https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/can-you-make-sociopath-through-brain-injury-trauma/


sociopathy can be caused by damage to certain parts of the brain?



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http://www.sociopathworld.com/2009/01/sociopaths-mimicry-and-blank-slates.html
	 Sociopaths, mimicry, and blank slates
	"I pick up on accents." That's what I always tell people when they ask where I get my accent from. When I hear someone speaking with a distinctive accent, I adopt it for my own, at least for that moment while I'm with them. It can get particularly offensive or dicey when I adopt the accent of someone of a different race or class from me and they think I'm making fun of them. I do it very naturally and the result, like that of many aspects of having a personality disorder, is that I don't really have the accent of my nationality or place of birth -- the default. What I have instead is a hodgepodge where people assume that I'm foreign, but no one can quite put a finger on where I might be from.

	For sociopaths, mimicry is their metier, their bread and butter.

	    Hare once illustrated this for Nicole Kidman, who had invited him to Hollywood to help her prepare for a role as a psychopath in Malice. How, she wondered, could she show the audience there was something fundamentally wrong with her character?

	    "I said, 'Here's a scene that you can use,' " Hare says. " 'You're walking down a street and there's an accident. A car has hit a child in the crosswalk. A crowd of people gather round. You walk up, the child's lying on the ground and there's blood running all over the place. You get a little blood on your shoes and you look down and say, "Oh shit." You look over at the child, kind of interested, but you're not repelled or horrified. You're just interested. Then you look at the mother, and you're really fascinated by the mother, who's emoting, crying out, doing all these different things. After a few minutes you turn away and go back to your house. You go into the bathroom and practice mimicking the facial expressions of the mother.' " He then pauses and says, "That's the psychopath: somebody who doesn't understand what's going on emotionally, but understands that something important has happened."

	I think mimicry is interesting, and I think a lot of empaths think it's freaky. What I find more freaky is what constant mimicry suggests -- that you have no baseline "you," that you are always just reactions to outside stimuli.

	I have a good friend who was initially very frustrated that I didn't seem to have defaults: no default understanding of right and wrong, no default beliefs, no default personality even. Everything had to be reasoned, everything had to be constructed anew. It can be frustrating for me too. It's time consuming. And sometimes it disturbs me how impressionable I am. Being a blank slate, sometimes I can surprise even myself with non sequiturs or unpredictable behavior. It's sort of scary.


http://pursuitmag.com/how-to-identify-psychopath/?fb_comment_id=677562685664662_678021885618742
	Psychiatrist Hervey M. Cleckley (1988) first defined the psychopath in his book, The Mask of Sanity (published in 1941). For Cleckley, the psychopath was a mimic of normality despite being devoid of emotion.

	The psychopath’s mask allows him to appear normal, but for a purpose: so he can get what he wants. Psychopaths are adept at crying when it’s expected of them, then rolling their eyes when they think no one is looking.

	...These latter traits are the psychopath’s true character. Emotions play a significant role in learning; but because psychopaths are handicapped in that arena, they have learned to interpret other people’s behavior in a more cerebral way and to mimic emotional behavior in order to get what they want.

	In essence, the world is truly a stage for the psychopath.



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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hervey_M._Cleckley
	In 1941, Cleckley authored his magnum opus The Mask of Sanity: An Attempt to Clarify Some Issues About the So-Called Psychopathic Personality. This became a landmark in psychiatric case studies and was repeatedly reprinted in subsequent editions. Cleckley revised and expanded the work with each edition published; the second American edition published in 1950 he described as effectively a new book.[citation needed]

	The Mask of Sanity is distinguished by its central thesis, that the psychopath exhibits normal function according to standard psychiatric criteria, yet privately engages in destructive behavior. The book was intended to assist with detection and diagnosis of the elusive psychopath for purposes of palliation and offered no cure for the condition itself. The idea of a master deceiver secretly possessed of no moral or ethical restraints, yet behaving in public with excellent function, electrified American society and led to heightened interest in both psychological introspection and the detection of hidden psychopaths in society at large, leading to a refinement of the word itself into what was perceived to be a less stigmatizing term, "sociopath".



was Cleckley's book popularized by the press?


	...In the same year as he published the Mask of Sanity during World War II, Cleckley wrote an address warning: "In our present efforts to prepare for national defense no problem which confronts the examining boards for selective service is more pressing or more subtle than that of the so-called psychopathic personality". He argued such soldiers were likely to fail, be disorganized and a drain on time and resources. He recommended routinely checking for past encounters with law enforcement or drinking alcohol until incapacitated.[11][12] In The Mask of Sanity, under a subsection entitled "Not as single spies but in battalions"[1] and further detailed in the appendix, Cleckley describes a survey he and others conducted between 1937 and 1939 at a large federal Veterans Administration hospital on the Southeastern seaboard, where he worked as one of the psychiatrists for the ex-service men who were mainly veterans of World War I. Cleckley critiques the 'benign policy' of the VA of not diagnosing more psychopathic personality due to giving the benefit of the doubt to issues such as neurasthenia, hysteria, psychasthenia, posttraumatic neuroses, or cerebral trauma from skull injuries and concussions. He concludes the psychopathic personalities have "records of the utmost folly and misery and idleness over many years" and if considering also the number in every community who are protected by relatives, "the prevalence of this disorder is seen to be appalling."


did he want some kind of psycopath crackdown? worth looking into


-----

Cleckley work said to be seminal


Hare in 1970s also did well-known work on this


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snakes_in_Suits
	The authors posit that around 1% of senior positions in business are psychopaths.



seems low?



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https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4059069/
	The manuscript surveys the history of psychopathic personality, from its origins in psychiatric folklore to its modern assessment in the forensic arena. Individuals with psychopathic personality, or psychopaths, have a disproportionate impact on the criminal justice system. Psychopaths are twenty to twenty-five times more likely than non-psychopaths to be in prison, four to eight times more likely to violently recidivate compared to non-psychopaths, and are resistant to most forms of treatment. This article presents the most current clinical efforts and neuroscience research in the field of psychopathy. Given psychopathy’s enormous impact on society in general and on the criminal justice system in particular, there are significant benefits to increasing awareness of the condition. This review also highlights a recent, compelling and cost-effective treatment program that has shown a significant reduction in violent recidivism in youth on a putative trajectory to psychopathic personality.



"Given psychopathy’s enormous impact on society in general and on the criminal justice system in particular, there are significant benefits to increasing awareness of the condition." authors on their way to realizing world run by psycopaths?


say they have a treatment that's promising


	...But this exasperating picture of the hidden and incorrigible psychopath may be changing. Neuroscience is beginning to open the hood on psychopathy. The scientist-author of this article has spent the last 15 years imaging the brains of psychopaths in prison, and has accumulated the world’s largest forensic database on the psychopathic brain. The findings from this data and others,11 summarized in Part IV, strongly suggest that all psychopaths share common neurological traits that are becoming relatively easy to diagnose using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).12


neat

can find common traits on psycopaths on MRIs

I wonder what's causing it?

you can find weird allusions to this, like this article by Jogakular (http://www.lindau-nobel.org/infections-and-disease-the-golden-age/
) or the TV show "The Expanse" which has some shadow group starting wars and truning people into psycopaths


	A. Emptied Souls

	The idea that some humans are inherent free riders without moral scruple seems to have become controversial only in the postmodern era, when it has become fashionable to deny that any of us have a “nature” at all. For as long as humans have roamed the Earth, we have noticed that there are people who seem to be what psychiatrist Adolf Guggenbühl-Craig called “emptied souls.”17 One of Aristotle’s students, Theophrastus, was probably the first to write about them, calling them “the unscrupulous.”18 These are people who lack the ordinary connections that bind us all and lack the inhibitions that those connections impose. They are, to over simplify, people without empathy or conscience.

