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One of the psychopaths I really admire is Dr. James Fallon (The Psychopath Inside). But my politics are at odds with his. He has identified himself as a Libertarian. I am still a Socialist (or Revolutionary Anti-Imperialist, which is just a more technical way of seeking a socialist outcome for society). It seems true intuitively that Libertarianism is the political philosophy of psychopathy par excellance. But, when polled about our political beliefs on the Sociopath Community (formerly Sociopath Forum, attached to 
characteristics of good writing is that one finds something new every time one reads it. I have read Atlas Shrugged many times.) Both Libertarianism and Objectivism are implicitly based on social darwinism. Darwinism means survival of the fittest. Social darwinism means that the people who rise and win in a capitalist society are the fittest. My article is meant to be a rebuttal.
what they must consider her flaw. Some of her followers have risen to prominent positions. Alan Greenspan, for example, is a highly influential economist. Representative Paul Ryan once said, “the reason I got involved in public service, by and large, if I had to credit one thinker, one person, it would be Ayn Rand.”
Interesting…”no rights can exist without the right to…property.” And “the source of property rights is the law of causality. All property…(is) produced by man’s mind.” She ingeniously leaves out the most basic form of property there is, land. Of course, land is NOT the product of the mind. Our minds had no part in creating the land.The land was there when we came into being. How is it morally justified to “own” land we didn’t create and, if such ownership can be justified, how is the existing distribution morally justified?” If our relationship to land is the product of the law of causality, it was not that of the mind creating the land. Ownership is basically the result of years of traditional ownership passed down through the generations and brute force; the stronger taking it from those who were unable to defend it. The land of the American continents was wrested from it’s native inhabitants by a more “advanced civilization.” European settlers to what is now called the United States of America had the advantages of guns and numbers. What is really strange is the way Rand defends this power of the gun over the Native Americans on the really deep philosophical ground that they were just “savages.” I am claiming that the whole philosophy stated by John Galt breaks down here. Perhaps it breaks down because she is no longer dealing here with individuals but with whole societies. She isn’t talking individualism any more. 
She uses the same “logic” to justify Israel’s theft of Palestinian lands. Israel is a modern, industrial society and the Palestinians not so much. This strips the Palestinians of all their rights, just as it stripped the Native Americans of their rights. There is nothing in John Galt’s speech that explains the rules of justice when an “advanced” society confronts a “backwards” one with land coveted by the advanced society.
According to Rand, it is only the government that operates with guns, never the private sector. Sure, once the rules of the game are established, the designated winners in the game don’t need guns. The government’s guns are available whenever needed to enforce the rules. But these rules enforce that the land is owned by a certain group of people regardless of how they came to own it. Not only are Native Americans annihilated by these rules, all citizens who don’t own any of the land are as well. Those without land are “free” to work for those who do. Rand doesn’t consider the certainty of starvation “force.” It is just nature. She talks as if we were living in a wilderness and the smartest, most able will prevail. A wilderness is rich in resources if one knows how to use them. The only resource for the property-less is the resource of other people who have exclusive access to the resources. It is ironic that Rand glorifies individualism as not needing other people. She means psychologically. But most of us need other people physically to make a living. People who gain their sense of self-worth from others are damned in the Objectivist term, “social metaphysicians.” By what term, I wonder, should us wage slaves be damned?
people are collectively responsible for all the productive discoveries made by their fellow “producers” throughout the ages. But everyone, including John Galt, is reaping the benefits (and losses) of past generations. In fact, we were all, without exception, born naked and helpless. We depended utterly on the nurturing of others, mainly our mothers. It was many years before we could earn our own way in the world. We were able to become the adults that we are by imbibing the cultural legacy of the world that spawned us, both the good and the bad. Not that the contributions of individually great people weren’t part of it. I’ll even concede that some individuals contributed a lot more than others. But nobody alive today can claim credit for the modern, industrial world. We inherited it’s largeous as well as our relative positions in the social hierarchy. Rand would have that society is completely fluid and accident’s of social origin are insignificant. Sure, there are people who were born with nothing who were able to rise. But they are the exceptions that prove the rule. So, when John Galt says, “You decided to call it unfair that we, who had dragged you out of your hovels and provided you with modern apartments, with radios, movies and cars, should own our palaces and yachts—you decided that you had a right to your wages, but we had no right to our profits,” he is claiming credit for the radio, the movies and everything else the modern world offers. If people complain that the wealth is distributed unfairly, the wealthy cannot rationally argue that all the blessings (and curses) of civilization were their own doing. 
