I’ve shared about relevant pieces that appeared on:

• CNN
• CNN.com
• Fox News Channel
• The Wall Street Journal
• Channel 4 in the UK

Surprisingly enough, there was even a ponerology-related moment on the sports network ESPN, which I also highlighted here.

What you’ll notice is that all of the aforementioned media outlets are ones with national reach. And that’s good news – pun intended – because it means that, through stories like the ones to which I’ve linked, large audiences are receiving information about, as well as being encouraged to consider, the influence of those with low empathy and conscience.

However, there is also something to be said for the impact of a story appearing in local news. Some people feel a closer tie with their local media outlets – whose personalities can come to seem almost like part of their family and with which they may have been engaging ever since childhood – and, therefore, might trust them more. Or they may feel that, if a story makes it to their local newspaper, radio program or telecast, it has more personal relevance to them than they do when they encounter it in a national outlet.

I have posted about at least one ponerology-related report from local news – a “Healthy Living” segment on KABC-TV in Los Angeles that focused on the work of Dr. Ronald Schouten and James Silver, authors of Almost a Psychopath: Do I (or Does Someone I Know) Have a Problem with Manipulation and Lack of Empathy?

But, for whatever reason, while there seems to have been a minor explosion of coverage on this subject in larger media outlets, it has been relatively rare that I’ve come across it in local media.

However, I was pleasantly surprised this week.

When I visited the homepage of the Detroit Free Press the other day, this is what I saw (see red arrow in the image below) in the list of top headlines, right underneath a nice fuzzy story about a local business leader’s charity-benefiting March Madness bracket success.

(Click image to view larger)

I was surprised because I didn’t expect to see the topic of psychopathy pop up in a hometown paper. I was even more surprised because I really didn’t expect to see it pop up there in this fashion – not just generically, but as part of a headline offering specific guidance to help people consider whether someone in a position of power over them may have the condition. Ponerology had definitely hit the Detroit Free Press.

Here is the actual article entitled “20 signs your boss might be a psychopath.”

As you can see, it is written by Michael L. Diamond and originally appeared in the Asbury Park Press, a local paper from the New Jersey city made famous by Bruce Springsteen. Asbury Park Press, like the Detroit Free Press, is a Gannett Company. So it appears that the story was taken from one local paper and then shared with other local papers owned by the same holding company. Thus, it garnered attention in various areas of the country, but did so by means of local outlets.

Diamond’s story quotes Kean University psychology professor Richard Conti. In a previous post, I’ve asked “Should Kids Learn about Ponerology in School?”. Well, although he doesn’t use (and may not know) the actual term ponerology, Conti seems to believe that, at least at the college level, they should. According to Diamond, Conti is teaching his students about “psychopathic traits found in business and government leaders,” a subject that could hardly be more central to the work of Andrew M. Lobaczewski, author of Political Ponerology: A Science on the Nature of Evil Adjusted for Political Purposes, the book most responsible for popularizing the term ponerology.

Diamond mentions the public’s “complicated relationship” with leaders who are often widely admired as brilliant and strong on account of the very traits that, viewed in another light, might reveal them to be devious and dangerous.

A student of Conti’s is quoted, describing one of the characteristics of psychopaths. I see that quote – the words of a young woman expressing to a journalist her knowledge about a conscience-reducing condition that she has been taught in her school occurs among those in positions of power – as a symbol of something we desperately need more of.

Diamond then lists 20 traits associated with psychopathy, encouraging the reader to rate their boss on each to determine a final score. In the Asbury Park Press’ original version of the article, a sub-headline in big letters above the article copy implores the reader to “Take the test below to find out if your boss shows psychopathic tendencies.” If the score is high enough, Diamond even urges them to “call security.”

Now, obviously, this is not a truly valid means of assessment. A layperson cannot definitively diagnose or rule out psychopathy in anyone using a tool or method like this. But that is beside the point.

The point is that Diamond has planted a seed in his readers’ minds, just like the seed his primary article subject, Richard Conti, has planted in the minds of his students. He has provided some basic information about the kinds of characteristics exhibited by psychopaths, which is not only educational, but sure to generate curiosity. And he has nurtured that curiosity, encouraging its development into – and the application of this newfound knowledge toward – healthy questioning about the nature of authority figures.

Both Diamond and Conti are contributing to the emergence in the public of wise skepticism and an enlightened form of discriminating thinking regarding the possibility of reduced capacities for empathy and conscience among those in power. For this, they should both be commended.

I completed my primary writing about ponerology in early 2012. As I worked on it, and then for a number of months after finishing it, I kept thinking about starting a separate blog dedicated to documenting the growing number of cases in which ponerologic issues surfaced in the media. What impelled me to finally create PonerologyNews.com in early 2013 was – as described in this post about it, the very first post on this site – my discovery, at a very coincidental moment, of a Yahoo headline story about psychopathic bosses.

