I recall watching an excerpt of that Khalanani woman speaking and thinking that she was a danger to society. I tend to take people seriously when they personally admit to a desire to commit random acts of violence.
Truth is there is a huge hole in mental heath, so many people let down leading unforfilled lives cause of lack of funding knolage an understanding, that stigma still surrounds it, I don't understand. How you can have a disease an every one is so sorry for you, but if your souls unwell everyone labels you, in general a Ross the board 😡
The DSM is a complete joke. Psychologists, especially in America swear by it and as a consequence people suffer i.e. they don't get the right treatment. I believe the profession as a whole is outdated and most psychologists are institutionalised. You might as well use a bible to determine if someone has a psychosis. As for ignorance over psychopathy, until I discovered your work on Quora 2 years ago I would be equally to blame.
I agree that the profession needs a complete overhaul before it can be thought of as functioning appropriately, and this is an ongoing trend that they seem to be hellbent on riding down to the bottom.
With how people are willing to cast aside facts and create studies, or write papers based on their feelings, it makes it very difficult for me to continue to cite their work. It seems that two different camps have been formed, and on the one side we are on the fast track to the gallows, and on the other side there are people claiming to have a "psychopath" in a DID system that also has anime characters, vampires, and demons. Of course, we can't forget that everyone else in the system has the full range of emotions, but they apparently have a brain that is a transformer for when the psychopath shows up.
As a soft science, it appears that in dealing with issues of mind, we are even more in the infancy stages than I imagined. As for the DSM being garbage however, is probably going too far. it's more like Galen's medicine in ancient times. not useless, but certainly error ridden and lacking many things, which we have since been able to discover and study.
Not garbage for what it is, garbage for how it is regarded. This is the fault of many different people, but it should be well known and widely stated that the DSM is nothing more than an insurance reimbursement manual.
On a slight tangent and maybe this isn't the right post to make this comment but I think Psychopathy desperately needs a total rebrand would say the term should be outdated due to the negative and inaccurate connotations which the DSM is incapable of correcting. We then have the greater issues of the public consciousness. Hollywood (I'm using it as a blanket term for all entertainment) has inadvertently acted against its 'all inclusive' diversity image by singling out people with a rare formation of the brain. Imagine the uproar if Hollywood made out all down's syndrome people were stupid? Until society evolves enough to embrace a different approach to psychopathy the only way forward, I believe is to do what has been done along the lines of LBGT and the so-called neurodiversity campaigns. A rebrand that will spur a social obligation to be inclusive. It's not ideal because it plays on people's emotions however this is how society (as a whole) adapts to the new threat, in this case, of being isolated from the herd. See how quickly they reform neural pathways to cope with the threat and thus change their behavior.
You are likely correct. The problem I foresee with this, however, is how those campaigns succeeded. There were many people pushing this forward, and that won't be the case with psychopathy. Psychopaths as a whole are not group participants, we don't have family that is going to champion the cause because most people are so poorly educated about psychopathy, most of us will never tell anyone, if we ever get diagnosed in the first place.
I think the overhaul needs to be done beginning with psychology just taking their hands off of it, withdraw a great deal of their poorly designed research, and say, this is a neurological thing, not a psychological thing. Our bad, we might have screwed this one up a great deal, we'll step out of it, and perhaps then rebranding can take place.
As for right now, there is a large contingent of psychologists that simply will not allow this to happen, and will fight against it because it makes them money and earns them status. They do research on "psychopaths", so they have deemed themselves worthy of respect.
Add to all of the sites like Love Fraud, and Sam Vaknin facing the possibility of the loss of their customer base, doing everything that they can to keep the status quo, that they will not allow psychopathy to be considered in any other way.
Sure, you're right of course. You might be surprised that some people might wish to raise awareness of this subject simply because they (in some form) can relate to it? For example, I was born in the 70's when society labeled Dyslexia as being a dunce. Likewise, ADHD wasn't understood either and now they put these kids on drugs. I firmly believe that all neurological dispositions need to be properly represented, not by theory or law of averages but by those who have first-hand experience.
You have already started the fightback with your years of input, raising awareness of an extremely rare and misunderstood disposition. The 'data' is already there and it could be transformed into a more compact and easily accessed format. For example, Hares checklist could be easily challenged and fallacies pointed out. Ideally, a new checklist could be formed, named, and presented to the wider public (cut out the authorities).
A knowledge base could be compiled at some point and form a new body of research. You would encounter resistance from those that benefit from misrepresenting people like yourself but that would be a good indicator of your progress. It's a lot to take on though, but who else is doing this?
