooms, not in Europe and the South Pacific. The Obama administration is disintegrating before our eyes. There is moderate hope that there will be no further catastrophes, other than the $17 trillion debt and the social problems with which the Democrats/Marxists have saddled us.

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The Pope, the Psychopaths, and a Sense of Humor

March 16, 2013 – 9:09 pm

The Pope, the Psychopaths, and a Sense of Humor

It is slowly beginning to dawn on the citizens of this great Republic that psychopathy is a real concept with real and quite negative effects. President Obama is often portrayed as exhibiting psychopathic traits such as grandiosity, lack of feeling, dishonesty, and parasitism, and that is only what his supporters say of him. For example, the Congressional Black Caucus threatened that Blacks would stay home in the 2012 elections (they didn’t) if Obama did not fulfill his promises concerning improvements in Black employment rates, but Obama was not listening and Black unemployment rates remain at record highs. But that is what psychopaths do. Psychopaths have no feelings for other people, but they are expert at manipulating their victims for their own benefit. Psychopaths have no empathy, no sympathy, no guilt, no remorse, no conscience, and no sense of humor. President Reagan had a great sense of humor, but President Obama does not. Only a trained psychologist can make an official determination of psychopathy, but the warning signs are recognizable and should be taken as a red flag.

Psychopathic behavior is characterized primarily by a “Socially Deviant Lifestyle” (Anti-Social Behavior) and “Aggressive Narcissism.” Psychologists maintain that one percent of the population is psychopathic, but that more intelligent and more cunning psychopaths gravitate toward positions of wealth and power for selfish purposes. Dr. Robert Hare, the originator of the Psychopathy Check List – Revised (PCL-R), puts the number of corporate psychopaths at four percent of corporate executives. Dr. Clive Boddy makes a convincing argument that the 2008 financial meltdown was driven by political and financial psychopaths. with the Boards of Directors of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, with their $10 billion accounting fraud, as prime suspects.

I am a professional engineer, not a professional psychologist, and I am therefore not qualified to determine the psychopathic score for President Obama or for anyone else. On the other hand, many of the items on the PCL-R, such as dishonesty and parasitic lifestyle, are quite direct and leave little room for interpretation. I had the great good fortune to work for four psychopaths early in my career, as confirmed by a professional psychologist. When a person is a two-faced liar and has narcissistic and anti-social characteristics, you should be on the alert and take precautions to protect yourself.

Psychopaths are very careful to present a charismatic front to an audience, regardless of how dishonest and manipulative they are in their personal dealings or dealings with subordinates. There are many domains in which psychopaths operate: political (all dictators), financial (Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac Boards of Directors), corporate (Jeff Skilling, “Chainsaw” Al Dunlap), beneficent (Jim Jones, Jim and Tammy Fay Bakker), and serial-murder (Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy).

It is well to monitor closely those in positions of trust, as we have seen too many politicians, bankers, executives, teachers, and religious figures who have used the authority of their positions to cover for hideous crimes. Now comes Pope Francis I to the head of the Catholic Church, which has been mired in psychopathic abuse and corruption. The new Pope’s first statement to the Cardinals who elected him was, “May God forgive you for what you’ve done.”

That may be the funniest statement ever made by a pope, and is very reassuring of Francis I’s humanity and stability in these parlous times.

By Administrator | Posted in Anti-Social Behavior, Corporate Psychopath, Narcissism, Political Psychopath, Pope Francis I | Tagged , , , , | Comments (1)

Comment by John

March 2, 2013 – 4:32 pm

Comment by John

John comments on the post, “Karl Marx Was a Psychopath,” quoting an earnest love letter from Marx to his wife Jenny von Westphalen. John ends his post with the question:

” … but is this the letter of a psychopath?”

Funny you should ask.

French Doctor Philippe Pinel, over 200 years ago, observed a condition he termed “insane without delirium.” We might currently rephrase that as “insane without overt manifestations.” Dr. Pinel’s observation is the first medical reference to psychopathy of which I am aware. Psychopaths test negative for overt psychotic manifestations, and are quite rational. But personality disorders date back at least to Theophrastus over 2000 years ago. Psychopaths can be utterly charming and charismatic when they want something.

Karl Marx was reputed to be an intelligent man, and I freely concede the point. But, unlike measles, psychopathy takes many forms, from Adolph Hitler to “Chainsaw” Al Dunlap to Casey Anthony. Understanding psychopathy requires looking much deeper than superficial behavior. One love letter does not define or undefine a psychopath.

Psychopaths cultivate an infinitely flexible personality, almost invariably within a single domain, to best meet their own selfish goals. Psychopaths want to control your life, within a domain in which they are experienced and comfortable. Common psychopathic domains include political domains (Hitler), financial domains (Bernie Madoff), corporate domains, (Al Dunlap), serial murder domains (John Wayne Gacy), and personal domains (Casey Anthony). In the extreme, political domains may include mass murder, and political and financial domains are morphing into a single entity, as in the 2008 financial meltdown, to which the psychopathic Boards of Directors of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac contributed so much. Psychopaths generally remain within their own single domain and you will probably never find a political psychopath, such as Karl Marx, committing serial murders, as John Wayne Gacy did. But the effects are equally horrific.

If Marx loved his wife and children so much and he was so intelligent, why did he keep them in poverty? Why did he have an illegitimate son with the house maid, Helen Demuth? Some of Marx’s children died of starvation-induced disease and some committed suicide. Ignoring and destroying conventional values is characteristic of psychopaths, but the social good of doing so escapes me.

By Administrator | Posted in Anti-Social Behavior, History, Political Psychopath | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

Comment by Pablo

February 27, 2013 – 5:52 am

Comment by Pablo

Pablo has a comment on the post “The End of the World. Or Not.” which raises interesting points.

Pablo – ” A few years ago, I read The Sociopath Next Door, by Martha Stout. Very enlightening. She stgsegus (suggests?) that as much as one quarter of the population falls into this category.”

Serious professional psychologists do not agree on all elements of psychopathy or its little brother, sociopathy. Various psychologists who make an effort to distinguish between psychopathy and sociopathy, and there are many of them, often use the two terms interchangeably. After working for four psychopaths early in my career, at a time when psychopathy was little noted, much less well understood, my interests are on psychopaths who kill large numbers of people or who do major damage to our Republic or to our economy.

Generally, about one percent of the population is considered to be psychopathic, but intelligent psychopaths gravitate toward positions of power, wealth, and influence, as in corporations, finance, and politics. Dr. Robert Hare has prepared the Psychopathy Check List – Revised (PCL-R) that is the primary tool for determining psychopathy. Dr. Hare and associates have found that 80% of corporate managers lead exemplary lives, scoring 3 or less on the PCL-R, just as you might expect of a person in a position of trust and responsibility. But 4% of corporate managers score in the psychopathic range (30 or more on the PCL-R) and these are the ones who do the major damage — WorldCom, Enron, the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac Boards of Directors and their $10 billion accounting fraud, Bernie Madoff, etc. The sixteen percent of corporate managers between the exemplary and the psychopathic may well be sociopath, or narcissistic, or anti-social.

