Identifying Psychopaths

Sophia_ · #1 05-17-2008, 01:11 AM

..

Quote:

Psychopaths stand-out via their 'low neuroticism'

A discussion with Adolf Guggenbuhl-Craig (author of The Emptied Soul, & James Hillman).

Guggenbuhl-Craig: The Psychopath is much more successful than you and I because he is not hemmed in by all sorts of impediments or worries.

Hillman: But we fail to recognise it…. So it would perhaps be more useful in our lives if we could spot one when we see one?

Guggenbuhl-Craig: Yes and you can maybe spot one if you know what a psychopath is, if you know that all of a sudden the other man or the other woman is marvelously tuned into you. He's just your kind of guy and he's just what you expect…. Then you can become very suspicious.

Hillman: … and is well, so-to-speak 'related'?

Guggenbuhl-Craig: Well related, you know, and he's a great guy and you would like to have lunch with him and he's really it….then you have to become suspicious. However if he is slightly aggravating and complicated and obstreperous then you actually have more security that he might be reliable.

It is the same in these homes for delinquent girls where most of the managers of these homes always fail when a boy or a girl were very nice and fitted into the general home and everyone said (at the end of 6 months or 10 months), "Well ynow they turned out to be excellent, they have kept the rules, they were nice, they were helpful, they were no trouble…", and they really met with the experience that all these girls or boys caused no troubles in the home for delinquent people, but they were socially -as soon as they were released- hopeless! And the ones who were horrible, y'now who broke the windows, tore up the bedclothes, who attacked the staff, often then turned out to be alright in the end. But that's the problem in the whole prison system, the psychopaths are the ones who can adjust the best to any kind of institution because it doesn't worry them to adapt, they don't care, they can sing the song of the warden or sing the song of whoever so they can come out alright at the moment, which is maybe not so important but that's why you have to watch when somebody gets along very well with you.

Hillman: What you are describing here is what you've written about as the 'successful psychopath'.

Guggenbuhl-Craig: Right, that's a successful psychopath which from my point of view is the problem. The criminal psychopath is not really the problem, he is an exception, he makes the headlines, he kills ten people or something else but he is such an exception that in reality you don't have to worry about him too much. You have to worry about the socially well adjusted psychopath.

Another problem with psychopaths is that we envy them. Even if you feel a little bit that someone is a psychopath that brings you even closer to him. Because we are all so tortured by our neurotic compulsions, and doubt's, and guilts, and inhibitions, and we are unable to do this or that, and you are shy, and you feel too guilty… so we would like to be free like a psychopath just to be free of all-that-stuff. When you have a psychopath in front of you it's lovely, it's great, it's relaxing. Nothing is as relaxing as having dinner with a psychopath because then you feel great and those darned horrible things fall away, especially when having a few drinks with a psychopath it's the greatest thing you can do. Then you feel absolutely at peace.

Hillman: That's part of the charm, it's almost as if they are graced with a kind of charisma.

Guggenbuhl-Craig: Many women fall for male psychopaths and many men fall for psychopathic women and why is that so? That's the same problem. The psychopath has no inhibitions therefore he can play up to achieve his sexual aims without any inhibitions. He will talk to a woman who is interested in poetry about poetry. He doesn't care about poetry but he will quote poets!… and even sexually he will be better because his sexual life is absolutely healthy. Normal sexual life is so complicated, so full of strange ideas and obsessions and desires….it's one of the most complicated things in life and in many ways shows some of the most perverse things. The only sexually normal man or woman is a psychopath, sexuality just functions, and a man psychopath and a woman psychopath -they can make love to anybody, anytime, anyplace, doesn't matter, because it's just going, there is no inhibition of any kind. That's why they are so good at making money -they can make love to an 80 yr old woman, doesn't matter, they can do it, no inhibitions.

Hillman: Well this idea of no complications so-to-speak, a healthy, uncomplicated, always available sexuality without inhibition, without guilt, without worry….

Guggenbuhl-Craig: …Without emotion, without any kind of twist, without any strange desires.

Ruth Price · #2 05-17-2008, 03:08 AM

Do they post on KR?

if so, yes to being a psychopath.

vulgaris · #3 05-17-2008, 06:27 AM

well, psychopaths or sociopaths, its scary to meet them as children. mostly theyre only up to the brazen harm/killing of animals. sometimes sex crimes (with people and/or animals). and they are really in tune with you because they look at you and can somehow work out exactly what they're supposed to say to you (even when they're being questioned by astute people) and say it (convincingly, sincerely) to assuage the situation.

Honey Bee · #4 05-17-2008, 08:38 AM

They lie effortlessly.

Sophia_ · #5 05-17-2008, 02:26 PM

About James Hillman:On soul-making

Quote:

Hillman has a complex “definition” of soul. Primarily, he notes that soul is not a “thing,” not an entity. Nor is it something that is located “inside” a person. Rather, soul is “a perspective rather than a substance, a viewpoint towards things… (it is) reflective; it mediates events and makes differences…”(1975). Soul is not to be located in the brain or in the head, for example (where most modern psychologies place it), but human beings are in psyche. The world, in turn, is the anima mundi, or the world ensouled. Hillman often quotes a phrase coined by the Romantic poet John Keats: “call the world the vale of soul-making.”

Additionally, Hillman (1975) observes that soul:
refers to the deepening of events into experiences; second the significance of soul makes possible, whether in love or religious concern, derives from its special relationship with death. And third, by soul I mean the imaginative possibility in our natures the experiencing through reflective speculation, dream, image, fantasy -- that mode which recognizes all realities as primarily symbolic or metaphorical.

The notion of soul as imaginative possibility, in relation to the archai or root metaphors, is what Hillman has termed the “poetic basis of mind.”

Psychopaths/sociopaths can memorize and recite poetry, but are unable to make the connection with the soul; they do not get poetic meaning through feeling it. They just don't get it directly, but can learn it via study!