Is there a psychopath in your life?

What is a psychopath? Do you know one? Ever been the victim of one? The chances are that the answer is yes, even if you may not realize it. The scientific consensus is that one in a hundred people is psychopathic and this breaks down evenly between men and women. (1)  Scary thought, huh? What is your idea of a ‘psychopath’? A serial killer? A crazy person foaming at the mouth? Think again.

Movie madness – muddling psychosis and psychopathy

Hollywood loves psychopaths and psychotics because they make such wonderful (or terrible, depending on your point of view) baddies. But if you think that because you’ve seen lots of movies featuring baddies who are ‘mad’ in some way you will therefore be able tell a psychotic from a psychopath, you are mistaken, because the movies regularly mix them up. Perhaps the most famous ‘mad’ movie baddie of them all, Norman Bates in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, is regularly branded a psychopath, although he was no such thing. He was a delusional psychotic. ‘Hearing voices’ or ‘seeing things’ that aren’t there can be symptoms of psychotic illnesses like schizophrenia, but does not mean that you are a psychopath. Of course, schizophrenia itself is another condition often misrepresented in the movies, which pursue the dramatic possibilities of ‘split personality’ while failing to acknowledge that it has nothing whatever to do with schizophrenia.

To see a more accurate movie psychopath, turn to the eponymous cold hired assassin ‘the Jackal’ in The Day of the Jackal, or the scheming and manipulative Tom Ripley (brilliantly portrayed by Matt Damon) in The Talented Mr Ripley.

In reality, most psychopaths are not criminal – although many criminals are psychopaths – but they are certainly amoral. The great majority are not killers; they are ‘bad’ rather than ‘mad’. So how do you tell if there is a psychopath in your life?

The charming manipulator

The socialized psychopath is likely to be too smart to end up in jail.

The socialized psychopath can appear extremely charming. You have to know them really well and have a fair amount of insight yourself to spot that they always and only ever do what suits them. As long as they are getting their own way, they can be as charming as you could wish, and the most delightful company. But they will lie at the drop of a hat, without the slightest twinge of anxiety or guilt (so the old ‘lie detector’ polygraph test wouldn’t be likely to catch them out). They will use other people for their own ends without the smallest concern – treating them as no more than chess pieces in their ‘game’. They have no sense of guilt or remorse and will always be able to come up with plausible rationalizations for their behavior which allow them to lay the blame for any subsequent disaster on other people. And, of course, once chess pieces have served their purpose, there is no reason why they should not be discarded.

Is it surprising that politics and show business are thought to have more than their fair share of socialized psychopaths?

Cruel yet magnetic

The socialized psychopath can be very attractive for the very qualities that make them psychopathic. This is not as contradictory as it sounds. A person whom we sense is not encumbered with the same inhibitions, doubts, uncertainties and sensitivities that plague the rest of mankind can seem very attractive. They can have such an aura of confidence and freedom about them. They may be enormously fun sensation-seeking risk takers. There are ‘no strings on them’ – or so it would appear. They may even seem like heroes to us. And they will keep us onside while we are useful to them. If you watch them carefully, however, their humor will tend to be on the cruel side.

Cult leader Jim Jones was very magnetic and attracted a great number of followers to his ‘Jonestown’ settlement where they met their tragic deaths. He was reported to have enjoyed dissecting live animals as a child – a common childhood indicator of psychopathy. Other people’s suffering does not shock the psychopath as it does ordinary people, although they can look as shocked as anyone on the surface. How so?

Feigning empathy

A psychopath is not ’emotion blind’. They can ‘read’ other people’s emotions perfectly well, and mimic them perfectly well. And for them, other people’s emotions are just another counter to use in their games. They themselves rarely get worked up about anything except not getting what they want.

How do you deal with someone who has no empathy, guilt, remorse or fear?

A psychopath may understand other people frighteningly well. They can watch dispassionately, with a cold and calculating mind, going convincingly through the motions of empathy on the surface while focusing on how to turn the situation to their advantage. The only way to spot them is to observe them carefully over a significant period of time. Do they regularly say one thing and then do another, more than other people? Do they use people emotionally, sexually, professionally and then discard them casually? Do they sometimes seem strangely un-shocked by shocking events?

Cold hearts

Not surprisingly, many two-faced bullies show strong psychopathic tendencies. As they say: ‘You can’t turn a lion into a vegetarian by throwing veggie burgers at it.’ Trying to appeal to the better nature of a person who hasn’t got a better nature is a losing strategy. Psychopaths do not feel guilt or shame. They won’t feel genuinely sorry for you and will only put up a front of convincing looking sympathy for as long as it suits them.

