That was awesome. So while reading your posts, I also ran across a documentary about serial killers. In that, they used Hare as a reference to who was a psychopath, which on is face doesn't seem bad, however it was used in a way that struck me like, they think of his work like others think of the Bible. I was disturbed by this.
Now maybe he has a handle on dangerous criminals and their behavior, but, how can he find that a psychopath has very limited emotions on the one hand and then deem someone with rage as a psychopath? They asses people who have a need for companionship as a reason why they abduct and then kill, as psycopaths. Yet a psychopath has no empathy, This makes no sense to me.
So I kinda compared what you wrote to this documentary, and the Hare test questions should rule out people with
empathy. I it seems very contradictory to me. I'm just a layman, and I can see obvious flaws. I don't understand why well educated people don't see them.
Also I got your point about the money he makes too, maybe his intent was to just do his work to begin with and when the money started rolling in he got greedy. I mean it seems to me, like he was trying to find out about psycopathy but had the idea that it was the reason for the worst criminal behavior out there, so that opinion jaded his work from the start. Or maybe he was trying to prove what he already thought. So, that would definitely not make for objective research. No wonder people think that psycopathy equals evil.
Your right that this needs to change, it's so bias it's not even a little funny.
I agree. This is a serious issue. There are so many different parameters for psychopathy within their own definitions, it is like being hit from all directions with conflicting information, and no one wants to step up and say, "This doesn't makes any sense. Shouldn't we clarify this?"
When I first read Hare’s complaint about Ronson’s wrong description of his appearance, the color of his eyes, in particular ,and correction of it, I wasn’t sure if he wasn’t being sarcastic. Turned out he wasn’t, good lord, in his big age. The man to me is an embodiment of cringe.
Fantastic price of writing. I’m glad you validate Ronson, his book is what got me on this train. As I read more and more of your work, the more I agree with you about the state of this field of medicine. a radical change needs to come about I just don’t see how that will happen, not in our lifetime anyway.
Hopefully very soon this will happen, but I believe that a lot of his teachings will hang on for a very long time. It will take a lot of effort to revamp how things are considered and done.
It is unfortunate that people are invested in being right, over being correct. If there was a conference that professionals from many walks of life, got together, sorted out a factual definition of what psychopathy is, and backed it all with repeatable evidence that is logically consistent, but it meant that I was no longer considered psychopathic, oh well. So long as they did their due diligence, and what they stated was supported by the evidence, that's fine by me.
I would think that they would get more credibility if they admitted that they were incorrect, and change their opinion or position when the evidence presents itself. Seems like credibility is tied to integrity.
With the information resources available now and with introspection and a little time, you can determine if you are bipolar better than many practitioners. Decades ago, when I was naive and the information just wasn't out there, I was misdiagnosed as bipolar (5 years on lithium and a bonus case of thyrotoxicity) by a dreadful old Freudian (subsequent clinicians have been vastly better), when I was not bipolar or anything like it. Yes, nowdays people seem to be overdiagnosing themselves with everything all over the place, but even so, I believe in taking control of ones own mental health journey. In time, you can understand yourself and what ails you and be on the way to a better life.
Certainly mental health experts should be considered- I have learned invaluable things from clinicians, that would not have occurred to me, that I had not happened upon, and that were extremely helpful. Conversely, some of the most useful information to me came from the internet, because there is often a big time lag before the medical establishment accepts what patients have long known and often information is suppressed (example, the history of antidepressant withdrawal syndrome). This applies to fields outside mental health too of course. So it is also helpful to read widely yourself, read other people's stories, have some trust in your own judgement. If I seem a bit gung-ho about self diagnosis, well, I have my own history and my own reasons for this! And my own temperament. I am not advocating ignoring professional advice, just treating it as only part of the picture and keeping your mental health in your hands not others when it is possible to do so (I realise that when problems are very acute, as yours are, this may not always be possible).
(I have a friend in another country who is a psychotherapist, a diligent, studious, compassionate, hardworking and ethical practioner. And yet in our discussions I am always amazed at the gulf between the knowledge and assumptioms of the professional in the field, and those of the interested patient. And the differences in treatments and paradigms between countries (again, in other aspects of medicine too). She is missing a lot, and so am I.)
