The Mind of a Sociopath

@ebrown p,

I'm sorry that you're not able to swallow 35 years of research in a single gulp, but that doesn't make him a crackpot. It makes you uneducated on the subject.

And your refusal to acknowledge that just makes you seem willfully ignorant. Go play with the moon landing disbelievers and the flat earthers.

0 Replies

@ebrown p,

ebrown p wrote:

If you point me to the relevant research

I just gave you several pages of references to relevant research. Are you blind?

http://www.hare.org/references/main.html

If you're simply unwilling to be convinced, I shall not try. I don't discuss evolution with Gunga, either....

0 Replies

@ebrown p,

i got a bad bitch im sociopath

you lil niggas sit here like "homeopaths"

im all like throw me the strap

im all like lead is my wrath

dont run my lil homies will connect with your back

you cant fight dont step cuz your wack

dont step cuz i slang your mom crack

when she was pregnant, with you at that.

schizo , i dont know whats going on

psycho, im the one with the bombs

crazy, smoked ur family, so long

torture u in the basement, hold on

the **** i turn this blowtorch on?

0 Replies

@ebrown p,

From the long article I posted above...

Quote:

"Some of the things he was saying about these individuals, it was unheard of," says Dr. Steven Stein, a psychologist and ceo of Multi-Health Systems in Toronto, the publisher of the Psychopathy Checklist. "Nobody believed him thirty years ago, but Bob hasn't wavered, and now everyone's where he is. Everyone's come full circle, except a small group who believe it's bad upbringing, family poverty, those kinds of factors, even though scientific evidence has shown that's not the case. There are wealthy psychopaths who've done horrendous things, and they were brought up in wonderful families."

"There's still a lot of opposition -- some criminologists, sociologists, and psychologists don't like psychopathy at all," Hare says. "I can spend the entire day going through the literature -- it's overwhelming, and unless you're semi-brain-dead you're stunned by it -- but a lot of people come out of there and say, 'So what? Psychopathy is a mythological construct.' They have political and social agendas: 'People are inherently good,' they say. 'Just give them a hug, a puppy dog, and a musical instrument and they're all going to be okay.' "

There will always be skeptics about anything unproven. There's nothing wrong with skepticism -- I tend to be a skeptic myself -- but when proof isn't possible and the evidence is overwhelming then even the skeptic in me takes a second look.

I think your earlier question of an analogous "high functioning psychopath" to the realm of autism has been answered to a degree. Yes, there are psychopaths who live among us in society. The "collateral damage" is oftentimes seen as acceptable, unless you're the one who was damaged. From the same article...

Quote:

Hundreds of thousands of psychopaths live and work and prey among us. Your boss, your boyfriend, your mother could be what Hare calls a "subclinical" psychopath, someone who leaves a path of destruction and pain without a single pang of conscience. Even more worrisome is the fact that, at this stage, no one -- not even Bob Hare -- is quite sure what to do about it.

1 Reply

@JPB,

eye lazy, mind hazy, its all gravy, on babies, i eat babies, im a dog, i got rabies, u want **** better pay me, i steal allyall fuckin ladies, its good i love it when u hate me, sober lately, but i act like onsomething, neck twitch, i think im on something, im human hunting, to me death is lovely, i wasted ur fuckin hubby

thread hijack hahahaha.

couldnt help it.

0 Replies

Jesus, DD, what stake do you have in this?

Your response to E-Brown is over the top. It's snide and hateful, and it is not at all justified by anything E-Brown has said to you. You really need to lighten up.

2 Replies

@Setanta,

Sure...there are LOTS of problems with research and theory etc in this area.

And I agree that way too much stuff is bandied about with as fact with way too little to support it....and not just in pop psychology.

I disagree that "hard" scientists do not dispute scientific "fact"...and a lot of today's scientific belief is gonna end up on the cutting floor.

Actually, I would disagree that there IS much scientific "fact"...I think what we have is beliefs best fitting experimentally observed reality and not falsified...but I would defer to our scientists on this.

In my field we have to view beliefs and theories with great scepticism, but, we do have a rapidly evolving body of knowledge that appears clinically useful, and it makes sense to proceed with caution based on our best information at the time.

I hope that even in a few years what we "know" now is gonna appear like stone age tools.

1 Reply

@dlowan,

Certainly there is little actual scientific "fact"--but that was hardly my point. I was stressing a distinction between, on the one hand, scientific "fact" and theory, and hypothesis on the other. It is my contention that much of psychology is in the realm of hypothesis rather than theory, a huge distinction. I would further add at this point that there is a real "flavor of the month" mentality in psychological definitions, diagnoses and treatment methods. That is certainly not how scientific theory works. To a large extent, this can be ascribed to an increasing subtlety in understanding and diagnosis--but it can equally be ascribed to the ability to make a good living on the periphery of science.

1 Reply

@Setanta,

Setanta wrote:

Jesus, DD, what stake do you have in this?

Your response to E-Brown is over the top. It's snide and hateful, and it is not at all justified by anything E-Brown has said to you. You really need to lighten up.

