Narcisso-Fascism: explaining psychopathy.

"PC commented on your post Psychopaths (Substack December 5th 2023)

I apologise if this is too much off topic, but I’ve always been intrigued as to how you therapeutically practiced with psychopaths as I believe most therapists would not have a clue (besides drugs/lock them up) or be too scared. I think you describe how psychopaths are made in Anxiety (horrendous abuse/circumstances growing up etc) and mention a conversation with one, but I’ve always thought born psychopaths (if you believe in such a thing) present some problems for some of the ideas from your model. For example, and this is a kind of biological reductionism to be sure, the consensus among most of my (admittedly psychology) lecturers (and I think also Hervey Cleckley) was that, whether we know why or not, some people are born without the capacity to feel empathy, or not care when they do which I think is the modern take on why psychopaths (the aggressive ones at least by the article definitions) act why they do. Obviously, there is no empathy test for a new-born child and psychology lecturers are well, psychology lecturers, but I’ve also read numerous tales of parents who gave their child the best upbringing and they still turned out to be a psychopath. So whilst I agree psychopaths can be made but if someone is born without the capacity to feel empathy (or a reduced ability), which must, be in some part at least, due to their grey matter then no matter how much therapy/drugs they have, they will never be able to feel empathy if the capacity is not there in the first place and thus a change in personality is impossible (if they just can’t feel empathy, how can they ever be empathetic?)."

There are numerous questions in this comment and it's obviously far too big to answer in one post, or even one book:

1. What is the nature of the psychopathic personality?

2. What is its cause?

3. Can it be changed?

In order to make sense of them, we would need to answer certain prior question (make that two books):

1. What is personality?

2. What influences personality development?

3. Can any personality change, for better or for worse?

4. Can there be therapeutic change in abnormal personalities?

5. Can there be therapeutic change in the psychopathic personality?

Mainstream psychiatry says personality is inherited, so people are born psychopaths and there's nothing much we can do about it. As PC wondered: "... some people are born without the capacity to feel empathy, or not care when they do ..." Now I know psychology spent the better part of a century trying to prove that personality traits are inherited but they failed. The reason they failed is simply because the claim "Personality is inherited" is irrefutable and is therefore not a scientific question. PC continues:

Obviously, there is no empathy test for a new-born child ... but I’ve also read numerous tales of parents who gave their child the best upbringing and they still turned out to be a psychopath.

Answer is: There are psychopaths and there are psychopaths. As described last week, three loose groups of this particular personality disorder were recognised, the aggressive, the inadequate and the creative (for convenience, I'll refer to them by those terms; also as men, which is a stereotype but it'll do). The first two groups are very alike but have practically nothing in common with the third, and not just because creatives almost never come for treatment. The common feature of aggressive and inadequate men is their explosive interpersonal and performance anxiety; what distinguishes them is how they handle it. The anxiety comes from their abysmal self-esteem, which is why they never volunterr they're anxious but will agree if it's put properly.

My practice was predominantly aggressive younger men. I didn't choose it that way, it just happened. I had a standard format of assessment in which everybody got the same questions in the same order in, as far as possible, the same tone of voice. It was designed to answer a couple of central questions: Who is this person? What's happened to produce him, and what's happened to bring him here today? There were hundreds of questions, covering every aspect of life and development, including a personality profile. The last question asked was: "How do you rate your self-esteem?" Invariably, and I mean with never one exception, these men replied: "Shit. Absolute shit, I hate everything about myself."

This gives the clue to what PC asked: " ... how you therapeutically practiced with psychopaths ...?" Answer: Don't threaten them. Never do or say anything that could be perceived as a challenge or threat to their vestigial sense of self-worth because that will immediately cause a surge of anxiety. How they handle the anxiety determines what category we dump them in. If they become weepy and resentful and say they need to have a drink or a puff of weed, we call that "inadequate psychopathy." If, however, they use the arousal of anxiety to flip themselves into rage, which is purely a learned response, and they start yelling and throwing chairs, we call that "aggressive psychopathy." They don't like losing control, they hate it and feel bad afterwards; it is wrong to say they can't feel guilt or remorse because they are drowning in it but they won't admit it.

As I said, I asked a lot of questions and have almost never had anybody object. Over about twenty years, the two people who objected to the questions were women with well-concealed paranoid psychoses who sensed where the interview was going and brought it to a sudden halt (blaming me, of course, but that's life). People are pleased to be asked for their views rather than be told what is in the files about them. They are relieved to talk about home and school and work and being unemployed and being beaten up and sexually abused and used and betrayed as long as they feel they aren't being judged. They are gratified that the material is written down in their words and not translated into psychobabble (as in "The cops were out to get me," as distinct from "Expresses paranoid delusional material"). One man, a policeman actually, said: "I started telling the psychologist about my life but she burst into tears and said 'That's so dreadful.' I laughed and walked out before we got to the really bad stuff."