I agree. There are gaps in everyone's knowledge, but some people's are far more larger than others. This would be fine, if it wasn't the area that many of these people have large gaps in the area in which they are meant to be experts, and those gaps exist because they just can't be bothered to keep learning.
There is a theory that people are anxious due to why that system evolved in the first place. It sort of makes sense if you follow this line of thinking.
1. Humans have an alert system that is meant to function to prevent them from dying. It is an internal alarm that is meant to be their heightened awareness of their overall environment.
2. Humans congregate in cities and high population areas for the notion of commerce and safety.
3. Safety being a driving force for the migration to cities creates an environment that more and more becomes a system that people rely on to feel safe.
4. Now that the humans that felt the need to reinforce safety have amassed in cities, and safety measures become more prevalent, the primal system for situational awareness become obsolete, but it has existed for tens of thousands of years, so it doesn't cease to exist.
5. Human technology and society progresses faster than the evolutionary process that this system runs on.
6. Anxiety in general begins to exist in large enough numbers to be noticeable because this system is a ghost in the machine.
7. The advent of social media happens. Now people that may be prone to this system firing more than it should is introduced to a new system that both immerses and isolates.
8. This causes the primal system to not know how to react. Humans are more n touch mentally, but far less in touch physically than ever before.
9. This is new territory, so the brain has no operational basis to proceed.
10. This system detects threats, and now are overloaded in being discombobulated and confused. Thus it over fires, and relentlessly tells the brain that there are threats all around.
11. This is an internal war that has no winners. The cognitive brain says "I'm safe", the primal brain says "I'm in danger", and the person dealing with both sides finds themselves in an untenable situation that they don't know how to resolve.
My opinion is that there has to be a way to quiet the primal alarm system, but part of doing so is engagement with other people on a consistent basis, which that part of the brain is still convinced is dangerous.
That was awesome. So while reading your posts, I also ran across a documentary about serial killers. In that, they used Hare as a reference to who was a psychopath, which on is face doesn't seem bad, however it was used in a way that struck me like, they think of his work like others think of the Bible. I was disturbed by this.
Now maybe he has a handle on dangerous criminals and their behavior, but, how can he find that a psychopath has very limited emotions on the one hand and then deem someone with rage as a psychopath? They asses people who have a need for companionship as a reason why they abduct and then kill, as psycopaths. Yet a psychopath has no empathy, This makes no sense to me.
So I kinda compared what you wrote to this documentary, and the Hare test questions should rule out people with
empathy. I it seems very contradictory to me. I'm just a layman, and I can see obvious flaws. I don't understand why well educated people don't see them.
Also I got your point about the money he makes too, maybe his intent was to just do his work to begin with and when the money started rolling in he got greedy. I mean it seems to me, like he was trying to find out about psycopathy but had the idea that it was the reason for the worst criminal behavior out there, so that opinion jaded his work from the start. Or maybe he was trying to prove what he already thought. So, that would definitely not make for objective research. No wonder people think that psycopathy equals evil.
Your right that this needs to change, it's so bias it's not even a little funny.
I agree. This is a serious issue. There are so many different parameters for psychopathy within their own definitions, it is like being hit from all directions with conflicting information, and no one wants to step up and say, "This doesn't makes any sense. Shouldn't we clarify this?"
Great post.
When I first read Hare’s complaint about Ronson’s wrong description of his appearance, the color of his eyes, in particular ,and correction of it, I wasn’t sure if he wasn’t being sarcastic. Turned out he wasn’t, good lord, in his big age. The man to me is an embodiment of cringe.
Yeah, unfortunately, I kind of have to agree with you.
No offense Athena but I'm kind of hoping that Hare comes after you. I get the feeling that he's not used to people pushing back.
Lol! If he did, I imagine our conversation will be about as productive as this one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cg_8knBHEyw
Rofl
Fantastic price of writing. I’m glad you validate Ronson, his book is what got me on this train. As I read more and more of your work, the more I agree with you about the state of this field of medicine. a radical change needs to come about I just don’t see how that will happen, not in our lifetime anyway.
Hopefully very soon this will happen, but I believe that a lot of his teachings will hang on for a very long time. It will take a lot of effort to revamp how things are considered and done.