Now, thanks to Michael L. Diamond’s work, the first story of this type that I’ve featured here from a local newspaper is also one about psychopathic bosses.

I think the fact that that particular angle on ponerology – the possibility of psychopathy among workplace leadership – has repeatedly been key is appropriate.

Conscience-reducing disorders affect us profoundly whenever they influence our systems. They may even affect us more profoundly when they influence high levels of power structures. But it is perhaps easiest for most people new to the subject to begin to recognize their impact and relevance on a level at which they are very personally and directly affected.

The level on which this occurs most personally and directly is probably actually the family level. However, for a variety of reasons, there is often tremendous resistance, especially initially, to acknowledging such disturbing dysfunction within the family.

The next most personal and direct level at which to become conscious commonly involves a setting in which people viscerally experience the exercise – and, in some cases, abuse – of power over them on a daily basis, namely, at work. And in a climate in which the “bad boss” is a widely-accepted archetype – as lamented in countless after-work venting sessions and portrayed in iconic films and comic strips – circumstances are conducive for the awareness that is sometimes avoided in the family setting to blossom when contemplating the relationship dynamics in one’s work experience.

To be certain, it is important – and surely Diamond and Conti both appreciate it – that people ultimately recognize ponerologic influences in other areas, including family and government. That’s why I’ve included among relevant resources that I’ve shared ones that assist them in doing that.

But by focusing on psychopathic contacts, including bosses, at work – much as Robert Hare and Paul Babiak do in their highly significant and pertinent book Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths Go to Work – Diamond opens the door for his readers to, over time, make the necessary connections to become even more sufficiently ponerology-conscious.

Just as I was making this realization, thanks to a number of resources on the topic, it seemed that much of the rest of the world was beginning to make the same realization. More and more stories related to the neuroscience of moral choice were coming out everywhere I looked. And dramas and books centering on psychopaths – perhaps the most fascinating examples of the stark difference between some humans and others in how they make moral choices – were attracting large audiences.

So I started this blog in order to help amplify this awakening to a new understanding about the factors underlying moral choice and, in turn, the types of events we refer to as “evil.”

Here on the blog, I’ve featured many stories that highlight the growing knowledge base at the intersection of neuroscience and morality. And today I read a quote that sums up well my feeling about this area of knowledge:

“It’s a field that’s waiting for a big revolution sometime soon.”

The quote is from Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Professor in Practical Ethics at Duke University’s Department of Philosophy and Kenan Institute for Ethics. And it comes from an article by Health and Science reporter Elizabeth Landau called “How your brain makes moral judgments” posted on CNN.com today as part of its “Inside Your Brain” series.

Landau’s article features a nice selection of ideas and research studies in this area of the neuroscience of morality. It demonstrates, yet again, that we do seem to be on the cusp of the revolution in the field to which Sinnott-Armstrong refers – and which this blog exists to help, in some small measure, to bring about – and explores the implications of that revolution.

It covers a variety of studies, relating to which areas of the brain do what when people make moral decisions, by some of the top researchers in the field, such as Joshua Greene and Adrian Raine.

It specifically discusses what is different in the relevant brain circuits in psychopaths as compared with others, a topic covered extensively on this site, as well as in autism.

And in one of its more fascinating aspects, it discusses how interventions in brain processes can manipulate moral judgments. For instance, it talks about research by Rebecca Saxe, associate professor of cognitive neuroscience at MIT and associate member of the McGovern Institute for Brain Research, in which the application of transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to a particular area of the brain led to a temporary shift in response when making moral judgments.

In the article, Sinnott-Armstrong is quoted regarding one of the most controversial aspects of ponerology, saying that he “thinks one day there could be treatments directly developed for the brain in extreme cases, such as criminal psychopaths.”

“‘It’s possible that if we understand the neural circuits that underlie psychopaths and their behavior, we can use medications and magnetic stimulation to change their behavior,’ he said.

Such techniques might not work as well as behavioral training programs, however, he said.”

The article also talks about how different brain areas may be involved in different kinds of moral judgments and whether there may be cross-cultural differences in moral judgment.

All in all, a very worthwhile article for those interested in these topics and yet another example of the increasing recognition of this crucial area of study.

So I looked into it.

It turned out that, on that day, Cooper had done a segment with James Fallon, the neuroscientist who, in the process of studying the genetics and brains of psychopathic killers, discovered that he himself, despite being a successful non-violent researcher, had many of the genetic and brain markers associated with psychopathy.

I wrote a very detailed post about Fallon and his fascinating story last year called “Neuroscientist James Fallon’s Work & Life Shed Light on How Psychopathic Killers are Made…and Perhaps Prevented.” So I won’t cover that in any more detail here.

