The Psychopath Test

The Psychopath Test

         
The fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-V) can be purchased now at Walmart for $122.70 with free shipping (thank goodness;  it is heavier than a sack of bowling balls).  It makes a great gift for all the Scientologists on your shopping list and is perfect for friends living in pretentious homes.  With its attractive cover it provides a welcomed addition to any coffee table center piece and is guaranteed to impress guests and intimidate the hired help.

DSM-V is a list of mental disorders and was written by a committee of mental health care professionals (mostly psychiatrists) and is published by the American Psychiatric Association.  The first edition was published in 1952 and was 65 pages long.  It listed 106 mental disorders including homosexuality which was described as a “sociopathic personality disturbance.”  It took the high priests of psychiatry twenty-two years to admit that homosexuality was not a mental disorder but was nothing more than a prejudice based more on politics than psychiatry.

By 2013 the DSM had grown to a leviathan-sized 947 pages.  Based on the increase in the size of the DSM from 1952 to 2013, mental illness has increased 628 percent in just sixty-one years.  Unless you watch cable-news shows or listen to talk radio, you probably have not noticed that insanity is raging out of control in the world.  What on earth is going on here? The answer lies not in the wind but in the money trail.

Sales of psychiatric drugs amounted to more than seventy billion dollars in 2010.  Brands such as Prozac, Zoloft, and Lexapro are as recognizable to the average household as Ivory Soap.  Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is an exemplar of “drugs gone wild.” Dr. C. Keith Conners runs the ADHD clinical program at Duke University and is recognized as one of the leading ADHD researchers. According to him, recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that 15 percent of high school-age children are diagnosed with ADHD.  The number of children on medication for this disorder had soared to 3.5 million from 600,000 in 1990. Dr. Conners challenges the rising rates of diagnosis and calls it “a national disaster of dangerous proportions.”

Allen Frances, a psychiatrist and editor of DSM-IV made the following startling confession when he admitted, “It’s very easy to set off a false epidemic in psychiatry.  And we inadvertently contributed to three that are ongoing now.” He goes on to list “autism, attention-deficit, and childhood bipolarity.”  Ian Goodyear is a professor of child and adolescent psychiatry at Cambridge University.  He along with almost every neurologist outside of the gravitational pull of  the American Psychiatric Association does not believe that childhood bipolar disorder exist.  “It is an illness that emerges from late adolescence.  It is very, very unlikely indeed that you’ll find it in children under seven years old.”

Who among us believes that 3,500,000 young people are suffering from a Ritalin deficiency or that two percent of children are bipolar?  It does not come close to passing the “laugh” test and is the result of a system where a committee of the most reality-challenged people on the planet get together and compile and publish list of mental disorders for profit.  “Big Pharma” then jumps on the money wagon and manufactures drugs that allegedly treat the mental disorders as long there are a sufficient number of "sufferers" to make it profitable.  Drug manufactures follow the introduction of their drugs by dispatching an army of representatives armed with an arsenal of samples, gifts, and valuable prizes available for simply writing prescriptions. The result is one monumental scam and a national disgrace.

The same merry band of psychiatrists who created the lists of mental disorders are the same people who decide who among our fellow citizens should be confined to a mental institution and when (if ever) they should be released.  How effective are they in making this important determination?      

Jon Ronson chronicles two revealing incidents in his book, The Psychopath Test.  The first case of psychiatric malpractice occurred in 1973 when David L. Rosenhan, a Stanford University research psychologist who along with seven confederates performed an experiment to determine what would happen if sane people somehow found themselves committed to a psychiatric hospital.  Rosenhan and his researchers checked into mental hospitals in five different states complaining of hearing a voice repeating the words “empty,” “hollow,” and “thud.”  Other than that they appeared and acted normal.  As soon as they were admitted they stopped complaining about their symptoms and immediately sought to convince the staff that they felt fine and asked to be released.

This was not to be. Their average length of hospitalization was nineteen days with a range from seven to fifty-two days.  Seven of the pseudo patients were diagnosed as schizophrenic (“in remission”) and one as bipolar.  Interestingly the actual patients in the hospital recognized immediately that the imposters were not real patients.  They thought that they were journalists.