I question your reported figure of Dr. Stout’s 25% sociopaths, but the number of people who are sociopaths, or who have narcissistic personality disorders or anti-social personality disorders may be about right.

Pablo – “I often wonder if there’s a genetic component involved.”

Me, too. When I first started writing on this subject in the late 1980s, this was one of my first questions. With the recent development in psychological understanding, I can give you a definite maybe as an answer.

Dr. Hervey Cleckley wrote the first clinical description of psychopathy in 1941, and one of his subjects was a middle child (of three children) in an otherwise solid middle-class family. Where did this psychopathic child come from? According to Dr. Robert Hare, psychopaths often display an immature sawtooth pattern in a brainwave analysis, but parents of psychopaths who are not psychopathic themselves sometimes display the same sawtooth pattern — heredity? Apparently. But a dysfunctional family and child abuse are the most common factor in psychopathy.

Pablo – “Does our soft society protect these people, allowing them to remain in the gene pool, or are they so good at adapting that they’d survive under any circumstances?”

Now you are getting into deep kimchi. The worst thing that the Democratic Party ever did (up to that time) to Blacks and to the republic was to pass LBJ’s War on Poverty in 1965. The War on Poverty cost $6.6 trillion over a thirty-year period, left us with a $6.0 trillion national debt, and was utterly corrupt and wasteful. In 1965, over 80% of Black children lived in a family with two parents. At the end of the War on Poverty in 1995, over two thirds of Black children lived in a single parent household, because the WoP paid mothers and children when there was no male present — the males bailed, massively, leaving broken families. Dysfunctional families are a primary element in psychopathy, When you have functional families, Black or white, psychopathy is minimized, but the incarceration/anti-social rate among Blacks is a direct function of Democratic Party social engineering.

Pablo – “In the end, it doesn’t really matter; the scary thing we need to understand is that the government cannot protect us from them, and THEY ARE EVERYWHERE.”

The government has no interest in protecting us from psychopaths or sociopaths; the government is increasingly driven by psychopaths. Any improvement will come from us.

Dr. Martha Stout has more recently been prominently involved in a put-down of Dr. Kevin Dutton, who professes to have found wisdom and virtue among psychopaths. Dutton is the only person to have made such an observation, and Dutton has allowed himself to be played while interviewing psychopaths.

By Administrator | Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (0)

To Solve the Debt Problem, Let’s Give California Back to Mexico

December 16, 2012 – 1:42 am

To Solve the Debt Problem, Let’s Give California Back to Mexico

WaPoo recently had an interesting, unworkable solution to the problem of the national debt: sell Alaska. Democrats keep producing unworkable solutions to problems that they have created, like the $16 trillion national debt. (LBJ’s War on Poverty – $6 trillion, the Dot.com Bubba Bubble – $3 trillion, the Democrat’s Unaffordable Housing Project – $7 trillion and counting).

The reason the WaPoo idea is unworkable is that it barely touches the national debt. WaPoo’s own estimate for the sale of Alaska is $2.5 trillion, perhaps as much as twice that, but whatever, that is less than the Obama Administration has added to the national debt, and nothing is done to curtail the growth of government. Sale of long-term productive assets to solve Democratic Party incompetence seems not to be a good idea. After the piecemeal sale of all the states, then what? And who would buy Alaska, China?

The only virtue of the WaPoo proposal is that it is much better than the Obama proposal to tax the job producers. A 100% tax on all job producers will finance the current government expenditures for only a matter of days, after which no one will be building factories, buying equipment, or hiring workers. Marxists think that Karl Marx was a great economic thinker, but Marxism has never produced a functional economic system and the current Marxist thinking in the Democratic Party is adding to Marx’s reputation for incompetence and societal destruction, not to mention genocide.

So, what is the solution? Let’s give California back to Mexico. California is becoming increasingly impoverished under the Democratic leadership, and productive individuals are fleeing to other more business-friendly capitalist states. If we retain California, it will be an increasing burden on the rest of the United States of America. As bad as California is, it is better than Mexico, and giving California to Mexico would increase the competence level in both California and Mexico while reducing the burden on the rest of us. Mexico argues that California was stolen, so giving California to Mexico would solve that problem. This is with all due respect with the hard-working, competent Chicanos with whom I have worked and who prefer working in the USA to working in Mexico. Maybe they would then all return to Mexican California.

If giving California to Mexico does not solve our debt crisis, perhaps we can give New York to Puerto Rico, and Chicago to anyone foolish enough to accept it.

By Administrator | Posted in History | Tagged , , | Comments (2)

The End of the World. Or Not.

December 14, 2012 – 2:16 pm

The End of the World. Or Not.

Many years ago when I was a teenager, there was an article in the newspaper about a predicted cosmological event (I do not remember the details) that related to a change of huge importance, up to and including the possible end of the world. When I tried to explain what I had read to some friends, they were singularly unimpressed, and on the appointed day, nothing happened. Except that I was left feeling foolish and gullible, and quite resolved never to be taken in again.

A few years later, my brother had occasion to stop at an isolated farmhouse. The old couple who lived there were glad to visit, and wanted to share their story. It seemed they were members of a small religious community (cult?). A young charismatic leader announced that the end of the world was coming and to survive, they had to sell all their property and move to a mountain in Mexico. The whole crew followed this prophet to Mexico, but this older couple felt they were not ready to pick up roots, and they remained behind, lonely and out of contact. They were glad for my brother’s interest and companionship, brief though it was. As it happened, Young Charisma did not know what the was talking about. Nothing apparently happened, as I think I would have noticed the end of the world. Typical of such prophets and their profits.

So it goes. It is quite a regular event that every few years a messianic leader gets a wild hair and decides that the end of the world is upon us. And then nothing happens.

The latest episode in this ongoing farce is the Maya calendar stone prediction. On December 21, 2012 (or December 23, depending on whom you ask), the end of the world will come (or something else will happen, depending on whom you ask), and the only safe place on earth will be Bugarach, a small village in southwest France, or Mount Rtanj in the Carpathian Mountains (depending on whom you ask).. Why Bugarach, France, or Mount Rtanj you may well ask? Well Bugarach and Mount Rtanj do have magic mountains (depending on whom you ask), so why not? My horseback estimate is that nothing of significance will happen on December 21 or 23, 2012.

But we are not home free. There are much more likely changes coming to our world. The United States of America has elected and re-elected a messianic Marxist psychopath as president. He has announced his intention to change our Constitution, and has systematically violated the law and promoted radical changes to our values. The federal government is now over $16 trillion in debt, with neither plans nor prospects to pay this amount of money.

There is historical precedence for this situation. When the Weimar Republic collapsed, Inflation was astronomical, messianic Hitler came to power, and millions died as Hitler pursued his National Socialist fantasy. The Soviet Union bankrupted itself and killed millions of its own citizens pursuing the messianic Marxist International Socialist fantasy. Even now, Greece, Italy, Spain, Ireland, and Iceland are threatened by their own profligacy. China has myriad problems including overpopulation, pollution, corruption, and overbuilding, and is being propped up by international markets which themselves are becoming quite unstable.

The arguments for identifying Obama as a psychopath are quite clear, though it would take a team of qualified psychologists to make an official determination. Given Obama’s history of concealing the details of his family, his background, his school records, and his basic political beliefs, it is quite unlikely that Obama would submit to such an evaluation.