	Psychopathy has always been part of human society; that is evident from its ubiquity in history’s myths and literature.19 Greek and Roman mythology is strewn with psychopaths, Medea being the most obvious.20 Psychopaths populate the Bible, at least the Old Testament, perhaps beginning with Cain. Psychopaths have appeared in a steady stream of literature from all cultures since humans first put pen to paper: from King Shahyar in The Book of One Thousand and One Nights;21 to the psychopaths in Shakespeare, including Richard III and, perhaps most chillingly, Aaron the Moor in Titus Andronicus; to the villain Ximen Qing in the 17th century Chinese epic Jin Ping Mei, The Golden Vase.22 More recent sightings in film and literature include Macheath, from Berthold Brecht’s Three Penny Opera, Alex DeLarge in Anthony Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange, and Hannibal Lecter in Silence of the Lambs.23


good overview of psycopaths in history and cultural perceptions of psycopaths


	No cultures, or stations, are immune. One of the modern fathers of the clinical study of psychopathy, Hervey Cleckley, famously opined that the Athenian general Alcibiades was probably a psychopath.24 And of course there was the Roman emperor Caligula. But psychopaths much more typically come from the ranks of the ordinary. Cleckley wrote extensively about ordinary patients he classified as having severe forms of psychopathy and whom he opined were almost all “plainly unsuited for life in any community; some are as thoroughly incapacitated, in my opinion, as most patients with unmistakable schizophrenic psychosis.”25 But he also examined patients who were highly functioning businessmen—men of the world as he put it—scientists, physicians and even psychiatrists. These people were able to navigate the demands of modern society, despite having the same clinical constellations as their less-functioning brethren, including grandiosity, impulsivity, remorselessness and shallow affect. These functioning psychopaths have become the objects of much recent attention.26


on "high-functioning" psycopaths


	Although in this article we will focus on research efforts in the U.S. and Canada, psychopathy is a worldwide problem. In 1995, NATO commissioned an Advanced Study Institute on Psychopathic Behavior, the scientific director of which was Robert Hare, whose seminal clinical assessment instrument is discussed in detail in Part II below.27


Robert Hare a psycopath? something off about him

	...Psychopaths also appear in existing preindustrial societies, suggesting they are not a cultural artifact of the demands of advancing civilization but have been with us since our emergence as a species. For example, the Yorubas, a tribe indigenous to southwestern Nigeria, call their psychopaths aranakan, which they describe as meaning “a person who always goes his own way regardless of others, who is uncooperative, full of malice, and bullheaded.”30 Inuits have a word, kunlangeta, that they use to describe someone whose “mind knows what to do but he does not do it,” and who repeatedly lies, steals, cheats, and rapes.31


	...Psychopaths have hidden from psychiatry too. Well into the eighteenth century, medicine recognized only three broad classes of mental illness: melancholy (depression), psychosis, and delusion, and the psychopath fit into none of these. Even today, the bible of diagnostic psychiatry—the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) does not formally recognize psychopathy, but uses instead the largely subsuming diagnosis of antisocial personality disorder (ASPD).33 ASPD was intended to be synonymous with psychopathy. But as discussed in more detail below,34 it has since become clear, if it was not at the time, that in their efforts to compromise the authors of the DSM missed the psychopathic mark.



this is worth looking into--were there active measures so modern man won't even have a word for them?


	...The causes of psychopathy, like the causes of most complex mental disorders, are not well understood. There is a growing body of evidence, including the research discussed in Part IV of this article, showing that psychopathy is highly correlated to aberrant neuronal activity in specific regions of the brain. Those neurological causes are in turn almost certainly either genetic or the product of very early developmental problems.43 Indeed, the clinical evidence of signs of psychopathy in very young children suggests that the classical blank slate model of the psychopath as the adult product of childhood maltreatment probably misses the mark.44 Although the question is still debated, many scholars of psychopathy have accepted an interactive model, in which the people who become psychopaths are seen as having a genetic or early developmental predisposition for the disorder, which then blossoms into psychopathy when the predisposed individual interacts with a poor environment.45


says its caused by genetics, something neurological correlated with it


	This is just one example of the nature versus nurture gnarl endemic to the larger question of why humans behave the way they do. Psychopathy is a particularly good example of why it is so difficult to tease out these causative influences. On the one hand, it is not difficult to imagine that a parent’s failure to bond with an infant could produce the kinds of neurological and clinical changes associated with psychopathy, and indeed there are many of these so-called “attachment theories” to explain a host of mental diseases. There are studies galore that correlate the neglect and abuse of children to those children growing up with increased risks of depression, suicide, violence, drug abuse and crime.46 But there are currently no studies that correlate these environmental factors to psychopathy. On the contrary, a paper Hare and his colleagues presented in 1990 shows that on average there is no detectable difference in the family backgrounds of incarcerated psychopaths and non-psychopaths.47


or not genetic?

sounds like they are unsure what the cause is, though I wonder how much of this is bullshit debates to mask it


	Many psychiatrists at the turn of the century were uncomfortable with general descriptions of psychopathy as a lack of moral core. Such labels seemed more judgmental than scientific, a concern that no doubt touched a nerve of a young discipline already self-conscious about its early descriptive excesses and empirical voids. Psychiatrists like Henry Maudsley in England and J.L.A. Koch in Germany began thinking and writing about more comprehensive ways to describe the condition.50 Koch’s diagnostic criteria even found their way into the 8th edition of E. Kraepelin’s classic textbook on clinical psychiatry. But in exchange for more theoretical diagnostic clarity, the so-called German School of psychopathy expanded the diagnosis to include people who hurt themselves as well as others, and in the process seemed to lose sight of the moral disability that was at the core of the condition. By the time of the Great Depression, psychiatry was using the word psychopath to include people who were depressed, weak-willed, excessively shy and insecure—in other words, almost anyone deemed abnormal.51 The true psychopath had, once again, become academically, if not clinically, hidden.


another instance author says psycopath definition became "academically hidden," worth looking into


	This began to change in the late 1930s and early 1940s, largely as the result of the work of two men, the Scottish psychiatrist David Henderson and the American psychiatrist Hervey Cleckley. Henderson published his book Psychopathic States in 1939, and it instantly caused a reexamination of the German School’s broad approach. In it, Henderson focused on his observations that the psychopath is often otherwise perfectly normal, perfectly rational, and perfectly capable of achieving his abnormal egocentric ends. In America, Cleckley’s Mask of Sanity did very much the same. A minority of psychiatrists began to refocus on the psychopath’s central lack of moral reasoning, but with more diagnostic precision than had been seen before.


cites Henderson and Cleckley as changing debate in "German school" and refocusing on lack of moral reasoning


goes over evolution of DSM's apparently flabby definition of psycopathy (not actually in there but called "anti-social personality disorder")


	...By dropping the affective traits dimension entirely, the DSM-III approach, and its 1987 revisions in DSM-III-R, ended up being both too broad and too narrow. It was too broad because by fixing on behavioral indicators rather than personality it encompassed individuals with completely different personalities, many of whom were not psychopaths. It was also too narrow because it soon became clear that the diagnostic artificiality of this norm-based version of ASPD was missing the core of psychopathy.56 This seismic definitional change was made in the face of strong criticism from clinicians and academics specializing in the study of psychopathy that, contrary to the framers of the DSM-III, had confidence in the ability of trained clinicians to reliably detect the affective traits.57 Widespread dissatisfaction with the DSM-III’s treatment of ASPD led the American Psychiatric Association to conduct field studies in an effort to improve the coverage of the traditional symptoms of psychopathy.


definition wonky, "missed the core of psycopathy" (I guess lack of moral reasoning?), some psychiatrists were angry at DMS authors


	The result was that the DSM-IV reintroduced some of the affective criteria the DSM-III left out, but in a compromise it provided virtually no guidance about how to integrate the two sets. As Robert Hare has put it, “An unfortunate consequence of the ambiguity inherent in DSM-IV is likely to be a court case in which one clinician says the defendant meets the DSM-IV definition of ASPD, another clinician says he does not, and both are right!”58


why is this important for court cases and why is Hare saying this?