But Fallon has recently released a book about his story called The Psychopath Inside: A Neuroscientist’s Personal Journey into the Dark Side of the Brain. And, in the wake of the book’s release, he has been showing up more frequently in the media, sharing his insights about psychopathy, its impact in the world, and what his story tells us about the possibility of reducing the number of psychopaths that develop, which is wonderful.

The interview with Anderson Cooper is below and, even though this clip is only five minutes long, it could be five of the most important minutes I’ve ever seen on television.

Early in the interview, Fallon:

• Shares a bit about his story
• Talks about the psychopathic traits that can be recognized by looking at brain scans
• Explains the difference between the “cognitive empathy” that he and psychopaths have and “emotional empathy,” which they tend to lack

The upshot of Fallon’s story is that, despite having the genetic and biological markers for psychopathic traits, he did not become a full blown psychopath. In fact, he became a very productive, contributing member of society. He believes the reason is that he had a very loving upbringing, which counteracted his destructive biological predispositions. And he believes that such an upbringing can have the same beneficial impact on others with similar biological predispositions.

As Fallon tells Cooper:

“I thought everything was driven by genetics, biology. And I didn’t think nurture had anything to do with it. Once I realized, because of the genes I have, that if you’re brought up in a very nurturing environment, you can offset the biology.”

I agree that Fallon’s case offers us hope that, at least in a subset of cases, people with biological propensities for psychopathic traits can be prevented from becoming full-blown psychopaths. However, I still think a lot more research is needed to determine how generalizable his case is. Is Fallon representative of all or most people with these markers or is he in some way a rare or special case?

Contrast Fallon’s statement that a caring upbringing can offset biological predispositions for psychopathic traits with this quote from Evil Genes: Why Rome Fell, Hitler Rose, Enron Failed, and My Sister Stole My Mother’s Boyfriend by Barbara Oakley:

“Oddly enough, one study has shown that murderers who have a normal family upbringing have even lower function in their right orbitofrontal cortical areas than murderers who were abused during childhood. Perhaps murderers without a psychosocial ‘push’ toward violence require a greater neurobiological ‘push.’ In other words, children with less severe neurological problems may be helped by having a normal upbringing – but children with more severe neurological difficulties may not be.”

The study Oakley cites for this claim in the book’s footnotes is:

Adrian Raine et al., “Reduced Prefrontal and Increased Subcortical Brain Functioning Assessed Using Positron Emission Tomography in Predatory and Affective Murderers,” Behavioral Sciences and the Law 16 (1998): 319-32.

I would like to see work to determine how Fallon’s claims and those of Raine’s study, which Oakley cites, can be reconciled.

The entire five minute clip of Cooper’s interview with Fallon is important. But, its last two minutes, from 3:13 on, take that to an even higher level, consisting of about as significant an exchange as I’ve ever seen aired.

Anderson Cooper basically admits to being convinced of the central point that many advocates of ponerology, from Andrew Lobaczewski on, have been trying to bring to public attention for decades now – that the influence of psychopathy and psychopathic traits in our world, including in circles of power – and specifically in the very highest circles of political power – is much greater than most people recognize.

Cooper says:

“I find this whole topic of psychopaths really interesting because I’m convinced there’s a lot more people out there who are psychopaths than we realize and particularly successful people, accomplished people, people on TV, people in the political sphere. I’m convinced there are tons of psychopaths.”

Fallon responds:

“If you look at, there was just a study done, a scientific study of all our presidents. And all the biographers answered all these questions about them and it was on a scale of psychopathy. And on the scale of psychopathy, in sort of the one part of psychopathy, not the criminality part but the other part which is a big part of psychopathy, the ones who scored very high were Theodore Roosevelt, JFK, FDR, Bill Clinton very high. The ones who had no psychopathy at all in this were people like Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford.

And when you look at the association of those psychopathic traits with leadership, it’s like we want these people, right, because they do things that are…they take chances, they lie at the right time. You know, FDR was lying all the time but he saved us so it was OK. So if you look at people that we choose to be leaders I think a lot of them have these traits and they’re part of leadership skills.”

Cooper then adds:

“I also think what it takes to propel somebody into the public sphere or propel somebody to success, I mean, it’s not, they are not normal impulses, I think and I think a lot of them are psychopathic impulses.”

Fallon responds:

“If you have that grand vision, cause psychopaths will have a grand vision – not all of them, some are just lousy rats – but people have that grandiose, narcissistic need and they’ve got something to prove and they’ve got something they say I’m gonna save the world. That’s part of it. Doesn’t make you psychopathic but it’s one of the traits that fits into this puzzle of psychopathy.”