Thank you for the post. I find that "Psychopathic Problem of the White Mind" quite funny at the moment... probably can't explain why without more reflection. <snicker snicker>
That same laziness is in evidence when looking at how various "experts" write on numerous other neurotypes; autism, add, etc. Horrible science and circular thinking abound, and sometimes get a better salary than I'm making too.
"I think that there is this enormous river of laziness and ego that has taken root in psychology."
Another possibility worth considering is the over-abundance of an already postulated - although severely under-estimated mental illness that might be slitting under the radar despite flying across everyone's face, because:
a) it hinges on lazy blame-shifting, thrives on intellectual dishonesty and gears up on ridiculously overblown egos lacking the least inkling of humility, instead masquerading together as a seemingly civilized and markedly well-composed persona, which would likewise imply b) such a condition would like not seem to affect the person's chances of career progression, especially if such person would band together with other people having similar traits in a way that would effectively be both counter-productive and outright disruptive to the development of knowledge (not only in the field of psychology, but across all fields of inquiry), and c) its particular properties could very well add insult, rather than relief, to the injury harbored by those suffering from other mental illnesses who make them excessively hot tempered rather than icy cold beyond reason.
Further, such a mentality would likely scapegoat psychopathy while looking to expunge its own sins. It would be especially hard to pin point in a field like psychology, due to its inherent qualities and also because such hypothetical professionals would be holding the proverbial keys to the kingdom.
But apparently it's tabboo to raise such possibilities too explicitly, even though it's not that fat-fetched (the proof is in the pudding) and despite the fact hat such conceptions seem to be well underway being shaped up in the back of many inquisitive minds out there. Maybe it's a matter of time, who knows.
PS -I don't suppose Hare was being *completely* ridiculous in his assertion that "all mental illness hinge around narcissism", and it's entirely possible Athena could be allowing her (understandable) disavowal of the author to not allow her sight to be as clear as it could be. Failing to do so, there could be a risk of subscribing the very same type of generalizing bias, over tribalism and hive mind mentality that Hare might have made himself, which possibly pertains the whole dynamic I elaborated initially.
I don't find it reasonable to dismiss any view as 100% ridiculous, since even a broken clock sometimes gets it right. I'm especially wary of doing so because that was the entire premise behind the witch hunts of old. I sometimes feel it would be a tremendous benefit to humanity if all scientific theories were kept anonymous, so we could all focus on the ideas whiteout obsessing too much about either glorifying or vilifying the authors.
The crux of the matter would not be so much "Why is narcissism so evil"? but rather "what causes narcissism to go pathological, and what exactly does that entail, and how does it manifest across different conditions?
What causes some seemingly well-adjusted people to put up a pristine yet hollow persona that is diametrically at odds with their deeply festering antisocial ways which they learned to keep private - in a way that sometimes hinders the communication between both sides, to the point that a person may be fully oblivious to their own darkness?
Or, to put it simply --- "Why do not many people realize they are (at least) two-faced? What is the scientific basis of widespread hypocrisy, and how to best uprooted this noxious weed?"
This hypothetical hypocritical group I'm here alluding to (while doing my best effort to not just outright blurt out that "pathological narcissism is the root cause of all evils of humanity, as well as the common hub to the spokes that are mental disorders") could be perpetuating the toxic aspects of civilization, while imagining they're actually vanquishing them. That could explain some things.
TL;DR: we're seemingly looking at the very same type of problems (pertaining the reliable systematization of knowledge) that eventually led to the development of modern science and the scientific method in the first place, so there's that.
It wasn't Hare that said that, it was Neville Symington. As much as I dislike Hare, he isn't that much of a dullard to make that ridiculous claim.
I disagree with Symington totally. It is a ridiculous assertion that dismisses what people suffer through. A person who was chained to a toilet their entire life, beaten, raped, and tortured, is not suffering because of narcissism in their adulthood. They are suffering because of what they have been through. The suggestion is very egotistical on Symington's part. There is no generalization on my part. I am directly calling his stances on such things without merit. His claims are possibly projections of his own mind onto others, but that is not an excuse. There is no room in helping people to have that sort of mentality towards the problems that they are facing.
If you are suggesting that he meant to say that it is someone else's narcissism that caused the person to suffer, and therefore cause their mental health issues, that was not at all what he said. He directly holds the patient responsible for their suffering.
