Psychos

Correcting the Psyochopath ?
Are these traits intrinsic to the individual and can they be corrected?

Psychologists have given up. Corrections not possible. So avoidance is advised.

Henry: Correction depends on many variables.. Before we can think about correcting these abnormalities, we need to find ways of protecting ourselves from their influence. That means first admitting that such people exist and are found in positions of power, and second, learning to recognize the signs of their manipulations and the pathological traits of our own thinking in order to free ourselves from their influence.

Laura: As Henry says, there are many variables. When speaking of psychopaths, specifically, the general consensus today is that they are not only incurable, they are un-treatable.

The first problem is that if you want to treat a problem, you have to have a patient. The word patient comes from Latin, and means "to suffer." A patient, by definition, is someone who is suffering and seeks treatment.

Psychopaths do not experience distress and do not think that anything is wrong with them, they do not suffer stress or neuroses, and do not seek out treatment voluntarily. They do not consider their attitudes and behavior to be at all wrong, and do not benefit from the many treatment programs that have been set up to help them "develop empathy" and interpersonal skills. The psychopath recognizes no flaw in his psyche, no need for change. They will, however, participate in treatment programs in prisons in order to gain their release.

When the recidivism rate of psychopaths and other offenders who had been in treatment was examined, it was found that the rate of general recidivism was equally high in the treated and untreated group, 87% and 90% respectively, however the rate of violent recidivism was significantly higher in the treated group than the untreated group; 77% and 55% respectively. In contrast, the treated non-psychopaths had significantly lower rates of general and violent recidivism; 44% and 22% respectively, than did untreated psychopaths, 58% and 39%. So it seems that treatment programs work for non-psychopaths, but actually make true psychopaths worse.

A Canadian journalist reporting on this study wrote: "After their release, it was found that those who had scored highest in terms of 'good treatment behaviour' and who had the highest "empathy" scores were the ones who were more likely to reoffend after release."

That's the psychopath for you: they can fake anything to get what they want.

The question is: how can therapy make someone worse? Robert Hare's conjecture is that group therapy and insight-oriented therapy actually help psychopaths to develop better ways of manipulating, deceiving and using people but do nothing to help them understand themselves.

Freud argued psychopaths are untreatable in psychotherapy precisely because having a conscience is a prerequisite for being able to use psychotherapy. It is the conscience, and the related capacity for concern for others, that drives the serious scrutiny of one's motives, which underlie one's behaviour. Yet psychopaths lack conscience and concern by definition.

SC: How can one tell if one is not himself a psychopath? That we haven't been influenced ourselves by the effects of their perversion/pathology while they occupy positions of power in an administration where we find ourselves - in a trade union, a political party or elsewhere?

What percentage of Society ?
Laura: Also keep in mind the 12% of individuals who are susceptible to the influence and thinking style of the psychopaths. In the end, you have a total of 18% or more of any given population that seeks to subdue and control the rest. If you then consider that remainder, the 82%, and keep in mind the bell curve, at least 80% of the remainder will follow whoever is in charge. And since psychopaths have no limitations on what they can or will do to get to the top, the ones in charge are generally pathological. It is not power that corrupts, it is that corrupt individuals seek power.

SC: Conflict seems to be a form of food for this type of perverse/pathological personality. Because it permits them to project their aggression, their violence on others and avoid to put themselves into question?

Henry: You might say that, having no emotions of their own, they feed off of their power to stir up the emotions of others. They get a kick out of the power it gives them. It makes them feel superior to be "above" such emotional displays.

SC: Łobaczewski's Analysis of lying is very powerful. When he demonstrates that the liar is always right, he is very convincing. There is in this a new matrices for understanding how psychopaths function. He explains very well this mechanism of the lie. The lie is their way of functioning and winning. I would like to know more about this mechanism of the lie and its effects. How does it work? Are these liars in all fields?

Henry: Lying is a very successful strategy because very few people think that there are hardcore liars in society who lie as a matter of course.

Think of a divorce or some other case before a judge and jury. Most of us will go into the proceedings with the idea that the truth is somewhere in the middle. The two opposing sides in a case will tell their stories, each embellishing their story a bit, each putting themselves in the best light, and the judge or jury will assume the truth is somewhere in the middle.

But what happens when one of the people is a liar and the other is a person telling the truth? The liar is at an advantage because the judge or jury will still expect that the truth is somewhere in the middle. So someone who is the victim of a liar and manipulator cannot come out ahead. Telling the truth cannot get that person 100% of the justice he or she deserves, while lying will always get the perpetrator something.

Daily life is like that trial. We are always going to give others the benefit of the doubt, if you are a moral person. The liar and manipulator will never do that and will use the good will of the person of conscience against him.

Lying is therefore always a winning strategy. That, in itself, can be an indicator that we are living in a pathological system!

Laura: When you consider the infantile internal structure of the psychopath, it's easier to understand the lying aspect. The psychopath doesn't lie in the way a normal person lies. Psychopathic lying is not mere deception, it is "creating reality" so that it conforms to the psychopath's wants.

Some Traits of the psychopath
There are a number of traits that we find in psychopaths: An obvious trait is the complete lack of conscience. They lack any sense of remorse or empathy with others. They can be extremely charming and are experts at using talk to charm and hypnotize their prey. They are also irresponsible. Nothing is ever their fault; someone else or the world at large is always to blame for all of their 'problems' or their mistakes. Martha Stout, in her book The Sociopath Next Door, identifies what she calls the pity ploy. Psychopaths use pity to manipulate. They convince you to give them one more chance, and to not tell anyone about what they have done. So another trait - and a very important one - is their ability to control the flow of information.

They are also incapable of deep emotions. In fact, when Hare, a Canadian psychologist who spent his career studying psychopathy, did brain scans on psychopaths while showing them two sets of words, one set of neutral words with no emotional associations and a second set with emotionally charged words, while different areas of the brain lit up in the non-psychopathic control group, in the psychopaths, both sets were processed in the same area of the brain, the area that deals with language.