There is disagreement regarding who is responsible for the mess that we are in now.
Some people think it is all an organized conspiracy perpetrated by _______(insert favorite group here)___________ and those who see it as a result of psychopathic behavior.
Here is a test of sorts that describe psychopathic behavior. I found it at http://psychology.wikia.com/wiki/Psychopathy I'm not a shrink, but I can read. You can go right down that list and see how it fits our leaders like a glove.
Cleckley defined psychopathy thus:[8]
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- 1. Superficial charm and above average intelligence.
- 2. Absence of delusions and other signs of irrational thinking.
- 3. Absence of nervousness or neurotic manifestations.
- 4. Unreliability.
- 5. Untruthfulness and insincerity.
- 6. Lack of remorse or shame.
- 7. Antisocial behavior without apparent compunction.
- 8. Poor judgment and failure to learn from experience.
| - 9. Pathological egocentricity and incapacity to love.
- 10. General poverty in major affective reactions.
- 11. Specific loss of insight.
- 12. Unresponsiveness in general interpersonal relations.
- 13. Fantastic and uninviting behavior with drink, and sometimes without.
- 14. Suicide threats rarely carried out.
- 15. Sex life impersonal, trivial, and poorly integrated.
- 16. Failure to follow any life plan.
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It has been shown that punishment and behavior modification techniques do not improve the behavior of a psychopath. They have been regularly observed to respond to both by becoming more cunning and hiding their behavior better. It has been suggested that traditional therapeutic approaches actually make them, if not worse, then far more adept at manipulating others and concealing their behavior. They are generally considered to be not only incurable but also untreatable.
Psychopaths also have a markedly distorted sense of the potential consequences of their actions, not only for others, but also for themselves. They do not, for example, deeply recognize the risk of being caught, disbelieved or injured as a result of their behaviour.
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Primary psychopathy
Primary psychopaths show a lack of anticipatory anxiety to threats and an apparent extreme emotional underreactivity. Occasional outbursts of emotion may be exhibited, but in a backdrop of emotional coldness, psychiatrists consider these a manipulative tactic.[citation needed]
Primary psychopaths' behavior is thought to be rooted in their inability to comprehend emotionally the consequences of their actions and an inability to form empathic bonds with others, even family. Since primary psychopaths do not experience the feelings that would usually inhibit other people's antisocial impulses, they do whatever is most expedient for getting what they want.[citation needed]
For the primary psychopath, especially prominent are the Factor 1 (in the two-factor model) PCL-R items of callousness/lack of empathy, shallow affect, lack of remorse or guilt, inability to accept responsibility for own actions, grandiose sense of self-worth, glibness/superficial charm, pathological lying, conning/manipulativeness.[citation needed]
On the MMPI-2 Restructured Clinical Scales (RC), primary psychopathy (as measured by the Psychopathic Personality Inventory, Factor 1) is negatively correlated with RC2 (low positive emotions), RC7 (dysfunctional negative emotions), RC4 (antisocial behavior), and RC9 (hypomanic activation). On the MMPI-2 Personality Psychopathology Five (PSY-5) scales, primary psychopathy was positively correlated with AGGR(ession) (specifically, grandiosity and interpersonal dominance, and instrumental aggression) and DISC(onstraint) (specfically, fearlessness) while being negatively correlated with NEGE (negative emotionality) and INTR(oversion).[16]
Newman et al. found measures of primary psychopathy to be negatively correlated with Gray's behavioral inhibition system, a construct intended to measure behavioral inhibition from cues of punishment or nonreward.[17]