It is unfortunate that people are invested in being right, over being correct. If there was a conference that professionals from many walks of life, got together, sorted out a factual definition of what psychopathy is, and backed it all with repeatable evidence that is logically consistent, but it meant that I was no longer considered psychopathic, oh well. So long as they did their due diligence, and what they stated was supported by the evidence, that's fine by me.
I would think that they would get more credibility if they admitted that they were incorrect, and change their opinion or position when the evidence presents itself. Seems like credibility is tied to integrity.
With the information resources available now and with introspection and a little time, you can determine if you are bipolar better than many practitioners. Decades ago, when I was naive and the information just wasn't out there, I was misdiagnosed as bipolar (5 years on lithium and a bonus case of thyrotoxicity) by a dreadful old Freudian (subsequent clinicians have been vastly better), when I was not bipolar or anything like it. Yes, nowdays people seem to be overdiagnosing themselves with everything all over the place, but even so, I believe in taking control of ones own mental health journey. In time, you can understand yourself and what ails you and be on the way to a better life.
Certainly mental health experts should be considered- I have learned invaluable things from clinicians, that would not have occurred to me, that I had not happened upon, and that were extremely helpful. Conversely, some of the most useful information to me came from the internet, because there is often a big time lag before the medical establishment accepts what patients have long known and often information is suppressed (example, the history of antidepressant withdrawal syndrome). This applies to fields outside mental health too of course. So it is also helpful to read widely yourself, read other people's stories, have some trust in your own judgement. If I seem a bit gung-ho about self diagnosis, well, I have my own history and my own reasons for this! And my own temperament. I am not advocating ignoring professional advice, just treating it as only part of the picture and keeping your mental health in your hands not others when it is possible to do so (I realise that when problems are very acute, as yours are, this may not always be possible).
(I have a friend in another country who is a psychotherapist, a diligent, studious, compassionate, hardworking and ethical practioner. And yet in our discussions I am always amazed at the gulf between the knowledge and assumptioms of the professional in the field, and those of the interested patient. And the differences in treatments and paradigms between countries (again, in other aspects of medicine too). She is missing a lot, and so am I.)
I agree. There are gaps in everyone's knowledge, but some people's are far more larger than others. This would be fine, if it wasn't the area that many of these people have large gaps in the area in which they are meant to be experts, and those gaps exist because they just can't be bothered to keep learning.
Did you have those thoughts prior to taking medication for bipolar?
There is a theory that people are anxious due to why that system evolved in the first place. It sort of makes sense if you follow this line of thinking.
1. Humans have an alert system that is meant to function to prevent them from dying. It is an internal alarm that is meant to be their heightened awareness of their overall environment.
2. Humans congregate in cities and high population areas for the notion of commerce and safety.
3. Safety being a driving force for the migration to cities creates an environment that more and more becomes a system that people rely on to feel safe.
4. Now that the humans that felt the need to reinforce safety have amassed in cities, and safety measures become more prevalent, the primal system for situational awareness become obsolete, but it has existed for tens of thousands of years, so it doesn't cease to exist.
5. Human technology and society progresses faster than the evolutionary process that this system runs on.
6. Anxiety in general begins to exist in large enough numbers to be noticeable because this system is a ghost in the machine.
7. The advent of social media happens. Now people that may be prone to this system firing more than it should is introduced to a new system that both immerses and isolates.
8. This causes the primal system to not know how to react. Humans are more n touch mentally, but far less in touch physically than ever before.
9. This is new territory, so the brain has no operational basis to proceed.
10. This system detects threats, and now are overloaded in being discombobulated and confused. Thus it over fires, and relentlessly tells the brain that there are threats all around.
11. This is an internal war that has no winners. The cognitive brain says "I'm safe", the primal brain says "I'm in danger", and the person dealing with both sides finds themselves in an untenable situation that they don't know how to resolve.
My opinion is that there has to be a way to quiet the primal alarm system, but part of doing so is engagement with other people on a consistent basis, which that part of the brain is still convinced is dangerous.
Yes all of this, but feom my own perspective I can't help thinking there is something more going on, whatever it is.
I think he needs to be challenged.
I agree