Talk:Psychopath/Archive1

"Transpersonification"
I've removed the section on "transpersonification". It appears to be sourced from a single book, and one of the listed authors is, er, see for yourself... http://www.google.com/search?q=Laura+Knight+Jadczyk The article as a whole needs more sources and the attention of someone who actually understands this stuff.--ZooGuard (talk) 14:47, 20 January 2011 (UTC)
 * "Laura Knight Jadczyk talks to reptilian space aliens on a ouija board." That means she's great, right? I mean, I wouldn't know how to do that. --Idiot numbre 188 (talk) 16:28, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

The book "Political Ponerology" by Andrew Lobaczewski is the earliest source of "transpersonification" idea as it pertains to Psychopaths as far as I can tell. Its available at this link http://ponerology.com/ or through Amazon.com. --Turpin (talk) 16:28, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

BoN's Booklist
This looks a bit suspect to me but I don't know enough to judge. Does anyone else have any views. Jack Hughes (talk) 13:11, 17 August 2011 (UTC)
 * I removed it. It looked too much like "giving a psychiatric diagnosis to people someone doesn't like".--ZooGuard (talk) 17:08, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

Skepticism
Heather Berlin, Steve Novella, Jon Ronson, and Brian Wecht participated in a panel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNLncBs0HSo where they presented very solid evidence to cast doubt on the existence of 'psychopathy' as a clear medical condition. I'm not going to include this discussion in the article just yet, but I think it deserves at least a discussion in the talk page. Klkevelson (talk) 21:49, 21 September 2015 (UTC)

Knight-Jadczyk quotes
Noticed added those quotes and references on April Fools' Day and they haven't been removed, so...congrats on the troll!

Also I feel this is a good time to announce a couple years ago when I was suffering from mental issues more I believed in some crazy things, including the kind of stuff LKJ promotes, and that may be reflected in my edits back then, but I'm feeling better and I don't believe that stuff anymore. Cheers! (This message brought to you by Her Reasonableness The High Chancellor Evangeline S., Champion of Rationality. Sing songs of praise to me or simply worship my genius.) 06:06, 11 January 2019 (UTC)

I'm a bit skeptical about calling Donald Trump and Robert Mugabe a psychopath?
The sources below are from blogs and news sites. I don't think, in my honest opinion, its appropriate to call both these men psychopath from merely these sites. I would love either better sources or delete these men from the list. BeardOfZeus (talk) 23:17, 12 October 2021 (UTC)
 * agreed. Psychopaths are known to be unable to create and carry out any long term plans. In the worst case, Trump is a narcissist. --Aniro (talk) 01:11, 25 October 2022 (UTC)

John Dillinger
Even if he was never psychoanalyzed, literary and cinematic depictions leave no question that one of the most talented and best-known criminals of all time that he was a sociopath. He was disciplined and resourceful, and had he put his talents to valid use he might have been a bank officer or a special agent of the FBI. There are other serial bank robbers who did murders, but none had his talent for escape and for exploiting the deficiencies of law enforcement, although he became the 'model' target of the FBI as "Public Enemy #1. He certainly fit the checklist for the sociopath. Nobody like him is on the list. Pbrower2a (talk) 20:30, 30 March 2022 (UTC)
 * Didn't Dillinger have a code of ethics? Vee (talk) 08:08, 25 October 2022 (UTC)

Alcibiades, Goering, and Trump
I deleted these three people from the list because they have never been professionally diagnosed with psychopathy or sociopathy. (Trump has been speculated to be a psychopath by psychiatrists who have never met him. That doesn't count.) A user re-added them with no edit reason. I deleted them again - sorry about that, I'm new here and didn't realize the way to deal with disputes was to go to the article's talk page. Anyway, since the list is called "Other individuals professionally diagnosed as psychopaths (or sociopaths)," I don't see why people who aren't professionally diagnosed as psychopaths or sociopaths should be on it. Madeleine (talk) 00:51, 10 April 2022 (UTC)
 * I see, I'll restore your edit. 00:54, 10 April 2022 (UTC)
 * Trump is probably a more valid case than Dillinger and Mugabe, and perhaps other still on the list. I think that the list should be better defined, and/or split in two: those diagnosed based on in-person observation/interviews by psychiatrists and those diagnosed based on public information. Bongolian (talk) 04:15, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

Outdated info
Okay, there is a lot wring with this article. For one, and correct me if I'm wrong, "psychopath" is not a legitimate clinical diagnosis. The people we often assume are psychopathic generally fall under the umbrella of "anti social personality disorder" which is a spectrum. https://www.healthline.com/health/psychopath#diagnosis

I also take issue with the capitalism and everyday psychopath section of the article. For starters the statement "Slyness and deception are characteristics which would be detrimental in any other economy except in capitalism" is an incredibly nebulous claim. Why exactly would these qualities not benefit somone in a state socialist economy, especially under Leninist style state planning and party dictatorship? I have yet to find evidence to contradict this. To my knowledge there was never an attempt to research this phenomenon under these systems. The only example of somebody attempting to do so I was able to find was the work of Andrzej Łobaczewski which was banned in communist Poland after he and his research team were chased out of the country. The conceit behind this statement is also troubling. If the premise is that capitalism is a system that unique rewards psychopathy, does that somehow make other economic systems morally superior by default? if we were to follow this line of logic than the argument could be made that feudalism is preferable to capitalism, since presumably "sly essentially and deception" are not rewarded in this system as positions of power are inherited by divine right. This is not to say that capitalism as a whole does not reward shyness and deception,it absolutely does, But this is less of a uniqe feature of capitalism and more of a problem with hierarchical systems in general.

