I persuaded the woman who had guided me on my first trip to go to California with me. How appropriate that the woman who first opened the new world to me should help me 
explore the world. We joined a guy who had a car and was planning to take the drive for himself. We took a northern route through Canada. I had a supply of acid which I took frequently. Liz didn’t get along with our driver and we once had the opportunity to hop aboard a freight train. This had always been a fantasy of mine. Now it could come true. But the cost-benefit analysis was all wrong. We had a secure ride all the way to our goal. The freight train was an unknown. It wasn’t going to California but to the West Coast of Canada. We might have been raped. Bottom line, I chose not to hop the train. Liz was furious with me.
When we got to San Francisco, we started on a motel. Our relationship went steadily downhill. I wanted to find the hippies, anyway. We found the Good Earth commune, the 
one that the chemist in New York was associated with. I joined and she didn’t. The thing to do was crash until you could find your own place. They were opening a new house and I got in. There was lots to do. The former tenants had been the STP Family. If anything could have put me off STP, it was the way they lived in that flat. Evidence showed that these people lived the most depraved lifestyle imaginable. The place was a filth hovel. Dried egg yoke on the dishes, shit on the walls in the shape of the letters “STP.” This was one drug I never tried and never wanted to. What I liked about the Good Earth was they were really neat and clean. While it was fashionable for beatniks to be slobs, hippies were building a whole counter-culture and they wanted to be efficient and together. In my house, one person got to be “housemother” once a week. That person cleaned the house, collected money from the others for food, bought the food and cooked it. You had the responsibility once a week and the rest of the week, others did it. Our rent was $25 a month. Money was easy to raise. Panhandling was a useful option. I found that spinning a sob story wasn’t productive. What worked for me and others was a perky smile and “Spare any change?” I also spent one night dancing topless and bottomless in the Tenderloin which netted me my whole 
month’s rent. Drugs were plentiful. I never had to buy any pot. It was just there. You wake up in the morning and someone would pass you a joint. Speed was banned as a “hard drug” but cocaine was completely accepted even though it’s really another form of speed. My thing was ACID and other psychedelics. I found someone who would sell me mediocre ACID for $45 per hundred hits. I simply sold each hit for $1.00 each. So my $45 investment upgraded to $100. I never used that stuff. I had connoisseur grade Acid for my own use. I tripped twice a week, the maximum number of times I could get off on it.
My regular trips stripped me of illusions and attachments. I “knew” nothing mattered. 
But it still did matter to me that it didn’t matter. One day, someone ran excitedly into our pad and shared the fact that a 13-year-old enlightened master was willing to give the knowledge of god to anyone who asked with a guileless heart. The was the answer. I wanted that knowledge. We got a group together and drove out to the ashram. There a Mahatma Fakiranand lectured us in his rather harsh, abrasive manner. He told us that without the knowledge, we were just machines for manufacturing shit. I had qualms. I wanted to receive the knowledge first and then bow down to Maharaj Ji. But that wasn’t the way they did things. You had to perform an act of faith first. I struggled with it but finally gave in. I was disappointed by the knowledge. It felt like being squeezed into a tiny space. I was. Squeezed into a narrow passage to a new realm which was really my Self.
Despite the disappointment, my life changed significantly after I received the knowledge. For one thing, my best friend and I had been leading a rather celibate life until then. All of 
a sudden, we were awakened to sex. It just happened. My ACID trips changed too. They took me light years further than they had before. I tripped with Mike, the guy I had a relationship with and immediately felt anxiety in his presence. I had to get away. He followed. I realized I was running away from myself so I turned to face him. He was ugly, hideous. And it hit me that the ugliness I saw was my own self-hatred. Then, instead of ugliness, I saw suffering. It was suffering I was causing myself. Then I saw him as a baby and I realized I could love that baby. Next I knew, we were climbing a hill to a tipi where we had been staying. The exertions of the climb were excruciating. I asked, “It this the way it is all the time. All this work?” He answered that it was work but had to get away from me some time. I was relieved.