So that's why I ended up with a clientele of aggressive younger men: they didn't feel threatened. Even when it was necessary to calm them down, they didn't mind as long as it wasn't threatening: "Can you slow down, I'm trying to write all this stuff," compared with "Sit down and stop shouting or I'll call security." That invites trouble: as explained in Narcisso-Fascism, once that happens, they are compelled to win the dispute, they can't not win otherwise their last shred of self-esteem shrivels and dies. So the voice gets louder, the fist slammed on the desk, the fear and anger of patient and psychiatrist amplifies back and forth between them with the inevitable bad outcome (psychiatrists, who like to pretend they are objective and topic-neutral, will say "Oh no, we never get frightened or angry, it's the patient projecting." What crap).

These two groups, who are really variants on the same theme, are completely different from what was called "creative psychopaths." These are the men of whom PC said: "... parents who gave their child the best upbringing and they still turned out to be a psychopath." These people very rarely end up in a psychiatrist's office. They are suave, sophisticated, well-dressed and well-spoken and, above all, charming. Seductive is actually the correct word. They can talk their way into anything, and talk their way out of any trouble. They are the high-flyers, the wunderkinds who slide easily up the hierarchy and who make sure no blame ever sticks to them. Mostly they come from apparently well-adjusted families and have often had every advantage thrust at them. Not for them violent explosions of rage or loss of self-control; they are not alcoholics or drug addicts (that may develop later); and they come equipped with an over-developed sense of privilege and entitlement.

As mentioned, they rarely come to psychiatric attention, mostly as a result of some sort of legal pressure. What emerges is that, at an early age, they realised they could fool people by one means or another, so that's what they do. For most of us, the major source of self-esteem is being loved by family and liked by friends, by being valued as a solid student, a solid player and a reliable worker. For a small proportion of the population, usually first born, undoubtedly clever, verbally proficient, mostly good looking and physically healthy, fooling people, putting a sting on them, winning by being smarter, outwitting the gimps, becomes the source of self-esteem, so that's what they do. This starts early in life: as teachers will tell you, the pattern is well-established by six or seven. Why first born? Because they quickly realise they can fool the little ones, and it soon generalises and takes control of their lives.

As adults, winning is everything. For them, being loved and liked, being valued as a hard worker and a reliable friend is less important than being able to look back on the day and think: "Oh boy, I ripped his arms and legs off and the poor dope is too stupid to realise it. He didn't deserve it anyway, he's too dumb, I can do better with it. What a laugh, what a great day. So what am I going to do tonight? Ah, I know, I'll give her a call." This is why they have no empathy, this is the mechanims by which they become anempathic (I just made that up, not to be confused with anempathetic sound).

According to the Challenge Hypothesis, once our basic needs are satisfied (food, shelter, social contact, etc), being a winner takes over as the driving motivation for human activity. For the creative psychopath, the thrill of winning drowns any normal emotion like empathy, guilt, regret and so on. Winning, being on top, is everything. They twist and turn the facts to give themselves a positive outcome: "He didn't earn that, his old man gave it to him so what's he complaining about? He should just nag the old man until he gives him another one. It wasn't much anyway, I reckon I can do better than that. Ah, I know, I'll give them a call." If and when they fail, they brush it off, sure they can find another chump to scam; one day, when the prison doors slam behind them for a very long time, suicide beckons.

They plan, they move people around like pawns, they scheme and manipulate and rearrange facts and rely on duping people by being charming and clever and disarming them. They get into people's wallets, their pants, their newspapers, their bank accounts, their houses, and when they've finished with them, they discard them like old socks. And they're everywhere. The upper echelons of society are stuffed full of charming, clever, erudite, smooth operators who slide from one opportunity to another: politics, business and finance, the military, academia, sport, entertainment, religion, gambling, you name it, there are hordes of creative psychopaths lying, twisting, cheating and scheming their way up the ladder. As soon as they get to the top, the first thing they do is kick away the ladder to make sure nobody else can compete. Some are clever, plenty more crash on the way up but they don't learn, they just try again in a different way. For them, winning is everything. Life is a huge game where the winner gets all and the poor get screwed because that's what they deserve as they're stupid and lazy and worthless ... You're heard all that self-justifying, social Darwinism stuff.

Psychiatry has nothing to offer these people. They are not mentally "ill" in any sense of the term. They choose. They are untreatable because they know exactly what they are doing and will never admit they're doing anything wrong: "Fools and their money are soon parted, isn't that what they say? Well, I just made sure some of the fools' money fell into my pocket. Is that so wrong? C'mon, stop looking so disapproving, everybody's doing it. Everything has a cash value, everybody has a price, even you. The race is to the swift, so I cut a few corners and won. So what does that make me? Smart."

The crucial point is that ordinary people - voters, workers, buyers, investors, parents - need to recognise the creative psychopath and run the other way. Trouble is, the people making the really big decisions on running the world, even whether the world will survive or not, are, with precious few exceptions, creative psychopaths. How come? Because that's what creative psychopaths do. Since they get their pleasures from dominating, they are attracted to power like flies to a corpse. But they know exactly what they're doing and don't care what anybody else thinks. "Hate me if you like," they say, "but remember, I'm worth more than you are." They are not mad. Bad, but definitely not mad.

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