She has likened Medicare to “armed robbery” but applied for it under her married name when she got lung cancer. Her faithful followers didn’t need to know about this. “Ayn Rand” didn’t take Medicare. Alice O’Connor got it. But they both inhabited the same body. She also collected Social Security, damned looter! Her followers today want to deprive us living Seniors of that same right.)
I was browsing the blogosphere when I came across the article, 
Is it possible for psychologists to ever understand the human condition well enough to create a utopia by “engineering” human behavior? This is the challenge thrown out by behavioral psychologist, B.F. Skinner in his novel, Walden Two (1948). Well written and entertaining, Walden Two is directed to the layman rather than to the professional psychologist. It concerns a fictitious intentional community of 1,000 started by one Frazier (no first name or title ever mentioned) who applies the tools of behavioral modification to make of Walden Two the best of all possible worlds.
Skinner’s technique as a propagandist is to show us Walden Two through the eyes of various outsiders who possess varying degrees of skepticism and enthusiasm for the community. The reader can identify with one or another of these visitors depending on his own inclinations. Skinner/Frazier is provocative in his claims, deliberately so, in my opinion, as another technique in breaking down resistance. The more we resist an idea, the more power it draws from our very resistance. He begins with teasers, ideas which have interest and merit on their own but which are fairly trivial and extrinsic to his central thesis. The reader and the skeptical visitors sense he is trying to soften them up and stiffen their backs all the more. A philosophy professor named Castle is the main bearer of resistance. Skinner looks down upon philosophy as a form of navel gazing and Castle is made an easy target. More serious reservations come from the narrator, a psychology professor named Burris. However, Burris also serves as a voice for Skinner and much conversation between him and Frazier is like an internal dialogue within Skinner, himself. The party is completed by two young men and their girlfriends. The guys and one of the girls are the enthusiasts of the group while the other girl resists by avoidance. She never engages any of Frazier’s ideas and remains untouched by them throughout the visit.
For a man advocating a program with a formidable name like “behavioral engineering,” Skinner’s utopia promotes a great deal of freedom. There is no money and everyone consumes the goods of the society as he needs. The law of supply and demand is based on labor credits. Everyone is expected to contribute 4 labor credits a day. The ratio of time employed to kind of work depends on the desirability of the kind of work. In other words, work that is really unpleasant which nobody really likes doing, would have a high labor value, so you would do it for a shorter time to get your labor credit. This makes the job more desirable. What you lose in pleasure of work, you gain in leisure. Enjoyable work has a lower labor value so you spend more time at it but it is still alright because it is pleasant. Either way, everyone is about equally contented. And residents choose their work (assuming it’s something they can do of course) so the people who figure out the value of a credit can adjust it by the number of people who volunteer for each task. If fewer people volunteer for something, they give it a higher labor value until more start volunteering. Thus, the economy combines elements of capitalism (supply and demand) with collectivism (everything is owned and consumed in common and used for the common good).
The educational system is also based on freedom and self-motivation. There are no regimented classrooms or threats of bad grades. Motivation to learn is solely the curiosity of the students. They are taught the methodology of learning and set loose. Behavior mod involves conditioning the children to persevere by introducing progressively greater obstacles that can be overcome. A strategy that achieved desired results every time, will now be made to only work every other time. Then, every third and so on. He may have gone overboard with this and created too much perseverance in them, encouraging them to use tactics that don’t work over and over. If something doesn’t produce the right results for the first 9 times it is tried, is it likely to work the 10th time (unless it is set up that way on purpose)?
A more obvious weakness of behavior engineering as a panacea is manifested in a discussion of how to create a “golden age.” Smug as always, Frazier claims to know what “conditions” are necessary to stimulate a renaissance in great culture. But his conditions strike me as evidence that Skinner is ignorant of crucial portions of the human psyche. The first thing he mentions is leisure obtained by means of patronage. Of course, it helps to have time to devote to one’s creative urges. But it doesn’t seem crucial. We enjoy more leisure as a whole today than in most periods. But we tend to fill that leisure time with trivial entertainment such as TV. The more time we have, the more distractions we clutter our lives with. I think an artist must have a certain amount of solitude, even, perhaps, loneliness in order to develop the kind of depth needed to create a new and crucial work of art.