We reached the Teepee and our clothes kind of magically fell off and we were in coitus. Where we had been making great exertion a few moments before, now energy was flowing through us effortlessly. Together, we were generating the energy of the world. Our individual forms disappeared like the images on a top that is spun at high speed. There was nothing but a whir of light. I realized that I was god and Mike was god. And we are the entire universe. “So this is the secret gurus have guarded from us,” I thought. “It’s not that they don’t want to share. It’s us who can’t accept it. It is too awesome. Total 
responsibility. We are responsible for everything. We are alone. There is nothing else.” The top gradually slowed down and our forms emerged from the light. But they were ennobled forms. We looked like gods on Mt. Olympus.
As Be Here Now said, after experiencing enlightenment, there is just carrying water and sweeping the floor. Life goes on. But I never forgot my experience and it is part of my consciousness. I’d like to say that I wasn’t subject to lesser things but I developed a big crush on another guy and told Mike I didn’t love him. Mike got drunk on money he borrowed from another guy. Somehow I got stuck paying for it in order to get rid of him. An ugly denouement of such an exalted experience. But many people develop obnoxious spiritual egos based on their LSD experiences. They think they are still as high as they were on their last ACID trip.
We separated into three groups. The people who were the leaders became exposed to some Scientologists and all joined up. The largest group were fond of hitching their way into the town and getting groceries the supermarkets were throwing out. They brought this back and it made up for a large part of our diet. My group was the only one serious about living off the land. We took 
care of a herd of goats, walking, feeding and milking them. We were known as “the goat people.” The owner of the land sold it one day and we all had to leave. The timing worked out well for me. I wanted to join a group of 3,000 Westerners with my cult, Divine Light Mission, who were getting chartered flights to India for only $300 for the whole trip, including a month there and the flight back.
Everyone got a going-away present of a lid of pot. I packed up my things, including the pot, and returned to my parents’ place in New York. By this time, my mother had died and my father had remarried. His wife owned a condo garden apartment from her deceased husband and they lived in Queens. I spent my time there, going to the ashram in 
Manhattan and preparing for the trip. Practicing the Knowledge (really some meditation techniques) got me high and I went feeling very idealistic about the whole thing. We were put into a tent village, six in a tent. They told us we would each have as much room as we would have in our coffins. We are awakened every morning by a microphone calling us to sit up and meditate for an hour. Then we met in the big tent for “satsang” (company of truth — actually 
people taking turns saying inspirational things). Then we lined up for breakfast. The meals were spicy, Indian dishes. For those who couldn’t deal, the medical clinic set up an alternate meal of tofu, rice and soy. Never-the-less, everyone got diarrhea. The lucky ones got viral diarrhea. The unlucky ones got amebic dysentery. I was one of the lucky ones. Diarrhea was disgusting in India because we used Indian-style toilets. We squatted on the concrete side of the toilet and wiped ourselves with our hands with a little bowl of water to rinse our hands with. We were not allowed to throw anything solid into the toilet such as a Tampax. Volunteers patrolled the bathroom to make sure everyone obeyed the rules. We were told that if someone threw a Tampax into the toilet, we were to make them put it out. I did some patrolling until my own diarrhea made me just too squeamish.
We had a whole little village on our own. We had a Divine Post Office, a Divine Bank, etc. These things were run by volunteers. We called that “service.” The practice consisted of service, meditation and satsang. It could be beautiful, depressing or boring and it managed to be all three for me at different times. I was given some codeine for my diarrhea and I realized how much I loved the escape of opiates. I also became cognizant of how much material things meant to me. It’s easy to say you don’t care about physical comforts as long as you have them. If nothing else, facing my own materialism was a valuable lessen learned. If you were really involved in the activities, you could feel high. If you didn’t, it could be excruciating.
By the time we were ready to go home, I had had it. Some people got really sick. There was a woman in my tent who had pneumonia. She couldn’t lie down because of her breathing. She sat in a chair all night. The bus to the airport was terrible. All the dust of the road came into the bus. It must have been a nightmare for the woman with pneumonia. It wasn’t a joy ride for me either, come to that. On the flight back to new your, people around me chanted, “bole shri satguru dev maharaj ki jai.” I ground my teeth and muttered, “Four legs good. Two legs bad.” I was really glad to get back to New York.