Also, nothing that I wrote here has anything to do with Symington. He's not only dead, but had little input into psychopathy. What he did think about it is easily dismissible, because anyone that states:
“The psychopath despises the person who holds on to an illusion that he is good; unconsciously he knows that it is a rejection of an important part of him. Because the psychopath unconsciously hates the person who has an illusion about him, he will always give a strong clue about the hidden side of his character.”
has no idea what psychopathy is or how we think.
The rest of what you describe sounds remarkably like normal human function. Unless you want to pathologize how humans are wired, it isn't something that is unusual in any way.
"It wasn't Hare that said that, it was Neville Symington. "
I'm very bad with names, sorry -- it's my Apollo heel.
Seriously though -- Symington was clearly writing from a crude and misinformed position, and his stance could be ripe with projection.
And that ties with my point; see... I was indeed suggesting there could be widespread pathology in the general way humans are wired, which makes some people prone to hypocrisy, projection, acting out and splitting.
Something that goes beyond the social masquerade; something more akin to an invisible something that seems to make people prone to unwittingly criticize in others the very same aspects they have repressed in themselves.
It's alluded to in popular sayings such as "When you point one finger, there are three fingers pointing back to you." or Baruch Spinoza's well known adage - 'What Paul says about Peter tells us more about Paul than about Peter".
There's even a passage in the Bible about it, so presumably it's something that has been around four ages: "Don't focus on the speck in your brother's eye while ignoring the log in your own eye."
So I had been assuming there might be a pervasive, not fully accounted for mental illness that could be backing this phenomena, and I had been supposing it could be pathological narcissism. I mean...
Hypocritical blame-shifting/projection/acting out/splitting are among its tenets, and the way psychopathy is conceptualized in earlier writings from modern psychology do sometimes convey such impression (that quote you pasted is a good example).
Simply put, certain earlier authors could be tapping into their own darkness. Symington's conceptualization seems egotistical, as you well say.
What I was wondering boils down to - could there be a sort of unacknowledged mental illness sourcing the egomania of the world and the seemingly irreconcilable incongruences of society? Could it a function of pathological narcissism?
However, in recent days I have been reframing this view. What if it's not so much a psychopathology that backs up these phenomena, but simply emotional immaturity?
Well yes indeed, that's another succinct way of putting it.
The standard for maturity has long evolved past the idea of "might makes right", but clearly not everybody has read the memo.
The power-lust type of issues around both toxic masculinity and toxic femininity could arise from this misconception.
The problem is how such issues are now akin to a blame-shifting cancerous growth tearing apart the fabric of society.
As is is, we live in a law and orderly pretense of a civilization, and we well know it.
There is a ideological gorge between theory and practice of human relations. There is such a thing as a war of the classes, as it always has been.
But it's a war no longer fought with torches and pitchforks - but with online computer terminals and social media accounts.
We're all riding a wacky train right now, heading ever faster down the unknown annals of history, with singularity just around the corner. There are peculiar times, to say the list.
Well, assuming the whole thing won't just end up as a huge ball of steel and fire, this problem now dawning on public consciousness will require fitting solutions.
The social contract would require revisions, so would the public institutions. Even in places where psychical violence is already shunned (as it should be), mental and emotional violence are yet barely considered.
The human species now far too powerful, will not nearly enough of a moral structure harnessing its potential destructive power.
Giants with feet of clay, as it were.
If only there was a way to harden the supporting structure, education my be it. But it would need to encompass these matters now being brought to light in modern psychology, I think.
It would need to be a new type of education that teaches the value of empathy and specifically highlights the dangers of unrestrained, hierarchically compounded narcissism.
I think some countries in Northern Europe are already dabbling with similar ideas:
I know of similar programs here in the States, but dislike them. They tend to work on the victim, oppressor narrative, and that is not teaching empathy. I don't know what they are teaching in Finland, but here those programs should be defunded.
Exactly - unsurprisingly, such programs are not really teaching empathy; they're likely more about lightly scratching the surface of the issue, in a way that creates a favorable public impression.
The thing is; purporting to teach empathy in a context shock full of rampant social disparities... is like drilling the desert for water, hoping that a handful of flower seeds scattered randomly might bloom.
