Descriptions:
Video Description
Not every psychopath is a killer in handcuffs — most walk free among us, hidden behind a perfectly normal face. This lecture from Academy of Ideas teaches you how to spot them. Drawing on Robert Hare and Martha Stout, it separates the rare violent extreme from the far more common predator in families, boardrooms, and politics. The signs are there if you know where to look: grandiosity, a cold reptilian stare, and speech full of contradictions. Recognizing the mask of sanity, it argues, is your best defense — before a pathocracy takes hold.
Full Video Transcript
The goal of Academy of Ideas is to empower the individual and promote freedom.
Become a supporting member to help us in our mission and access over 75 membership videos with more added each month.
Sign up now at academyofideas.com slash members.
Human predators populate our society. Psychopaths are human predators.
They coerce, manipulate, lie, steal, defraud, abuse, and take life without feeling guilt or remorse.
A leading expert on psychopathy, Robert Hare, estimates that 1% of people are psychopaths,
while the clinical psychologist Martha Stout suggests this figure is closer to 4%.
Studies indicate that psychopaths are overrepresented in the corporate executive world and in politics.
In this video we are going to explore the psychology of the psychopath, as this knowledge
can help us minimize the damage they inflict on us, those we care about, and humanity at
large. Compared with other major clinical disorders, little systemic research has been
devoted to psychopathy, even though it is responsible for far more social distress and
disruption than all other psychiatric disorders combined, writes Robert Hare. Psychopaths
are found in every segment of society, and there is a good chance that you will have
a painful or humiliating encounter with one, your best defense is to understand the nature
of these human predators. Individuals such as Ted Bundy, Charles Manson,
or Jeffrey Dahmer are who come to mind when most people think of the psychopath, and while
such individuals are psychopathic, they represent an extreme of this disorder. Most psychopaths,
rather than committing violent crimes, engage in immoral acts that fly under the radar of
criminal justice system. They will abuse family members or neglect their well-being. They will
cheat others out of money, pathologically lie, or manipulate others for selfish ends.
Many people know nothing about this disorder, writes Martha Stout. Or if they do,
they think only in terms of people who have conspicuously broken the law many times over
and who, if caught, will be imprisoned. Most psychopaths are not incarcerated.
they are out here in the world with you and me the reason most of us refrain from routinely
exploiting and harming others is because we possess a conscience we empathize with the
suffering of others and if we make another suffer we feel guilt psychopaths have no conscience
and they lack the ability to feel empathy and guilt in fact a psychopath does not feel love
friendship or any emotional connection to anyone at all if psychopaths maintain ties to other
people, it is only because they see them as a possession, resource, or tool.
This emotionless void which exists in the heart of the psychopath makes them capable
of repeatedly engaging in acts that harm other people.
Even experienced and case-hardened professionals find it unnerving when they see a psychopath’s
reaction to a gut-wrenching event or listen to him or her casually describe a brutal offense
as if an apple had been peeled or a fish gutted, writes Robert Hare, or as he continues,
the psychopath is a self-centered, callous, and remorseless person, profoundly lacking in empathy
and the ability to form warm emotional relationships with others, a person who functions without the
restraints of conscience. If you think about it, you will realize that what is missing in this
picture are the very qualities that allow human beings to live in social harmony. In place of the
emotional connections which create meaning in the lives of normal people, the internal
life of the psychopath is driven by the pleasure principle and the need for continual excitement.
Many psychopaths are alcoholics, addicted to drugs or sex, and engage in highly risky
behaviors, but the most seductive stimulant for a psychopath is power.
No matter whether they are a career criminal, an unemployed freeloader, a middle manager,
a CEO, a financier, bureaucrat or politician, the mind of the psychopath is obsessed with
controlling other people. Or as Martha Stout explains, the prize to be won can run the
gamut from world domination to a free lunch. But it is always the same game, controlling,
making others jump, winning. Robert Hare shares a snippet from a psychological
report about a psychopath named Earl. The most salient thing about Earl is his obsession
with absolute power. He values people only insofar as they bend to his will or can be
coerced or manipulated into doing what he wants. He constantly sizes up his prospects
for exploiting people and situations. While from our vantage point the psychopath
is suffering from a severe mental disorder, psychopaths see nothing wrong with themselves
and are sometimes forthright in stating that their condition is a blessing. Their lack
of emotional attachments and inability to feel empathy and guilt grant them an unprecedented
advantage in what is a dog-eat-dog world. Or so they say. Ted Bundy, for example, referred
to guilt as an unhealthy social control mechanism that does terrible things to the body. Given
that they see their psychopathy as a benefit, it should come as no surprise that attempts
to rehabilitate psychopaths fail miserably. In summarizing the literature on the so-called
treatments for psychopathy, Robert Hare explains. Many writers on the subject have commented that
the shortest chapter in any book on psychopathy should be the one on treatment. A one-sentence
conclusion such as, no effective treatment has been found, or, nothing works, is the common
wrap-up to scholarly reviews of the literature. To make matters worse, psychopaths are notoriously
difficult to identify. For although inwardly they are as different from us as night and day,
Outwardly, they camouflage their predatory nature with what the 20th century psychiatrist
Hervey Cleckley called a mask of sanity.