My disgust with the cult was short-lived. Soon I remembered how high I felt before I went to India and while I was practicing the “knowledge.” I began going to the ashram regularly. Next, I joined a Premie House. “Premie” literally means “lover” and practically means a devotee of Maharaj Ji. A Premie House is like an ashram only not as strict. The people I joined with were beautifully idealistic. After a month, each of us had joined one of the ashrams. My choice of ashram was in Denver and was supposed to start the ideal school for our kids. I was very excited about devoting my life this way. It was great at first, like so many other things. I won’t bore you 
by telling what went wrong. I found myself kind of stranded there. I had donated all my money. I had to ask my parents to send funds so I could get back to New York. But just contacting them seemed a problem. I didn’t want them to know I was leaving while I was waiting for the money. But we had a picnic every Sunday for all devotees. I contacted a nice girl in a Premie House who was open-minded enough to let me stay there until I got the funds. I grabbed my things while most of my housemates were out. One woman remained and helped me to carry stuff to the Premie House which was nearby.
About this time, I discovered the “beat generation” and read On the Road and The Holy Barbarians. I had a new religion. A boy in my class was also into it and so I was into him. I tried showing off my knowledge of the beats but he never bit. I also discovered Henry Miller who became my guide and idol. The beats were in the Village which represented everything forbidden, gays as well as beats. I figured the best way to meet them would be to pick someone up and fuck him. That way I could get rid of my virginity and break the ice at one time. But the guy I picked up was a disappointment as was the sex I had with him. It did de-virginate me as the blood mixed with semen gave evidence.
At 16, a kid is legally allowed to quit school and get a job. I decided that was what I wanted to do. I figured the worst thing my parents could do to stop me would be to have me arrested and put in a youth house. But they would lose me anyway. So I figured they wouldn’t do it. And I was right. I announced my plans and quit school. My father persuaded me to go to a business school for a few months. I did so but spent all my time in the girls bathroom, hanging out with the other “bad girls” and never learned comptometry which I was supposed to be studying and which bored me. I finished school and was ready to try my wings.
I got a job as a file clerk making minimum wages, a dollar an hour, $40 for 40 hours a week. I got an apartment in the Italian part of Mott Street where I had wanted to live for years. My apartment was in a renovated tenement. It was tiny, like a monk’s cell which was cool because, by this time, I had already discovered Zen Buddhism a la Alan Watts. My parents donated a beautiful, round, wood table and one chair. I took the mattress from my bed and was ready for my new life. My bookcase had copies of Evergreen Review, On the Road, The Holy Barbarians and Alan Watts. I moved in before the electricity was turned on. With candlelight, I felt very ascetic.
Life on my own was not meant to be monk-like, however. I knew people from the nuthouse and they knew other people. I was soon going to parties every night. I also experimented with sex but none of it really worked well. Although my hyman was gone, my body was smarter than I was and refused to let these guys enter. We thought it was because I was still a virgin but I never did bleed again when I finally successfully had intercourse. I hung around with this guy, or, rather, he hung around with me. I got my first bennies which I had read about in On the Road. I loved the high. I was with Tom who I necked with all night because I had dry mouth. When I wasn’t mouth-to-mouth with him, I was drinking beer.
I wanted to try pot in the worst way. They was what my reading convinced me was the holy grail. I was convinced that pot would make me a great writer. Tom and I went out to score one night. It took the entire night to connect. But the adventure was fun. We met lots of people along the way. When we finally found the pot, I recklessly spend an entire week’s salary on it. We went back to my “pad” to smoke it. The next day, we wandered around the East Village which my heightened imagination helped me pretend we were in an exotic foreign country. It was really great but my real love was for the stimulant high. I graduated to meth amphetamine, courtesy Tom, and went to see these people he wanted me to meet.
shoulder. I turned to meet Jim Kolb. My first thought upon seeing his face was of O’Brian, the man in Orwell’s 1984 who seduced and betrayed the main character. The trait that registered in my conscious mind was intelligence. But there had to be darker traits lurking beneath the surface of my awareness. Mesmerized, I did not look away from his eyes all night, except to do art with him. By morning, we were fucking. We did that all day. I know because I noticed the day gradually getting dark. At evening, he offered me a capsule which he called a “goofball.” Jim told me, “You will feel this in your clit.” I had read about goofballs in the beatnik literature so I had no qualms. But I’m pretty sure this was something else. From that moment, my memory was only a few disembodied moments. “Now I’m going to kiss your eye,” he said in a challenging voice as if I would have resisted. “Go ahead,” I said in a sexy voice. Then my memory was static. The next day, my eye was bloodshot. I’m wandering across a dark room and bump into furniture. Extreme pain, not what it would feel like to bump into something. I hear a scream, like a wild animal. I knew somewhere that the scream came from me.