Note that my only qualification for speculating on someone’s psychopathic state is my personal experience with four psychopaths early in my career — see Memorable SOBs in Inaction above. I began studying psychopathy years before the subject was widely recognized and I was originally interested in solving the management problems presented by psychopaths. Awareness of psychopathy comes in waves, and has led to many insights into the problems associated with psychopathy:

• Mass murderers in the 1970s – Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy

• Corporate psychopaths in the 1990s – WorldCom, Enron

• Finanacial and political psychopaths in the 2000s – Bernie Madoff, Rod Blagojevich, the Boards of Directors of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac during the housing bubble collapse in 2008, the LIBOR scandal this year

Regardless, there are twenty-one basic items, mostly relating to narcissistic and anti-social behaviors, that define psychopathy as in Dr. Robert Hare’s Psychopathy Check List – Revised (PCJ-R). It is self-evident that Obama exhibits many of the traits of a psychopath, including:

Factor 1: Personality “Aggressive narcissism”

• Glibness/superficial charm – fake charisma peculiar to psychopaths, the better to manipulate people
• Grandiose sense of self-worth
• Pathological lying
• Cunning/manipulative
• Lack of remorse or guilt
• Shallow effect (genuine emotion is short-lived and egocentric)
• Callousness; lack of empathy
• Failure to accept responsibility for his own actions – blame George Bush

Factor 2: Case history “Socially deviant lifestyle”.

• Need for stimulation/proneness to boredom – criminal or hazardous behavior for the thrill
• Parasitic lifestyle
• Poor behavioral control
• Lack of realistic long-term goals
• Impulsivity
• Irresponsibility
• Juvenile delinquency
• Early behavior problems
• Revocation of conditional release *

Traits not correlated with either factor

• Promiscuous sexual behavior
• Many short-term (marital) relationships*
• Criminal versatility
• Acquired behavioural sociopathy/sociological conditioning (Item 21: a newly identified trait i.e., a person relying on sociological strategies and tricks to deceive)

* Not obvious for Obama

Apparently scoring on nineteen of twenty-one points relative to psychopathy, Obama is far ahead in the psychopathy sweepstakes compared with any other president of the American Republic.

For over a century, the United States working with its allies has always provided a stabilizing anchor for the rest of the world. This capability is ending, deliberately destroyed by Marxist psychopaths in the Democratic Party. The collapse of American stability is marked by increasingly credible unrest in Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and around the periphery of China.

The good news is that all psychopaths create their own self-inflicted failure, just like Narcissus did. The bad news is that the survivors of psychopathic episodes pay a terrible social and economic cost. Prepare yourself.

By Administrator | Posted in Corporate Psychopath, History, Narcissism, Political Psychopath, SOB Personalities | Tagged , , , , | Comments (1)

Psychopathy 101 – A Practical Guide

November 7, 2012 – 8:16 pm

Psychopathy 101 – A Practical Guide

There are not many psychopaths out there, perhaps one percent of the population according to psychologists, but they sometimes have enormous influence, all bad. The spectrum of psychopathy is quite wide, from Adolph Hitler through Bernie Madoff, Rod Blagojevich, “Chainsaw” Al Dunlap, John Wayne Gacy, and Casey Anthony, all of whom have been professionally assessed as psychopaths, though Hitler seems to be an exceptional case with multiple pathologies. There are criminals out there, and then there are psychopaths. By far, the most economic and social damage is caused by psychopaths, including corporate and political psychopaths in the United States of America.

My interest in psychopathy began early in my career when I worked for two senior military officers and then for two professional corporate managers, all within a ten-year period. I did not know they were psychopaths at the time, I just thought they were crazy: dishonest, abusive, erratic, and having high personnel turnover, though their own managers thought them quite good or at least acceptable. One Army captain and one logistics manager went through personality and career collapse while I knew them. At that time, the concept of psychopathy was not a condition widely recognized by the general population, and the definition of psychopathy has been developed and refined in the intervening years by professional psychologists.

Psychopathy is a complex, multi-dimensional subject, still poorly understood within the general population and not wholly agreed upon among professional psychologists. A sociopath has some similarities to a psychopath, the terms are often used interchangeably, and the definitions vary depending on who is doing the defining. Much of the original .thinking about psychopathy is now being done within the Anglosphere outside the United States. Canadian, British, and Australian psychologists use the term psychopath almost exclusively, and I will follow that practice.

The four psychopaths I worked for each had a signature statement that made an indelible impression and set me off into my lifelong interest in psychopathy and management malfunctions:

Army Captain – “I am a tough son-of-a-bitch” or alternatively, “I am a mean son-of-a-bitch.” He threw temper tantrums and was a pathological liar, but only around subordinates. He had a “nervous breakdown” when the Brigade Commander caught him in a serious operational dishonesty.

Army Lt. Colonel – “I am a tough son-of-a-bitch.” He seriously mishandled a personnel problem, and a good young Lieutenant was sent back to the States, apparently with total amnesia.

Plant Manager – “I have a reputation as a tough little bastard.” Soon after I was hired as Assistant Plant Manager in charge of construction of a new 30,000 SF manufacturing facility, I tried to talk to home office management about problems the Plant Manager was creating. I was told that one of the reasons I was hired was to “keep an eye on” my Plant Manager, who was on serious prescription drugs.

Logistics Manager – His first formal statement to me after I was hired was “I have a reputation as a tough, hard-nosed son-of-a-bitch.” He had a reputation for a violent temper and frequently destroyed property, on one occasion tearing a bolted-on bookcase off the wall of a construction trailer. He had a broken nose, plausibly reported to be from when his father slammed a door in his face when he was six years old. A new senior manager came in and promptly fired the Logistics Manager because of all the problems in the unit.

My interest thoroughly aroused, I began asking questions, and I now have literally many dozens of written and oral reports of managers who talk in this manner, including high-ranking politicians. There appears to be a positive correlation between the “tough SOB” statement and a psychopathic personality. There are professional psychometric gauges of psychopathy, such as Canadian Dr. Robert Hare’s Psychopathy Check List - Revised (PCL-R), but the “tough SOB” statement is common among confirmed psychopaths.

“I am a tough son-of-a-bitch” is a strange and perverse thing for anyone to say. A son is a child, and there is no such thing as a tough child. Nor do psychopaths get tough results, sometimes causing millions or billions of dollars of damages (Enron, WorldCom, Sunbeam Corporation). A record of childhood abuse is often noted in a psychopathic personality, and calling oneself a son-of-a-bitch shows a profound disrespect for the psychopath’s parent, consistent with having an abusing parent. Psychopaths often have a sycophantic relationship with senior management (father figures) while creating huge dollar losses and massive personnel disruption and turnover within their organizations. The psychopath sometimes appears to walk a fine line between keeping good relations with his superiors, while systematically destroying the company. This continues until it is stopped, usually quite abruptly; a psychopath may be transferred or fired outright. I have seen both outcomes.