Also, diagnosis problem from DSM5 drifts down to general population. By reading about BPD, I have much more sympathy for its sufferers now, though will also remain self protective around them. But by knowing WHY they are problematic, I can be much more understanding and helpful, rather than just running/abandonment. And, it is very helpful as a layperson to understand that Athena is a psychopath, which simply means that she tends to be way more logical and less s"ympathetic." And it has nothing to do with good/evil. Overall, I think Athena is trying (and succeeding!) to make a very positive and useful contribution to the world. And my sad, damaged, abusive, narcissistic Ex has very little in common with psychopathy, other than the symptom of not clearly seeing/understanding the pain he causes. I guess People with narcissism are not minding causing pain to others v. people with autism, psychopathy, & neurotypical do not want to cause pain--among other problems, it is inefficient :-) and for autism & neurotypical pain of others can cause us pain. I guess for narcissistic, pain can feed the narcissism. Having an accurate picture of my Ex as sociopathic, not psychopathic, can help me have a bit of sympathy for him and at least have a better idea what I can give him to help with negotiations over the kids--he is emotional, not logical. If he were psychopathic, I would try offering him different things in a negotiation.
I guess maybe mental illness/difference could be categorized as having been caused by brain wiring (e.g. psychopathy, autism) and/or trauma/abuse? But maybe best to do a diagnosis based not on cause but on treatment, with the awareness of what the cause is? And maybe only calling something an "illness" if it causes the person w the condition pain or causes them to cause others pain? That would define Athena as not having an illness (from your writing you seem more logical and in control than most people I know and reasonably happy and not causing others pain--you cause me joy and insight!). And, people with autism in my family could work on the things that they need to (symptoms) without thinking that the cause (brain wiring) necessarily needs to be changed--the brain wiring can also give advantages. --just some sorting/organizational ideas from a non expert.
I think that it is greatly important to function well in society regardless of how you are wired. As I have said many times, psychopathy affects how you see the world, but not your behavior within it. A person can certainly be psychopathic and a criminal, but it is very important to remember that the person is a criminal that happens to be psychopathic, not that psychopathy had anything to do with their decision making.
It is so common that I see people that claim to be a psychopath, but they are using it as an excuse to behave poorly, to absolve themselves of personal responsibility, and of course make them appear powerful. The person's actions have to do with their choices, not their brain type.
You talked about your experience with psychological testing, brain scans, etc,. Did those psychiatrists or psychologists give you any input regarding Hare and the prevailing steps taken for determining the presence of psychopathy? It seems that the whole process was very detailed, repetitive (as a way of filtering out bogus info, I assume) and complex. That process itself seems to rule out simplistic diagnosing, and the Hare paradigm itself. Did any of the people who evaluated you weigh in, did you question them at all, or was that whole process before you started researching the field?
No, they didn't give me a clue what they were considering. There was no mention of Hare, or the PCL-R. Just a lot of tests, interviews and such, but no indication that psychopathy was what they were considering.
Researchers at Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore used MRI scans to show that the striatum is approximately 10 percent larger in psychopathic individuals compared to people with no psychopathic traits. This region is part of the forebrain, an area that contains the entire cerebrum and which helps to coordinate cognition, motor and action planning, decision-making, motivation, reinforcement, and reward perception.
Reminds me of Jean-Francois Lyotard "Knowledge is produced, to be sold".
Overall the DSM is only a taxonomy and If taken as a bible this is troublesome. However as a taxonomy it is the only taxonomy that ensures payment by insurances and state for medical treatment.
Now there was a hypothesis in a comment to Asimov's foundation triology that there is a correlation between available money in field and growing professionals in that field. In so far if there is money no one is willing to bite of the hand that feeds them, and that means the DSM might not see itself being removed.
Next only crow punches out a crows eye, if one reaches the status of an acceptable phD in a field he/she has climbed a social ladder which means he is hierarchical above the laymen and thus to an extend protected from criticism of the less educated. This boils down to the middle ages when the doctores had been a non heredical title ensuring a costatus with the noblemen and women.
In so far closing this comment, what might change some minds is public research from those with a certain diagnosis. However it had to adhere to the scientifical necessities of statistics and be empirical.
For example sixty diagnosed write down diaries of their symptoms for a year and afte a year compare those diaries. As the mind is a constructivistic machine all things need to be considered subjective until found to appear statistical more than x times.
Very well thought out and stated.
Thank you, Merry
I recall watching an excerpt of that Khalanani woman speaking and thinking that she was a danger to society. I tend to take people seriously when they personally admit to a desire to commit random acts of violence.