Frazier goes on to argue, “When artists and composers aren’t patronized, they generally get a modicum of leisure by becoming irresponsible. Hence their reputation with the public.” He doesn’t mention examples but one that seems to fit would be Richard Wagner who had a reputation for irresponsibility due to his habit of accumulating debts. Of course, Wagner was, indeed, suffering from a lack of patronage. So far, Skinner is right. But Wagner was just as productive during this earlier period of his life as he was later on when under the generous patronage of King Ludwig III. True, he wrote his most mature work at this latter period but only because he was in the mature time of his life. There is no evidence that his work improved under Ludwig or that it suffered before him. Not that the patronage wasn’t a good thing. Artists deserve support. But Skinner has not managed to support his contention that making support more available is really going to make a difference to the culture.
“Of course, I know nothing about your course in ethics,” Frazier said, “but the philosopher in search of a rational basis for deciding what is good has always reminded me of the centipede trying to decide how to walk. Simply go ahead and walk! We all know what’s good, until we stop to think about it. For example, is there any doubt that health is better than sickness?”
“Secondly, can anyone doubt that an absolute minimum of unpleasant labor is part of the Good Life?” Frazier turned again to Castle, but he was greeted with a sullen silence.
But even he admits, “I can’t give you a rational justification for it. I can’t reduce it to any principle of the great good. This is the Good Life. We know it. It’s a fact, not a theory.” In Skinner’s terms, the “Good Life” is one in which people’s motivations are understood and gratified. But how well does he understand out motives or motivation, itself, for that matter? People’s motives (based on their values) have varied a great deal more than the above excerpt acknowledges. Frazier mentions health and leisure as “good,” hardly doing justice to the complex cacophony of choices our species is known to make. No doubt, he believes behaviorism can explain it but he has not demonstrated such ability. Certainly Frazier works at shaping the motives of his subjects. But are they not also shaping his behavior? If he does, in fact, govern without compulsion, he cannot force his values on the population. He can only work with what they already value. Is this not, in fact, a form of symbiosis?
On P. 255, Frazier asks “What would you do if you found yourself in possession of an effective science of behavior? Suppose you suddenly found it possible to control the behavior of men as you wished?” But Frazier’s “control” is hardly what is usually implied by that word, which would be power-over, power wielded over people against their will. Frazier’s only “power” comes from his ability to organize people in a way that enables them to be happy and to get what they want. It is power-with. Skinner must have his reasons for putting his ideas in such threatening terms, almost as if he delighted in pushing our buttons. In his own language, calling his program, “behavioral engineering,” is bad behavioral engineering. He used a term most calculated to generate resistance. It seems he wants to win people over in spite of themselves. It smacks of ego aggrandizement (which Frazier admits is one of his motives).
He intensifies the provocative effect of his claim to be able to control people with his “mysterious” science of “behavioral engineering” by saying, “If man is free, then a technology of behavior is impossible.” But his “technology of behavior” is not opposed to freedom. It is based on it. “It’s a little late to be proving that a behavior technology is well advanced,” he goes on. “How can you deny it? Many of its methods and techniques are really as old as the hills. Look at the frightful misuse in the hands of the Nazis!” The Nazis used techniques of manipulation for power-over. Their ability to manipulate did not abolish free-will, however. We are always free to refuse to be manipulated. Most manipulation is based on the knowledge on 
the part of the manipulator (consciously or otherwise) of secret guilt, inadequacies and resentments on our part (which is usually unconscious). Manipulation is blackmail. The antidote to manipulation is the same as the antidote to blackmail: to tell the truth. The victim of most forms of manipulation is not as much afraid of the blackmailer telling the world as he is of becoming aware of his own secrets, carefully hidden from himself. A self-aware human being is enured to manipulation. It always costs us to face our inner demons and that is the true cost of freedom. Other forms of power-over are outright deception and physical domination in the form of guns or muscle. These techniques are outside the province of psychology and hence our discussion. It is noteworthy, however, that, without these additional techniques, the Nazis couldn’t have reigned.
He continues with more benign examples than the Nazis. “What about education? Or religion? Or practical politics? Or advertising and salesmanship? … My question is, have you the courage to take up and wield the science of behavior for the good of mankind?” By his examples, he shows that what he means by “behavior technology,” is in the hands, not only of educators, religious leaders, advertisers and salesmen. They are in our own hands at well! We use these “techniques” on each other every day. A child can do it, and does. What else is he doing when he acts on his best behavior in hope of going to the circus as a reward? What else are his parents doing by doling out rewards for such good behavior? Most manipulation is mutual.