	...The idea that psychopathy could be an excusing condition appears to be as dead a letter as there ever is in law.

	And yet this dead letter seems to be stirring a bit in the academy.


author comes off at annoyed at academia on psycopathy


	...Once we recognize that the key to criminal responsibility is rationality, and a sufficiently rich kind of rationality not only to navigate the perceived world but also to perceive it with reasonable accuracy, then what about psychopaths? They are certainly rational in the narrow sense of being able to determine their best interest and to navigate in the world to achieve that interest. In fact, in some sense they are hyperrational. They consider only their self-interest and they are masters, at least in the short run, of manipulating the world to those interests. But do they perceive the world with sufficient accuracy to be held responsible for their highly rational manipulations of it?


spends a lot of time talking about debate whether or not psycopaths should be held accountable for actions given they have disorder

(if they are rational, and can reason that if they break the law they will go to jail, then enforcing the law on them is a good thing, isn't it?)


	...It is extremely common for psychopaths to need virtually constant stimulation. They rarely if ever can sit and read, or even sit and watch television. As one might imagine, such a trait does not mix well with the tedium of prison. If things are not happening around them, psychopaths often will make them happen. Their need for stimulation and their impulsivity drive many of the other Factor 2 criteria, including their sexual promiscuity, their inordinate number of marriages, and even their criminal versatility. They are quickly bored with this week’s lover, wife, and type of crime; they move impulsively on to the next, with little appreciation of the meaning of commitment.



psycopaths get bored easily so try to stir shit


	Psychopaths are notoriously parasitic. One incarcerated psychopath reported to our investigators that his mom and dad were always supportive, always ready to help him out and always had some money around that he could borrow. But in fact there was a letter in the inmate’s file from his father asking the Department of Corrections to prohibit his son from contacting them. The letter explained that the family, with agony, had decided on this course after 20 years of being deceived and manipulated by their son. They decided they no longer wanted him in their lives. When confronted with this fact, the psychopath laughed and said, “Mom and Dad always say that, but they always give in.”


end up using people

why? I guess that's easier than working themselves? funner for them?

a lot of accounts say psycopaths "hyperrational" or something like that, but can see that's not true for a lot of them (like the ones in jail)


	Anger is never far from the surface in the psychopath. A perplexing aspect of that anger, particularly to the victims, is that the aggression is often over trivialities. A common answer to why a psychopath got so angry over something so insignificant is, “I don’t know, it just pushed my button.”


get angry over little things and they don't know why


	Psychopathy does not show up unannounced at the door of adulthood. There are always early signs of it, which is why the Factor 2 list includes early behavioral problems and juvenile delinquency among its diagnostic criteria. The typical incarcerated psychopath has a long criminal career stretching back into the juvenile courts, often with serious and violent juvenile adjudications.


usually starts in childhood


	Recidivism statistics are discussed at length below,92 but a short vignette may put a more personal touch on the numbers. When the scientist-author was at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, he and his fellow graduate students worked with psychopathic prisoners. One of the prisoner-psychopaths constantly walked around with a car mechanics book under his arm and constantly talked about how he was planning to go to a car mechanics school in the interior of British Columbia when he was released. Coincidentally, on the very morning this man was released, the scientist-author was driving to the prison and saw him, still carrying his car repair manual under his arm, on his way to the bus stop. There were two buses waiting outside the prison—one headed east to his car mechanics school and the other headed west to Vancouver. He looked at both buses, then casually dropped his car repair book in the trash and jumped on the bus to Vancouver. Two weeks later, the scientist-author was doing his rounds at the prison recruiting new volunteers for research when he came across the same inmate. When asked why he was back in prison so quickly, the inmate laughed and said, “Best two weeks of my life.” He had, on the very day of his release, robbed several banks and used the proceeds to rent a penthouse in downtown Vancouver, cavort with prostitutes and buy front row tickets to home hockey games of the Vancouver Canucks. When asked why he did not go to the mechanics school, he looked perplexed and said, comically, “What fun would that be?”


prison not working for some? guy used his 2 weeks out of prison just to rob a bank and hang out with prostitutes in a penthouse

did the guy not mind prison that much or just not thinking straight? like even if rational with no morals, this is weird behavior


suspect this is why KGB, mafia types control their agents with threats of death, torture (although they use threat of prison too)



	...Since Hare’s early grouping of the criteria for psychopathy into just two Factors, other researchers, using a statistical technique called Item Response Theory Analysis, have discovered that there may be utility in further breaking down the two factors into three or four “facets.”93 Researchers are also beginning to develop models that do not assume a given criterion is independent from other criteria, and that instead recognize that having, say, criminal versatility and being a pathological liar may have a multiplying effect, rather than just an additive effect, on the probability of being a psychopath.94


there are improvements to Hare's checklist that sound reasonable


	...After a psychopath has been sentenced to prison but before the adult system labels him incorrigible, data suggests that he is more likely to be released early than his non-psychopathic cohorts despite a typically long and uninterrupted juvenile record. In a study published in January 2009, Stephen Porter and his colleagues examined the files of 310 male offenders serving at least two years in a Canadian prison between 1995 and 1997.107 Ninety were determined, retrospectively, to be psychopaths.108 Porter found that the psychopaths were roughly 2.5 times more likely to be conditionally released than non-psychopaths.109 Psychopathy was only a slightly less-effective predictor of the early release of sex offenders, psychopathic sex offenders being released 2.43 times more frequently than non-psychopathic sex offenders.110 Porter suggests these results may be because the psychopath is able to use his finely honed skills of deception and manipulation to convince prison officials to release him early.111 It seems prison mental health experts and parole boards are no less immune than the rest of us to being fooled by the psychopath’s mask of sanity.


psycopaths use their "mask of sanity" to get released from prison early


	...The bottom line is that psychopaths, who represent roughly 20% of the prison population, recidivate at massively higher rates, and more quickly, than the other 80%. The average psychopath is back and forth to prison three times before the average non-psychopath with the same sentence makes it back once.119 The average incarcerated psychopath has been convicted of committing four violent offenses before age 40.120 While the typical non-psychopathic felon may ponder and struggle with life on the outside and with changing his criminal ways, the typical psychopath returns to his life of crime, and often violent and sexual crime, in the same way he does everything—impulsively, selfishly and without any regard to the rights of others, rights he does not even notice.


average incarcerated psycopath in and out of prison 4 times, author says "does not even notice" rights of others


	...Given the grossly disproportionate contribution that psychopaths make to the exploding costs of our criminal justice and correctional systems, one might expect that criminologists and corrections officials would be very interested in reducing the recidivism of psychopaths. Alas, psychopath being a synonym for incorrigible, psychopaths have been not been the objects of sustained treatment efforts either in or out of prison. Given the neuroscience and therapeutic discoveries discussed in the next two sections, perhaps this neglect may soon come to an end.


author comes of annoyed at lack of interest in treating psycopathy despite high cost to society


	...It took the use of fMRI to begin to unlock the neurological mysteries of psychopathy because the way in which the brain of the psychopath interacts with other humans beings, or actually fails to interact, is psychopathy’s essential feature. Static images of brain morphology tell only the tiniest part of the story. Seeing brains functioning as they navigate social problems has shown us, with remarkable reliability, that psychopathic brains cannot navigate those problems.


fMRI of brains navigating social problems show psycopath's brains have problems


	...The fMRI data shows a robust and persistent pattern of abnormal brain function in psychopaths: namely, decreased neural activity in the paralimbic regions of the brain. These are the regions generally below the neocortex, including and adjacent to the limbic structures, as shown in Figure 7.