Yes, I agree. When someone tells you who they are, it is usually a wise idea to believe them
Truth is there is a huge hole in mental heath, so many people let down leading unforfilled lives cause of lack of funding knolage an understanding, that stigma still surrounds it, I don't understand. How you can have a disease an every one is so sorry for you, but if your souls unwell everyone labels you, in general a Ross the board 😡
The DSM is a complete joke. Psychologists, especially in America swear by it and as a consequence people suffer i.e. they don't get the right treatment. I believe the profession as a whole is outdated and most psychologists are institutionalised. You might as well use a bible to determine if someone has a psychosis. As for ignorance over psychopathy, until I discovered your work on Quora 2 years ago I would be equally to blame.
I agree that the profession needs a complete overhaul before it can be thought of as functioning appropriately, and this is an ongoing trend that they seem to be hellbent on riding down to the bottom.
With how people are willing to cast aside facts and create studies, or write papers based on their feelings, it makes it very difficult for me to continue to cite their work. It seems that two different camps have been formed, and on the one side we are on the fast track to the gallows, and on the other side there are people claiming to have a "psychopath" in a DID system that also has anime characters, vampires, and demons. Of course, we can't forget that everyone else in the system has the full range of emotions, but they apparently have a brain that is a transformer for when the psychopath shows up.
Oh, my!
As a soft science, it appears that in dealing with issues of mind, we are even more in the infancy stages than I imagined. As for the DSM being garbage however, is probably going too far. it's more like Galen's medicine in ancient times. not useless, but certainly error ridden and lacking many things, which we have since been able to discover and study.
Not garbage for what it is, garbage for how it is regarded. This is the fault of many different people, but it should be well known and widely stated that the DSM is nothing more than an insurance reimbursement manual.
On a slight tangent and maybe this isn't the right post to make this comment but I think Psychopathy desperately needs a total rebrand would say the term should be outdated due to the negative and inaccurate connotations which the DSM is incapable of correcting. We then have the greater issues of the public consciousness. Hollywood (I'm using it as a blanket term for all entertainment) has inadvertently acted against its 'all inclusive' diversity image by singling out people with a rare formation of the brain. Imagine the uproar if Hollywood made out all down's syndrome people were stupid? Until society evolves enough to embrace a different approach to psychopathy the only way forward, I believe is to do what has been done along the lines of LBGT and the so-called neurodiversity campaigns. A rebrand that will spur a social obligation to be inclusive. It's not ideal because it plays on people's emotions however this is how society (as a whole) adapts to the new threat, in this case, of being isolated from the herd. See how quickly they reform neural pathways to cope with the threat and thus change their behavior.
You are likely correct. The problem I foresee with this, however, is how those campaigns succeeded. There were many people pushing this forward, and that won't be the case with psychopathy. Psychopaths as a whole are not group participants, we don't have family that is going to champion the cause because most people are so poorly educated about psychopathy, most of us will never tell anyone, if we ever get diagnosed in the first place.
I think the overhaul needs to be done beginning with psychology just taking their hands off of it, withdraw a great deal of their poorly designed research, and say, this is a neurological thing, not a psychological thing. Our bad, we might have screwed this one up a great deal, we'll step out of it, and perhaps then rebranding can take place.
As for right now, there is a large contingent of psychologists that simply will not allow this to happen, and will fight against it because it makes them money and earns them status. They do research on "psychopaths", so they have deemed themselves worthy of respect.
Add to all of the sites like Love Fraud, and Sam Vaknin facing the possibility of the loss of their customer base, doing everything that they can to keep the status quo, that they will not allow psychopathy to be considered in any other way.
Sure, you're right of course. You might be surprised that some people might wish to raise awareness of this subject simply because they (in some form) can relate to it? For example, I was born in the 70's when society labeled Dyslexia as being a dunce. Likewise, ADHD wasn't understood either and now they put these kids on drugs. I firmly believe that all neurological dispositions need to be properly represented, not by theory or law of averages but by those who have first-hand experience.
You have already started the fightback with your years of input, raising awareness of an extremely rare and misunderstood disposition. The 'data' is already there and it could be transformed into a more compact and easily accessed format. For example, Hares checklist could be easily challenged and fallacies pointed out. Ideally, a new checklist could be formed, named, and presented to the wider public (cut out the authorities).
A knowledge base could be compiled at some point and form a new body of research. You would encounter resistance from those that benefit from misrepresenting people like yourself but that would be a good indicator of your progress. It's a lot to take on though, but who else is doing this?
Unfortunately, Hare will have to no longer be in this world for that to happen. He sues people that challenge him.
Exactly.
I concur.
Thank you, Athena, thank you.