If psychopathy was not well-known when I first encountered it, professional psychologists are now actively engaged, and are constantly advancing and refining psychological knowledge. Dr. Hare’s PCL-R lists twenty-one items, each graded 0, 1, or 2. A score of 30 or more is in the psychopathic range. Most people score quite low in a rating of psychopathy, that is, most people are normal and may become, quite unsuspectingly, a victim of a psychopath.

The two principal components of psychopathy measured by the PCL-R are narcissism and anti-social behavior. Both factors are of ancient and classical lineage. Narcissus, according to the primary legend, was a very handsome hunter. Nemesis tempted Narcissus to see his reflection in a pool of water, and Narcissus fell in love with his own image. Narcissus was so enthralled with himself that he stayed by the pool gazing at himself until he starved to death. There have been many artistic depictions of Narcissus, some dating to 4000 years ago.

Narcissus

In psychological terms, a narcissist personality is self-absorbed, selfish, and short-sighted. When combined with anti-social behavior, these two factors are the basis for a psychopathic personality. Like Narcissus, psychopaths always fail, usually ending in prison (Bernie Madoff) or dead (Saddam Hussein). But they may cause much trouble and destruction before they fail.

The first recorded instance of anti-social personality disorders dates to the time of Aristotle. Theophrastus was a student and successor of Aristotle. Theophrastus wrote The Characters, a description of thirty trouble-causing personality types, some of whom are now recognized in modern psychology as having personality disorders. Among the types Theophrastus described was a person who borrowed money and refused to pay it back and a person who committed minor theft. We are much advanced in the practice of psychopathy since Theophrastus’ time, and anti-social acts now include mass murder and mass financial fraud. Australian Dr. Clive Boddy has written a plausible article identifying psychopaths as a factor in the 2008 worldwide financial fraud and collapse.

Theophrastus

Concurrent with the increase in the understanding of psychopathy, there was an evolutionary increase in the size and scope of organizations driven by the increase of technology and communications. Bigger and more complicated organizations promoted expression of more complex psychopathic traits. Technology and communications fed both the increase of organizational size and the understanding of the psychopathic traits that resulted from the changes and growth of organizations.

Psychopaths have always been with us, of course, and good and evil have always been universally recognized based on ancient cultural wisdom. It is only recently that understanding of psychology and physiology have identified markers related to psychopathy and other behaviors. For example, infants have immature brain wave patterns, a rapid saw-tooth waveform. Unusually, psychopaths may display a similar pattern. Moreover, parents of psychopaths sometimes display the same pattern, even though the parent exhibits little evidence of psychopathy.

Years ago, I was in a position to present local seminars on the subject based on my experiences early in my career. The only real advice I could give to my audiences was, “If you find yourself working for an SOB, run like hell.” That seemed not to be a positive message, and while I had some extremely interesting conversations, I soon had an opportunity to go back into engineering. Just within the last few years, Dr. Hare co-authored a book, Snakes in Suits, giving case histories of psychopaths causing massive damage to their own organizations. One chapter of Snakes in Suits was devoted to dealing with psychopaths on the job, and Dr. Hare’s ultimate advice, in so many words, was “Run like hell.”

In summary, psychopaths are having a devastating effect on our Republic, its citizens, and their economy. There are psychological tests for psychopathy, but there is insufficient awareness of the factors by which psychopathy is determined, principally narcissistic and ant-social behaviors. Labor unrest and high personnel turnover are frequently indicators of psychopathic management. The “tough SOB” statement is an almost certain practical indicator of psychopathy, but many psychopaths do not make this statement, just as different psychopaths display different behaviors.

By Administrator | Posted in Anti-Social Behavior, Corporate Psychopath, Narcissism, PCL, Political Psychopath | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments (3)

The Regressive Party: The Worst and the Dimmist

October 7, 2012 – 7:25 pm

The Regressive Party: The Worst and the Dimmest

Junius was the pseudonym of a commentator in Great Britain during the 1770s. Junius wrote a series of letters to the press advising British subjects of their rights and attacking politicians who would deprive the British people of those rights. Specifically, Junius employed satire to attack George III’s ministers for corruption, calling them “the best and brightest.” George III and his ministers were under heavy attack from different quarters during this time, including France and the American colonies, with conflict in Ireland. Junius’s attacks were effective then, but you do not see many such satirical attacks in the mainstream media now, regardless of how corrupt the politicians are. Indeed, much of the MSM is a full participant in the corruption.

The best and brightest theme was revived by David Halberstam during the Vietnam War in a book with a similar title, but the book was notably lacking in satire. In fact it was a deadly serious description of how the Democratic Party got us into a land war in Asia, a geopolitical no-no, based on fraudulent information from the executive branch of government. Having gotten us into this ill-conceived war, the Democratic Party was unwilling to prosecute the war to a successful conclusion, left the South Vietnamese with a military capability to defend themselves and with a faithful promise for logistical support for that defense, and then reneged on the promise of support. The South Vietnamese people were betrayed by the government of the United States and fell to a malevolent North Vietnamese regime supported by the Soviet Union and Red China. The cost in lives and treasure was huge and American honor was lost.

This was a shocking betrayal of democratic principles by the Democratic Party. In a major political transition, the betrayal of democratic principles and values came to mark a new era in the evolution of the American Republic, on a par with the collapses of the Federalist Party and of the Whig Party, the rise of the Republican Party, and the rise and fall of the Dixiecrats.

Now Democrats are apt to call themselves “Progressives,” though “Regressive” would be more suitable and more descriptive. The current Regressives favor governance by elitists, exactly what Junius was ridiculing; elitists in the 1770s were as corrupt, ineffective, and destructive as Regressives are now. The Regressive Party favors a system of governance similar to George III or any punk dictator — Hitler, Stalin, Saddam Hussein, Idi Amin — wherein the elitists make the decisions and their subjects are there to pay for the elitists $4 million vacations. Great Britain has subjects, the United States has citizens, and the best and brightest elitists want us to become subjects again — subjects of the worst and dimmest Regressives, not of the British monarchy.

In a similar vein, in the Soviet Union the elitists were known as the nomenklatura, and they had access to dachas, elitist vacation sites, foreign travel, and western goods from special stores just for themselves. Meanwhile, the American citizens get increasing poverty and food stamps. I’m sure that is better than getting starved or shot, like the Kulaks.

If the emergence of the best and brightest occurred during the Vietnam War, the phenomenon was a long time in development. FDR had his “Brain Trust” who served the same purpose and achieved the same results. Under the tender ministrations of Roosevelt’s Brain Trust, the Great Depression extended into the longest and most severe economic downturn in history. During FDR’s Administration, unconstitutional and extra-constitutional programs were advocated and sometimes passed, free trade was restricted, and investment capital was systematically destroyed, as when Roosevelt raised taxes after the 1936 election (not before the election, he was not that stupid), and thus created a major recession within the Great Depression.