	The paralimbic regions form a kind of girdle surrounding the medial and basal aspects of the two hemispheres. They contain many important structures, including the anterior temporal cortex, ventromedial prefrontal cortex, amygdala, insula, temporal pole and cingulate, many of which are associated with moral reasoning, affective memory and inhibition, exactly the kinds of puzzle pieces one would expect might be involved in psychopathy.


psycopaths had reduced neural activity in parts of brain associated with moral reasoning, affective memory and inhibition

says recognizing moral situations and remembering things with emotional content take different paths for psycopath brains


	...It is well known that psychopaths perform significantly worse than non-psychopaths in the go-no-go task; that is, psychopaths are much less likely to inhibit their responses when the “K” shows up.146 This inability may explain the psychopath’s poor behavioral controls, nomadicity, and generally impulsive lifestyle.

	In turns out that the regions of the brain involved in inhibition overlap the paralimbic regions, primarily the anterior and posterior cingulate. The go-no-go task was administered in the mobile scanner, looking for brain differences that might explain the psychopath’s reduced response inhibition. Both adults and juveniles high in psychopathic traits exhibited dramatically decreased activity in these inhibitory regions.


so its this one area of the brain that gets messed up. Why?


	...What does all this mean? First, it suggests that the story of psychopathy is largely limbic and paralimbic rather than prefrontal.150 This dovetails nicely with the central paradox of the psychopath: he is completely rational but morally insane. He is missing the moral core, a core that appears intimately involved with the paralimbic regions. If the key to psychopathy lies in these lower regions, then it is no mystery that the psychopath is able to recruit his higher functions to navigate the world. In fact, when he gives a moral response, it seems the psychopath must recruit frontal areas to mimic his dysfunctional paralimbic areas. That is, the psychopath must *think* about right and wrong while the rest of us *feel* it. He knows morality’s words but not its music.



they have to recuirt frontal lobe instead of moral reasoning parts of brain. Has to think about what's right and wrong and can't feel it.


Probably psycopaths can be "good people" in this way, basically just learn right and wrong (which I guess would be the same as rewiring in frontal lobe)

so why are so many people trying to rewire them the opposite way?


	...Third, and perhaps more significantly, these imaging techniques may help us identify and then understand the development of psychopathic traits in juveniles. It is difficult, and controversial, to assess psychopathic traits in young people. No one wants the label psychopath to become self-fulfilling


I wonder if this is what Cleckley ended up doing?


	...V. THE TREATMENT OF PSYCHOPATHY

	The received dogma has been that psychopathy is untreatable, based on study after study that seemed to show that the behaviors of psychopaths could not be improved by any traditional, or even nontraditional, forms of therapy. Nothing seems to have worked—psychoanalysis, group therapy, client-centered therapy, psychodrama, psychosurgery, electroshock therapy or drug therapy153—creating a largely unshakable belief among most clinicians and academics, and certainly among lay people, that psychopathy is untreatable, though as we will discuss below few if any of these studies were properly controlled and designed.


what's up with that?


	Most talking therapies, at least, are aimed at patients who know, at one level or another, that they need help. Psychotherapy normally requires patients to participate actively in their own recovery. But psychopaths are not distressed; they typically do not feel they have any psychological or emotional problems, and are not only generally satisfied with themselves but see themselves as superior beings in a world of inferior ones. Clinicians report that psychopaths go through the therapeutic motions and are incapable of the emotional insights on which most talking therapy depends. As one psychotherapist wrote, his psychopaths in treatment “have no desire to change, … have no concept of the future, resent all authorities (including therapists), view the patient role as … being in a position of inferiority, and deem therapy a joke and therapists as objects to be conned, threatened, seduced, or used.”154


wouldn't want to change if they see themselves as "superior beings"


	Treatment not only seems not to work, there is evidence that some kinds of treatment make matters worse. In a famous 1991 study of incarcerated psychopaths about to be released from a therapeutic community, those who received group therapy actually had a higher violent recidivism rate than those who were not treated at all.155 One explanation is that being exposed to the frailties of normal people in group therapeutic settings gives psychopaths a stock of information that makes them better at manipulating those normal people. As one psychopath put it, “These programs are like a finishing school. They teach you how to put the squeeze on people.”156 Group therapy is also, of course, an endless source of excuses—my parents didn’t love me, I was abused, my wife left me, I am numb and empty inside, I am useless—none of which the psychopath actually feels but all of which he can use to his tactical advantage at the right moments, especially when trying to manipulate mental health professionals.


sociopaths learn to manipulate "frail" people and find excuses for their behavior


	...The study followed the juveniles for two years, and the recidivism results were promising: 70% of the control group receiving no treatment was rearrested at least once in the two years, 20% of the group getting traditional group therapy treatment, and only 10% of the group getting Caldwell’s decompression treatment.162 These results were encouraging on two fronts. First, contrary to the earlier study showing that traditional group treatment of adult psychopaths could make them worse,163 Caldwell’s initial results with juveniles showed a significant improvement even with traditional group therapy. Even more encouraging, Caldwell’s decompression therapy was twice as good as the already good traditional therapy. This pilot study suggested that Lipsey and Wilson might be right—that treatment might work if juvenile psychopaths are treated early enough, intensely enough and for long enough.


found they could improve juvenilles outlook

I think juveniles have more "plastic" brains, like easier to rewire when younger? maybe has something to do with it


this could also be why the okhrana does things like starvation, war, genocide over and over--would end up wiring them opposite way. They'd end up with a larger pool to recruit from.


	...We recognize that virtually every government spending proposal is touted as a net benefit, and that in government speak any new tax is now called an “investment.” But with psychopaths it is really true that their enormous drain on the public fisc will continue unabated unless something is done. Even modestly effective and costly treatment will have significant economic benefits.

	Figure 12 shows the cost of treating one psychopath depicted as a return on that initial cost over six years, with a treatment using something akin to Caldwell’s decompression therapy and assuming something akin to Caldwell’s results. The performance of the S&P 500 is shown for comparison.


author points out that even conservative estimates for existing treatment of psycopathy in juveniles would have very good return in inviestment for savings in incarceration alone. Comes off as annoyed that government seems to not get this.


	The psychopath has hidden himself since he emerged with the rest of us 200,000 years ago. His very disconnectedness is his mask. We cannot see him because we assume all humans have the connections that bind us, and because the psychopath’s very lack of those connections allows him to mimic them. He has been lost to psychiatry and the law and continues to be lost in a correctional system that is, on the one hand, loath to label juveniles as psychopaths, yet on the other hand seems content to stand by and watch them graduate into adult psychopaths who spin the revolving prison door at up to 25 times the rate of non-psychopaths.


this guy is great


	...Psychopaths exist, and they exist in large and disproportionate numbers in prison. Ignoring that fact distorts our penalogical outcome measures and, perhaps more importantly, interferes with the way we should be thinking about and managing non-psychopaths in prison. Yes, caution is in order. The science is still new, the neuroimaging still expensive, cumbersome, and not quite diagnostic, and the mask of psychopathy still a little too opaque. The precise manner in which legislatures, judges, and prison officials might begin to address the problem of psychopathy is a complex question, implicating many difficult policy issues. But we cannot begin to address any of those difficult issues until we come to grips with the facts that psychopathy is real, it can be reliably diagnosed, and in the near future might even be treatable in some juveniles.