Thank you for the post. I find that "Psychopathic Problem of the White Mind" quite funny at the moment... probably can't explain why without more reflection. <snicker snicker>
That same laziness is in evidence when looking at how various "experts" write on numerous other neurotypes; autism, add, etc. Horrible science and circular thinking abound, and sometimes get a better salary than I'm making too.
It is rather vexing, isn't it.
*round of applause* im short on time so this is short. Thank you for this. True af
I'm glad you enjoyed it
"I think that there is this enormous river of laziness and ego that has taken root in psychology."
Another possibility worth considering is the over-abundance of an already postulated - although severely under-estimated mental illness that might be slitting under the radar despite flying across everyone's face, because:
a) it hinges on lazy blame-shifting, thrives on intellectual dishonesty and gears up on ridiculously overblown egos lacking the least inkling of humility, instead masquerading together as a seemingly civilized and markedly well-composed persona, which would likewise imply b) such a condition would like not seem to affect the person's chances of career progression, especially if such person would band together with other people having similar traits in a way that would effectively be both counter-productive and outright disruptive to the development of knowledge (not only in the field of psychology, but across all fields of inquiry), and c) its particular properties could very well add insult, rather than relief, to the injury harbored by those suffering from other mental illnesses who make them excessively hot tempered rather than icy cold beyond reason.
Further, such a mentality would likely scapegoat psychopathy while looking to expunge its own sins. It would be especially hard to pin point in a field like psychology, due to its inherent qualities and also because such hypothetical professionals would be holding the proverbial keys to the kingdom.
But apparently it's tabboo to raise such possibilities too explicitly, even though it's not that fat-fetched (the proof is in the pudding) and despite the fact hat such conceptions seem to be well underway being shaped up in the back of many inquisitive minds out there. Maybe it's a matter of time, who knows.
PS -I don't suppose Hare was being *completely* ridiculous in his assertion that "all mental illness hinge around narcissism", and it's entirely possible Athena could be allowing her (understandable) disavowal of the author to not allow her sight to be as clear as it could be. Failing to do so, there could be a risk of subscribing the very same type of generalizing bias, over tribalism and hive mind mentality that Hare might have made himself, which possibly pertains the whole dynamic I elaborated initially.
I don't find it reasonable to dismiss any view as 100% ridiculous, since even a broken clock sometimes gets it right. I'm especially wary of doing so because that was the entire premise behind the witch hunts of old. I sometimes feel it would be a tremendous benefit to humanity if all scientific theories were kept anonymous, so we could all focus on the ideas whiteout obsessing too much about either glorifying or vilifying the authors.
The crux of the matter would not be so much "Why is narcissism so evil"? but rather "what causes narcissism to go pathological, and what exactly does that entail, and how does it manifest across different conditions?
What causes some seemingly well-adjusted people to put up a pristine yet hollow persona that is diametrically at odds with their deeply festering antisocial ways which they learned to keep private - in a way that sometimes hinders the communication between both sides, to the point that a person may be fully oblivious to their own darkness?
Or, to put it simply --- "Why do not many people realize they are (at least) two-faced? What is the scientific basis of widespread hypocrisy, and how to best uprooted this noxious weed?"
This hypothetical hypocritical group I'm here alluding to (while doing my best effort to not just outright blurt out that "pathological narcissism is the root cause of all evils of humanity, as well as the common hub to the spokes that are mental disorders") could be perpetuating the toxic aspects of civilization, while imagining they're actually vanquishing them. That could explain some things.
TL;DR: we're seemingly looking at the very same type of problems (pertaining the reliable systematization of knowledge) that eventually led to the development of modern science and the scientific method in the first place, so there's that.
It wasn't Hare that said that, it was Neville Symington. As much as I dislike Hare, he isn't that much of a dullard to make that ridiculous claim.
I disagree with Symington totally. It is a ridiculous assertion that dismisses what people suffer through. A person who was chained to a toilet their entire life, beaten, raped, and tortured, is not suffering because of narcissism in their adulthood. They are suffering because of what they have been through. The suggestion is very egotistical on Symington's part. There is no generalization on my part. I am directly calling his stances on such things without merit. His claims are possibly projections of his own mind onto others, but that is not an excuse. There is no room in helping people to have that sort of mentality towards the problems that they are facing.
If you are suggesting that he meant to say that it is someone else's narcissism that caused the person to suffer, and therefore cause their mental health issues, that was not at all what he said. He directly holds the patient responsible for their suffering.