The current elitists represent an attempt to impose a corrupt and inefficient oligarchy on our republican form of government. The elitists have created repeated disasters within the economy: Social Security is doomed to bankruptcy, Medicare is doomed to bankruptcy even more rapidly, the misbegotten and corrupt War on Poverty cost $6.6 trillion and left us with a total national debt of $6 trillion (poverty is now greater than at any time since we lost the War on Poverty), Clinton’s Dot.com Bubble collapsed, as all economic bubbles collapse, and the collapse added $3 trillion to the national debt, the Democrats’ Housing Bubble collapse has added another $7 trillion to the national debt and counting, aided by the fear created when a Leftist was nominated and elected to the presidency. The elitists have created serial and growing economic disasters, producing a total national debt of $16 trillion and counting just within the last thirty years, and we have absolutely nothing to show for the wasted money but a pile of IOUs. At the same time, the elitists claim a higher and higher share of the national wealth, while the middle class loses ground and poverty increases. One might get the impression that elitist economists from elitist schools really do not know what they are doing, except they take care of themselves quite well within the economic chaos they create.

It is not as if the American economy is unmanageable. An American grade-B movie actor with grade-A political and economic understanding and a shop keeper’s daughter in London created the greatest economic boom in history, and provoked the self-destruction of the Soviet Union on the side. Reagan is the only American president to have ever earned a degree in economics, and Reagan’s degree was definitely not from Harvard. Neither Prime Minister Thatcher nor President Reagan were elitist, nor did they go to elitist schools. Elitists do not understand how Reagan and Thatcher could be so successful, and are in denial that their success could have any long-term meaning.

Imagine that, our Declaration of Independence and our Constitution of the United States of America intended and created a polity where men were not subject to corrupt and foolish bureaucrats. American citizens were encouraged to rely on their own resources and talents, and corrupt and foolish bureaucrats do not understand (or more likely, fear) the power that belongs to the individual, as acknowledged in the Constitution. Now the bureaucrats try to destroy the citizen’s powers, just as Junius reported.

So, how did the elitists get it so wrong?

About two hundred years ago, French Dr. Philippe Pinel made a major contribution to the study of modern psychology, helping to define the discipline. Among Dr. Pinel’s observations was a condition he identified as “insane without delirium.” This is still a good quick definition of what we now identify as psychopathy.

Within the last few decades, the understanding of modern psyschopathy has expanded exponentially, fleshing out Dr. Pinel’s observation. The increasing incidence and severity of psychopathic expression is a process that can only be described as evolutionary:

• In the 1930s and 1940s, Dr. Hervey Cleckley. author of The Mask of Insanity, defined the modern understanding of psychopathy primarily in terms of the small-town drunks and troublemakers who were his patients.

• In the 1970s, the mass-murdering psychopath (Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy) came to public attention, though Dr. Cleckley had barely acknowledged this possibility.

• In the 1990s, corporate psychopaths (“Chainsaw” Al Dunlap at Sunbeam Corporation, Bernie Ebbers at WorldCom, and Andy Fastow at Enron) created billions of dollars of losses and destroyed thousands of jobs and careers. Following from this, Dr. Robert Hare co-authored Snakes in Suits giving case histories of psychopaths in corporate positions, and offering individuals and corporations advice on how to avoid being ensnared in psychopathic games.

• More recently, Dr. Clive Boddy has created a persuasive argument that financial and political psychopaths were instrumental and prominent in the 2008 financial meltdown.

• There are historical psychopaths (Gilles de Rais. Hitler, Stalin), but in their times there were limited psychological tools for analysis of the phenomenon.

Regressives’ dishonesty and corruption are now approaching a scale similar to the Weimar Republic, never mind George III. The only virtue of psychopaths is that they always fail. Unfortunately, they are costing us trillions of dollars and much heartache while they fail.

How is it that the so-called best and brightest have come to be a bunch of psychopaths? Aye, there’s the rub.

The current definition of psychopathy (or the closely related term sociopathy) describes severe personality disorders wherein the psychopath, having little control of himself, demands control of others. It is amazing and disconcerting that so many are willing to concede control of their own lives to a nobody from nowhere, based on a cultivated, fake charisma.

“Too much, too little, or uneven” childhood discipline is often a factor in the creation of psychopathic personalities, and this is particularly true of corporate and political psychopaths. Too little childhood discipline produces spoiled brats. In my investigations of dysfunctional personalities, I uncovered psychopathic-type personalities both who had been abused as children and who had been spoiled brats. We have parents who fancy themselves elitists and who have children who grow up with the elitist message, who grow up with a sense of superiority and entitlement, who go to elitist schools and are told they are the best and brightest, all very distorting to tender young psyches.

If this closed elitist society is composed of the best and the brightest, then everyone else in flyover country must be less good and less bright. But that is not the egalitarian principle on which this Republic was established and on which this Republic thrived until the Regressives began to systematically destroy our Republic and loot our banks and financial institutions. The more damage Regressives do, the more “corrective” actions they find they must apply, and our freedoms are diminished.

And that is how we are regressing back to a more primitive political system. The Constitution of the United States of America produced the best and brightest political system the world has ever known, and we are actively turning away from Constitutional principles at the insistence of dishonest and corrupt psychopaths. The American people have been slow to understand this, but Junius would understand perfectly.

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Psychopathia

September 20, 2012 – 1:01 am

Psychopathia

Updated 07 October 2012

WWII was started by psychopaths — Hitler, Stalin, Japanese Imperialists. Particularly in times of stress, people are attracted to psychopaths, who make a career of playing on people’s insecurities. Psychopathy is insufficiently recognized and understood as a threat in today’s world, but the world is getting so chaotic that psychological denial appears to be an element contributing to our misperception. Psychopaths are happy to increase the chaos. In a time of conflict and unrest, it would be wise to understand the psychological processes at work.

Personality disorders are broadly lumped into thinking disorders, including psychotic behavior (paranoid, schizophrenic, and related behaviors), emotional disorders including anti-social and narcissistic behaviors that are indicators of psychopathy, and various mood disorders.

An initial contact with a psychopath will most likely be on the job and an impression soon develops that “This guy is crazy (psychotic),” but you will soon discover that the psychopath’s senior management does not regard him as crazy, and likely holds the psychopath in high regard. The psychopath is not psychotic, it is much worse than that. There is a limit to the damage that a psychotic person can do, but observe the damage that a psychopath, such as Adolph Hitler, can do.

Psychopathy is a complex condition that is poorly understood within the general public, and not wholly agreed upon within the professional psychological community. The professional understanding of psychopathy is under constant revision as new investigations reveal new insights into the psychopathic state. Psychopathy takes many different forms. Casey Anthony, John Wayne Gacy, “Chainsaw” Al Dunlap, Bernie Madoff, and Rod Blagojevich were each convicted criminals and each showed traits consistent with psychopathy.

At about one percent of the population, there are hundreds of thousands of junior-grade psychopaths out there causing turmoil and trouble, and not a few world-class psychopaths. If you have ever worked for a psychopath, there is no doubt that you are seeing something extraordinary and extraordinarily troubling. If you lost money or a job in the 2008 financial meltdown, credible psychologists have argued that psychopaths were a big factor in your losses.

This article does not pretend to be comprehensive, but attempts to present major viewpoints that contribute to an understanding of our current problems and conflicts as related to psychopathy.

Two hundred years ago, French Dr. Philippe Pinel identified a condition he termed “insane without delirium,” which is still a good short description of the psychopathic state. Within the last few decades, it has become evident that psychopathy itself is evolving as the culture, technology, and economy change and grow. Recent developments in the study of psychopathy have involved several more-or-less discrete steps.