Frazier says, “to go to all the trouble of running controls would be to make a fetish of scientific method.” The reason it isn’t necessary to go “to go to [all that] trouble” is “…the relation between cause and effect is obvious. The happiness and equanimity of our people are obviously related to the self-control they have acquired.” So Frazier, the “experimental scientist” now abandons experiment, itself, and presents himself as a channeler of revealed truth, received from the Great God Obvious. Burris’ “head was spinning” as he wondered “how Frazier had been so successful.” The answer to that question, of course, is also “obvious.” It’s easy to be successful in a fictitious “experiment” if the author so decrees.
As the visit draws to a conclusion, Frazier reveals yet another radical idea. He considers history bunk and does not encourage its study at Walden Two. “I don’t care how well historical facts can be known from afar. Is it important to know them at all? I submit that history never even comes close to repeating itself. Even if we had reliable information about the past, we couldn’t find a case similar enough to justify inferences about the present or immediate future. We can make no real use of history as a current guide.” He offers a lot of pertinent criticism of history and it’s relevance, including the unreliability of its information, its skewed perspectives, etc. But, even with all of History’s drawbacks, eliminating history as a study would cause an even greater distortion of our understanding. Why study history? Er … it exists, doesn’t it? We have a past. Would he let young people grow up in Walden Two thinking it had always existed, thinking, perhaps, that it had sprung up full-blown from the brow of Zeus? It strikes me as dangerous to accept such massive ignorance. To remain ignorant, is to believe a lie.
Addendum
In Pinocchio, a good fairy gave Jiminy Cricket the job of being the conscience to a wooden puppet. At the same time, she gave the puppet the ability to move at will. Pinocchio didn’t know what was right or wrong. Jiminy was there to guide him. But Pinocchio was free, irrespective of the cricket, to choose his course of action. He often ignored his “conscience” and got into trouble. Jiminy and the fairy rescued him. But he learned more from his mistakes than from Jiminy.
What is “conscience?” My Google search defined it as, “an inner feeling or voice viewed as acting as a guide to the rightness or wrongness of one’s behavior.” Several other definitions always include the word “feeling.” Most of them then follow this with the concept of guilt. Merriam-Webster defined it as “the part of the mind that makes you aware of your actions as being either morally right or wrong. : a feeling that something you have done is morally wrong … “ Thus “conscience” seems to be inseparable from the “feeling of guilt.” Wikipedia defines “guilt” as “Guilt may refer to: Guilt (emotion), an emotion that occurs when a person believes that they have violated a moral standard that they themselves believe 
in … “ Of course, there’s the legal definition which isn’t about feelings. But conscience and guilt seem to be closely bound together by feeling. When people all accept one philosophy, such as Christianity, as the Truth, guilt and conscience reinforce that philosophy. Today’s world is a smorgasbord of philosophies and religions, therefore, it is problematic where a conscience is supposed to lead one. I guess people are expected to derive their conscience from inner values. So one man’s conscience may conflict radically with that of another man. For example, Officer Wilson, the cop in Missouri who shot an unarmed teenager says his conscience is clear. Who can argue with that as everyone’s conscience is his own, individual creation. Conscience can justify any act, no matter how heinous.
Some people say that conscience is really driven by empathy which Merriam-Webster define as “the feeling that you understand and share another person’s experiences and emotions : the ability to share someone else’s feelings …” This takes it into the realm of intuition. There is no real way to objectively determine whether someone’s intuition is correct of not. There is definitely a notion that empathy makes someone a better person.
predators. Robert Hare calls us “social predators.” The public associates us with serial killers although only a small number of psychopaths ever kill anyone. We can manipulate people, often as a game of power. It can give one a heady feeling to know one is calling the shots outside of other people’s awareness. This gives one a powerful experience of grandiosity. Psychopaths have the reputation of using our cunning only to hurt people. Sam Vaknin said, on the contrary, “The vast majority of psychopaths, like an iceberg, are underwater, and like an iceberg, they are inert.” But not having a conscience, that is, a feeling that one must act a certain way does not force a psychopath to do wrong. A psychopath’s lack of conscience 
gives us a choice. One can objectively know right from wrong. In fact, the law presumes that psychopaths know right from wrong objectively which is why we are held responsible for crimes we commit. Knowing what is right and what is wrong can function as a guide just as effectively as a conscience. Not needing to beat oneself up with guilt feelings, really causes a psychopath to deserve more credit for doing right. A free choice is automatically a moral choice. But the fact that psychopaths can chose to do wrong scares people. How do they know what choice psychopaths will make? There is such a thing as a “pro social” psychopath. James Fallon is one as well as others living useful, productive lives in their chosen profession. They can work as surgeons, ball players, lawyers or a myriad other group of occupations which require single-minded focus and a mind not clouded by emotion.
