"Serial killers ruin families, corporate and political and religious psychopaths ruin economies."

[Kurovski]

How to spot a psychopath...From Broadmoor to boardroom, they're everywhere, says Jon Ronson, in an exclusive extract from his new book. May 21



"I shouldn't have done my research just in prisons. I should have spent some time inside the Stock Exchange as well."

"But surely stock-market psychopaths can't be as bad as serial-killer psychopaths," I said.

"Serial killers ruin families," shrugged Hare. "Corporate and political and religious psychopaths ruin economies. They ruin societies."

It wasn't only Hare who believed that a disproportionate number of psychopaths can be found in high places. Over the following months, I spoke to scores of psychologists who all said the same. Everyone in the field seemed to regard psychopaths in this same way: inhuman, relentlessly wicked forces, whirlwinds of malevolence, forever harming society but impossible to identify unless you're trained in the subtle art of spotting them, as I now was.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/may/21/jon-ronson-how-to-spot-a-psychopath

[Orrex]

1. Almost as dangerous as the psychopaths are the opportunists who aspire to be like them

K/R

[yurbud]

2. If someone aspired to be like a psychopath, they pretty much are one

unless they have some glimmer of sympathy for others and guilt for past wrongs they have done.

[Orrex]

7. I fear that that might be a tempting but problematic oversimplification

People who might otherwise be mentally healthy and fully functional can admire and emulate certain characteristics of a psychopath without actually being psychopaths themselves. I'm not saying that these are admirable people pursuing an admirable goal, but I'm very confident that it happens because I've seen it happen.

Unless you're positing a sort of selective psychopathy, in which the person truly is a psychopath but only within a limited context.

It effectively amounts to the same thing as what I'm describing, I think.

[Kurovski]

9. I think you're right. Hitler's Germany is one huge example.

[Kurovski]

5. Or even aspire to serve them. (nt)

[provis99]

3. It's the nature of humanity that psychopaths rise to the top.

Look at history. It's basically the tale of society ruled by psychopaths.

[Kurovski]

8. It is fairly recent that it is being considered a problem.

The excerpt relays a story about a doctor who over one hundred years ago wrote about a mental disease with no outward appearance, where the individual was perfectly rational and convincing. They were speaking of psychopaths.

[yurbud]

4. when the wealthy put Bush in the White House, they made this blatantly obvious

Since he wasn't the brightest bulb, he didn't cover up those psychopathic tendencies very well, or barely at all.

And by installing him, the wealthy made it clear that nothing mattered but increasing their wealth, not even the safety or dignity of their own country.

[amborin]

6. K&R

[Kurovski]

10. I've always wondered--even here on DU-- why The DSM manual

had no entries for sadists. I don't mean the sexual fetishists, but the judges, the teachers, bosses, who make life so miserable for everyone.

[PoliticAverse]

11. and they're extremely 'charming'. n/t