The out-of-control psychopath typically fails in business and becomes a pure criminal. Sociopaths by contrast are capable of rational responses to rewards and are usually adept at hiding their evil character when such is advantageous. They can conform in style as necessary to achieve their ends. So they dress appropriately for their careers, adopt the recognized status symbols (including a spouse), and fit the political values of their chosen milieu. They can be conformists in any order and even establish a cover of legitimate achievements. A sociopath can be a solid liberal or social democrat in a trade union, a fervent exponent of faith in a religious organization, a conservative in a for-profit business, a spit-and-polish military officer, or a fervent Commie in a communist order. The one political system in which sociopaths most thrive is fascism, especially if one is a brutal enforcer or a lying propagandist. Despite the apparent conformity the sociopath may bankrupt a corporation with accounting fraud or embezzlement or do grave damage by disclosing proprietary information, defrauding customers, or doing sexual harassment, or do grave harm to his country through treachery or military recklessness. Any institutional loyalty of a sociopath is simply cover for exploiting an organization.

All organizations other than criminal cliques and fascist movements know the danger of sociopaths and do what they can to avoid them as employees, members, or activists. They often hide well as "snakes in suits" and can be very good at dirty work on behalf of a vile regime, especially as an enforcer (Lavrenti Beria, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Pietro Caruso, "Chemical Ali"). But know well that such people, when no longer needed, scare those who remain in authority or are judged by the victors of wars that their sides lose.

Capitalism attracts sociopaths for the same reason that it attracts honorable, talented people: personal prosperity, identity, and desirable roles in life. Without the prospect of personal gain nobody would start a business. Without pay an employee would leave.

"Slyness and deception are characteristics which would be detrimental in any other economy except in capitalism" - this statement is completely unbased and smells of propaganda. --Aniro (talk) 01:20, 25 October 2022 (UTC)


 * I rewrote and expanded that part, how about the current version? (What 76.1... mentioned earlier at the top of this section was changed earlier.) --ApooftGnegiol (talk) 07:45, 25 October 2022 (UTC)
 * We don't have NPOV, we're not Wikipedia. As for your other statement, capitalism incentives self-interest at the expense of altruism in an almost unique manner. Although I reckon the reason sociopaths are such a feature in capitalism today is 'cause capitalism is the dominant socioeconomic system. It just seems to be a problem with hierarchical models of societal organization in general. Power corrupts. Vee (talk) 09:17, 25 October 2022 (UTC)


 * There's more to consider about criticism of bias than NPOV vs. RW's SPOV. I often find that writing criticized as biased (when the critic is not a troll) is simply bad. In this case it was spun out from a poor quality reference, and trying to tie psychopathy too directly to the abstract category of capitalism doesn't seem helpful, and RW's articles about societies called things other than capitalist suggest that it's inaccurate. The new text is as critical of greedy selfishness, and while still slim, I mentioned a better-known and more mainstream book on psychopaths in business.


 * This is not a particularly bad case (there's no drama here), I'm just reminded of how I've seen on some occasions how people have argued pointlessly over bad writing, some trying to make it more, and some less, pro- or con- this or that instead of just replacing it with something clearer and more useful. The better writing is, the easier and more productive arguing about it tends to be. --ApooftGnegiol (talk) 11:24, 25 October 2022 (UTC)


 * 1) it's not about NPOVs, it's about providing or not providing junk information (and this particular statement is based on a personal opinion of one single guy). 2) Psychopaths don't need to be incentivized to be selfish, they're simply 100% selfish and have no conscience, and nothing can change that. 3) I don't see any rational reasons why a non-capitalist society would be immune to actions of selfish sly manipulators who have no conscience. --Aniro (talk) 00:02, 26 October 2022 (UTC)

Does anyone object to me removing the listicle?
It's an eyesore, contains several questionable (at best) inclusions, and I don't really see how it furthers the purpose of the article. Do we really need it? Vee (talk) 09:24, 25 October 2022 (UTC)
 * I'd support trimming questionable entries, but what's left after? If it's just a list of killers and rapists, there may not be much point to keeping the list. (Those with RW articles could however be moved to "See also" then.) In principle, however, I think there could be some value in pointing to more varied examples of psychopaths, though better writing about or listing of such isn't so easy. --ApooftGnegiol (talk) 10:59, 25 October 2022 (UTC)
 * The reference for Mugabe's inclusion is literally a blog post, not an actual medical diagnosis. The blog post in question waxes lyrical about how revolution supposedly has a higher incidence of psychopaths taking the helm, which I find questionable because 1) not every evil person is mentally ill (most of the mentally ill are victims rather than victimizers) and 2) the medicalization of political figures, even ones we find abhorrent, is a non-fallacious example of a slippery slope that also kind of cheapens the actual diagnosis. Unless the diagnosis was made in a clinical setting it's inherently suspect. Vee (talk) 12:12, 25 October 2022 (UTC)
 * As for Breivik, he's a cut and dried case of a sociopath. I'd support his inclusion in the "see also" section. Trump clearly shows signs of the of personality characteristics, but he shows signs of malignant narcissism (not NPD) more than he does anything resembling ASPD.  Vee (talk) 12:17, 25 October 2022 (UTC)

Since no one bothered to object, save for one person (who's objection wasn't really an objection anyway) I removed it. If someone wants to add an improved section, go for it. I was just trimming the dead growth. Vee (talk) 07:47, 26 October 2022 (UTC)