After Rosenhan published the results of his experiment he was challenged by one mental hospital to send his confederates to their facility with assurances that they would detect them as imposters.  And this is the best part.  He agreed to do it but in actuality did not send anyone.  This did not prevent the hospital from “detecting” a steady stream of pseudo patients.  In just a few months they rejected 10% of their new patients.  Rosenhan’s conclusion: “It is clear that we cannot distinguish the sane from the insane in psychiatric hospitals.”

The second case of psychiatric malpractice took place in London in the 1980s when Tony (pseudonym) at age 17 was arrested for assault after he was in a fight that resulted in serious injuries to the other combatant.  Tony decided to fake insanity in order to avoid doing what would have been at most five years in prison.  Somehow he thought that life in Broadmoor (London’s most notorious mental institution) would be more pleasant.  Tony prepared for his psychiatric evaluation by reading a book about Ted Bundy and plagiarizing lines from movies like Blue Velvet staring Dennis Hopper.  When he met with the psychiatrists he quoted a few lines such as “he liked to crash cars into walls for sexual pleasure” and “he wanted to kill women because he thought looking into their eyes as they died would make him seem normal.”

Tony’s plan worked perfectly and he was diagnosed as suffering from “Dangerous and Severe Personality Disorder” and was committed to Broadmoor for an indefinite period of time.  He quickly learned that life at Broadmoor was far from the world of pizza and video games that he imagined and began immediately attempting to convince the staff that he was sane and had just faked insanity in a misguided attempt to avoid prison.  Tony learned that it is much easier to be diagnosed insane that it was to convince the staff otherwise.  It took him fourteen years to convince the psychiatrists that he was sane and suitable for release.

The attending Broadmoor psychiatrists realized that Tony had faked insanity but “discovered” he was a psychopath based on his score on the Hare Psychopathy Checklist written by Robert D. Hare a researcher in the field of criminal psychology.  The “test” consist of an evaluation based on twenty factors with scores ranging from zero to forty. Famous psychopaths like Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, and John Wayne Gacy are representative of those scoring forty.  Hare estimates that 1% of the general population, 4% of Fortune 500 corporate top executives, and 25% of the prison population are psychopaths.  Tony scored 29 on the Hare Psychopathy Checklist and that was sufficient justification to keep him in Broadmoor for fourteen years.

According to Stephen Hawking in his 2010 book The Grand Design, the council of Monza, Italy passed an ordinance making it illegal to keep goldfish in a curved goldfish bowl. They maintained that it is cruel to keep a fish in a bowl with curved sides because it distorts their view of reality.  What “curved bowl” is distorting the human species’ view of reality as we search for the truth of any issue or question?  Reality or truth is shrouded in a veil of culture and dogma.  The process of science is the only tool proven able to penetrate this cloud hiding the mysteries of the universe.

Rigorous and careful observations followed by the formulation of a hypothesis that explains the observations and results is the first step of the scientific method. In the next step predictions are made based on the hypothesis and tested.  After the predictions are confirmed the hypothesis is vetted by the entire community of specialists in the field of inquiry who are challenged to replicate the results and confirm the predictions. This is a vital step because scientists suffer from what the DSM describes as “Oppositional Defiant Disorder” making them a most contentious group of people determined to find a flaw in their colleagues’ most cherished hypotheses.  Only hypotheses surviving the crucible of the scientific method are  promoted to theory, the highest standard of truth granted by science.  Although theory is the hallmark of truth and reality, there is always some element of admitted uncertainty in any scientific theory. This is the major difference between dogma and scientific truth. Science always leaves the door open to the possibility of new evidence in the future.