wondered what was the difference between them and myself. They were together. In control. I was anything but. Why? I woke more fully a few hours later. Jim smirked at me and said, “I had to spank you last night.” He went on saying I was moving so much he had to stay inside me just to hold me down. “Then you started getting sexy saying, ‘Hit me! Hit me!'” I was shocked, devastated. I wanted to feel good like the day before but I felt spaced. I still planned to live there. Tom suggested I go back to my apartment with him to get my things. We we got there, a whole bunch of my friends were there. They bathed me. I started to feel myself. “I don’t think I’m going back,” I said. I heard a sign of relief. I found out I had been “victimized.” I had second degree burns on my body, together with bruises, the bloodshot eye and a rash on my scalp. Tom described things he said had been done to me, depicting himself as an innocent, of course. My friends rallied around me and persuaded me to kick Tom’s ass to the curb. I was very confused because I was starting to 
fantasize about the whole event. Here they were defending me and I was liking it. I decided I wasn’t ready to go on living on my own and I went back home to my parents. By this time, they were living on Long Island. I went back to high school and spent a winter considering all that had happened. I got Masochism in Modern Man by Theodore Reik and examined my sexuality in light of my new information.
really false position with all that. But the thing I wanted most came to pass. I ran into him again and resumed our relationship. This time, he was homeless. That made two of us. But we still managed to fuck in other people’s apartments. I wanted him to beat me so I could know if I was really a masochist. But he wouldn’t do it. We saw each other off and on and I considered myself in love. But I went back home in the autumn to continue high school.
never thought about it before but it made perfect sense. Furthermore, I saw this as a way to finally become a member of society instead of an outcaste. I joined some groups. Young Americans for Freedom was happening. I subscribed to National Review, enjoying Buckley’s snarky wit. The Conservative Party wanted to run candidates against the liberal Republicans. I ran for New York State Assembly. I was now in college. One of my proudest moments was participating in a debate against the three other candidates (Republican, Democratic and Liberal). The debate was covered in the school paper. As far as becoming a regular member of society, forget it. Before, I had been too far left. Now I was too far right. “Normal” people just went with the flow. I would never be normal.
Festival. While in Bayreuth, I audited the classes Friedelind Wagner gave in the various theater arts, appropriate since Wagner considered his art a Gesamtkunstwerk (a work that combined varied disciplines into one masterpiece). Then I got a job teaching English in four German high schools. I stayed in Germany for a year and two months. I had my appendix out. With the advantages of socialized medicine, it didn’t cost me a penny. I almost got married to another teacher who married one of his students instead and became a missionary. Obviously, not a good match for me but it really hurt to lose him. Pictures of me at the time show how happy I was while we were together.
four week vacation the very first year. The salary was awesome after having worked at minimum wage until then. It was the end of the 60’s and, despite my other interests, I couldn’t stay oblivious to the changes once I was back in the USA. Of course, being me, I glommed on the darker aspects. The Manson trial was taking place and I managed to strike up a correspondence with Sandy Good.
More importantly, I finally had the opportunity to explore my true sexuality. There were rags out like Screw where people could place uncensored ads for, well, whatever. I was looking for a sexy sadist but I also noticed an ad from someone who wanted to start a liberation group for masochists. Why not? There were liberation groups for everyone else, gays, women, even mental patients. I contacted the man and we had the first ever meeting of 
Anyway, we expected to fit right in as another liberation group. Wrong. The Village Voice, which was very welcoming of the others refused to even accept our ads. This led to a whole campaign. The activist in me was in her element. We picketed and I got an interview with Howard Smith and later wrote my own article which was published in the Voice, 
up the group to sadists. When I returned from my wandering, I found a far more liberating organization than the one I had started. But that’s for later. Meanwhile, I turned my attention to psychedelics. One of my best friends lived upstairs from a chemist who also dealt really good quality ACID. I read Timothy Leary and realized that this was something I just had to get in on. So I did. It was a revelation, a discovery of a whole new world. The beat generation had been awesome but THIS, the hippie world was a genuine counterculture. My third trip was a really heavy one in which I saw myself in Hell. A guy was actually wearing a flowing robe and the walls of the apartment clashing colors so, when the lights went on, it looked like flames. But, at the same time, I realized that Hell was loneliness. I needed something new.
