Psychopaths

[Schneibster]

Given what I've seen (and I have studied it a fair bit, since I think it's tied up with why the world is so screwed up), I would characterize it as a spectrum disorder like autism, with some sufferers only mildly affected and easily capable of assimilating well, and others deeply emotionally crippled by it.

I think that a bit of sociopathy is required in a good leader. Too much, and they start taking advantage of their position; too little, and they are paralyzed by fear of hurting someone and will allow great harm to come to many instead. Sometimes the lieutenant has to order the sergeant to take a couple guys into a hot zone where they're likely to be killed. And they have to go, because someone has to, otherwise the other platoons in the regiment are at risk. But they're liable to get killed doing it.

ETA: I chose war but many non-war scenarios with various natural catastrophes occur to the mind as supporting examples. And, BTW, what many people call "courage" is the sergeant knowing and telling the couple guys and they go anyway. But that's a different subject.

[Audley Strange]

If psychopathy is a neurological condition, is there are direct opposite I wonder? People so crippled with empathy and sympathy that they cannot function "normally"?

Is there a baseline "normal" psychology?

I just googled pathological empathy:

http://www.oup.com/us/catalog/general/s ... 0199738571

http://ps.psychiatryonline.org/article. ... urnalID=18

http://saferelationshipsmagazine.com/ge ... er-empathy

I only skimmed these links. But I think I might have it.

I don't know what's totally normal. Pathological Normalcy?

Cheers for the links.

The first link, to Oxford University Press, is advertisement with thorough information about a book; some interesting information can be drawn from it and it looks topical for Audley's questions.

The Psychiatry Online linked looked like it was concerned with empathy deficit, which is sociopathy/psychopathy, and like it was a description of a book on it. I don't think its helpful for Audley's questions.

The last link yields this:

In fact, these genes influence the production of various brain chemicals which can influence just ‘how much’ empathy you have. These brain chemicals include those that influence orgasm and it’s effect on how bonded you feel while also influencing some aspects of mental health (no, no! That’s NOT a good mix!). Other brain chemicals influence how much innate and learned fear you have. However, females don’t seem to assess threats well and in females, these chemicals increase her social interactions at the same time she is not assessing fear and threats well (This is not a good thing!!). One of the final chemicals effects delaying reflexes (like getting out of the relationship) and impacts short and long term memory (remember when I talked about how you store good and bad memory–here’s the culprit!).

And since it is genetic, these kinds of genes can run in entire families that produce ‘gullible’ and ‘trusting’ individuals who seem to just keep getting hurt.

Looks like in women this produces an excess of trust that is commonly used by sociopaths to get women to do things for them.

That link looked pretty good and pretty pertinent to Audley's questions and the most informative of the three since it's an entire article.

And for the summary. Pathological atruism does seem somewhat akin to what I was thinking of though I meant more people who would be emotionally crippled by a disaster they saw on the news say, to the extent they could not function properly almost as if they endured the trauma of the event first hand.

Its interesting that you mention ASD in regards to sociopathy, I have suspicions that both are entirely related and most likely hangovers from our past when they had more benefit. When I read Baron Cohen's work on it ASD recently, I could see that things like obsessive focus, reduced communication and of course lack of compassion would be an advantage in hunting and in battle, whereas our societies them dysfunction.

[Svartalf]

http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-11-p ... ction.html

Can these studies be applied to management and executives? If we find that a significant number of Americans are psychopaths, can they democratically vote to approve of psychopathy?

I don't understand. What would that approval mean? Psychopaths already live, what's the word? assimilated lives. Many are quite successful. And being a psychopath is different from being a serial killer.

They still wreck lives, cause untold suffering, and ought to be introduced to the habit of showering with Zyclon B.
Especially the bankers and every exec that delocalized jobs from his country to a third world one.

[hadespussercats]

http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-11-p ... ction.html

Can these studies be applied to management and executives? If we find that a significant number of Americans are psychopaths, can they democratically vote to approve of psychopathy?