The essence of mental health lies in the ability to discern reality from the noise of distortion promoted by the profit-motivated American Psychiatric Association.  The most casual review of the successes and failures of psychiatry to diagnose and treat mental illnesses leads to the obvious conclusion that mental health and human happiness are too important to be left in the hands of the American Psychiatric Association and the pharmaceutical industry.  It is time to employ science to the study of the human brain and behavior. The tools of science have fueled man’s understanding of the universe while simultaneously increasing the well-being and quality of life for the world’s seven billion citizens. Surely a cross-disciplinary team consisting of neurologists, chemists, physicists, biologists and other interested specialists motivated by the truth not profit would develop better solutions for defining, diagnosing, and treating mental illnesses.

Golfing with Donald Trump

Scotland is the home of 5,295,400 people plus almost seven million sheep. The normal temperature at Turnberry in January is 42 degrees along with 18 days of rain rising to 57 degrees in July with 12 days of rain.  Sheep seldom play golf and neither do most of their owners.  Raising sheep is an around-the-clock, seven-day a week, year-around activity not suited to the kind of people inclined to hitting a small white ball, and chasing it only to hit it again.  And, who could even imagine what a shepherd would look like in checkered pants and a Paddy cap?  At first glance Turnberry, Scotland hardly seems like a good place to build a golf resort. The question becomes who in their right mind would do such a thing?

That dear reader, would take a business genius with a self-declared “big brain” along with his multiple bankruptcies and over 3,500 lawsuits. A person such as Donald Trump, who Marco Rubio called a con artist.  The question is how much of his own money does he have in the Trump Turnberry Golf Resort? Trust me, the sheep are not the only ones being sheared in Scotland.  Scratch Trump and you will find people being separated rather quickly from their money.  What he calls business other people call, “I've been robbed.”

The well-heeled clientele is not Trump's only fraud victims. At the start of the 2007 recession, Donald Trump convinced lower-income people to invest in a pseudo-scientific vitamin scam—all without expressing any concern about how it might potentially endanger people’s health.  Using a multi-level marketing scheme called The Trump Network, he encouraged people to take an expensive urine test, which would then be used to personally “tailor” a  pricey monthly concoction of vitamins—something a Harvard doctor told the Daily Beast was a straight-up “scam.”  After the Daily Beast challenged the company doctor to defend the products, he derided the idea of “evidence-based” medicine. The scam failed leaving Trump with the money and the little guy holding the bag.

Trump’s 2016 Election Campaign is one of his biggest scams so far.  He “loaned” his campaign forty-two million dollars out of which he has plowed six million dollars (so far) back into his own pocket.  Every time he flies on Trump Air, holds a campaign rally at any of his properties including his Palm Beach estate (Mar-a-Lago) he pays himself out of campaign funds.  Now, in spite of crowing loudly that he is self-funding his campaign, he is soliciting money from the wealthy “donor class.”  When the campaign is over Trump will use this money to pay himself back for the loans he made to his campaign.  With this scam he is able to personally benefit from campaign contributions in a case of having-your-cake-and-eating-it-too.

Trump brags continuously and loudly about his business skills which includes four “Chapter 11 bankruptcies.”   His book, The Art of the Deal should have been titled The Art of the Steal. If he should become president, the thought of using the US Treasury like a personal piggy bank will be irresistible to him.  If he loses the election, he will sign a contract for another reality television show for some unheard of amount of money.  America’s only hope is that the voters realize that Donald Trump is temperamentally unfit to be president.  The next time Trump talks abut “Make America Great Again,” the astute voter will ask, “For who?”
           

The Candidate

"Individuals gain power because they answer a need shared by an entire population.”

                                                 Eileen Heyes

For a representative democracy to function, intelligent and noble people of high moral character have to run for public office.  It takes both courage and moxie to place one’s entire life (as well as friends and family) under a microscope.  Unfortunately, candidates for elective offices are not protected by anything like the Queensberry Rules prohibiting blows below the belt.  The only protection they have from slanderous lies is the morality and good judgement of their fellow citizens.

Elections, of course, take place in the zeitgeist of the times.  For example, when many people are out of work or working in low-wage jobs, voters become angry.  During periods of high unemployment, “It is no wonder the people [have] little faith in the ability of their . . . government to get anything done.”  In times of high stress the electorate quite naturally looks for simple solutions and scapegoats.  One candidate, “. . . sensed, as many politicians did not, that people did not want a detailed plan for turning the economy around. What [they] wanted was someone to lift their spirits and restore their sense of national pride.”  In the words of Eileen Heyes, “Someone will have to come along who thinks very simply,” and demonstrates that he  “. . . has the strength to carry out his simple ideas.”