Birth through teens
I was born in Manhattan to Jewish atheists. My mother was a liberal and didn’t have the courage to admit she was an atheist. Instead she told me god was an old man up in the sky some people believed in. Of course, I knew there was no old man in the sky. I looked up and saw nobody. But my mother pointed out that there are people in California who never saw snow. But we know snow is real. If I had been sharper, I would have said, “Somebody sees snow. Who has seen god.” Of course, some people have. Most of them are in mental hospitals. My father was a Trotskyist who had no problem articulating his beliefs, both cosmic and mundane.
I had a sister, two years younger, whom I bullied when we were toddlers. Later, I discovered she could be a fun playmate. I think my terrible twos lasted for my entire childhood. It seemed I was always having a stand-off with my mother. I was only fighting for the right to be myself. It seemed I always had to fight for that.
We lived near a park with woods and rocks and trees to climb and even a little stream to build dams in after the rain. My best friends were boys. We played with forts and had gangs. Once I belonged to two gangs at once. I told each one I was spying on the other gang when I felt like playing with them. On my block, I hung with another group of boys who were into mischief. We would annoy local merchants until one of them ran after me and caught me. I was dragged home like a desperado where all my misdeeds were paraded before my mother.
role-playing that I would carry it out to the bitter end. Again, nobody knew why I was doing this. It was my secret. The secret’s out. It was Smerdyakov from The Brothers Karamazov. My acting out got me into a nuthouse. I saw what was happening and I decided I wanted to go there. I felt completely in control of the events as if I were writing a play and everyone was playing a role which I assigned him. It was a heady feeling. Some doctor there told me I probably just had a personality disorder and would be out in two months. I thought, “That’s what you think.” I knew I didn’t want to go home that soon. I stayed for two years.
became friends with the other girl. We are in touch to this day. There were activities available if you behaved. There was gym and OT (occupational therapy) and helio and hydro therapy. There was also “school” which was a joke because we just sat and stared at the “teacher” who was only a glorified baby sitter. But you could get credit. I earned a year’s credit during my two years there. It was there that I learned about teen culture, rock and roll, hero sandwiches and pizza and how to dress cool.
where she had affairs with the nuns. While she was in the nuthouse, she had an affair with the head nurse of the women’s ward. I know this for a fact. I mean, it wasn’t just her bragging and making stuff up. She never took me seriously and saw me as a kid. But I felt really poignant pangs of agony and ecstasy. My first real love. While we didn’t get to be lovers, we were good friends and hung out a lot, even after we got out of the nuthouse. I visited her at her mother’s apartment which I found fascinating and exotic. Her two sisters were a lot freer and more grown up than I. One was really sophisticated and beautiful. I studied her make-up tricks. The other looked like she was going to be a dyke but she was dating guys.
But, in the nuthouse, I was still going through changes. I read a magazine article about teen thrill killers and I decided that would be a very cool thing to be so I planned a murder. I was totally committed to my course of action. The planning part made me really high. It lifted me above the mundane life I seemed to be living. I picked a victim, a girl my age who trusted me enough to have me over to her apartment. Then I hit her over the head with a really heavy object. I thought this would kill her but, instead of going down, she ran out of the apartment.
When I was a teen, I made some gay friends. We would watch TV together and this one was gay and that one was gay. Celebrities are almost always a repository in which to dump our own “stuff.” But nobody seems to fulfill that role better than Taylor Swift. According to various opinions, she is a really nice, unpretentious gal whose talent made famous, a danger to the morale of the country, a psychopath or a member of (victim of?) the Illuminati.