Do you see the irony of being rebuked by you, of all people, for "snide and hateful" behavior?

I have readily admitted on many occasions that I do not suffer fools gladly.

1 Reply

@Setanta,

DD is certainly capable of answering for himself but I believe he indicated his interest previously.

Quote:

I do not claim an expertise. I'm an interested layperson, and I've had reasonably close relationships with folks who have extensive experience.

1 Reply

@DrewDad,

Do you suggest that you should get a pass on your scurrilous behavior because you are willing to accuse me?

1 Reply

@JPB,

You miss the point--i was asking what stake DD has in this discussion that is so important that he would lash out so viciously at E_Brown, someone who is, in my experience, almost invariably civil in a discussion.

0 Replies

@Setanta,

Setanta wrote:

Do you suggest that you should get a pass on your scurrilous behavior because you are willing to accuse me?

I'm amused that you see fit to act as hall monitor. If ebrown takes offense, I assume he can speak for himself.

0 Replies

I see, DD, that you have edited your post since i clicked on it to respond. You say you don't suffer fools gladly. Does that mean that you consider E_Brown a fool because he has the temerity to disagree with you? That's just more viciousness on your part, and to one member at this site whom i don't ever recall using incivility toward any other member--and he and i have disagreed deeply in the past, and i've seen bitter disagreement between him and other members here.

1 Reply

@Setanta,

I would consider someone who relegates nearly 40 years of scientific research to "crackpot" status on the basis of his personal feelings to be foolish, yes.

I found his use of "crackpot" to be pejorative. Sue me.

2 Replies

@ebrown p,

The PCL-R like any other actuarial tool is helpful in assessing risk. The data can help us target changeable factors that lead to recidivism and to determine where to allocate resources appropriately. It’s a tool for assessing “probability.”

You’re skeptical, I understand, but I strongly disagree that the term psychopath and the PCL test are meaningless when properly applied. The PCL-R has been found to be psychometrically valid.

0 Replies

I'll repeat this since nobody seems to have caught it previously....

Aside from Hare, the other person I feel has something to contribute to this discussion would be Julian Jaynes. Jaynes makes a solid case for believing that the entire manner in which the human brain and mind are used has undergone a major change very recently and that what we call consciousness is new, along with what he calls the ability to "narrate" and that includes some sort of a psychic modeling ability which allows us to construct internal models of other people which is the foundation of what we call empathy, as well as the ability to calculate sequences of events and consequences both physical and moral. Psychopaths almost certainly lack these abilities and could likely be described as throwbacks to an age no more than around four or five thousands years ago at most, at which point these abilities did not exist and in fact were not necessary.

What we are talking about here is almost certainly a microevolutionary change of some sort and the amount of time it takes, according to scholars like JBS Haldane, to spread totally throughout the human population.

1 Reply

@DrewDad,

I do not disagree that the use of the term "crackpot" is unjustified. That, however, was not directed at you, and in no way authorizes your response to E_Brown. I will repeat that i have never known him to use incivility to someone simply because they have disagreed with him.

Earlier in this thread, Montana had at me because i criticized the sequence of her contentions about people who she alleges she has known who she claims are sociopaths or psychopaths. Her responses eventually lead her to address me as "asshole," and that despite the fact that i had offered no unflattering personal reflection on her or her character. Do you not see the irony in that? You speak of the irony of me criticizing you for your tone toward E_Brown. I was not complaining about what anyone said to or about me. And, tediously, once again i am disgusted because it is completely out of his character as i am familiar with it to indulge in such personal reflections on other members. For my part, i know you entertain a low opinion of me, a matter of indifference to me. But i respond to people in like kind, and do not just lash out at people simply because they have disagreed with me. In my experience, E_Brown does not even lash out at those who have attacked him, although he would past a certain point be justified in that.

1 Reply

@Setanta,

Thank you, hall monitor. If ebrown takes offense, he can take it up with me.

1 Reply

@DrewDad,

Quote:

I would consider someone who relegates nearly 40 years of scientific research to "crackpot" status on the basis of his personal feelings to be foolish, yes.

Just as a simple psychotic episode does not make someone a psychopath, so a simple foolish episode does not make someone a fool. Your argument about 40 years of research (which i see no reason to label as scientific, absent a thorough knowledge of the methodology, of which i remain ignorant) is without merit. You seem to be sufficiently scientifically literate to know what the Michelson-Morely experiment was, and its implications for science. Many, many scientists long continues to object to the results of that experiment, charging a fault in methodology, even though Michelson and Morley had repeated the experiment several times to assure a reliable methodology because they were themselves shocked by the results. How many hundreds, and possibly even thousands, of scientists' life's work was completely invalidated by that experiment? The number of years of research and the number of publications of those scientists could not alter the indisputable fact that the Michelson-Morley experiment completely demolished the theory of a luminiferous aether.

The number of years of a person's career, and the number of their publications is no guarantee of indisputable expertise. Questioning it in this case might make E_Brown appear foolish--it doesn't make him a fool, and it's not even certain that it makes him foolish.

2 Replies

The Mind of a Sociopath

Related Topics

Quick Links

My Account

able2know