Also, nothing that I wrote here has anything to do with Symington. He's not only dead, but had little input into psychopathy. What he did think about it is easily dismissible, because anyone that states:
“The psychopath despises the person who holds on to an illusion that he is good; unconsciously he knows that it is a rejection of an important part of him. Because the psychopath unconsciously hates the person who has an illusion about him, he will always give a strong clue about the hidden side of his character.”
has no idea what psychopathy is or how we think.
The rest of what you describe sounds remarkably like normal human function. Unless you want to pathologize how humans are wired, it isn't something that is unusual in any way.
"It wasn't Hare that said that, it was Neville Symington. "
I'm very bad with names, sorry -- it's my Apollo heel.
Seriously though -- Symington was clearly writing from a crude and misinformed position, and his stance could be ripe with projection.
And that ties with my point; see... I was indeed suggesting there could be widespread pathology in the general way humans are wired, which makes some people prone to hypocrisy, projection, acting out and splitting.
Something that goes beyond the social masquerade; something more akin to an invisible something that seems to make people prone to unwittingly criticize in others the very same aspects they have repressed in themselves.
It's alluded to in popular sayings such as "When you point one finger, there are three fingers pointing back to you." or Baruch Spinoza's well known adage - 'What Paul says about Peter tells us more about Paul than about Peter".
There's even a passage in the Bible about it, so presumably it's something that has been around four ages: "Don't focus on the speck in your brother's eye while ignoring the log in your own eye."
So I had been assuming there might be a pervasive, not fully accounted for mental illness that could be backing this phenomena, and I had been supposing it could be pathological narcissism. I mean...
Hypocritical blame-shifting/projection/acting out/splitting are among its tenets, and the way psychopathy is conceptualized in earlier writings from modern psychology do sometimes convey such impression (that quote you pasted is a good example).
Simply put, certain earlier authors could be tapping into their own darkness. Symington's conceptualization seems egotistical, as you well say.
What I was wondering boils down to - could there be a sort of unacknowledged mental illness sourcing the egomania of the world and the seemingly irreconcilable incongruences of society? Could it a function of pathological narcissism?
However, in recent days I have been reframing this view. What if it's not so much a psychopathology that backs up these phenomena, but simply emotional immaturity?
Doesn't it make more sense that it is just the hardwired instincts of survival attempting to find relevance in a world that no longer requires them?
Well yes indeed, that's another succinct way of putting it.
The standard for maturity has long evolved past the idea of "might makes right", but clearly not everybody has read the memo.
The power-lust type of issues around both toxic masculinity and toxic femininity could arise from this misconception.
The problem is how such issues are now akin to a blame-shifting cancerous growth tearing apart the fabric of society.
As is is, we live in a law and orderly pretense of a civilization, and we well know it.
There is a ideological gorge between theory and practice of human relations. There is such a thing as a war of the classes, as it always has been.
But it's a war no longer fought with torches and pitchforks - but with online computer terminals and social media accounts.
We're all riding a wacky train right now, heading ever faster down the unknown annals of history, with singularity just around the corner. There are peculiar times, to say the list.
Well, assuming the whole thing won't just end up as a huge ball of steel and fire, this problem now dawning on public consciousness will require fitting solutions.
The social contract would require revisions, so would the public institutions. Even in places where psychical violence is already shunned (as it should be), mental and emotional violence are yet barely considered.
The human species now far too powerful, will not nearly enough of a moral structure harnessing its potential destructive power.
Giants with feet of clay, as it were.
If only there was a way to harden the supporting structure, education my be it. But it would need to encompass these matters now being brought to light in modern psychology, I think.
It would need to be a new type of education that teaches the value of empathy and specifically highlights the dangers of unrestrained, hierarchically compounded narcissism.
I think some countries in Northern Europe are already dabbling with similar ideas:
https://www.polarpartners.fi/why-should-we-teach-empathy/
I know of similar programs here in the States, but dislike them. They tend to work on the victim, oppressor narrative, and that is not teaching empathy. I don't know what they are teaching in Finland, but here those programs should be defunded.
Exactly - unsurprisingly, such programs are not really teaching empathy; they're likely more about lightly scratching the surface of the issue, in a way that creates a favorable public impression.
The thing is; purporting to teach empathy in a context shock full of rampant social disparities... is like drilling the desert for water, hoping that a handful of flower seeds scattered randomly might bloom.