If you suspect there is a psychopath causing havoc in your life then you need to avoid them as much as possible. Collect and record evidence of their manipulative behavior. Try to avoid seeing them except when other people are around. Psychopaths leave a string of broken hearts, disappointment, bewilderment and empty wallets in their wake. Romantic relationships with a psychopath (of either sex) are fraught with dangers to your emotional and even physical well-being.

How do you treat the psychopath?

Traditionally psychopaths have only been ‘treated’ when they have been caught in criminal misdemeanor, and that ‘treatment’ has often been no more than punishment. Psychopathy is seen as a ‘personality disorder’ and therefore pretty much untreatable. Psychopaths may be very happy with being the way they are and there is some evidence that their brains, in some respects, work quite differently from other people’s.

In a fascinating study, researchers at the Institute of Psychiatry, Kings College London (2), showed six psychopaths and nine healthy volunteers’ pictures of faces displaying different emotions. When looking at happy faces (as opposed to neutral faces), the brains of both groups showed increased activity in the areas involved in processing facial expression, although this increase was smaller in the psychopathic group.

In contrast, when processing faces full of fear compared with neutral faces, the healthy volunteers showed more activation and the psychopaths less activation in these brain regions. Psychopaths can be very emotional themselves if they feel thwarted, but they are less concerned with other people’s emotions except as a hook by which to manipulate them.

The psychopathic continuum

We can all behave psychopathically sometimes, given extreme enough circumstances. Even whole cultures may be more psychopathic than others. Societies that encourage individuality, material gain and personal power while glorifying violence at the expense of the community display psychopathic tendencies just as surely as individuals do. And some people may manifest some psychopathic tendencies while still on occasion having genuine empathy and consideration.

The vast majority of people do care about others, are shocked and upset by the suffering of fellow creatures and won’t tread over all and sundry just to get to the top. And we can all be manipulative, calculating, selfish or ladle on the false charm at times. But for the psychopath this is par for the course.

Notes

1. See Robert D Hare’s excellent: Without Conscience: The disturbing world of the psychopaths among us
2. This research was conducted by Professor Declan Murphy and colleagues at Kings College London and published in ‘Facial emotion processing in criminal psychopathy’, British Journal of Psychiatry, 2006 189: 547-555

EXCERPT from “No strings on me: Is there a psychopath in your life?” by Mark Tyrrell

Photo courtesy bryancrump

The Problems in Profit

There are two basic types of profit – the one We all think of in the material sense (money, mainly), and the profit We receive when We make One We love better for how We choose to behave. The second is a powerful motivator to pursue the first. How many go to work to support Their families? How many expend Their energy, accounting for it and getting tokens in return, so as to afford as good a situation as They can for the Ones They love? How many doing that, inputting Their energy into the accounting system, receiving Their tokens, really would rather do something else while They are there adding energy?

I’ll wager quite a few.

Given this, the first problem I will bring up is that material profit creates slaves. When One has to account to another to survive, when One has to go plug One’s energy into something doing something One does not want to do, One is not free, and when One is not free, One is a slave or a prisoner. The money system – ANY money system – creates slaves. Wage slaves, debt slaves, and crime slaves.

The second problem with material profit, therefore, is that it creates crime. Especially in a scarcity environment. Crime slaves are all the Ones who get bribed (“paid”) to do the work for the “kingpins” or whatever title One wishes to give the Ones who call the shots. This applies to “governments” (controlminds) “above board” as well as the underground “crime lords,” for They call the shots, either way. At the top.

The third problem that material profit creates, mostly as money again, is that of promoting the psychopathic in the population of Humanity to great power over Others. I think We have vast evidence at this point in time to prove that. I mean just the budget of the corporation, THE UNITED STATES, that masquerades as “Our” controlmind, that is given (however true, it has plenty of evidence of being fairly close on this point) has over half going to ways to kill and control Others while very small fractions go to helping People. If THAT’s not psychopathic, I don’t know what is.

And that’s just one problem that the foundational problem of psychopaths in control creates.

But why would a money system, accounting for most of the Humans on this planet’s energy, do this? Because any boss has, in essence, a life-and-death power over any He employs. (Sure, We might say that One can always “get another job,” but with most, and especially these days, that may not be the case.) And when some have power over Others, it draws psychopaths. A psychopath likes nothing better than to feel power over Others. For this reason They pursue money in ANY way They can. Where Most would stop short – killing anOther is usually out of the question – a psychopath, seeing an opportunity to gain through unEthical means, will not hesitate. They will be the Ones overall promoted.

What are some other problems created by psychopaths in control? When Some have wealth enough to eradicate poverty twenty times over and They do nothing to help (psychopaths don’t care), then poverty is clearly one problem We have because the caring Individuals are not promoted to the top.

