Posted on 09/15/2011 5:02:03 PM PDT by bronxville
THE PSYCHOPATH - The Mask of Sanity
Special Research Project of the Quantum Future School
Imagine - if you can - not having a conscience, none at all, no feelings of guilt or remorse no matter what you do, no limiting sense of concern for the well-being of strangers, friends, or even family members. Imagine no struggles with shame, not a single one in your whole life, no matter what kind of selfish, lazy, harmful, or immoral action you had taken.
And pretend that the concept of responsibility is unknown to you, except as a burden others seem to accept without question, like gullible fools.
Now add to this strange fantasy the ability to conceal from other people that your psychological makeup is radically different from theirs. Since everyone simply assumes that conscience is universal among human beings, hiding the fact that you are conscience-free is nearly effortless.
You are not held back from any of your desires by guilt or shame, and you are never confronted by others for your cold-bloodedness. The ice water in your veins is so bizarre, so completely outside of their personal experience, that they seldom even guess at your condition.
In other words, you are completely free of internal restraints, and your unhampered liberty to do just as you please, with no pangs of conscience, is conveniently invisible to the world.
You can do anything at all, and still your strange advantage over the majority of people, who are kept in line by their consciences will most likely remain undiscovered.
How will you live your life?
What will you do with your huge and secret advantage, and with the corresponding handicap of other people (conscience)?
The answer will depend largely on just what your desires happen to be, because people are not all the same. Even the profoundly unscrupulous are not all the same. Some people - whether they have a conscience or not - favor the ease of inertia, while others are filled with dreams and wild ambitions. Some human beings are brilliant and talented, some are dull-witted, and most, conscience or not, are somewhere in between. There are violent people and nonviolent ones, individuals who are motivated by blood lust and those who have no such appetites. [...]
Provided you are not forcibly stopped, you can do anything at all.
If you are born at the right time, with some access to family fortune, and you have a special talent for whipping up other people's hatred and sense of deprivation, you can arrange to kill large numbers of unsuspecting people. With enough money, you can accomplish this from far away, and you can sit back safely and watch in satisfaction. [...]
Crazy and frightening - and real, in about 4 percent of the population....
The prevalence rate for anorexic eating disorders is estimated a 3.43 percent, deemed to be nearly epidemic, and yet this figure is a fraction lower than the rate for antisocial personality. The high-profile disorders classed as schizophrenia occur in only about 1 percent of [the population] - a mere quarter of the rate of antisocial personality - and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say that the rate of colon cancer in the United States, considered "alarmingly high," is about 40 per 100,000 - one hundred times lower than the rate of antisocial personality.
The high incidence of sociopathy in human society has a profound effect on the rest of us who must live on this planet, too, even those of us who have not been clinically traumatized. The individuals who constitute this 4 percent drain our relationships, our bank accounts, our accomplishments, our self-esteem, our very peace on earth.
Yet surprisingly, many people know nothing about this disorder, or if they do, they think only in terms of violent psychopathy - murderers, serial killers, mass murderers - people who have conspicuously broken the law many times over, and who, if caught, will be imprisoned, maybe even put to death by our legal system.
We are not commonly aware of, nor do we usually identify, the larger number of nonviolent sociopaths among us, people who often are not blatant lawbreakers, and against whom our formal legal system provides little defense.
Most of us would not imagine any correspondence between conceiving an ethnic genocide and, say, guiltlessly lying to one's boss about a coworker. But the psychological correspondence is not only there; it is chilling. Simple and profound, the link is the absence of the inner mechanism that beats up on us, emotionally speaking, when we make a choice we view as immoral, unethical, neglectful, or selfish.
Most of us feel mildly guilty if we eat the last piece of cake in the kitchen, let alone what we would feel if we intentionally and methodically set about to hurt another person.
Those who have no conscience at all are a group unto themselves, whether they be homicidal tyrants or merely ruthless social snipers.
The presence or absence of conscience is a deep human division, arguably more significant than intelligence, race, or even gender.
What differentiates a sociopath who lives off the labors of others from one who occasionally robs convenience stores, or from one who is a contemporary robber baron - or what makes the difference betwen an ordinary bully and a sociopathic murderer - is nothing more than social status, drive, intellect, blood lust, or simple opportunity.
What distinguishes all of these people from the rest of us is an utterly empty hole in the psyche, where there should be the most evolved of all humanizing functions. [Martha Stout, Ph.D., The Sociopath Next Door] (highly recommended)
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/076791581X/qid=1133179720/sr=8-1/ref=pd_bbs_1/103-4340866-4794240?v=glance&s=books&n=507846
Just thought you'd all like to know where this material was plagiarized from.