The modern political candidate must read the mood, fears, and thinking of the voters.  He must also be able to command the attention of the media, especially television.   Insults and extreme statements given by a talented entertainer and self-promoter are extremely effective.  In one case the candidate's rhetoric was so outrageous that, “Even [his] associates considered it something of an embarrassment, not at all a fitting complement to his powerful speeches.”  It did not matter; the cruder and the more outlandish his statements became, the higher he climbed in the poles and the more free television coverage he garnered. “If the new [candidate] was rather extreme in some of his views, well, that could be overlooked.”  In the words of Heyes, “All great movements are popular movements, volcanic eruptions of human passions, stirred either by the cruel Goddess of Distress or by a firebrand of the word.”  And this candidate was certainly a firebrand.

Slowly but surely he was able to destroy all his opponents, leaving the establishment scratching their collective head and asking, how could this happen? Yes inexplicably, “The temperamental [newcomer] was now a key player in the national arena.”  It seemed that “The sentries [party officials] guarding the way proved, in the end, incapable of stopping the cunning newcomer.”  “How could one man do all this in a civilized industrial nation in an era of mass communication?” This candidate was certainly a different kind of candidate.  “He refused to listen to any real information about his opponents, relying instead on his own instincts.”  “He refused to listen to his [political] advisers’ predictions that he was marching into disaster.”

“Sooner will a camel pass through a needle’s eye than a great man be ‘discovered’ by an election.  In world history the man who really rises above the norm of the broad average usually announces himself personally.”  On 1/1/1933 to the surprise and dismay of the entire world, Adolf Hitler became the chancellor of Germany.  Yes, all the material quoted in this essay [with slight modifications noted by brackets and ellipsis] refer to Adolf Hitler and were taken from  Eileen Heyes’1994 book, Adolf Hitler.

Anatomy of a Trump Supporter

                           “No nation is permitted to live in ignorance with impunity.”

                                                      Thomas Jefferson

On June 16, 2015 self-proclaimed billionaire and reality-television star Donald Trump announced his candidacy for the Republican nomination for the presidency of the United States.  The immediate reaction was, this is a joke, and he is not a serious candidate.  Political analysts and all of the media predicted that he would be out of the race by the end of summer.  Virtually everyone just sat back waiting for his latest outrageous but entertaining statement.  Any one of his following statements would have ended the candidacy of any one of the previous presidential hopefuls in American history:

1.   “He [John McCain] was a war hero because he was captured.  I like people who weren't captured.”

2.  “You have to take out their [terrorists] families.”

3.  “I am going to bomb the shit out of them [ISIS].”

4.   “We are going to have a deportation force.”

5.   “I would bring back water-boarding and I would bring back a hell of lot worse than water-boarding.” 

6.  “I want surveillance of certain Mosques.”

7.  “I love the old days.  Do you know what they used to do with guys like that [a protestor]?  They would be carried out on a stretcher folks.”

8.  “There has to be some form of punishment for women who have abortions.”

The more outlandish, crude, or extreme Trump’s statements the greater his support became as measured by the polls and primary election returns.  Buckets of ink, hours of pundits pontificating, and thousand of blogs have attempted to answer the question, “Who are the Trump supporters?” A December 2016 Washington Post analysis found that Trump's support was skewed to white uneducated males, especially those with lower incomes.  His support is 47 percent among men vs. 28 percent among women.  Fifty percent of Trump’s supporters make less than $50,000.  Education level is the hallmark of Trump supporters with the absence of a college degree being the single-best predictor of a Trump supporter.  An analysis of Trump's win in New Hampshire indicated that for every one percentage-point increase in the number of college graduates over the age of 25, Donald Trump's share of votes fell by 0.65 percentage points.  In summary the profile of a Trump supporter is an uneducated lower-income male.