------

https://www.quora.com/What-exactly-is-a-psychopath?share=1
	What exactly is a psychopath?


	Athena Walker, Psychopathy is present from the first breath one takes, to the last.

	Psychopaths are people that have a different formation of the brain than what we tend to call neurotypicals. That would be anyone wired in a normal way. Psychopaths have marked brain differences from a neurotypical brain. Our amygdala alone is around eighteen percent smaller, as well the same showing/damage to the orbital cortex, the frontal lobe, and also the insula which is located deep in the cerebral cortex.

	The orbital cortex regulates impulsivity, and the frontal lobe is the damage to the ethics and morality section of the brain. All of these areas will show a pattern that is present and distinctive for a psychopathic brain.

	It is also why we do not process our chemical or electrical impulses as a neurotypical does. There has been extensive research using a variety of medications to see if there is any impact on the psychopathic brain, but there is not. Personally I have a greatly reduced, or paradoxical reaction to nearly every medication that has been ever scripted to me. Our makeup does not allow for intervention on a chemical level at this time.

	Psychopaths can be dangerous, or they may be benign. However, the number of psychopaths versus regular population is around one to three percent. It is very low. Within that mix you will have high functioning, and low functioning psychopaths. The difference between the two if often intelligence, ability to learn from mistakes, and impulse control. If they are high functioning they possess these traits, if they are low functioning, they likely are deficient on at least one, perhaps all. The greatest indicator between a criminal and non criminal psychopath is the ability to control impulses.


says criminal and unsuccessful psycopaths have poor impulse control, but the successful ones are better with that


	Another factor is epigenetics

	Kevin Dutton says it best.

		"I want to bring to your attention, a field, a new discipline emerging out of the field of genetics called epigenetics. Epigentics is basically is studying how the environment turns on different genes that we have naturally. The analogy that I always use to describe this. Imagine a book on a library book sitting on a shelf. Imagine the text, the writing in that book is your genes, your genetic code. If that book remains closed then that writing, that information is not going to have any impact in the outside world. It's going to remain dormant. However if someone comes and picks up that book and opens it, and starts reading those words, then that information is going to have an impact. Now, that's exactly the way the environment interacts with our genes. We need an environmental trigger on some occasions to turn those genes on. In other words to make that information to become life and that, using the analogy, is the person coming over and opening the book.

		Now, when it comes to psychopathy the general consensus at the moment is that psychopathy is about fifty percent genetic. There is a fifty percent genetic variation in psychopaths, but, in a lot of occasions it's environmental triggers in early formative childhood years, for instance a violent or traumatic childhood that is the equivalent of the person coming and opening that book and turning those genes on. And that kind of person generally becomes a violent criminal, a violent psychopathic criminal."


says psycopathic genes can be activiated by trauma, so can get more psycopaths by creating childhood trauma


		Hervey Cleckley had a brilliant insight in regards to the drive to do things in a psychopathic mind. He states as summarized by Professor Joseph Newman;

		"Psychopaths are not driven by the things that lead to their behavior. It's not that they're driven to be especially violent or aggressive, it's not like they're so motivated to get money that they're going to after it in that way, it's not like they're so turned on by sexual things that they do things that are sexually inappropriate, and he went on and on that, and he explicitly notes, that if anything their drive towards those goals, maybe less that those of other people. The only thing is when they have a whim, just a thought that it might interesting to try this or do this, they are more likely to act on it. So he talks about very weak urges breaking through even weaker restraints being a hallmark of psychopathy".

	Psychopaths are indeed quite real, and are the defacto bogey man of Hollywood. The portrayal of psychopaths in film, television, and media is always that of the negative. It is short sided and wrong. People always need there to be a villain. Right now it is us that fit that bill.


GEE WIZZ I WONDER WHY

it's the same thing with communism--why do you and your comrades get such a bad rap? look around you... (or read a history book)


	We are real, it is a difference in how our brain is wired. We haven't pro-social emotions, meaning we do not feel guilt, empathy, do not bond to others, have diminished or nonexistent fear cues, and can come across as very callous, cold, and predatory if we are not using what we call a mask to shield away that part of ourselves. We do this to get along and blend into the neurotypical world.


Athena sees herself using mask to "sheild away" callous and cold part of herself

so it's like they're always fronting and have to do this to not come off weird to people


------


https://www.quora.com/Do-psychopaths-enjoy-manipulating-others-like-one-would-have-fun-playing-an-instrument-Do-they-enjoy-the-process-as-well-as-the-reward-If-it-depends-then-what-is-more-common?share=1
	Do psychopaths enjoy manipulating others like one would have fun playing an instrument? Do they enjoy the process as well as the reward? If it depends, then what is more common?

	Zack Middleton, A Sociopath diagnosed with ASPD - Twice

	Not a Psychopath but since you A2A’d I’ll give you my two cents.

	We need to remember that not every one Soci/Psychopath is the same, so there’s no real answer to this, I can however give you my own views.

	I don’t usually actively seek manipulating someone, only if I need a big life change or am low on money for example. Though I do sometimes see a fun opportunity to do so and will do it just for fun yes, this is usually a situation where I can see that it will be entertaining for a while or that it will be a new learning experience/to fill a curiosity.

	A recent example of this is some chats I had online, I played around with a few people in a bizarre relationship to see if I could sway the direction of things with them both. Had no real point but it was fun, so to fully answer. Yes, we’d probably do it here and there, and I personally enjoy the process more than the results if my inspiration was purely for fun.


enjoy manipulating people


some say its fun, others just a means to an end


------


https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=PANiAwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PA3&dq=sociopath+OR+psychopath+mimic&ots=XvPgUPOqxC&sig=0z8LslNhAeNIM7oyEzbrZ_AWfTo#v=onepage&q=mimic&f=false


why is this book written so badly?


https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=Uam-CvVrQ2QC&oi=fnd&pg=PA1&dq=sociopath+OR+psychopath+mimic&ots=YlVDrEozuR&sig=rg8sBrDspLBTi268wDVgyFN14io#v=onepage&q=sociopath%20OR%20psychopath%20mimic&f=false

this one too in a different way



------


https://www.researchgate.net/publication/309323117_Kissing_Babies_to_Signal_You_Are_Not_a_Psychopath
	Kissing Babies to Signal You Are Not a Psychopath.
	Article in Journal of Neuroscience Psychology and Economics 9(3) · October 2016


lol


https://www.inverse.com/article/22659-kissing-babies-politicians-psychopaths-hillary-clinton-donald-trump-economics


article on it


------


https://brocku.ca/brock-news/2015/03/psychopaths-mimic-emotions-very-accurately-brock-study/
	Psychopaths mimic emotions very accurately: Brock study

	...“He was always so friendly, cheerful, polite.” “I don’t believe it – he was such a nice guy! How could he do something like that?”

	These are common reactions when finding out that someone we know, who’s seemingly empathetic, warm, and supportive, turns out to be psychopathic.

	But new research by Brock psychologist Angela Book shows that psychopaths are able to display emotions they don’t feel to the extent where everyone around them is convinced that those emotions are real.

	“Psychopaths tend to lack fear and we know they lack remorse,” says Book. “We wanted to know if they were better able to fake these things.”

