Looking for Psychopaths...
Really?
Here is an unusual term for mass manipulation: The “Psychopath”
I remember joking about it 20 or 30 years ago. Based on the level of conformism expected in US public “education,” but noticing the requirements for “success,” I coined the phrase for the “ideal” American: the conformist psychopath.
You may have noticed that articles about “psychopaths” have proliferated in the last couple of decades. Once you’ve read one, you have probably read them all. So, why are these articles so common?
One thing you can always sell people: they are smarter or better than others. Creating straw men who meet the expectation is always marketable.
It happened only today that I noticed that I have been tricked, too, which happens probably more often than I would like to believe, but at least, this time I can correct myself.
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The psychological mechanism of tricking people with “psychopaths” is based on the threat “psychopaths” pose, which strongly suggests the immediate implementation of the “expert-recommended” remedy for self-defense: RECOGNIZE “psychopaths” in order to be able to protect yourself! It is only an additional reward that the “smart” person who can “identify psychopaths” can bask in the warmth of their own pseudo-intellectual piss and shit that he prefers to believe to be sunshine. Ouch… That was a bit harsh on myself, that is, on the person I used to be only a couple of days ago.
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Here is an article from Psychology Today about psychopaths:
Once you carefully read it, you probably won’t find anything particularly suspicious about it. It’s the usual pseudo-scientific BS. But why are such articles so common and what do they do to the unsuspecting?
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How about checking out the “characteristics” that you are supposed to be able to use to identify a “psychopath”? Here are the criteria with my thoughts attached:
1. Lying and manipulation
How can people know that they are telling the truth? Most of the time, they cannot even determine that about their own utterances. Also, people can change their mind about what they consider the truth, when new information becomes available or new considerations must be introduced.
If one party assumes power over another without a legal contract (e.g. a boss-worker relationship legally permits one person to preside over another to a certain extent), it doesn’t matter if that person is a “psychopath” or not, because the relationship is going to be destructive and must be avoided.
On the other hand, people usually want to accomplish things, which can involve trying to convince others. Such attempts can often be mistaken for “manipulation.”
2. Lack of morality or rule-breaking
That’s a good one, because most people who have lost cultural foundations (traditions or religions) have no clue what good or bad mean. It makes matters worse that two people are often unlikely to agree on the moral or ethical value of a specific act. They can easily assume that the other person is a “psychopath.”
3. Lack of empathy and cold-heartedness
Who goes first? “If you don’t give in, I won’t! If you disagree with me, you are a psychopath!”
Oh, well, no comments.
4. Narcissism and false superiority complex
According to Eric Berne (Games People Play, 1964), one of the most important needs humans have is the need for recognition. People striving for it can often be labeled as histrionic or even narcissistic by other people, who might be simply insensitive to the common human need. Yes, you just noticed, such insensitive people are, according to the article, “psychopaths.”
Self-esteem also enters the picture here. People with low self-esteem have a hard time accepting others with a realistic level of self-esteem. Who is going to tell what is “too much,” which would mean that the other person has a “superiority complex”?
5. Gaslighting and psychological bullying
When people don’t know the truth and are uncertain about their thoughts, often change their minds, but they still want recognition. This doesn’t mean that there are not manipulating people, but those who fall under the spell of a con artist usually wake up too late, anyway…
6. Lack of contrition and self-serving victimhood
People, who usually do their best, have a hard time to show remorse. Still, they might be able to admit that the mistake they made was due to insufficient information or poor judgment, which would qualify them as “normal.” After all, humans never have enough information to make fully-informed decisions and even if they did, the human intellect is frail and prone to making mistakes.
Playing the victim is ALWAYS a game (in the sense Eric Berne defines games), but it’s not necessarily against someone else. People are pretty good at playing against themselves through a lifetime in order to be able to complain later. However, if someone is claiming a reward for false victimhood, the claim doesn’t have to be honored and the game can be stopped right away, psychopath or not.
7. The “situational” sociopath or psychopath
Most people are able to behave in a callous, self-serving manner, especially when they are protecting others. According to the author of the article, if you are kind to your family member, but couldn’t care less for the panhandling junkie who wants a dollar for washing your windshield, unless you want a quarter to make a long mark on your paint, you are a psychopath.
Everyone has a limit to being “good.”
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The above considerations suggest that searching for “psychopaths” can easily serve the purpose of alienating people in an already atomized western culture that has only a few traces or remnants of true communities.
Cultural and personal differences hamper mutual understanding enough to make nearly anyone believe that a colleague, a neighbor, or even a spouse is a “psychopath” and, as such must be avoided. And isolated people become a lot easier to manipulate…
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So, the ultimate message of instructing people to look for “psychopaths” is that
YOU MUST NOT TRUST ANYONE! THEY MIGHT BE PSYCHOPATHS!
AT LEAST, DON’T TRUST THEM, UNTIL YOU ASCERTAIN!
Guess, what? If you go along with the criteria and the identifying process from the article, you can easily find out that EVERYBODY AROUND YOU IS A PSYCHOPATH!
RUN FOR YOUR LIFE!
These guidelines to spot psychopaths are indeed quite gray area stuff in humanity.
But there is one plus to the definition which has been bragged about as a superpower to run heartless things like the stock market etc ...
If it was a positive to be a psychopath to run a certain system, doesn't that illustrate that system itself as psychopathic?
All in all it really doesn’t matter whether we call them serial abusers, toxic narcissists or psychopaths. Just don’t allow the little Hitler’s out of their cells. And certainly bar the doors.