Planned obsolescence is also a psychopathic thing – making products with deliberate flaws so that the products break down and new products sold, all for profit. This, in turn, creates the bulk of the waste We create on this planet. If all products were designed to the highest standards rather than the lowest tolerances, waste would be radically reduced. To the psychopath, the profit is all that matters. Never mind the destruction to the planet. Of course, psychopaths will blame “Humanity” for “trashing the planet.” That plays right in with convincing Us there are too many of Us for the planet to support so that We consent to things that take care of “overpopulation.”

Psychopaths make plans to control the rest of Us. “Overpopulation” is merely Their way of saying, “There’s too many People here to CONTROL.” With money as a tool, They buy things – and everything They can. They scheme to take things from People – the HSBC MERS mortgage fraud is the tip of an iceberg. They seek to control even the food (Monsanto), water (“laws” making it illegal to collect the water that falls from Our sky), and They are working on air (the whole “climate change” scam).

The “climate change” concept also plays into Their painting a picture of “overpopulation,” as well as control – when They can tell You how much You can have, You are not free.

This planet belongs to Humanity – the psychopaths stole it through “trusts” and deceit – but They promote the concept that Each of Us must “earn” a place on it. They glorify the Ones who have lots of material thing (the Ones They have allowed this for, in the industries They own) and look down on the poor, as if it is the poor who have created the mess They have found Themselves in. They concocted a “trust,” a very long time ago now, proclaiming Each of Us “incompetent” or “dead.” And then monetized a legal fiction for Each of Us, putting it on a market They don’t make any effort to let Us know about. Then They tell Us We are that corporation and that We are subject to the rules placed upon that corporation.

They put on plays for Us between the corporations They create (ALL controlminds (“governments”) on the planet now are corporations, beholden to profit and not People) to suck wealth from Us. This ties in with the “war” budget, where They funnel wealth to these industries, where They propagandize to gain support for war. They own the media and have characters in Their plays, all scripted, which They tell Us are real. We then consent to, and participate in, Their wars. “If You want peace, take the PROFIT out of war.”

They create products to poison Us and sicken Us for profit (Roundup, vaccines, “geoengineering,” sodium fluoride and other toxins in Our water, etc.), create “legislation” that protects Them (vaccine court versus suing the manufacturer for the damage the product caused, etc.), and, given They want to control every One on this planet, and own RFID chips, is it too far a stretch to think They might chip Us through the vaccines They own?

Profit in the material gives rise to poverty, oppression, wage/debt slavery, intrusion, and profiteering (war profiteering, prison profiteering, pharma profiteering, medical profiteering, chemical profiteering, food, water, air profiteering). It creates artificial scarcity. If We all had access to the food that makes it to market, about 25% would be uneaten, but because We distribute by profit, 30-40% spoils before sale, making it appear that We have a food scarcity. And that does not include new tech such as vertical farming… People starve in the midst of abundance.

Clearly, profit as motive, when it is a material profit, leads to most of the problems We are seeing here on this planet.

But what of the profit from the heart? That feeling We get when We help the Ones We care about? The ongoing profit We receive watching the help We gave blossom for Those We gave Our energy to? This is the true profit. Of course, in a world where the focus is on the material gains and not the heart gains, the true profit is downplayed, or never mentioned. It’s more important to have money than to be appreciated for who You are. Such heart profit leads to problem resolution, as opposed to problem creation.

And all this leads Me to the point: We can remove material profit as motive – remove shoddy products, products that sicken so as to sell pharmaceuticals to “treat” the illnesses, most of the breaking of the three Laws of Ethics (making it “legal” to do so in many cases). We can create a world where profit is strictly though the heart. Where the only motive to do things is for the love, the appreciation, the thanks, the fame, the lauds, the caring, the betterment.

Ethics will emerge as prime, unlike the legal system that props up and supports the twin towers to psychopaths in power (accounting for Human energy and top-down controlmind), which right at the bottom thwarts Ethics – how Many have been wronged that have had to accept that fact because They could not afford an attorney? How many “laws” (statutes, bills, acts, codes, regulations, mandates, etc.) give advantage to Some rather than serve Ethics? How many times have Ethics been thwarted in some legal technicality? How many times have they been thwarted because the “law” is creating a problem where none existed before “the law” moved in?

So how can We remove material profit? All profit is founded in energy scarcity. Before robotics, Human energy to get things done no One would choose to do without the promise of profit was scarce – and accounting for Human energy arose to motivate Us, thus creating wage slavery. Today, We have robots to do any work We would not choose to do. Today We have access to the energy in the aether – though hidden and suppressed, I personally know of one way to extract that energy: electrogravitics. It is because of My awareness that We CAN access all the energy We need that I am so driven to bring it out and free Humanity from material profit.