	Book and her team conducted three experiments to test a theory called mimicry, “where these individuals are successful because they’re able to look normal; that would include emotional mimicry.” She says they use mimicry to avoid being detected.



how do you think actors do it? people can be very good at faking emotions...



https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/wicked-deeds/201401/how-tell-sociopath-psychopath
	Psychopaths, on the other hand, are unable to form emotional attachments or feel real empathy with others, although they often have disarming or even charming personalities. Psychopaths are very manipulative and can easily gain people’s trust. They learn to mimic emotions, despite their inability to actually feel them, and will appear normal to unsuspecting people. Psychopaths are often well educated and hold steady jobs. Some are so good at manipulation and mimicry that they have families and other long-term relationships without those around them ever suspecting their true nature.




------


https://www.quora.com/What-emotion-is-the-most-difficult-for-a-psychopath-to-mimic
	What emotion is the most difficult for a psychopath to mimic?

	...Standing up for someone when they need you the most.

	I can generally blend in pretty well with people, talk their talk, feign interest in what they love - to the point where they actually believe that I am genuinely interested in their lives.

	The charade goes on until they're in trouble and it's at this moment when I start to think - you deserve this you scum.


lol



	...Aaron John Smith, Psychopath, Plain and Simple.

	I’m going to change difficult with annoying. Difficulty isn’t really an issue unless I’m tired, but that makes everything in life difficult.

	The most annoying to mimic is grief. I’ve had many people in my life die, and I’ve had to go through the same slow and boring routine of denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. Not to mention all the snot and tears.

	I have to slow my life down to make it look like I actually cared about the person, I have to keep memorabilia about the person and I am required to have a memorial yearly. It’s very tedious.

	I get over someone’s death in 0.1 seconds, and that space between 0 and 0.1 is simply ‘Oh’. The rest is put on. It gets worse when it’s a family member, then I’m expected to surpass grief and go straight into devastation.

	So in short, grief, because it’s a slow, gradual and messy situation. The routine, the tedious nature of it and the amount of tears, snot and support I must provide to show authenticity can be draining.


props to this guy for honesty? at least he tries I guess...


a lot of them say it's draining to keep acting to fit in


	...Athena Walker, Psychopathy is present from the first breath one takes, to the last.

	It’s dependent on my mood. I don’t think there is one in particular that is “the most difficult”, more like there are times where certain things require more effort than others.

	A good example would be interest. Sometimes I am tired, and your problems do not matter to me. I have to listen because it’s required, but at that moment simulating interest is difficult. Sometime I want you to stop talking because the mindless drivel on the television is way more interesting, or at least doesn’t demand my undivided attention.

	Other times, sadness. My Grandmother lived to be over one hundred. She lived a long time. She died, because you know, people do. Am I really supposed to be sad that my Grandmother died after living over one hundred years? No. But I have to fake it. It’s not something I was thrilled to have to do.

	So really it’s not about one in particular. Sometimes it’s no issue, no matter what the feigned response is. Other times it’s a huge pain in the ass to do and I am resentful at having to make the effort. All experiences that I don’t naturally feel are going to be work. How much work depends on the situation and how dedicated I am in that moment to pretend.


	...Sydney Smith, The happy, shiney, lady psychopath.

	Sadness is hard, grief is fucking ridiculous for me, like running a goddamn mental marathon. I can perfectly mimic everything but I can never focus of grief. Crying is messy and after so long becomes slightly annoying and I often forget to act sad. Prime example: my uncle died and at the wake my aunt whose husband had just died came up to me and asks me how my day has been going and I tell her with a smile “it's been wonderful, and how has your day been?” And she bursts into tears …oops… So yeah, can't focus, people are more delicate, too much to consider. I'd rather not.



https://www.quora.com/How-does-a-sociopath-mimic-emotions-such-as-love
	How does a sociopath mimic emotions such as love?

	Adam Brooks, Sociopath, diagnosed with ASPD


	In my case I personally don't love anyone. That includes friends and family. Something I do take into consideration is the fact that I have a specific purpose for each person in my inner circle. Which means it is in my best interest for them to keep functioning correctly, I mostly try to help them fix their problems when they are causing too much of an issue for them.

	For example, I have a friend who got beat up on video and he was depressed for a while. For this reason he never went out on weekends which bothers me because he's usually the one who buys a lot of booze when we go out. So what did is I seeked to get revenge for him in order to get him emotionally stable. (I can't specify what I did for legal reasons) Needless to say he now buys even more booze for me because he is very thankful for what I did.

	Im not sure how long this is gonna last but I can definitely say this was a very good investment. Basically I don't “love” people but if I find them important for me then I will look out for their needs.


so it's like he doesn't feel it but he will act it out

I guess that works! better than teaming up and deciding to destroy the entire world...



------


https://www.quora.com/profile/Athena-Walker


Athena has a lot of interesting answers about psycopathy


seems to be kindof one of the "good guys?" (not like she's part of any conspiracy). "bad guys" try to mess up understanding of psycopathy I think


https://www.quora.com/Why-are-psychopaths-so-leery/answer/Athena-Walker?share=1

comes off as dislaking non-sociopaths though, calls them "neurotypicals"




https://www.quora.com/How-accurate-is-this-article-shared-by-Quora-on-psychopathy?share=1
	Michelle Roses, Addiction/Trauma Therapist

	...The reality is, as Athena Walker writes about beautifully throughout Quora, none of these are accurate for most people who are diagnosed with AntiSocial Personality Disorder, which is the true diagnosis.


uh-oh (anything going on here?)



athena's answer to bustle article (https://www.bustle.com/p/6-unexpected-nighttime-habits-of-psychopaths-according-to-experts-8478995?share=dfbcc7df):


	...It’s dreadful.

	The author is as educated about psychopaths, as she is about solving cold fusion.

	That is, not at all. She needs to stop talking. She is degrading the world in which we live. A vow of silence would benefit all.

	That would of course include….typing as well.



author writes fake news I guess, like "7 Ways To Tell If Someone Was In Your Past Life, According To Psychics" (https://www.bustle.com/p/7-ways-to-tell-if-someone-was-in-your-past-life-according-to-psychics-8446807) and a bunch of sketchy-sounding relationship advice



https://hellogiggles.com/news/russian-bobsledder-doping-shirt-failed-doping-test/
    Ugh

	This Russian bobsledder wore an "I don't do doping" shirt, failed a doping test

	Kristine Fellizar



something going on here?

had a hunch the Russian athletes were framed or "poisoned" with trace amounts, since it wouldn't make rational sense for the athletes to do it but it would make rational sense in narrow-minded way to do this to get Russians more resentful of rest of the world and the rest of the world to look down on Russians so Russian agents could be better motivated (this is just a hunch)

worth looking into more--what are the active measures targeting psycopaths?

also this: https://www.google.com/search?&q=%22Kristine+Fellizar%22+marriage+advice+for+millennials



https://www.quora.com/Why-does-Athena-Walker-refer-to-empathy-as-a-cheat-code?share=1
I have a thought about empathy. I call it training wheels or the tutorial on a video game. Let me explain this with the analogy that I thought of in regards to this.

    Let’s imagine for a second that we get many lives. This is in line with some people’s worldviews and directly contradictory to others—I am aware of that. For this, however, many lives is what we are talking about.

    So if a soul had to go around many, many times to learn all their lessons that make them a whole, functional soul, there would be stages, sort of like a video game.

    The first stage, the tutorial stage—that would be religion. This is where the rules are told to you and you follow the bouncing ball. You can’t screw it up too much (shhh, I know; that is not always or even often how it works) if you do what the directions tell you. This requires no feeling, self-reflection, or prior knowledge. It’s easy mode, infinite lives, and respawn at the point of death. It’s noob land.