Also, diagnosis problem from DSM5 drifts down to general population. By reading about BPD, I have much more sympathy for its sufferers now, though will also remain self protective around them. But by knowing WHY they are problematic, I can be much more understanding and helpful, rather than just running/abandonment. And, it is very helpful as a layperson to understand that Athena is a psychopath, which simply means that she tends to be way more logical and less s"ympathetic." And it has nothing to do with good/evil. Overall, I think Athena is trying (and succeeding!) to make a very positive and useful contribution to the world. And my sad, damaged, abusive, narcissistic Ex has very little in common with psychopathy, other than the symptom of not clearly seeing/understanding the pain he causes. I guess People with narcissism are not minding causing pain to others v. people with autism, psychopathy, & neurotypical do not want to cause pain--among other problems, it is inefficient :-) and for autism & neurotypical pain of others can cause us pain. I guess for narcissistic, pain can feed the narcissism. Having an accurate picture of my Ex as sociopathic, not psychopathic, can help me have a bit of sympathy for him and at least have a better idea what I can give him to help with negotiations over the kids--he is emotional, not logical. If he were psychopathic, I would try offering him different things in a negotiation.
I guess maybe mental illness/difference could be categorized as having been caused by brain wiring (e.g. psychopathy, autism) and/or trauma/abuse? But maybe best to do a diagnosis based not on cause but on treatment, with the awareness of what the cause is? And maybe only calling something an "illness" if it causes the person w the condition pain or causes them to cause others pain? That would define Athena as not having an illness (from your writing you seem more logical and in control than most people I know and reasonably happy and not causing others pain--you cause me joy and insight!). And, people with autism in my family could work on the things that they need to (symptoms) without thinking that the cause (brain wiring) necessarily needs to be changed--the brain wiring can also give advantages. --just some sorting/organizational ideas from a non expert.
I think that it is greatly important to function well in society regardless of how you are wired. As I have said many times, psychopathy affects how you see the world, but not your behavior within it. A person can certainly be psychopathic and a criminal, but it is very important to remember that the person is a criminal that happens to be psychopathic, not that psychopathy had anything to do with their decision making.
It is so common that I see people that claim to be a psychopath, but they are using it as an excuse to behave poorly, to absolve themselves of personal responsibility, and of course make them appear powerful. The person's actions have to do with their choices, not their brain type.
You talked about your experience with psychological testing, brain scans, etc,. Did those psychiatrists or psychologists give you any input regarding Hare and the prevailing steps taken for determining the presence of psychopathy? It seems that the whole process was very detailed, repetitive (as a way of filtering out bogus info, I assume) and complex. That process itself seems to rule out simplistic diagnosing, and the Hare paradigm itself. Did any of the people who evaluated you weigh in, did you question them at all, or was that whole process before you started researching the field?
No, they didn't give me a clue what they were considering. There was no mention of Hare, or the PCL-R. Just a lot of tests, interviews and such, but no indication that psychopathy was what they were considering.
I just saw this online. It might interest you:
Researchers at Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore used MRI scans to show that the striatum is approximately 10 percent larger in psychopathic individuals compared to people with no psychopathic traits. This region is part of the forebrain, an area that contains the entire cerebrum and which helps to coordinate cognition, motor and action planning, decision-making, motivation, reinforcement, and reward perception.
That is very interesting. Do you have a link that I might be able to backtrack to the research involved?
I can’t speak to the author’s comments on psychopathy itself. I was interested in the ‘straitum’ info.
As am I
https://www.braintomorrow.com/brain-region-bigger-psychopaths/
Thank you kindly
Reminds me of Jean-Francois Lyotard "Knowledge is produced, to be sold".
Overall the DSM is only a taxonomy and If taken as a bible this is troublesome. However as a taxonomy it is the only taxonomy that ensures payment by insurances and state for medical treatment.
Now there was a hypothesis in a comment to Asimov's foundation triology that there is a correlation between available money in field and growing professionals in that field. In so far if there is money no one is willing to bite of the hand that feeds them, and that means the DSM might not see itself being removed.
Next only crow punches out a crows eye, if one reaches the status of an acceptable phD in a field he/she has climbed a social ladder which means he is hierarchical above the laymen and thus to an extend protected from criticism of the less educated. This boils down to the middle ages when the doctores had been a non heredical title ensuring a costatus with the noblemen and women.
In so far closing this comment, what might change some minds is public research from those with a certain diagnosis. However it had to adhere to the scientifical necessities of statistics and be empirical.
For example sixty diagnosed write down diaries of their symptoms for a year and afte a year compare those diaries. As the mind is a constructivistic machine all things need to be considered subjective until found to appear statistical more than x times.
Well a hell of a work to be honest.