Modern psychopathy was largely defined by Dr. Hervey Cleckley in the 1940s and 1950s, when Dr. Cleckley studied small town psychopaths who were in and out of mental hospitals and jails. Dr. Cleckley’s patients did not test positive for any psychotic condition (delirium, hallucinations), so they were released from mental hospitals, but then they went on to commit small irresponsible crimes and outrages on a recurring basis, frequently returning to jail or to a mental hospital.

Twenty years later, in the 1970s, the concept of the mass-murdering psychopath abruptly entered public awareness, with Ted Bundy and John Wayne Gacy as prime examples.

In the 1990s, with the increasing size and complexity of corporations, organizational psychopaths in Sunbeam Corporation (“Chainsaw” Al Dunlap), Enron, and WorldCom came to public attention while causing billions of dollars of economic losses and disruption of thousands of lives and jobs.

More recently, the focus is now on financial and political psychopaths and their role in the 2008 financial meltdown which wiped out trillions of dollars of value and savings, particularly savings of retirees.

The dominant drive of all psychopaths is the need to gain control over other persons. This is quite ironic (or not) since psychopaths have very poor control over themselves. The only exception to this general rule is a situation wherein authority figures provide external control for the psychopath; in this situation, psychopaths display rigidly correct behavior in the presence of people whom they have cause to fear, that is, anyone in a recognized position of authority (father figure). Other than that, psychopaths typically use dishonesty, threats, and bluster to control other people.

It follows that the psychopath’s need for control is not rooted in any strength of character, but originates in weakness and insecurity. The psychopath’s need for control may take the forms of physical control, financial control, political control, emotional control, or sexual control, or some combination thereof. This control may be attempted or exercised within marriages, families, offices, shop floors, corporations, and bureaucracies particularly, up to and including nations.

A second major characteristic of psychopaths is extremely limited affect: no sympathy, no empathy, no guilt, no remorse, no conscience, and no sense of humor. However, psychopaths are quite capable of faking these emotions in order to manipulate their victims. The game is exposed when a psychopath abruptly goes from a manufactured charisma to a violent temper tantrum, depending on what effect he is trying to create in his victim. A psychopath is like a hollow man who can adapt and express different personas, different value systems, different emotional states, not as an expression of his core being, but as an infinitely variable mechanism to control others. Several psychologists have noted that psychopaths are often very interested in therapy sessions, not for the purpose of making themselves well, but to gain understanding that will improve their performance as psychopaths. Therapy seldom changes the psychopath’s behavior.

By definition, all dictators and all dictator wannabes are psychopaths, given their urgent need to control others. When a dictator (Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, Saddam Hussein) achieves full control, there is no limit on his irrational, destructive behavior, but few dictators reach this level; psychopathic leaders are limited in our democracy, at least until recently. Psychopaths typically have a favored, supportive group (sycophants), and any unsupportive person or group is at risk, up to and including risk of death in a dictatorship. Compliant personnel are sometimes graciously allowed to survive by the dictator or by the corporate psychopath. The converse of the dictator’s need to control others is the need of others to be controlled. An anxious, ignorant, dependent, bought-and-paid-for citizenry makes the dictator’s job much easier. Dictators are insecure, and create insecurity in others as a means of control.

The human experience is infinitely variable, but the most likely context in which a child may become a psychopath is a dysfunctional family or a broken family. A dysfunctional home environment may include abuse, neglect, or faulty discipline (too much, too little, or irregular). At least in some cases, there may be a genetic component, making psychopathy subject to hereditary influences. Physical or neural defect or injury may produce results similar to psychopathy.

Psychopath and sociopath are closely related terms, with closely related behaviors. The factors that determine these conditions appear to include genetics, dysfunctional family and community conditions, and possibly nervous system injury or defect. The expression of psychopathic and sociopathic behavior may range from lone murderers to cooperative criminal enterprises, with recent incidences found in corporations, financial institutions, and political establishments. The definitions of these terms are fluid, and the terms are often used interchangeably. “Psychopath” will be used throughout.

Some psychologists argue that psychopaths are afflicted with genetic defects and sociopaths are the product of a dysfunctional family or community. Sociopaths show loyalty to members of the tribe or family, while outsiders are designated victims. Ferocious disputes within the tribe are quite possible, even as common bonds of family ties are maintained, often in the breach. Psychopaths and sociopaths exhibit similar predatory and parasitic behaviors. The Mafia and the Chicago political machine are sociopathic, and dictators also may be considered sociopathic, though some dictators are known to have experienced extremely disturbing childhoods (Adolph Hitler, Saddam Hussein). There is a blurred line between psychopathy and sociopathy, and the terms are often used interchangeably.

The terms sociopath and psychopath encompass behaviors that are generally described as aggressively narcissistic (malignant narcissism) and anti-social (socially deviant lifestyle). With one percent of the population considered psychopathic by psychologists, there are some three million living Americans who were, are, or will become psychopaths, and perhaps another fifteen million Americans who exhibit sociopathic tendencies. Prognosis for the psychopathic condition is very poor.

Much of the recent psychological work in psychopathy has been done in the Anglosphere outside America, and this work has largely identified such deviant personalities as corporate, financial, and political psychopaths. Some years ago, it seems that much of the original work in American psychology was dismissed as “pop psychology,” and consequently original research in psychopathy is now more common in Canada, Great Britain, and Australia. Transactional Analysis was a descriptive (as opposed to analytical) psychological system some years ago but it is less followed now in the USA, though there are active TA research and therapeutic groups in Europe and Australia.

Organizational psychopaths actively seek positions of power and prestige, and gravitate toward fields where they can exercise their psychopathic skills profitably; politics and finance are current favored areas where psychopaths may be found. Rapid changes in technology and organizational size and complexity present opportunities for psychopaths to seize a position, take the money, and run, while the psychological community follows in identifying psychopathic evolution and the law and the plodding bureaucracy lag behind

A non-psychopath is most likely to encounter a psychopath within a work environment. Psychopaths control subordinates by bullying, lying, and various manipulative behaviors. Psychopaths control upper management by respectful, sometimes servile, behavior while expressing contempt for upper management by creating problems within the organization. Psychopaths are famous for excuse making, blaming others, and rationalizing away problems when they engage in organizational destruction.

The final major characteristic of psychopaths is failure, often self-inflicted failure. Psychopaths are likely to end up in a violent death or in prison (Rod Blagojevich, Bernie Madoff). The termination of the psychopath’s career follows much trouble and cost for his various victims and for society.

History of Psychopathy

The following psychological works are basic to understanding contemporary pychopathy:

Theophrastus, a student and successor of Aristotle, first noted what is now known as a personality disorder over two thousand years ago. The minor theft and trickery that Theophrastus documented fell short of psychopathy, but encompasses behaviors that, in more extreme form, are similar to psychopathy.

French Dr. Philippe Pinel, some two hundred years ago, led in the modern understanding of psychology. Dr. Pinel described a condition he identified as “insanity without delirium” which is a good short description of psychopathy.