In recent years, the Diagnostic Statistical Manual has grown from a slim volume to an enormous tomb and with it’s width, it’s influence also grew until it was the size of a bully kicking the other kids off the playground. Scholars of psychology and psychiatry met regularly to decide what would go into it. Dr. Hervey Cleckley and Dr. Robert Hare developed the concept of psychopathy. Dr. Hare’s checklist is the acknowledged defining and diagnostic tool for what “psychopathy” means. But a powerful group refused to accept it. They found concepts such as “lack of empathy” too subjective and considered a more “scientific” concept based more strictly on overt behavior. Therefore, they replaced psychopathy with the “antisocial personality disorder.” In embracing this term, psychology lost the depth and subtlety that was part of psychopathy. It became an index of criminality. A criminal could be diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder even if he felt empathy and guilt. Feelings were just too damned unscientific. You can’t even measure them, for goodness sake. However, psychopaths’ brains have distinct differences from normal ones. The frontal orbital cortex which is fed impulses through the amygdala, often appears dark and inactive when a psychopath is subjected to a PET brain scan. This characteristic isn’t part of the ASPD diagnostic criteria. Sounds very scientific to me but what do I know. I’m only a lowly layman. So diagnosed psychopaths like M.E. Thomas couldn’t have ASPD since she is not a criminal. Hail science! Since psychopathy isn’t listed in the DSM as a personality disorder, the real verdict of psychiatry is that psychopathy isn’t a disorder. Robert Hare has stated this specifically. “Psychopaths are not disordered. They have no deficit.” Well that’s that.
I wrote the comment on someone’s blog that had a revolting number of hostile comments after it, all signed “anonymous” and all denying the blogger is a “real” psychopath:
Can a Psychopath Learn to Feel Your Pain?
Is there really such a thing as “psychopathy?” Is it a disorder? Is it ASPD or something similar? Or is it, as I believe, something real. There are psychopaths in every culture on earth. And some moral values are 
Science is notorious for changing its findings every 30 years or so. We used to think a new-born infant a blank slate; that whatever s/he would become would come from environment and experiences. The pendulum has swung to the opposite side with ever greater awareness of what an infant already brings with hir. A book, As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who Was Raised As a Girl by John Colapinto, describes the spectacular failure of the blank slate theory when Dr. John Money tried to have a boy who had lost his penis in an accident raised as a girl. The movie, The Bad Seed, showed the confusion of family and friends at the extreme psychopathy if an eight-year-old girl who was just “born bad.” Although few eight-year-olds are serial killers, there are instances of children who show psychopathic traits from an early age and who grow up into adult psychopaths.
James Fallon, a neurologist, famously discovered his own brain scan was like the brain scans of murderers he had studied. He began entertaining the idea that he was a psychopath. Looking at his life and questioning his friends, he found confirmation of that possibility and he wrote The Psychopath Inside. Clearly, he stands on the side of those who do believe psychopaths can be diagnosed by scanning their brains. Tom Chivers, talking about Dr. Fallon, said, “he barely draws breath in an hour, in which I ask perhaps three questions. He explains how he has frequently put his family in danger, exposing his brother to the deadly Marburg virus and taking his son trout-fishing in the African countryside knowing there were lions around. And in his youth, ‘if I was confronted by authority – if I stole a car, made pipe bombs, started fires – when we got caught by the police I showed no emotion, no anxiety’. Yet he is highly successful, driven to win. He tells me things most people would be uncomfortable saying: that his wife says she’s married to a ‘fun-loving, happy-go-lucky nice guy’ on the one hand, and a ‘very dark character who she does not like on the other. He’s pleasant, and funny, if self-absorbed, but I can’t help but think about the criteria in Hare’s PCL-R: superficial charm, lack of emotional depth, grandiose sense of self-worth.”