Psychopaths are akin to predatory creatures who mimic the appearance and behavior of their
prey.
In his article Snake in the Grass, the psychologist Daniel Jones explains that
There are spiders in Australia that smell and behave like ants.
Some are so convincing that the ants will allow a spider to live permanently as one
of them.
This spider will then feast upon its new friends.
But it won’t eat all the ants, or even a significant number.
Instead, it extracts resources slowly, sustainably, and over time.
Like the Australian spider, on the social stage, psychopaths often appear normal.
In fact, they tend to be more charismatic, charming, and confident than most people.
This social allure is partially a function of the fact that psychopaths experience far less stress, fear, and anxiety than the rest of us
But it is also the result of the psychopath’s remarkable capacity to lie about their past, their achievements, and their character
In a manner which mesmerizes and sometimes psychologically paralyzes their victims
Most of the victims I have known in my work have reported that their initial involvement with a psychopathic person
and their continued association, even though she or he caused them pain,
was a direct result of how charming she or he could be, explains Martha Stout.
Countless times, I have watched people shake their heads and make statements such as,
he was the most charming person I ever met, or I felt like I’d known her forever, or
he had an energy about him that other people just don’t have.
Luckily, there are cracks in the psychopath’s mask of sanity.
One of these cracks is a pathologically inflated sense of self-importance, which psychopaths
find impossible to hide.
Or as Robert Hare explains, psychopaths have a narcissistic and grossly inflated view of
their self-worth and importance, a truly astounding egocentricity and sense of entitlement, and
see themselves as the center of the universe, as superior beings who are justified in living
according to their own rules.
The eyes of a psychopath can also reveal their predatory nature.
As some victims report that looking into the eyes of a psychopath is akin to looking into
the eyes of a reptile.
No matter their mood, their eyes are the same – empty, cold, intense, and unsettling.
This commonality between the eyes of a psychopath and the eyes of a reptile is one of the sources
the contemporary myth that there exists a race of reptilian humanoids. Some people respond to
the emotionless stare of the psychopath with considerable discomfort, almost as if they feel
like potential prey in the presence of a predator, writes Martha Stout. Others may be completely
overwhelmed and intimidated, perhaps even controlled, with little insight into what
is happening to them. Whatever the psychological meaning of their gaze, it is clear that intense
eye contact is an important factor in the ability of some psychopaths to manipulate
and dominate others. Another way to see through the psychopath’s mask of sanity is to pay attention
to their manner of speaking. Psychopaths find it difficult to maintain a coherent narrative.
Their statements are often contradictory and littered with inconsistencies.
They tend to jump from one unrelated topic to the next. And when asked a question,
they are known to respond in a way that is irrelevant to what was asked.
Psychopaths are notorious for not answering the question posed them,
or for answering in a way that seems unresponsive to the question, explains Robert Hare.
Some psychopaths also accompany their speech with exaggerated hand movements.
Researchers believe the hand movements of a psychopath are a function of how their brain
processes words, ideas, and emotions. But the hand movements also function as a deceptive strategy.
They distract listeners and make it harder to catch on to their inconsistencies and lies.
Regarding one psychopath undergoing a psychological assessment, Robert Hare explained,
his narrative was accompanied by expansive hand movements and exaggerated facial expressions,
a dramatic display that blinded our interviewer to what was happening.
The root cause of psychopathy is unknown, but studies indicate that psychopaths are
born with a predisposition to psychopathy. They are, in other words, a product of nature,
not a nurturer. There is no convincing body of findings linking the core characteristic
of psychopathy, that is, the absence of conscience, with childhood maltreatment,
explains Martha Stout. In fact, there is some evidence that psychopaths are influenced less
by their early experience than are non-psychopaths. While psychopaths have plagued all societies
throughout history, the problem of their existence is amplified by contemporary trends toward
political centralization.
Governments are reaching their tentacles into ever more areas of life, global institutions
are attempting to place the entire world under the same yoke of tyranny, and developments
in technology are creating the potential for a form of totalitarian rule that is far more
invasive than anything that has come before.
As psychopaths crave power, as they are naturally charismatic, skilled liars, and unconstrained
by empathy, fear, anxiety, and guilt, it is reasonable to surmise that some psychopaths
gravitate towards, or are actively established in, positions of political power.
In his book Political Ponerology, the Polish psychiatrist Andrzej Wojciechowski proposed
the name pathocracy for the type of political system in which psychopaths rule.
And unless more people are aware of the threat of this predatory class, this type of rule
may become a full-blown reality.
I shall accept the denomination of pathocracy for a system of government wherein a small
pathological minority takes control over a society of normal people.
If an individual in a position of political power is a psychopath, he or she can create
an epidemic of psychopathology in people who are not, essentially, psychopathic.
Under such conditions, no area of social life can develop normally.
Whether in economics, culture, science, technology, administration, etc., pathocracy progressively
paralyzes everything.
Learn more about our membership, access transcripts, and the art we use in the videos by visiting
academyofideas.com
Source: Academy of Ideas