I don't understand. What would that approval mean? Psychopaths already live, what's the word? assimilated lives. Many are quite successful. And being a psychopath is different from being a serial killer.

They still wreck lives, cause untold suffering, and ought to be introduced to the habit of showering with Zyclon B.
Especially the bankers and every exec that delocalized jobs from his country to a third world one.

If they do those things, they should be punished. I'm just pointing out that not all psychopaths act in that way.

And the idea of doing brain tests to lock people away prophylactically is repugnant to me.

[Seth]

http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-11-p ... ction.html

Can these studies be applied to management Socialists and executivesMarxists? If we find that a significant number of Americans Marxists are psychopaths, can they we democratically vote to approve of psychopathy confine them to insane asylums for life?

[Schneibster]

And for the summary.

Pathological atruism does seem somewhat akin to what I was thinking of though I meant more people who would be emotionally crippled by a disaster they saw on the news say, to the extent they could not function properly almost as if they endured the trauma of the event first hand.

A better example might be someone who sees a movie about someone getting killed and cannot unlink their feelings about the simulated event enough to acknowledge it's done with mirrors in the moviemaker's art. I get what you're saying, I think, if that's right. My sister is like that. I have it too but less. Enough so that I'm a lousy leader, though.

Its interesting that you mention ASD in regards to sociopathy, I have suspicions that both are entirely related and most likely hangovers from our past when they had more benefit. When I read Baron Cohen's work on it ASD recently, I could see that things like obsessive focus, reduced communication and of course lack of compassion would be an advantage in hunting and in battle, whereas our societies them dysfunction.

That also is true. But from an architectural standpoint, the amygdala is the context-associater. So disfunctions in various downlinks from portions of the frontal lobe. My general completely unscientific sense of the function of the frontal lobes is that they are context generators of various kinds. How they would have developed over the last few million years, however, and managed to survive, has to do not only with reducing focus in some places, but overemphasizing it in others. The kind of personality that is good at fashioning arrowheads can probably get plenty of hunters to use his products to kill food, and they will share with him, for example. This is how society works; this is what we're adapted for, over millions of years as opposed to the ten thousand or so of civilized veneer sloppily drawn over the Ice Age hunter.

[Cunt]

Lets all read this while remembering that homosexuality was considered insane until quite recently.

With that in mind, how about everyone do a Turing test on this shit. Turing was a homo war hero you can look him up.
He was smart as fuck AND handsome as all get out.
Fucking hero.
The test is this - is the way Schneibster wants to handle some 'insane' people better, or worse than the way Mr. Turing and other queers were treated recently, in Turings time.

Would you mind terribly if I didn't feel things about people?

The amygdala is the part of the brain that associates emotional content with things. Thoughts, incoming sensory impressions, all get combined with their emotional context at the amygdala. What's happening to these psychopaths is that the vmPFC, which is responsible for creating feelings about people specifically, that is, the emotions that make us social, doesn't transmit that context to the amygdala; people therefore are viewed by the sufferer as objects without any emotional context that would prevent harming or killing them, or engender remorse if the sufferer did harm.

Possibly all true, but none of that says that they would surely harm or kill. Remorse doesn't help victims who are dead anyway, so is wasted.

This sounds like the BS about motorcycle helmets and seatbelts.

Not only are we preventing harm to others, we are preventing these unfortunate people from being locked up. With criminals. Without treatment. In hell. They and their victims both cry out for our intervention.

These people are insane. You're suggesting we let them wander around untreated until they maim or kill someone instead of treating them. I disagree. Strongly.

I don't mind, but you'd literally be insane if you didn't. By one of the definitions of insane: not having an appropriate emotional response to a situation.

I have noticed that many on this forum don't have 'appropriate' emotional responses.
I think they are okay anyway.

You aren't talking about what I'm talking about and need to think about this a great deal more before you say something that will piss me off seriously.

This isn't a fuzzy standard. It's like claiming there's nothing wrong with someone who has a hole in their head and they ought be left alone. That's as insane as they are.