Political scientists Jonathan D. Weiler and Marc J. Hetherington presented another compelling possibility in their 2009 book,  Authoritarianism and Polarization in American Politics.  They defined authoritarianism as a worldview that values order and authority and distrust outsiders and social change.  People scoring high on the authoritarianism scale seek strongman leaders who are punitive, target out groups, and have simple and forceful leadership styles. This is especially true when they feel threatened.  Prior to the 1964 civil rights legislation authoritarianism was equally distributed between the Democrat and Republican Parties.  However, the rise of Trump coincides with the Republican Party becoming the party favored by authoritarians.  Weiler and Hetherington measured people’s authoritarianism by ascertaining their answer to three questions:

1.  Are you freaked out by social change?
2.  Do racial differences unsettle you?
3.  Do you support strongman leaders?

They  realized that these questions were far too direct to elicit honest answers, so they devised four questions disguised as “Child-rearing values.”  Subjects were asked, “Which one of the following pairs of values do you think is more important for a child to have?”

Independence or Respect for elders
Obedience or Self reliance
Curiosity or Good manners
Considerate or  Well-behaved

The authoritarians answered “Respect for elders, Obedience, Good manners, and Well-behaved” as the most important qualities for a child to have.  They then surveyed Trump and non-Trump supporters, and found that Trump supporters were strongly correlated with high scores on the authoritarian assessment test.  In light of Weiler and Hetherington’s findings Trump’s “crazy” statements all of a sudden make sense.  For example, his statements:  “You have to take out their families” and  “I am going to bomb the shit out of them” both appeal to people who prefer simple solutions and a strong leadership style.  His statements We are going to have a deportation force and I want surveillance of certain Mosques appeals to the authoritarian’s distrust of out-groups such as immigrants and Muslims.

Unlike presidential elections in the past the Republican primaries indicate that the voters were not moved by ideology.  Trump has not exhibited an identifiable political philosophy.  His theme is “Make America Great Again” followed by a number of dubious claims like “building the wall,” “deporting illegals,” and “bringing the jobs back from overseas.”    In November 2016 voters will have to decide who has the experience and temperament to be president.  To date Trump has campaigned as a grandiose narcissistic bully, and opportunist. Einstein once said, “Everyone has to sacrifice at the altar of stupidity from time to time.” Donald Trump has surely exceeded the threshold of "from time to time."

Trump And The Five Stages Of Grief

 

Since Donald Trump became the presumptive nominee for the Republican candidate for president, there has been considerable angst among a large segment of the Republican Party. Twenty percent of Republicans say they will support Hillary Clinton over Trump.  His fitness for the presidency has been openly challenged by many party regulars.  Republican leaders such as Romney and both the Bush presidents are refusing to attend the convention in Cleveland.  The leader of the Republican Party and Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan has so far refused to endorse Trump, in part, out of fear that with Trump on the top of the ballot the Republican candidates for the House of Representatives and the Senate will be put at risk.

 Elisabeth Kübler-Ross in her 1969 book, On Death and Dying, proposed what is now called the Kübler-Ross model to describe a series of emotional stages experienced by survivors of a traumatic experience such as the death of an intimate.  These five stages are denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.  The Republican Party is currently in the “bargaining” stage of dealing the grief of Trump being the likely party nominee.  Trump’s closed-door meeting with Paul Ryan and senior Republican members of the Congress is just one indication of the bargaining taking place.  Eventually most Republicans will coalesce behind Trump’s candidacy not out of love for him but out of fear and loafing of Hillary Clinton.

Trump was able to secure the Republican nomination by appealing to the basest atavistic fears and instincts of the bulk of right-wing activists who vote in the primaries.  He accomplished this with three promises:

1.  Build a wall along the US/Mexican border
2.  Round up and deport twelve million illegal immigrants
3.  Band Muslims from entering the United States

None of these proposals would ever be approved by Congress, and even if they did, they would be struck down by the courts.  The West Point Honor Code states,  “A Cadet will not lie, cheat, steal or tolerate those who do.”  I hereby offer the Rationalist Voter Pledge.  A rationalist will not endorse, support, or vote for Donald Trump or tolerate those who do.