On the whole, psychopaths are not well liked. Kurt Vonnegut, the scribbler who inflicted that piece of pious cant, The Man Without a Country, weighed-in. “To say somebody is a PP (psychopathic personality) is to make a perfectly respectable medical diagnosis, like saying he or she has appendicitis or athlete’s foot. And so many of these heartless PPs now hold big jobs in our federal government, as though they were leaders instead of sick. What has allowed so many PPs to rise so high in corporations, and now in government, is that they are so decisive. Unlike normal people, they are never filled with doubts, for the simple reason that they cannot care what happens next. Simply can’t. Do this! Do that! Mobilize the reserves! Privatize the public schools! Attack Iraq! Cut health care! Tap everybody’s telephone! Cut taxes on the rich! Build a trillion-dollar missile shield! Fuck habeas corpus and the Sierra Club and In These Times, and kiss my ass!” I notice this rant is more political than medical, despite his claims. My views about eliminating psychopaths from public life are found in 
Psychopathy isn’t listed in the DSM and Dr. Robert Hare isn’t sure if it is really a personality disorder at all. Tom Chivers asks, “But is psychopathy a disorder – or a different way of being? Anyone reading the list above will spot a few criteria familiar from people they know. On average, someone with no criminal convictions scores 5. ‘It’s dimensional,’ says Hare. ‘There are people who are part-way up the scale, high enough to warrant an assessment for psychopathy, but not high enough up to cause problems. Often they’re our friends, they’re fun to be around. They might take advantage of us now and then, but usually it’s subtle and they’re able to talk their way around it.’ Like autism, a condition which we think of as a spectrum, ‘psychopathy’, the diagnosis, bleeds into normalcy.” I’m happy to see Dr. Hare has softened towards us a bit. He used to just say we were “not very nice people.”
James Blair defines psychopathy as “a developmental disorder marked by emotional deficits and an increased risk for antisocial behavior. It is not equivalent to the diagnosis Antisocial Personality Disorder, which concentrates only on the increased risk for antisocial behavior and not a specific cause—ie, the reduced empathy and guilt that constitutes the emotional deficit.”
The authors of Born Criminal discuss some problematic public policy decisions based on the psychopath-as-monster paradigm. For example, there is a tendency to prolong the prison sentence of an inmate who scored high on the PCL-R. Robert Hare says that a high score correlates positively with recidivism. I don’t mind the fact that such a person can be denied parole as parole is really a privilege, not a right. But wanting to extend imprisonment beyond the court mandated sentence flies in the face of our civil liberties. There has been a lot of loose talk of “solutions” which are even more sinister. Some people would isolate psychopaths from “normal” folk for their protection (the protection of the normals, that is—keep the sheep from the wolves). That not only harms psychopaths. It is demeaning to the sheep, oops, I mean the normal folk. Who wants to be keep enclosed and “safe” the way society used to try to “protect” women. Born Criminal talks a great deal about the metaphors comparing psychopaths to animals—wolves, snakes, lizards, etc. Depriving us of our humanity is a step in the direction of depriving us of our civil rights or even our lives. The book also touches on the blogs and websites devoted to exposing the monsters in their midst. “Aftermath: Surviving Psychopathy 
Foundation and Lovefraud.com” participated in a study by someone working on a master’s thesis at Carleton University. Questionnaires were given to people recruited from Robert Hare’s website and other places which sought to discover if these good people had the misfortune of working with psychopaths. “Lovefraud.com was run by Donna Andersen, who according to her website was ‘not a licensed therapist’ and whose qualifications consisted of having been married to a sociopath and having ‘heard from more than 2,800 other victims about their experiences’ (a phone consultation with Andersen cost $65 per hour). One of the findings of this study was to warn employers against hiring psychopaths. Funny how they want to prevent us from contributing to society in a lawful manner.
I think we need to leave the assessment of psychopathy to the experts. Brain Scans don’t seem widely accepted among them. Since M.E. Thomas’ Confessions of a Sociopath, a lot of psychopaths have stood up and told our own stories. Professional labeling is valued by some of us and rejected or ignored by many others. I would like to see a scan of my brain but it’s too expensive and society is not as keen on doing this large scale. The difficulties in defining and assessing us do not prove we are a myth. Of course, we’re not born criminals. We have a choice between criminal and non-criminal pursuits.