Psychopaths in Song
The conspiracy whisperers who promote the fantasy (sorry, folks, I don’t buy it) of a world wide occultic organization called the Illuminati have almost (if not all) all successful celebrities in the organization. Most are, supposedly, prisoners and victims of this evil group.
Not a Nice Person?
Taylor Swift a Nice Person
Narcissists, or “narcs,” as they are not-so-affectionally called on social media, have a great deal of similarities with the other Cluster B “disorders.” To make things more complicated, narcs are seen through the eyes of professional psychiatrists/psychologists as defined in the DSM and subject to clinical diagnosis. But narcs are also seen through the eyes of the victims/survivors and through the eyes of psychopaths and, I guess, other narcs.
We all know the myth from which the word, “narcissism” is derived. A youth see his reflection in a body of water and became instantly enamored, to the point of losing interest in all others, even the goddess, Echo. The myth is at variance with the definition commonly in use. Unlike the youth in the story, a narc does engage with the world, needing admiration or “narcissistic supply.”
Narcissism has strong relationships with the other Cluster B “disorders.” They share with histrionics the need for attention, to be in center place in every scene. Hardly odd when one considers that narcs see themselves as being the center of the universe. Their lives are a thrilling narrative all about them and with themselves as the heroes/heroines. Narcs share with borderlines a lot of destructive behavior. Joan Crawford is considered a borderline but she was so mean and destructive to her adopted daughter, Christina, many see her as a narc. The blogosphere is full of tales of vicious, destructive narcs, particularly when they are parents. That borderlines can equal that behavior shows what a thin line divides these Cluster B “disorders.” And, of course, there’s psychopathy or “ASPD.” So many “victims” of narcs use the term “narcissist” and “psychopath” interchangeably while discussing “their” narc. There is a truism that “every psychopath is a narcissist but not every narcissist is a psychopath.” But “being a narcissist” isn’t the same thing as “suffering from narcissistic personality disorder.” I think all Bees are narcissistic. It just isn’t their central defining feature as it is in the case of NPD. Of course, non-Bees can also be pretty narcissistic.
Narcs are more grandiose than any of the other Bees and can’t help but talk about themselves whenever they can find a (semi) willing listener. Psychopaths are more likely to encourage the other person to talk in order to learn all about him/her. Sam Vaknin observed that the narc sits somewhat removed from the other as if to avoid contamination. The psychopath draws closer (as if zeroing in on the prey).
In April 1967 at Cubberley High School, Northern California, during a discussion of the Third Reich, students voiced wonder that such a thing could happen. It was the 60’s, after all. Everyone was about being anti-authoritarian, doing their own thing. In order to answer the question, how could it happen, the teacher, Ron Jones, decided to have an experimental simulation of fascism right in the classroom. His experiment was too successful. The fascist mindset he set into motion was real, too real. Some students thrived in the new environment. Those who were intelligent and independent and sensitive did really poorly. Those who thrived were the under-achievers, those who hadn’t done well in the more humanistic environment. Jones believed that the appeal for under-achievers was equality. Everyone had a chance to succeed. All they had to do was follow the rules. But fascism isn’t all about equality. There are always scapegoats. Those who can’t manage to be part of the authoritarian society. However, when involvement was made optional, not a single student opted to leave. Even the teacher got caught up in it. There is a movie about it, published on Jun 27, 2001, administered by Israeli Educational Television. Another film, Lesson Plan, showed the original people involved, speaking about their thoughts and experiences. This film is not yet available but it has been shown in various film festivals.
With Donald Trump running for president, with rumors of the New World Order, an “Illuminati,” a permanent state of war, shouldn’t we take a good long look at it and ourselves? The TV show, Law & Order: SVU has an episode called Design, year 7, 2006-07. It is about (among other things) a fertility clinic that is striving to make a super race. Dr. Huang, the unit’s psychiatrist, tells them that some day, there will be two races, the enhanced and the ordinary. Isn’t there someone inside that longs for superiority, grandiosity, 
supremacy? Why else is there “American exceptionalism?” Why else is there “White supremacy?” There are many ways in which this longing is expressed. Biohacking is a way individuals can seek their own superiority. Through the use of Nootropics (medication that enhances our minds), we seek to be better than best. The movie, Limitless, expresses this yearning.