Dr. Hervey Cleckley did seminal work in modern psychopathy about 1940, as described in his book, The Mask of Insanity. Dr. Cleckley dealt primarily with small-town psychopaths who were in and out of jails and mental hospitals. In hospital, they were found to be without psychoses and were released. On release, they typically created family problems and public nuisances, were jailed, and often returned to hospital for further psychiatric evaluation. This repeating but erratic sequence of events came to define the incidence of Dr. Cleckley’s small-town psychopaths. Dr. Cleckley barely acknowledged psychopathic behavior among business and professional persons and was ambiguous concerning severe criminality such as mass-murdering psychopaths.

Dr. Cleckley’s principal psychopathic characteristics:

• Extremely egocentric.

• Unable to make close associations, even with family members.

• Irresponsible.

Dr. Cleckleys’s list of narcissistic and anti-social characteristic items describing psychopaths:

• Superficial charm and good “intelligence.”

• Absence of delusions and other signs of types of irrational “thinking.”

• Absence of “nervousness” or psychoneurotic manifestations.

• Unreliability.

• Untruthfulness and insincerity.

• Lack of remorse or shame.

• Inadequately motivated anti-social behavior.

• Poor judgment and failure to learn by experience.

• Pathological egocentricity and incapacity for love.

• General poverty in major affective reactions.

• Specific loss of insight.

• Unresponsive in general interpersonal relations.

• Fantastic and uninviting behavior, with drink and sometimes without.

• Suicide (threats) rarely carried out.

• Sex life impersonal, trivial, and poorly integrated.

• Failure to follow any life plan.

Dr. Cleckley’s book, The Mask of Insanity, featured case histories of small-town psychopaths. The “mask” referred to a fabricated persona of the psychopath’s own construction. Psychopaths appear to have no core personality, but have flexible values and traits to fit any occasion, particularly when the psychopath needs to manipulate someone in order to achieve his selfish goals or to talk his way out of trouble.

Even though Dr. Cleckley was ambiguous concerning violence among psychopaths, in the 1970s there were repeated instances of mass murder by psychopaths, including Ted Bundy and John Wayne Gacy.

As an aside, Dr. Cleckley was also noted for his studies of multiple personalities, as described in his book, The Three Faces of Eve.

Canadian Dr. Robert Hare is a leading current psychologist who has written numerous books and has produced the leading clinical evaluation tool for psychopathic behavior.

Dr. Hare’s book, Psychopathy: Theory and Research, presents a review of personality and physiological tests related to psychopathy. These items include

• Psychometric studies (intelligence tests, Rorschach tests, Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory, etc.). Psychopaths tend to test high for conflict and for negative views of parents, particularly fathers.

• Electroencephalogram (EEG) studies. Psychopaths tend to display infantile brainwave patterns, among other things. Interestingly, non-psychopathic parents of psychopaths sometimes show similar infantile brainwave patterns.

• Autonomic Nervous System (ANS) studies. Physiological reactions to stress create measurable changes in the body. ANS tests include Galvanic Skin Response (GSR, a measure of electrical conductivity), breathing rates, blood pressure rates, heartbeat rates, and other measures. Psychopaths are noted for the equanimity with which they face stimuli that most other people often find highly disturbing. Psychopaths are often not satisfied with mere excitement and court danger (pointless criminal and immoral behavior) in order to satisfy an inner urge.

Dr. Hare’s Psychopathic Check List – Revised (PCL-R) has recently been revised once again, and there are many commentaries, including the Dangerous and Severe Personality Disorder (DSPD) Program. The current PCL-R is as follows (British spelling throughout):

Factor 1: Personality “Aggressive narcissism” (Malignant Narcissism)

• Glibness/superficial charm

• Grandiose sense of self-worth

• Pathological lying

• Cunning/manipulative

• Lack of remorse or guilt

• Shallow affect (genuine emotion is short-lived and egocentric)

• Callousness; lack of empathy

• Failure to accept responsibilityfor own actions

Factor 2: Case history “Socially deviant lifestyle”.

• Need for stimulation/proneness to boredom

• Parasitic lifestyle

• Poor behavioral control

• Lack of realistic long-term goals

• Impulsivity

• Irresponsibility

• Juvenile delinquency

• Early behavior problems

• Revocation of conditional release

Traits not correlated with either factor

• Promiscuous sexual behavior

• Many short-term marital relationships

• Criminal versatility

• Acquired behavioural sociopathy/sociological conditioning (Item 21: a newly identified trait i.e. a person relying on sociological strategies and tricks to deceive)

Scoring the PCL-R is officially done only by a trained and qualified psychologist, and is based on extensive personal interviews and tests with suspected psychopaths. Each item on the PCL-R is scored as 0, 1, or 2, with a maximum score of 42. A total score of 30 is the nominal cut-off point, above which psychopathy is indicated. Dr. Hare urges caution with this score; a score of 30 may indicate a psychopath, but 29 does not necessarily indicate a sterling character. A high score below the psychopathy range may well indicate a personality disorder. Dr. Hare calls attention to a psychopathic score composed of all 1s and 2s, as compared to an equal score composed of only 0s and 2s; is this difference significant? Most people score quite low on the PCL-R, meaning that most people are well-adjusted and productive individuals.

Most of the items on Dr. Hare’s Check List are self-explanatory, but a few in particular deserve comment. “Need for stimulation/proneness to boredom” is an actual need of psychopaths, sometimes expressed as a preference for danger over mere excitement, such as engagement in immoral or illegal acts. Psychopaths know well they might be caught, but proceed regardless; the current need overrides possible future consequences. Following such immoral or illegal acts, the psychopath will often exercise “glibness/superficial charm” and engage in “cunning/manipulative” behavior in order to talk his way out of trouble, a task in which he often succeeds. A cultivated charisma is a condition often found in psychopaths, but the psychopath’s charisma, like his emotional behavior, is faked in order to manipulate his victims.

A limited study by Babiak, Neumann, & Hare reveals that 80% of corporate leaders score 3 or less, somewhere near sainthood, or at least indicating virtue and integrity. Four percent of corporate leaders score in the psychopathic range, much higher than the one percent of psychopaths found in the general population. Moreover, corporate psychopaths are valued for their charisma even if it is fake, and for their willingness to take innovative risks, which could pay off, or not (Bernie Madoff, Jon Corzine). Corporate psychopaths are not stupid, and they score well on “creativity, good strategic thinking and communication skills,” even as they do poorly on “responsibility and performance.”

Psychopaths do not test positive for psychosis (Dr. Pinel’s delirium) but their mental condition is such as to create wars and economic disasters, and myriad lesser troubles. Dr. Hare has suggested that the psychopathic condition might be identified and followed in order to minimize societal damage.

Many items on Dr. Hare’s Psychopathic Checklist – Revised are similar to Dr. Cleckley’s list of narcissistic and anti-social characteristics.

Dr. Hare is co-author with Dr. Paul Babiak of the book, Snakes in Suits, that gives case histories of psychopaths in organizational settings. This contrasts with Dr. Cleckley’s case histories of small town psychopaths.

