Subject: Re: Unwelcome mail from the stalkers From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.net> Date: Mon, 14 Jan 2002 00:41:04 GMT Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp Message-ID: <3219957659658868@naggum.net> * "Wade Humeniuk" <humeniuw@cadvision.com> | Erik, are you really calling Jean-François a psychopath, as in the actual | psychiatric diagnosis? It is serious matter. Yes, it is a serious matter. You can tell a psychopath by how they react to humiliation -- while normal people get angry and may _want_ to hit back, a psychopath has his whole raison d'être threatened and turns into an extremely vicious and violent attacker and he cannot control himself. Everything is somebody else's fault, and they are unable to look at their own reactions as contributing to the situation. What really told me that Jean-François Brouillet is a certifiable psychopath was his attempt at conditional apologies. Before children develop a sense of personal responsibility, they believe that the _only_ measure properly dealing with the world is that which makes them "feel good" (which is more internal then hedonism). Young children lack long-term goals and have no realistic sense of planning, This is the developmental stage that psychopaths never get past. Members of the so-called "me generation" exhibit a lot of personality traits that (more) social generations have found to be fundamental to sociopathic personality disorders. The ultimate sociopath is one who forces others to obey his will in order to make him feel good about himself, which is generally not possible without the approval of others, whether they are forced into that position or not. Grasping the concept of "society" usually takes more than 20 years in a well-developed society, which is why the voting age was set to 21 until it was lowered, amazingly, to 18 in 1971 in the U.S., despite much evidence of pandemic failure to grasp what a society means for people that young. The concept of "self-esteem" usually takes even longer to develop as distinct from "I feel good about me". Then there is the very difficult concept of one's private and public person which has been eroded dramatically in the past 10 years by the media, and people who have not had a chance to develop properly will feel invaded all the time. | I listened to a radio program with Dr. Robert Hare about psychopaths/ | sociopath and how they may be more prevalent in society than we know. Any person who manages to control other people's behavior exhibits many "psychopathic" personality traits. However, the best criterion is whether they can cope with and obey rules set by others. A psychopath exhibits an almost complete lack of respect for the rule of law and legal procedures that are put in place to prevent individual feelings of hate and revenge from taking over, and has serious personal problems with the police or indeed any other authority. If they cannot _be_ the authority, they turn very hostile, and they are known to fight any authority at all simply because it is there and is not them. | He contended that not all psychopaths exhibited violent behavior, but | many lived actively in society. If a psychopath is not challenged, he would only seem eager and maybe aggressive in reaching power. However, actually setting and working towards long-terms goals and overcoming setbacks and problems is highly incompatible with the psychopath's personality. Anyone who has been able to work towards something for a long time through serious setbacks, is most probably in the clear. But if setbacks are somebody else's fault and the universe in general is basically "against" someone, watch out. The ability to accept responsbility for one's own actions and deal with setbacks rationally is vital to the mature human being. Psychopaths lack both abilities. | It also said that psychopaths have little real feelings and do not cry or | laugh as a real response, but as a calculated learned behavior. For | example they see a car accident and the crying and emotions that are | displayed. They go home and practice the facial gestures, sounds and | crying in the mirror. When they think it is appropriate, they display | the emotion without any of the actual feelings, often getting it wrong. | From the little I know, trying to get a psychopath to feel something is | useless. Well, I disagree, and so does the literature. A psychopath lacks empathy, not feelings. Where normal people feel great, even happy, when they feel efficacious and feel that they are in control on their long- term journey towards their larger goals in life, a psychopath would feel great about being able to manipulate and control others. Simply put, a normal person needs to understand and deal with reality directly and feels good about his efficacy in this regard, a psychopath needs to understand and deal with people and feels good only to the extent that he can make other people do his bidding. | I have certainly met psychopaths (and am beginning to think they are | common) and quickly get out their way. Personally I am also have the | opinion one can have psychopathic tendencies to one extent or the other. The normal check-list has 40 points. If you score below 15, you are basically a spineless wimp who would be the ideal control object for someone with a score above 30. Being emotionally shallow is certainly worth a few points, but such people can just be really unintelligent. | (Who hasn't acted in a less then virtuous manner?) That is not really the point. The point is whether you (1) understand that you broke some general laws, regulations, or rules that apply to _all_ people, not just "the others", and (2) cared only about your own immediate gratification. Some classify anyone who is willing to sacrifice others for their own emotional well-being as psychopaths. | I also think its coming out into the open now and will become a big | societal issue. The "me generation" is exhibiting a lot more problems than any previous generation in this regard, for two particular reasons: (1) they were not required to mature and think about society and what it means to work and live in cooperation and collaboration with other people, and (2) they have discarded religion, which traditionally has been a very strong enforcer of the idea that "there is a higher power than me". (For this reason, many religious leaders have been fantastically evil through the ages, and religion is still the most significant motivator for evil, for the simple reason that those non-believers are "different from us", which has been grounds for hatred since the dawn of mankind.) | As for Jean-François being a psychopath I am going to have to reserve | judgement though it seems unlikely to me. Why would a psychopath engage | in a conversation in a technical newsgroup? There does not seem to be | anything to gain here (perhaps psychopaths need no real reason). Oh, just watch him when he requires others to be polite and courteous while he is exempt from this law himself. Watch him when he is so immature that he thinks apologies are bargaining chips to make people feel good. What kinds of empathy can Jean-François Brouillet possibly possess when he keeps going like he does? He certainly lacks respect for other people. This is all about how he does not feel good about himself because some perceived authority figure does not approve of him. Watch how he calmed down only when Kent Pitman, another authority figure here, approved of his view. Jean-François Brouillet is a text-book example of a psychopath. Watch him come back and attack me viciously as soon as he loses the feeling of sufficient approval, despite promises to the contrary -- they were absolutely nothing but manipulative in order to elevate himself and "duck" me. A psychopath is really _nothing_ -- he has failed to mature beyond the whining child who wants only one thing: immediate gratification, he has no long-term plans, and he lacks the ability to recover from pain by himself -- he is only what other people think about him. I would give Jean-François Brouillet 40 out of 40. // --