In Cluster B, this longing is expressed most markedly in narcissists and psychopaths. As a psychopath, I am on fire over my freedom from conscience. It sets me apart from the sheeple who are stuck in their mundane little worlds. Some psychopaths speak of their “emptiness” and apathy, even a “deadness.” But grandiosity is the antidote to such feelings.
In The Witching Hour, by Anne Rice (1990), a family of aristocrats living in Saint-Domingue has power unimaginable by our standards. It represents an alternative cultural vision to the Anglo one that set up colonies in the North East of what is now the United States. The southern region was based on a mentality more like the one mentioned above in The Witching Hour. Unbounded power of some humans over other humans was acceptable there. If these are the two alternatives, is the latter finally winning in the end despite the Civil War?
Part of me deplores what is happening and what is coming. But part of me is also enamored with it. I fantasize a brave new world in which efficiency and power rule, in which there is no or minimal weakness and dependency. Everyone has a place and is part of something big. Funny how grandiosity and equality seem to merge in this fantasy. What are we really trying to rise above? Mortality, perhaps. Life is awesome and mysterious. But it is also disgusting. There is shit and decay and disease. Are these things intrinsically disgusting or is our disgust something implanted in us by our parents at a very early age. I have experienced a mentality free of disgust at rare moments, notably when really high on drugs. Funny that I have had that experience both on ACID and heroin, two drugs that are so opposite in 
many ways. Perhaps there is a world possible in which we really can accept mortality without holding our noses, in which we can truly be free of the loathing that seems to be our birthright in this any most societies.
Robert Hare, known as the “father of psychopathy,” is certainly a phenomenon worthy in himself of being studied. One of the consequences of his frequent study of psychopaths is a wariness which causes him to greet his interviewer with the words, “Let me see your eyes.” Despite the caution gained from having been burned in some of his interactions, Dr. Hare has retained an intellectual openness, the very thing that makes him most confusing. He has never reached a conclusive plateau in his understand of psychopathy. As such, he some made statements that seem (at least) to contradict each other. From the get-go, Hare approached psychopathy as a personality disorder. When the DSM dropped psychopathy from it’s list of personality disorders, substituting ASPD (antisocial personality disorder), Hare wrote, “Among the reasons 
given for this dramatic shift away from the use of clinical inferences were that personality traits are difficult to measure reliably, and that it is easier to agree on the behaviors that typify a disorder than on the reasons why they occur. The result was a diagnostic category with good reliability but dubious validity, a category that lacked congruence with other, well-established conceptions of psychopathy. This ‘construct drift’ was not intentional but rather the unforeseen result of reliance on a fixed set of behavioral indicators that simply did not provide adequate coverage of the construct they were designed to measure.”
He, on the other hand created his checklist (PCL-R) which is accepted as the “gold standard” for measuring and assessing psychopathy but it used only by in the penal system for risk assessment in deciding whom to parole. The disconnect between Hare’s definition of psychopathy and the DSM’s use of ASPD has continued to this day. Hare wrote, “the failure to explicitly bring personality back into the diagnosis of ASPD means that the disorder is ambiguous and continues to lack congruence with traditional conceptions of psychopathy.”
anomalies found in psychopaths, nurture is still considered an important factor. However,
highly daunting possibility. But the same Dr. Hare who once remarked we are “probably not very nice people,” said in an article printed in 
Are psychopaths evil? “I’ve never used these terms. Psychopaths can be dangerous and cause very serious problems in society. But I don’t know what the soul is. I think a better word is conscience, but what is that? Is it the concept of self-awareness? Can a computer think in this kind of abstract sense? I don’t think so, but maybe we’re also just a bunch of algorithms. It’s a mystery of human nature that makes my head hurt.” I like a man who thinks so hard that it makes his head hurt.
hese restrictions were slowly removed as Beth’s behaviour improved. Within one year of living in the house her behaviour was so recovered that Beth was permitted to share a bedroom with the therapist’s own daughter. A remarkable transition took place in Beth Thomas. She learned empathy and remorse when someone was hurt. She learned about right and wrong. When she talked about her earlier abuse of Jonathan she wept openly. She no longer talked about hating anyone or wanting to kill anyone. She didn’t abuse herself anymore. Her therapy took years to complete and Beth, like any child abuse victim, will likely live always with the consequences of her abuse.
