Psychopathy

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Psychopathy is a form of personality disorder characterized by lack of empathy, and with a drive to socially manipulate and control. Not all psychopaths are physically violent. Psychopathy is a stable mentality, not to be confused with psychosis.

The term psychopathy is sometimes considered interchangable with the term antisocial personality disorder, and also with the term sociopathy, and is actually not a generally recognized, clearly defined psychiatric term or diagnosis. Some consider the condition to also be closely related to narcissistic personality disorder. An important method used by trained specialists for identifying psychopathy is something called the Psychopathy Checklist, created by Canadian psychologist Robert D. Hare.

Among those who have contributed most to the describing of this enigmatic personality type are Hervey Cleckley who wrote the early, significant book titled The Mask of Sanity, and Robert D. Hare, author of Without Conscience: The Disturbing World of the Psychopaths Among Us.

1 Description
- 1.1 Sadism
2 Elusive to normal people
- 2.1 Conspiracy theories
3 Possible causes
4 See also
5 Notes
6 Further reading
- 6.1 Films
7 External links
8 Relevant discussion threads

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Description

Individuals who are psychopaths are inherently in a perpetual state of desperation. This desperation is caused by a lack of ability to perceive reality intuitively -- an ability which all normal people, on the other hand, do have.

Psychopaths are aware both of their own desperation and of other people having some source of information that the psychopath lacks. This awareness motivates two strong drives, namely to destroy the sentient self of others, and, secondly, to create an environment that makes sense to the psychopath. Psychopaths like hierarchy, rules, titles, uniforms and so on. Even if a psychopath is not himself the dictator, he craves to live in a dictatorial social system where the rules are clear and where he can control others absolutely, and where he, in turn, will be controlled by those "stronger" than him. This clearly expressed and overt form of social existence is the only one which the psychopath, with his strange condition, can understand and navigate in. One may also speculate that this mindset of the psychopath explains his worshipping of Gaia, as he cannot avoid acknowledging that planet Earth is what he perceives as "superior" to himself.

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Sadism

Sadism, a term named after Donatien Alphonse François de Sade, is what many first think about when picturing what psychopathy is, and rightly so. Psychopaths enjoy tormenting others -- ranging from making others merely embarrassed, to making them desperate, possibly even by physically torturing and even murdering. This behavior gives the psychopath a combination of two things he craves: being in control over others, and, perhaps just as important, supplies some sort of "feedback" or information input. The more the victim suffers, the more information for the psychopath, which is needed as desperately as is air, food or water. The psychopath lacks contact with his true inner self and personality (if one assumes he none the less does have one), and this makes it impossible to perceive reality intuitively and directly, and so the only way he can perceive reality and get a sense of existence is through input from others.

One of the most typical, and dangerous, results of this malfunction of the psychopath is that, for him, empathy for others is simply unknowable. He ruthlessly, callously, and actively victimises others and uses them as though they were simply resources; he has no regard for them as living beings -- and indeed does not even know what regard for living beings is. His lack of empathy is absolute -- that lack is precisely related to the very center and basis of what is psychopathy.

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Elusive to normal people

Among themselves, psychopaths recognize that they have common perspectives and needs. However, for normal people, psychopathy is so alien that it is difficult in the extreme to relate to its nature. The reason for this is that the quality which is lacking in a psychopath is the very central quality of normal people, maybe even of animals, and it is naturally hard to grasp that a being that is human in appearance totally lacks the most basic human feature. On top of psychopathy's outlandishness comes the fact that psychopaths are necessarily very adept at studying and performing human behavior, and even though many of their displays of emotions and other human qualities are often doomed to be nothing more than absurd caricatures, it is far easier for the normal onlookers to believe the crude performance than to consider the reality behind the psychopath's "mask".

The natural human difficulty in understanding what they are dealing with when faced with psychopathy has caused normal people to fall prey to psychopaths in all aspects of society and in all kinds of social situations through all time.

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Conspiracy theories

Symbol of psychopathy?

There are those who believe that oppressive social structures are being planned in secrecy by politically and economically powerful individuals. Such conspiratorial plans may accurately be described as psychopathic.

Because psychopathy is so difficult to grasp, and because of the human tendency to "follow along" as per our social nature, the general population may not be able to learn about psychopathy unless information is made available on a very grand scale.

Some conspiracy theorists fear that a complete, global dictatorial social structure will be put in place by psychopaths, which would leave nowhere to escape to. Given that psychopathy is real, and that psychopaths are able to collaborate towards common goals, the fear of the conspiracy theorists can be considered a realistic one if the members of the general population do not gain understanding of the very elusive nature of psychopathy in time.

A famous quote by Edmund Burke is a quite precise description regarding psychopathic conspiracy. The quote reads: "When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle."

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Possible causes

How psychopathy is caused is not clearly understood. Some say the cause is childhood abuse and trauma, others suggest it is a condition that some people are born with. Scientific investigations have looked into whether psychopathy may even define a distinct type of human, a sub-species or "species within the species".[1]

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