    The second stage is empathy. This is medium difficulty mode. This is where you have to rely on something internal to direct behavior. You may or may not have the connect-the-dots of religion, so you have to have a little help. That’s where empathy comes in. You do what feels good. It’s pretty basic and requires a bit of reflection and introspection, but it’s still giving you some directions. Not a walk in the park, but not like the next mode either.

    Psychopathy. This is the Dante Must Die mode, 1999 difficulty, Madhouse-level play-through. You’ve got no directions, nothing is where it’s supposed to be, no one prepares you for any of it, and GO!!! Figure it out sweetheart, because the only way out of here is death.

    Some of us do well, and some hear the wah wah wha wahaaaaaaaa….. music followed by the prison doors.

    Empathy is fantastic for those that have it. I see little use for the feeling personally, but I rather like cognitive empathy. Emotional empathy is a crutch; make no mistake about that. It’s also not a “get out of jail free” card. I am rather tired of hearing things like

    Excuse me for being rude, but it’s difficult for me to see someone as human when they’re lacking basic empathy. If you can’t feel guilt for doing something wrong, then what stops you from becoming a monster?

    That is an actual quoted comment. Guess what? Empathy doesn’t make you special, and it doesn’t make you good. Nothing about it does. Sorry to be the one to tell you, but neurotypicals can and are just as nasty and toxic as any above the snowline psychopath. It’s just a matter of the right circumstances. Empathy does not in any way protect you from being simply awful.

    In fact, often, it makes people feel self-righteous and superior. You’re not. That’s not how it works. What determines your value in this world is what you do, not what you feel. If you are relying on empathy to take care of your “goodness” factor, you’re failing. You have to make effort to be a good person. You have to invest in understanding the world, and you can’t look down on other people because you don’t understand them.


she gets angry at people judging her for being a psycopath, reacts to that strongly (so she does have some emotions, right?)

maybe she has a point? probably some "monsters" in history that *weren't* psycopaths, its just easier to convince psycopaths to be that way



examples:


http://www.pbs.org/auschwitz/40-45/killing/
	In 1941, SS General Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski told his superior Heinrich Himmler that the Nazis had been murdering Jews, including women and children, at close range and in cold blood all summer. Bach-Zelewski was worried about this method's traumatizing effects on his men. Himmler recorded in his diary the General's concerns: "And he said to me, 'Reichsfuhrer, these men are finished for the rest of their lives. What kind of followers are we producing here- either neurotics or brutes?'"

	Himmler realized he had to find new methods that would spare his troops the psychological strain of killing human beings at close range.
	Carbon Monoxide

	According to the memoirs of Rudolf Höss, Commandant of Auschwitz, Adolf Eichmann suggested using "showers of carbon monoxide while bathing, as was done with mental patients in some places in the Reich." Instead of leading to water, the showerheads were connected to canisters of carbon monoxide.

	The birth of this method had varied sources, including one ironic twist. Artur Nebe, a Nazi-killing squad commander, had come home drunk from a party one night and passed out in his garage with his car still running. The carbon monoxide gas from the exhaust nearly killed him.

	As Nebe related the incident to his SS comrades, this near-miss convinced him that gassing could be used effectively against the Jews and other Nazi enemies. Gas would be cheaper than bullets, and no Nazi would directly take a life.



there was a story of someone high in Nazi command, who was with Einsatzgruppen or something like that at one point, tried to shoot a Jew but couldn't do it

they other guys had to get drunk before carrying out the orders


http://www.deathcamps.org/occupation/einsatzgruppen.html
	Communist officials, resistance fighters, POWs, Romany and especially Jews were killed throughout the Soviet Union. The victims were rounded up and taken to secluded sites outside of cities, towns and villages. There they were shot and buried in anti-tank ditches, quarries, gorges and other similar sites. The killers mercilessly murdered men, women and children. The Einsatzgruppen and their assistants ultimately killed more than 1.2 million individuals. There were very few survivors of these massacres. Many of the killing squad members drank vast quantities of alcohol to withstand the physical and psychological stress caused by their inhuman and bestial duties. Others found it possible to rationalise their behaviour.


https://books.google.com/books?id=yQwUCgAAQBAJ&pg=PA208&lpg=PA208&dq=Einsatzgruppen+drunk+women+children&source=bl&ots=qahX_vqido&sig=ggy_sd_3WgoG_x3AIf00LAsQekk&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiFk9f9l_fZAhWk34MKHVejB044ChDoAQgsMAE#v=onepage&q=Einsatzgruppen%20drunk%20women%20children&f=false
	During the Russian campaign of 1941-2, some 3,000 Germans served in the Einsatzgruppen. There is no evidence that these men were psycopaths. Indeed, a substantial number seemed to be drawn from the middle and professional classes; all the officers and many of the NCOs had university degrees. This may have been part of the reason why, by the spring of 1942, the senior German officers charged with overseeing the work of the Einsatzgruppe had to report problems in the ranks.

	Murdering men, women, children, babies, day after day is not to everyone's taste. There were reports of heavy drinking and disorder in the Einsatzgruppe, of failure to kill victims efficiently, of refusing to continue the slaughter, even of suicide. The task of shooting tens of thousands of Jews was having an adverse effect on 'pure Aryan' men, and the accepted execution method, a bullet in the nape of the neck, was failing to make any appreciable dent in the problem. If Poland and the other easter territories were to become 'Judenrein,' fresh methods would have to be found. The Germans therefore did what anyone would do when confronted with a management problem: the set up a committee.

	...present were representatives from the German Foreign Office, the departments of justice, the SS, the police and the Gauleiter of Poland. These were not uneducated brutes: more than half of those present at teh Wansee Conference held doctorates from the German universities. So, with cofee and notepads at their elboys, these senior representatives of the German Reich stat down to discuss the systematic destruction of a whole race of people.

...




https://www.quora.com/What-is-your-opinion-of-this-article-by-Shahida-Arabi?share=1
	What is your opinion of this article by Shahida Arabi?




https://thoughtcatalog.com/shahida-arabi/2018/03/11-things-i-learned-about-narcissists-and-sociopaths-by-age-27-that-i-wish-everyone-knew/
	11 Things I Learned About Narcissists And Sociopaths By Age 27 – That I Wish Everyone Knew

	By Shahida Arabi

	...Some are born toxic, continue to be character disordered and have no conscience or remorse for their actions. Their brains are inherently different, revealing deficits in areas of the brain related to empathy and compassion. They may know right from wrong but they simply do not care. Many grandiose narcissists on the high level of the spectrum deem themselves superior and feel entitled to anything and everything. That’s why they deliberately destroy lives and sabotage people – because they can and they are rewarded by it. The highly disordered do not always destroy others because they are “suffering in pain.” They do so because they know they can get away with it.

	...When you’re led to feel guilty about setting boundaries with them or cutting off contact, that makes it all the more difficult to detach from them and realize you don’t deserve their treatment. Feeling pity for them in place of healthy boundaries is usually a waste of energy you could be feeling for their actual victims or showing compassion for yourself.



https://www.quora.com/What-is-your-opinion-of-this-article-by-Shahida-Arabi?share=1
	Athena Walker, Psychopathy is present from the first breath one takes, to the last.

	That she needs to stop writing about things she clearly has arrived at a bunch of conclusions regarding, when she knows nothing about them.

	Had she stuck to “toxic people” meaning exactly that, it would have been one thing. But of course she didn’t do that. She did what all of these articles do, and give neurotypicals the shining purity pass while slapping the “evil” label on narcissists and sociopaths.

	Way to go empathy. Prove your value as being zero. I would guess that if she has supposedly known so many “toxic people” that she is the problem. The common denominator is her, so it’s pretty easy to figure out this is likely an exercise in projection.