Trump is the virtual winner

In September 2015 Diogenes wrote (See President Trump):

"All the pieces necessary for a US fascist-style dictatorship are currently in place:  (1) Trump, a media-savvy, wealthy, charismatic, and populist demagogue in the mold of Huey Long,  (2) an ignorant, uneducated, and frightened electorate combined with a history of a low turnout in primary elections, and (3) an extremely weak field of other Republican  contenders who lack any ability to garner the attention of the media away from the King of reality television."

In January 2016 Diogenes wrote (See President Trump Revisited):

"This entire sordid Republican Primary has delighted Democrats until they realized (belatedly) that Trump is a master politician who might very well defeat Hillary to become the 45th President of the United States."

And today, February 24th--Diogenes writes:

Trump has a lock on the Republican nomination with the establishment Republicans left with just one slim option.  And that is, Kasich and Rubio must join forces whereby one agrees to drop out and support the other.  The decision could be made on the basis of a coin toss if negotiations fail.  The loser drops out with the understanding that the winner would pick him for Vice President.  This, of course, is highly unlikely setting up an inevitable Trump/Clinton confrontation in November.

President Trump Revisited

              

                                      “It was the best of many bad options.”

                                                         Gore Vidal

President Trump was originally posted on 9/15/2015 at the blog site, The Needlefish Chronicles, but was later moved to the site The Diogenes Files (to make room for weightier matters) on 12/18/2015 thus losing over ninety days of seniority due to Google’s carelessness.

Bill Clinton said Obama was “luckier than a dog with two dicks” to face hapless Mitt Romney in the 2012 election. This makes it very difficult to describe the luck of Donald Trump in facing Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, Ben Carson, and Ted Cruz (and a host of duller luminaries) for the Republican Presidential nomination.  Brother George tarnished the Bush name so badly that Jeb cannot use his only advantage--name recognition.  Although Jeb and his allies have spent 111 million on campaign ads, he is currently at the bottom of the pack with a 5% ranking.  This is a case of the “the dog will not eat the dog food.”  Rubio an obvious greenhorn enjoys the worst attendance record in the US Senate and was documented both as a liar and a thief in Peter Golenbock’s 2014 book The Chairman.  Ben Carson made a fortune pitching religious bromides to the faithful and selling bogus nutritional supplements to another information-challenged group.  He actually bragged about trying to kill his mother with a hammer.  In his book he claimed that General Westmoreland met with him personally and offered him a four-year scholarship to West Point.  The entire story has been totally debunked. That leaves only Ted Cruz standing between Trump and the nomination.  And that, dear reader makes Trump luckier than (expletive deleted).

Ted Cruz was moving up on Trump until Trump brilliantly played the “birther” card, an old canard that a Hillary Clinton volunteer dreamed up in the 2008 election in an attempt to derail Barack Obama.  It failed to resonate with the Democrats, but proved to be immensely popular with right-wing Republicans who to this day think Obama was born in Kenya in the Muslim faith.  While Tea Party Republicans would be hard-pressed to find Kenya on a map, they know where Canada is located and Cruz fully admits to being born there having only renounced his Canadian citizenship in May 2014.  The entire Canadian thing has been just more than Tea Party queen Sarah Palin could stand, so she dropped Cruz and gave Trump a big mama grizzly-bear hug upsetting Cruz so badly that he lost his normally icy calm demeanor and in an attempt to mimic John Kennedy, he confused a Robert Kennedy quote for the work of JFK.

Ted Cruz is a very scary man with eyes colder than a viper but on closer examination, he is more of a libertarian than a conservative, reminding people of their crazy uncle who shows up  at every family gathering, gets drunk, and falls into the backyard fish pond.   This entire sordid Republican Primary has delighted Democrats until they realized (belatedly) that Trump is a master politician who might very well defeat Hillary to become the 45th President of the United States.  And he will build the wall, all four-thousand miles of it.  Not on our southern border, but on the Canadian border.  Not to keep the Canadians out, but to prevent Americans from fleeing the country.