...<snip>...need to think about this a great deal more before you say something that will piss me off seriously.

I don't really understand this. Could you clarify what you mean here? Are you making a vague, ineffectual threat of some kind? Over a difference of opinion? I must be misreading this.

I asked you a similar question before, about the word you use 'libertardian'. I noticed that you bravely did not anwer. I still don't know what you mean by it. Could you spell that out, too?

[Cunt]

Let me put it this way: these people WILL end up in prison, and WILL hurt someone very very badly first. Shall we treat them and prevent it, or not?

You are making some large claims based on what? Have you evidence that psychopaths can't live lives like most others with little harm to the people around them?

I think if there is treatment, or a cure, it should be offered, but would you like to be forced to take my 'cure', because I found that you fit some diagnostic criteria in the DSM-IV?

[Atheist-Lite]

Tests for these kinds of conditions will be in the hands of whom? We could find the nice guys on the inside and the bad guys on the outside if we're not careful?

[Schneibster]

Lets all read this while remembering that homosexuality was considered insane until quite recently.

False analogy. We're talking about brain dysfunction. A disorder that prevents important information from being associated together, and results in aberrant behavior, killing and maiming people and so forth.

What's that got to do with homosexuality?

Do you think killing and maiming people is normal behavior? Do you think it's desirable? Do you think people should be allowed to do it?

With that in mind, how about everyone do a Turing test on this shit. Turing was a homo war hero you can look him up.
He was smart as fuck AND handsome as all get out.
Fucking hero.
The test is this - is the way Schneibster wants to handle some 'insane' people better, or worse than the way Mr. Turing and other queers were treated recently, in Turings time.

First, Turing is a hero of mine. I'm well aware he was homosexual, and I consider the way he was hounded to death a crime against humanity; he unquestionably would have greatly advanced cybernetics and math had he lived, if nothing else.

Second, we have not spoken of what I want to do. You are attributing something to me without evidence. I have asked questions. You are attacking me for asking them. I thought you were better than that.

Third, what do you think cognitive therapy is? Did you even check before you decided I'm Dr. Mengele? Or are you just knee-jerking along, without a care for reality?

The answer to your question is, infinitely better, in fact so much so that your question is ridiculous. Not to mention that it makes insulting assumptions about me and about psychology.

Would you mind terribly if I didn't feel things about people?

The amygdala is the part of the brain that associates emotional content with things. Thoughts, incoming sensory impressions, all get combined with their emotional context at the amygdala. What's happening to these psychopaths is that the vmPFC, which is responsible for creating feelings about people specifically, that is, the emotions that make us social, doesn't transmit that context to the amygdala; people therefore are viewed by the sufferer as objects without any emotional context that would prevent harming or killing them, or engender remorse if the sufferer did harm.

Possibly all true, but none of that says that they would surely harm or kill. Remorse doesn't help victims who are dead anyway, so is wasted.

This sounds like the BS about motorcycle helmets and seatbelts.

Not only are we preventing harm to others, we are preventing these unfortunate people from being locked up. With criminals. Without treatment. In hell. They and their victims both cry out for our intervention.

These people are insane. You're suggesting we let them wander around untreated until they maim or kill someone instead of treating them. I disagree. Strongly.

I don't mind, but you'd literally be insane if you didn't. By one of the definitions of insane: not having an appropriate emotional response to a situation.

I have noticed that many on this forum don't have 'appropriate' emotional responses.
I think they are okay anyway.

You aren't talking about what I'm talking about and need to think about this a great deal more before you say something that will piss me off seriously.

This isn't a fuzzy standard. It's like claiming there's nothing wrong with someone who has a hole in their head and they ought be left alone. That's as insane as they are.

...<snip>...need to think about this a great deal more before you say something that will piss me off seriously.

I don't really understand this. Could you clarify what you mean here? Are you making a vague, ineffectual threat of some kind? Over a difference of opinion? I must be misreading this.

Threat?

You've accused me of being Dr. Mengele, which is where it looked like you were going from the above. There is no threat. There is merely the fact that I will decide you're not worth talking to.