Yes, I’m very interested. I’ll check it out. Thanks. Freepers are wonderful. :)
I had Amazon open so checked it out. There are 9 of his books for sale at $115 each - used.
From the first reviewer: “These people have no conscience as a restraining factor in life and thus procede towards positions of money and power with a ruthless efficacy that is largely undetected as we don’t consider it possible that people would behave like that. We find them in leader positions in politics, the corporate world and religious movements to mention a few. The costs to society and the affects on normal people is devastating, which is why this book is recommended for everyone.
Hervey Checkley’s gives a great understanding of how these people function and also how come even professional people can be taken in by them. Like the book says they carry a mask of sanity and only careful observation over time gives the clues that something is amiss.”
Boy they are describing the two wackos in the WH to a tee.Scary
Do I have a conscience? I really don't know.
Have I ever felt guilt? No.
On the other hand I have felt shame, but not about what I believe others to feel that emotion.
And then again, to me, family is everything.
If you have ever read any of the Louie LaMour Sackett western series, that is ALL of my family's take on family.
When family calls you answer that call if humanly possible.
Am I a true psychopath? Probably not but functioning psyochopath is a pretty close description.
I got convinced yesterday when he gave a million to planned parenthood and in his bill wants to tax soup kitchens. The very kitchens where he was getting his photo-ops on 9-11. The very next day he started on the pass the bill, pass the bill, pass the bill now sales pitch...the very bill which will cause havoc for soup kitchens and our poor.
I was once told that one of the hardest things in life is for good people to realize that evil exists because it is so unlike them. This book is written with actual accounts from this doctor's practice. It lists the clinical signs and symptoms so that you can identify if you are dealing with or are in a relationship with a sociopath.
One in twenty five is a chilling figure to come to grips with. Knowledge is power so I recommend that everyone read this book. It is an eye opener and very liberating to read it.
Regards, Mr. Sol
Barry and Ms Food Police
Reid
Durbin
Schummer
Ted Kennedy
Pelosi
Weiner
Debbie Blabber-Mouth
Maxine Waters
Boxer
Hawkins
Kerry
Bill and Hillary
Soros
Buffet
Sen Nelson ( FL)
Edwards
Gore
Patty Murray
Barney Frank
GE's Igar
The News Anchors/Reporters at MSDNC, ABC, NBC, CNN,CBS,
The list of leftist media people and Dem congress people is infinite. All are ruthless ,bold faced Liars, soul less , power hungry and money hungry creatures.
Creepy
Sounds very Dexter-ish. Lacking the emotion, but given a code to live by that you’ve accepted.
Not actually given a code but accepted my own code, yes.
One part of my code - If you're my friend, you're my friend for life, untill you screw me over.
Then you better watch over your shoulder for the rest of your life.
I sometimes think there are people without souls, because they are without feeling for others. First Corinthians has something to offer on the matter:
“Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not love, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not love, I am nothing.”
You obviously love your family. You’re no more a psycopath than I am. Sometimes we can look to deeply into ourselves like we’re our own little gods and compare too much with others. I do it at times as well especially when I had to do psych at college. I thought each diagnosis was me, me, me. I’d never make a psych person. I’d be in the crazy house in a month. No, it’s better to help others...do some volunteer work. It gets us out of ourselves, makes us feel good, while helping others.
The people I think are sociopaths/psychopaths are those who’d steal from a homeless person and laugh while doing it. They have no shame or guilt whatsoever. These are some of the people we have running this country. We have a Czar who wrote a book about murdering the vast majority of people in the world. Darwins cousin was another...it led to forced sterilization in this country which Hitler copied. These people don’t go away and for some reason recognize each other.
God only makes good. If one takes that premise then one must surmise that something happened to them. Alice Bailey, for example, attempted suicide a number of times when she was a child. The first time at 5 y/o. Blavatsky also attempted a few times. Annie Besant the same. Margaret Sanger was obsessed with eugenics and tried to get others to commit suicide. HG Wells, GB Shaw were also eugenists. They were also into the occult and whose books influenced the UN from its beginning aka Huxley, and other places of power...
That is either manifestly untrue, or God is not doing all the making.
Another good book along the same vein is “The Psychopath Test” by Joe Ronson.
One psychopath can be a menace to his family, his neigbors, his circle.
A strata of secret Stalinists is waiting to figure out the train schedules, and how to get us to that point.
Treasure that 2nd Amd, folks.
As cold-bloodedly practical as any SS or KGB gulag guards, in their dreams.
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