Athena didn't like that Arabi equated psycopath and "toxic person"

"she did what all of these articles do"

hmmm



https://www.amazon.com/Becoming-Narcissists-Nightmare-Narcissist-Supplying-ebook/dp/B01B01O3PA/?tag=thougcatal0c-20
	Becoming the Narcissist’s Nightmare: How to Devalue and Discard the Narcissist While Supplying Yourself Kindle Edition
	by Shahida Arabi


a lot of her articles put a gender bias on psycopathy (why do this?) (example: https://thoughtcatalog.com/shahida-arabi/2018/02/the-real-reason-you-miss-the-narcissist/ and https://thoughtcatalog.com/shahida-arabi/2018/02/24-powerful-valentines-day-reminders-if-youre-healing-from-a-toxic-relationship-with-a-narcissist/ , a lot of articles on recovering from relationship with narcissist)

a lot of articles panning narcissistss, then:

https://thoughtcatalog.com/shahida-arabi/2018/02/3-counterintuitive-ways-to-overcome-self-sabotage-and-manifest-the-life-of-your-dreams/
	3 Counterintuitive Reasons Why Owning Your ‘Dark Side’ Is Key To Manifesting The Life Of Your Dreams
	By Shahida Arabi,

	...1. You need to believe you are worthy of what you desire – and enough to “deserve it.”

	...AFFIRMATION

 	“I am enough. I am worthy of everything and anything I desire. I am deserving. I deserve all good things in my life. I embrace all good things coming to me right now. I allow all miracles to enter my life.”

 	...2. Spiritually bypassing your emotions is not your pathway to abundance; owning your emotions all while remaining grateful is.

 	...AFFIRMATIONS

	“I am so wealthy in every facet of my life. I deserve abundance in everything and anything. I am already abundant. I allow more abundance to flow into my life.”

	“I validate all of my emotions. I honor when I am angry, hurt, confused. Sometimes, life is deeply unfair. I never deserved the pain inflicted on me. I rise higher than my oppressors and bullies.”


weird article

I guess a lot of what she writes plays to a victim complex?


https://thoughtcatalog.com/shahida-arabi/2018/02/27-survivors-reveal-the-sickest-most-twisted-thing-a-narcissist-did-to-manipulate-them/
	27 Survivors Reveal The Sickest, Most Twisted Thing A Narcissist Did To Manipulate Them
	By Shahida Arabi


...


https://thoughtcatalog.com/shahida-arabi/2018/02/the-most-powerful-women-are-always-the-ones-you-dont-see-coming/
	The Most Powerful Women Are Always The Ones You Don’t See Coming
	By Shahida Arabi

	...The most powerful women are always the ones you don’t see coming.

	The ones that build empires while others sleep. The ones who plan their comeback meticulously and quietly, behind the scenes. The ones who appear to be lambs, but emerge as the lions. These women are always underestimated, but they’re really the ones who have been in control all along


like a spy? Kitty Oppenheimer, Lady Bird,



https://thoughtcatalog.com/shahida-arabi/2017/03/dear-abuser-i-am-the-revolution-you-never-expected/
	Dear Abuser: I Am The Revolution You Never Expected
	By Shahida Arabi


LBJ was abusive...

so were the tsarist secret police


https://thoughtcatalog.com/shahida-arabi/2018/01/the-dark-side-of-being-an-empath-5-powerful-ways-the-highly-sensitive-experience-the-world-differently/
	The Dark Side Of Being An Empath: 5 Powerful Ways The Highly Sensitive Experience The World Differently
	By Shahida Arabi


where did the word "empath" come from?


https://thoughtcatalog.com/shahida-arabi/2017/12/whats-its-like-to-be-an-infj-in-other-words-a-living-paradox/
	What’s It’s Like To Be An INFJ, In Other Words, A Living Paradox
	By Shahida Arabi

	...INFJs are the rarest personality type and tend to be the natural targets of emotional predators. However, while INFJs are extremely compassionate, these types are ones you should never mess with. Outwardly, INFJs may not be as overly bold and aggressive as other personality types, but when they bring the reckoning, they bring it with full force.


another pattern? appealing to ego in victims of psycopaths

on this site and her books looks like a narrow target, women who have dated a psycopath and got messed up or changed by it

probably worth looking into later--another side of this might be pick up community and "the red pill" or books like "the game", which by some indications is another active measures campaign.

psycopaths in positions of power would probably be the type of people they'd want most to manipulate, and it's said to be more common in males.


https://thoughtcatalog.com/shahida-arabi/2017/12/narcissists-rule-the-online-dating-world-how-to-protect-yourself-in-the-modern-dating-age/
	Online Dating Is A Hunting Ground For Narcissists And Sociopaths: How To Protect Yourself In The Modern Dating Age
	By Shahida Arabi,


https://thoughtcatalog.com/shahida-arabi/2017/12/single-women-are-happier-than-society-thinks-they-are-according-to-research/
	Single Women Are Happier Than Society Thinks They Are – According To Research
	By Shahida Arabi


reminiscent of Felliza's saying millenials not getting married


http://www.mentalhealthnewsradionetwork.com/healing-our-addiction-to-the-narcissist-an-interview-with-shahida-arabi1/

she doesn't sound as nutty in her interview as she does in some of her articles


https://thoughtcatalog.com/shahida-arabi/2018/01/what-if-youre-the-narcissist/
	What If You’re The Narcissist?
	By Shahida Arabi

	One of the most popular questions I receive from survivors of narcissistic abuse is, “But what if I am the narcissist? How would I know?” Chances are, if you’re even able to self-reflect on this question, you probably aren’t a narcissist. Narcissists, after all, lack empathy and are unable to even own up to their abusive behavior most of the time unless it serves them in some way. And even the most self-aware narcissists do not have a problem with their narcissism; they see it as a sign of their superiority, whereas you are obviously seeing it as a source of concern.


https://thoughtcatalog.com/shahida-arabi/2018/02/11-sickening-signs-youre-dealing-with-a-sneaky-female-narcissist/
	11 Sickening Signs You’re Dealing With A Sneaky Female Narcissist
	By Shahida Arabi

	...She will continually steer the conversation back to herself without fail, time and time again, to highlight her own perceived achievements or to stage pity ploys that make her seem like the victim when she is actually the culprit.

	...But take heart – all narcissists eventually unmask themselves and many eventually meet their downfall, all while their victims move onto bigger and better things.


...


https://www.quora.com/How-do-you-deal-with-people-who-consider-themselves-morally-superior-to-you?share=1
	How do you deal with people who consider themselves morally superior to you?

	...Athena Walker, Psychopathy is present from the first breath one takes, to the last.
	Answered Mar 9, 2018 · Author has 6.8k answers and 26.8m answer views

	Well, that is a common occurrence when you are psychopathic. People think that they are fundamentally better than we are because they feel a chemical cocktail that I do not. I really don’t see what about a chemical makes a person moral. It seems to me that choices and how you behave determines that. However, they disagree.

	I simply point out how empathy, their beloved chemical cocktail, is a limited cheat code. I give them examples of when empathy fails, and allow them to consider it. It often has a chilling effect, other times it has an angering one. It very rarely has the effect of getting them to think differently immediately. It may have an effect later on if it bugs them that they call people less than human.

	Really, it’s going to be a part of the human condition. People have a need to feel good about themselves at the expense of others it seems. Not all people, but a fair number of them get off on feeling superior. You might be able to give them pause, but more likely they will stubbornly resist your attempts to get them to see reason. So unless you like ruffling feathers, it’s probably better to just avoid them.