Of course, using force on a child is nothing new. Adults have always thought they knew best. Sometimes, it was even true. The mental health industry is also big on doing things against the will of patients for their own good. So it’s not surprising that Beth was “fixed” for her own good. Of course, Beth was behaving in a way that could not have been tolerated. Something had to change her. But is this really a success story? According to her therapist, it is. After all, Beth is now a nurse. I guess that’s better than serving a life sentence in the Big House. But the mere fact that someone is a nurse does not prove she is mentally and emotionally healthy. What struck me most forceably was the pictures of her displayed in articles lauding the wonderful healing Beth has achieved. To me, her face shows enormous anxiety. It reminds me of another picture I have seen. That of Frances Farmer after her lobotomy. Frances Farmer’s awesome beauty, her face serene with the knowledge of her right to be herself has been replaced by the face of fear.
Cluster B is called the “dramatic cluster.” While people in the other clusters tend to internalize problems like anxiety and neurotic problems, we Bees are more likely to externalize. Histrionic Personality Disorder is, of course, known as the dramatic “disorder” par excellance. Histrionics are often called Drama Queens. But people with Borderline are right in there. After all, without conflict, there can be no drama and Borderlines’ psyches are battlegrounds of conflicting needs. They need the security of a relationship. But they also need space and can feel claustrophobic if the significant other gets too close. Borderlines seem to be torn apart by their intense emotions. Histrionics have emotions too but their emotions seem more shallow and short-lived. A histrionic may be embroiled in a drama of life and death but a 
half-hour later, on to something else.
Histrionics are known for an eye-catching manner of dressing. They can look really sexy, sharp, or eccentric. Whatever gets them attention. They are also seductive. They often attach more significance to a relationship than the other party does. Despite their handicaps, they usually have good social skills. Regina George in the movie Mean Girls is said to have been histrionic and she had a lot of power in her social circle. It’s obvious how similar many histrionic traits are to narcissism. Narcissists can also look hot and act seductively but that only describes some narcs. Sam Vaknin described two kinds of narcs, somatic narcissists and cerebral narcissists. The latter aren’t particularly interesting in excelling through their bodies or sexual prowess but concentrate on their mental superiority instead. Histrionics want any 
kind of attention they can get but narcs prefer admiration. Narcs also are more interested in power than histrionics.
A classic book about Borderline is I Hate You — Don’t Leave Me! Written by Jerold J. Kreisman, M.D. and Hal Straus, it captures the trapped feeling borderlines must experience. They resort to self-harm (cutting and other things), drug and alcohol abuse, eating disorders, whatever can offer some relief. Another characteristic is “splitting,” black and white thinking. Someone is either a savior or an evil enemy. All of these things bespeak the desperation inside. My friend and fellow-blogger, Lucky Otter, who has borderline, says that most therapists don’t want to treat people with this disorder. The prognosis is too poor. Nevertheless, others have said it is one of the easiest personality disorders to cure. While I Hate You — Don’t Leave Me discusses traditional psychotherapy, some other methods have been 
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), “a type of psychotherapy in which negative patterns of thought about the self and the world are challenged in order to alter unwanted behavior patterns or treat mood disorders such as depression,” and Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT). “The term ‘dialectical’ means a synthesis or integration of opposites. The primary dialectic within DBT is between the seemingly opposite strategies of acceptance and change. For example, DBT therapists accept clients as they are while also acknowledging that they need to change in order to reach their goals. In addition, all of the skills and strategies taught in DBT are balanced in terms of acceptance and change.” It is now recognized as a gold standard treatment for Borderlines. It is a kind of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy which, in turn, is under the umbrella of Mindfulness.
Like histrionics, borderlines share some characteristics of narcissists. Narcs are notorious in the social networks of the web for their ability to cause harm to others. They are even more notorious for this than psychopaths. That is why I was surprised that Joan Crawford (Mommy Dearest) is considered borderline instead of narcissistic. Others so named are Courtney Love and Princess Diana. Mind, none of these people have been professionally diagnosed.
CLUSTER B 