You have no idea what you're talking about, and you're hostile toward medicine. I'd never have bothered engaging you if I had known you're an anti-psychology crank.

I asked you a similar question before, about the word you use 'libertardian'. I noticed that you bravely did not anwer. I still don't know what you mean by it. Could you spell that out, too?

http://rationalia.com/forum/viewtopic.p ... 2#p1046882

Apparently you never bothered to read my response.

[Schneibster]

Let me put it this way: these people WILL end up in prison, and WILL hurt someone very very badly first. Shall we treat them and prevent it, or not?

You are making some large claims based on what?

The facts that a) these people are in prison for violent crimes, both the subjects and the controls, b) the subjects have been diagnosed with psychopathy and the controls have been examined and determined not to have psychopathy, and c) brain scans show not merely "a difference" but a dysfunction. Not to mention d) brains change with use, growing new synapses, and e) unused pathways wither. These last two are key in cognitive therapy and allow therapists to really help patients by giving them the brain exercises they need to regain their lost (and sometimes never developed) capacities.

This is what boggles my mind: you are militating against just sitting and talking with people. That's what cognitive therapy is. It can be combined with drug therapies, but does not require them unless there is organic damage.

Have you evidence that psychopaths can't live lives like most others with little harm to the people around them?

Dude, they're in prison for violent crimes. What do you want, blood?

I think if there is treatment, or a cure, it should be offered, but would you like to be forced to take my 'cure', because I found that you fit some diagnostic criteria in the DSM-IV?

If you were in prison would you mind talking to a guy once a week about your feelings, with the possibility that something that you know you're missing will open up for you? It might not work, and if you resist it it certainly won't. But would it be that big a deal that you're getting all nasty with me?

What the fuck is this shit?

[Schneibster]

Tests for these kinds of conditions will be in the hands of whom? We could find the nice guys on the inside and the bad guys on the outside if we're not careful?

This is not a psychological test. It's a brain scan, followed by another type of brain scan. The results are unequivocal, and the evidence is clear. The cure, if I'm right, is a type of therapy that involves helping the patient to think in the way that uses those pathways, and to develop the habit of using them whenever she or he (though most true psychopaths are male, females are too risk-averse generally) deals with another person.

What's "on the inside?" This kind of therapy works best on someone who is in normal society and has a maximum of interactions in which to practice their new skill.

[Schneibster]

The key here is, if you catch them early, you can teach them the skill of having feelings about people as they interact with them, and prevent them from getting into the criminal justice system in the first place. This is better for them, and better for the putative victims. It's also much cheaper; the violent prison population would be cut in half (unfortunately this would not result in a halving of prison incarcerations because of stupid drug laws, but little baby steps first). Not only that but half of the people who are victims of violent crime would not be any more, which is better for all of us.

I'm really disappointed in you, Cunt.

[Atheist-Lite]

It's a arbitary and subjective checklist, and the scan is secondary. Now fast forward a decade and the Republicans are in power replacing the courts with theocratic venues etc and you can see the dangers of this approach surely? All it'll take is some christian shrink to link modern American atheism to pyschopathy, and coupled with that checklist which appears to be a wide net and to cover all bases....afterall it is the shrinks career vs you?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hare_Psychopathy_Checklist

[Schneibster]

It's a arbitary and subjective checklist, and the scan is secondary.

I'm sorry, I'm into actual medicine, not homeopathy and zany anti-psychology conspiracy theories and such.

The scan is not secondary. That's the point.

Do you know what fMRI is?

Now fast forward a decade and the Republicans are in power replacing the courts with theocratic venues etc and you can see the dangers of this approach surely? All it'll take is some christian shrink to link modern American atheism to pyschopathy, and coupled with that checklist which appears to be a wide net and to cover all bases....afterall it is the shrinks career vs you?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hare_Psychopathy_Checklist

Oh noes, I'll have to sit and talk to someone for an hour a week. Oh woe is me. I wish I could die instead.

Are you done?