Dr. Lyle H. Rossiter is author of The Liberal Mind: The Psychological Causes of Political Madness, a meticulously reasoned book describing how Leftists come to be the way they are: controlling, dishonest, manipulative, irresponsible. The United States of America was founded on the principle that citizens could control their own affairs better than any prince, potentate, dictator, or British monarch, but there is an active movement within the Democratic Party to overturn the Constitution in favor of Democratic Party control; Democrats are quite open about what they want to achieve, all for the good of the citizens, of course. The current political debate is an argument on who will control the body politic, the individuals handling their own affairs or the state handling everything to its own advantage. Leftists construct elaborate rationales to justify their elitist seizure of power, but no dictatorial regime has ever taken account of the well-being of all the citizens. The state handling everything has an abysmal historical record, from Genghis Kahn to Kim Jong Il.

Dr. Rossiter argues that “good enough” upbringing fosters mature development of an independent personality capable of cooperating with others to achieve mutually desirable goals. Insufficient or defective upbringing may include neglect or abuse and leave a void in the personality that may be filled by trying to control others. In the extreme, this is a psychopathic personality. Dr. Rossiter structures much of his book on the works of Dr. Erik Erikson.

Dr. Erik Erikson originated the phrase “identity crisis.” Dr. Erikson wrote Identity: Youth and Crisis, postulating that people grow through a series of stages. Successfully negotiating one stage leads to the opportunity to tackle the next stage. Lack of success at any stage leads to life difficulties, but recovery may be possible.

Dr. Erikson’s life stages:

• Basic trust vs. basic mistrust – The period of infancy. 0-1 year of age.

• Autonomy vs. Shame – Covers early childhood.

• Purpose – Initiative vs. Guilt – Preschool, 3–6 years.

• Competence – Industry vs. Inferiority – School-age, 6-11 years.

• Fidelity – Identity vs. Role Confusion – Adolescent, 12 – 20 years. Intimacy vs. isolation – The first stage of adult development. Generativity vs. stagnation – The second stage of adulthood, 25-64 years.

• Ego integrity vs. despair – This stage affects the age group of 65 and on.

When I first recognized the extraordinary nature of psychopaths, I just thought they were crazy. This was well before widespread public awareness of psychopathic behavior. Dr. Erikson’s book was among the first I read to answer my questions. It has taken another forty years by a wide range of psychologists to develop a workable understanding of psychopathic behavior and effects.

ARTICLES

Memorable SOBs in Inaction

Psychopaths almost without exception throw violent temper tantrums with screaming, cursing, and sometimes property damage. Psychopaths often have a signature statement, repeated many times. In my first four observations of psychopaths early in my career, I was struck by the uniformity of the psychopaths’ signature statements:

• Army Captain – “I am a tough son-of-a-bitch,” or alternatively, “I am a mean son-of-a-bitch.” His career ended when he had a “nervous breakdown” after being caught in a serious operational dishonesty.

• Army Lt. Colonel – “I am a tough son-of-a-bitch.”

• Civilian plant manager – “I have a reputation as a tough little bastard.”

• Civilian logistics manager – “I have a reputation as a tough, hard-nosed son-of-a-bitch.” His career ended after many violent, destructive temper tantrums, and he was fired. He went on to at least two more jobs with decreasing rank and responsibility, from which he was fired within a matter of weeks.

• Additionally, I have an eye-witness report confirming that the real life model for Captain Queeg of the novel, The Caine Mutiny, actually did say “I am an unholy son-of-a-bitch,” as described in the novel.

• Another reported case involved a Vice-President of a well known national food services company. In spite of being an inspiring speaker, his signature statement was, “If you can work for me, you can work for any son-of-a-bitch alive.” He caused so much trouble he went through four quick demotions and was finally fired while driving a delivery truck on a remote route.

At first I was not at all sure what those signature statements meant, but it was obvious that none of these characters was tough: dishonest, destructive, with very high personnel turnover, but nothing they did was tough in the sense of achieving results. I started asking questions and found many similar examples.
There are several striking instances of high ranking politicians who pretend to be tough; the late former Senator Ted Stevens (Bridge to Nowhere), convicted former governor of Illinois Rod Blagojevich, and serial screw-up Rahm Emanuel celebrate their reputations as tough sons-of-bitches.

A “son” (of-a-bitch) or a “bastard” both assert a child-like condition, but a tough child is a logical contradiction. Blagojevich is in prison, Stevens bragged about breaking the law, and if the board minutes of Freddie Mac are ever released, perhaps we will learn what Emanuel knew about the $10 billion accounting fraud while he was a member of the Board of Directors of Freddie Mac. At any rate, while maintaining a strong mask, they each got abysmal operational results. The signature statements as detailed above are consistent with the abused or spoiled child hypothesis.

Disordered personalities at work

British Dr. Katarina Fritzon has done research on corporate officers and distinguishes between “successful psychopaths” who may hold high-ranking and prestigious positions in the corporate world, and “unsuccessful psychopaths” who may be petty criminals or mass murderers. Socially, successful psychopaths do much more damage than the damage done by unsuccessful psychopaths.

Corporate Psychopaths

This is a transcript of a television program featuring Dr. John Clarke of Australia. Dr. Clarke describes a presentation he was giving on criminal psychopaths, after which an audience member approached and said that his corporate boss acted just like the criminal psychopaths that Dr. Clarke had described. This incident seems to have been a seminal moment for Dr. Clarke as he realized that psychopathy went well beyond major and minor thugs and into corporate boardrooms. Comments on this site are extensive, and describe the frustration, anger, anxiety, and despair that results from having to work for a psychopath.

Dr. Clarke is author of Working with Monsters.

Is Your Boss a Psychopath?

A summary of Dr. Hare’s presentation to Canadian policemen describing the behavior of and damages created by psychopathic business executives, including Sunbeam, WorldCom, and Enron.

The Corporate Psychopaths Theory of the Global Financial Crisis

Dr. Clive Boddy makes a plausible argument that “Corporate Psychopaths” seek power and that the rapid change, growth, and turnover in organizations within recent years facilitates the Corporate Psychopath’s progress in achieving power. Corporate Psychopaths, having looted their companies and substantial portions of the economy, are now in charge of advising on how to correct the damage they themselves have created.

Tough Boss or Workplace Bully?

http://www.shrm.org/Publications/hrmagazine/EditorialContent/Pages/0609daniel.aspx

Dr. Theresa Daniel, writing in the Society of Human Resources Management (SHRM) Journal described workplace bullying and cites three studies indicating that perhaps half of all workers will work for a bully boss at some point in their careers. Interestingly, Dr. Daniel reports that 80% of HR personnel have been bullied by their HR bosses, when HR is expected to deal with and correct such situations. One can only speculate that upper management sees only the positive and charming aspects of the bully boss and of the psychopath’s mask, and upper management has the final say on their subordinate managers, not realizing that the bully boss has a serious personality disorder. There is no substantive difference between HR “bully bosses” and psychologists’ “psychopathic bosses.”

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Salute to Chairman Bernanke

September 18, 2012 – 2:38 am

“The New Yorker” headline:

Three Reasons to Salute Ben Bernanke

I would be glad to render a proper salute to Chairman Bernanke, but I have only two middle fingers.

“Fox Nation” headline:

For Every $1 Added to the Economy, Obama Added More Than $3 in Debt

Remember that the stimulus was sold to us on the basis that $1 of stimulus would generate $1.50 of economic growth?

By Administrator | Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (3)