I know electrogravitics was pulled into black (or maybe gray) projects back in the late 1950’s. Before it went black, My dad, who worked with T. Townsend Brown doing experiments in electrogravitics, would share the results of experiments, telling Us of the gravity control and energy from the aether They were getting, painting a picture of the future I would grow up in: cars would fly, cities would float, and We would have all the energy We could use. I was thrilled, as a young child, to know of the bright future I would see.

One night, Dad came home to tell Us We couldn’t talk about electrogravitics anymore, We couldn’t even say the word, “electrogravitics,” because “They want it secret for now.” And so, We never spoke of it again.

We have free energy, but the psychopaths in control know that the addition of free energy means a removal of the need to account for Human energy – the removal of money systems and their inherent control of Others that so draws the psychopaths (whether “fiat” systems or “backed;” given that the bulk of the planet’s gold has been scooped up by the key players in this staged play They put on, can We expect much difference when money is “backed by gold?”).

One problem in shifting to much better ways of doing things is the depth of the indoctrination the Humans not in control have gone through. Many believe that the way THEIR country is set up (or was set up initially) is the be-all and end-all of systems We could operate under. In truth, there are better ways by far than any top-down “government.” Any time One is given the power to make choices for anOther outside the three Laws of Ethics, One again draws psychopaths, thus building the second tower to psychopaths in power. Combine the power of money with the power such top-down systems offer, add a legal system to support them, and We see exactly what We see: the bulk of the wealth on this planet flowing to very few, with Ethics thwarted at every turn.

With the web, We can govern Ourselves by solving problems Ethically as they arise, locally with planetary reach for solutions. Ethical consensus amongst Those who care, as opposed to applying a “law” that may be highly inappropriate in any given situation, creating a problem where there was none. If I had the money (ironic, that), I would build servers around the planet that had no central “backbone,” that mirrored one another. I would hold a contest for the best open-source site that allows for problems to be reported, both emergency and non, and for Those who care to respond, or offer suggestions.

I would build electrogravitic generators and “power boxes” to plug appliances into – and give them away. I would create vehicles, allowing Those who care to respond to emergencies from anywhere.

If I had the money, I would free Humanity.

Sadly, I am nowhere NEAR rich enough to create what would best be created. All I can do is hope that Those with enough money will take the ball and run with it. All I can do is define the system that offers true Human freedom, that puts Ethics at the top for true justice, rather than material profit and all the problems that it entails. All I can do is point to how We ALL can pursue happiness as richly as We might choose. All I can do is hope that Others will share this awareness widely, for We WILL create better here when enough of Us know We CAN.

We each have both the obligation and the right to treat Others and be treated Ethically. We each are responsible for the behavior We choose. We each are owners of the abundance of this planet, which could afford Us ALL everything We each might desire and I point to a way to take it back from the psychopaths in control. I offer a way We can say “NO” to Their next world war – which Their numerology is pointing to being this year (2016) (They are obsessed with such things whether We give credence or not).

The question I ask all You pointing to the evidence that We have psychopaths in control is:

How much do You really want to solve for this problem?

Frankly, I want to very much.

But I cannot do it alone. I am living on the edge of poverty and most months do not have food all the way through. But this is not about Me – it’s about You (I would use the second Person singular here, “Thou,” but so few grasp the distinction and most will think that it’s merely “archaic”). You whose eyes read this. And all Humans of heart, whether They can read this or not. We have a planetary and radical problem of psychopaths in power, and a radical solution is in order. One that tackles the root of the problem and not the myriad branching effects.

Two towers were brought down by the psychopaths in power. I say We bring down Theirs. Let’s start discussing and sharing awareness of something better than what the psychopaths are creating. Let’s introduce Ethical anarchy in a solutocracy.

Art Thou on board?

NOTE: The three Laws of Ethics:

1. Do not without fully informed consent willfully hurt or kill anOther;
2. Do not without fully informed consent willfully take or damage anOther’s property; and,
3. Do not willfully defraud anOther (which can only happen without fully informed consent)

“We Each are temples of Awareness.”

Links:

How to Withdraw Consent
tapyoureit.boards.net/thread/37/withdraw-consent

Money = Power = Energy
tapyoureit.boards.net/thread/64/money-power-energy-systems-enable

Ethical Anarchy vs. Psychopaths in Control
tapyoureit.boards.net/thread/48/ethical-anarchy-psychopaths-control

The Abundance Paradigm Foundational Writings
tapyoureit.boards.net/thread/2/abundance-paradigm-foundational-writings

Short story to illustrate:

Quite the Opposite – A Short Story for Change
tapyoureit.boards.net/thread/72/quite-opposite-short-story-change