How to separate psychotic delusion from regular dumb ideas?
consistently fits a unified view of reality. In other words, one’s beliefs must be consistent with one’s other beliefs. If two beliefs conflict, one of them must be wrong. If one believes in a natural, material universe, and a bright light appears with a loud voice announcing, “I am the Lord, Jesus Christ,” and then performs miracles to prove it, one would have to either reject this experience as a hallucination or modify hir previous philosophy in order to accommodate this new data. One should always be willing to modify one’s view of reality in terms of the data.
politicians.
A “false belief that a person holds to be true, despite what other people may think or say?” But aren’t there people who believe something we might think is nonsense without being psychotic?
“Delusional jealousy?” Lots of people are plagued by irrational jealousy. I hardly think they’re ready for the rubber room.
The thing is, there seems to be a sometimes pretty thin line between actual delusion and the kinds of thinking “normal” people sometimes engage in. Harry Potter fans will remember Luna Lovegood who believed many bizarre things most people considered nuts. Of course, her beliefs earned her the nickname “Loony” but she really didn’t seem to be so. Lots of people entertain all sorts of conspiracy theories. Look at Munch in the series Law and Order: SVU. Even I believe some things that are dismissed as crazy by the mainstream. For example, I believe that 9/11 was an inside job. Of course, I could change that view if shown enough evidence. Maybe that’s the difference.
Quite often, other people’s beliefs seem crazy. How can they rationally believe that? Truth should be self-evident.
The beauty of a democratic, pluralistic society is that each of these claimants can co-exist with one and other. We often think other people and groups are crazy. But we usually live and let live. The only people to whom this courtesy is not extended are those who are deemed crazy by the consensus. For this to happen, they can’t just have bizarre beliefs. They must also be harmful to self or others. Of course, ideas can be very dangerous. But this is a danger we are willing to live with. If someone threatens my view of reality, that’s my problem. Only if he physically threatens my autonomy or well-being is his freedom taken away from him. At least, in theory. Of course, someone who does this sort of thing can be subject to the criminal “justice” system unless he seems mentally impaired enough not to be responsible. Even convicted criminals are considered rational enough to have a point of view that deserves to be taken seriously. Only the mental patient’s reality is dismissed out of hand. Mental patients are to be treated kindly, again in theory, because they are not held responsible.
Sanity is a privileged status. Seriously denying someone’s sanity is an assault on his adulthood. This might be a good time to mentioned the fact that psychopaths, as a group, have sometimes been subject of that assault. To say we are wearing The Mask of Sanity is to suggest that we really only seem sane on the surface. All terms of that sort, such as moral imbecility would remove us from the sphere of those who must be taken seriously. At present, the law regards us as sane and responsible. Some psychopaths have sought the status of mental patient to avoid the long arm of the law. Most of the “cases” Dr. Cleckley discussed in his book had voluntarily put themselves in his care. The book, The Psychopath Test, shows what dire consequences can come once one is in the mental health system. They can do anything to a mental patient, give hir electric shocks, put hir in a straight jacket… Of course, some people really are crazy. They can’t help it. Be glad you’re considered eccentric and/or bad and not nuts.
In Praise of Empty Souls
Quora asked psychopaths who are signed up with them to answer thorny questions, “Do psychopaths feel empty inside.” 
As an infant, I remember feeling that I was about to be swallowed by a void, as if there were chaos inside me trying to suck me inside. I never felt that again until my first acid trip. How about this very minute? As the psychopaths answered Quora, it’s hard to know a deficit with no standard of comparison. Is boredom a sign (as some have suggested)?
Spiritual Void
rots. While still alive, many people here experience failure of one organ or another. The most poignant loss is that of the brain. Many people here have various degrees of Alzheimer’s and dementia. I used to consider these dreaded conditions. Now I don’t fear them. There is something deeply disgusting about the physical world. I choose to deal with that by not turning away but looking at it full on (giving is the psychopathic stare?). I am also struck by the number of deaths taking place among celebrities. Bowie, Patty Duke, Glenn Frey, Alan Rickman… It’s like they’re wiping the slate clean. Out with the old, bring on the new. By the old, I probably include myself. I’m on the way out. I’m at peace with it. I am not straining at the bit to get their sooner, nor am I hoping to put it off.
As I stated in my Grandiose is My Indian Name, I’m drawn to the Platonic Ideal more than to the physical actuality. Not that I haven’t enjoyed the physical world. We have it. We damn well should enjoy it. But life is essentially spirit. Whatever that means to someone with a blank space. I guess I’ll find out.
CLUSTER B 