Anderson Cooper is one high-profile journalist that seems to have realized the tremendous importance of ponerologic topics. Not long ago, he did a segment about Ariel Castro, the man who abducted three girls and held them captive for nearly ten years, in which the topic of psychopathy was front and center. Kudos to Cooper for recognizing how crucial it is that we educate the public on this subject and for courageously covering it on his show.

And the huge traffic surge that I saw as people looked for information in the wake of his interview with James Fallon?

That shows how much interest there is among the public about this topic. And it’s very heartening to see that interest increasingly being met not just by sensationalized fiction or news focused on titillating crimes, but by objective science disseminated by competent researchers and clinicians.

As for the psychopath test:

Well, after the interview with Fallon, not shown in the clip in this post, Cooper said:

“As I said, I find this just amazing. If you’re curious about where you fall on that scale of psychopathy, you can actually take a test to find out. We’ve posted it on our web site AC360.com. It just takes a couple of minutes. I’ve taken it. Pretty much everyone on our staff has taken it and let’s say the results are very, very interesting.”

The link he references on the AC360 blog is here.

And, from that page, it links to the quizzes page associated with Channel 4’s episode “Psychopath Night”, which features tests devised by Kevin Dutton, author of The Wisdom of Psychopaths.

• Passed for over 4000 yards
• Threw 40 touchdown passes, the most ever in the Division I Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) by a freshman, setting an Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) record
• Led his Florida State Seminoles to an undefeated season in which they consistently beat their opponents by astounding margins of victory
• Became the youngest person ever, and only the second freshman, to win the prestigious Heisman Trophy as college football’s most outstanding player
• Passed for the game-winning touchdown with just seconds left in the game to help the Seminoles win their first college football national championship since 1999 as he garnered Most Valuable Player honors

On top of all this, Winston lit up televisions around the country all year long with his enthusiasm, bright smile and charm.

Off the field, however, Winston faced a serious challenge.

For the last month of the season, the Florida State Attorney’s Office was investigating a complaint of sexual assault against Winston. The investigation made for headline news and called into question not only whether Winston would be eligible to lead the Seminoles in the last games of the season and in a possible national championship game – since, if charges were brought, he would be declared ineligible – and not only whether, despite his stellar performance, he might be denied the Heisman Trophy, but whether he could eventually go to prison.

Ultimately, on December 5, 2013, just days before the ACC championship game and the deadline for Heisman voting, Florida State Attorney Willie Meggs announced, in a widely-publicized and controversial press conference, that the state would not file charges against Winston or anyone else in the case. But for nearly a month, Winston played, and continued to perform at a historically high level, while the cloud of the investigation and a possible felony charge hung over him.

So how did he manage to maintain such a standard on the field despite the pressures of incredibly high expectations combined with being the subject of a high-stakes investigation?

Robert Smith

Well, Robert Smith, a former NFL running back and frequent guest discussing football on the sports television network ESPN, has a theory. Perhaps Winston exhibits some of the traits of psychopathy.

Outside the Lines (OTL) is a television show on ESPN that examines critical issues related to sports on and off the field. On January 7, 2014, the day after Winston’s MVP performance in the national championship game, the episode of OTL focused on various aspects of his dramatic 2013-14 season.

The podcast with audio of the episode is available here. I couldn’t find a way to embed it so you’ll have to click through to listen or download it.

At the 7:47 mark in the show, a clip is played of a reporter interviewing Florida State’s head football coach, Jimbo Fisher, about Winston’s ability to play consistently well despite the off-the-field stressors. The clip goes like this:

OTL’s host, Bob Ley, then says to Robert Smith:

“We have seen that, Robert, vividly. Alright. Help us civilians understand how an athlete…this was just not an off-the-field distraction, I mean some people minimized it calling it that. This was perhaps your life and liberty here hanging in the balance…how someone is able to focus like this on a game which is, of course, the focus of what they’re doing right now along with their schoolwork, and put this other stuff aside and excel like this.”

Smith responds:

“Well let me preface this by saying I’m not saying that Jameis Winston is a psychopath, OK? But now that the season’s over I’m going to have a little bit more time to read. There’s a book out there called The Wisdom of Psychopaths and it talks about certain jobs where some of the traits – being task-oriented, being so driven, the ability to focus like a psychopath – helps them perform better whether it’s an airline pilot, a surgeon, and I would certainly argue at the quarterback position having some of those traits, the ability to be so meticulous, to be so detail-oriented, to have such a short memory of failure and to be able to come back and to keep performing – I think that was the trademark of Jameis Winston.”

Then at the end of the segment that includes Smith, Ley says “Robert Smith, thank you so much. Educating us also on psychopaths. We appreciate that.”

Now, like Smith, I also want to emphasize that I am not claiming that Winston is a psychopath. There is not a sufficient basis on which to make such a claim and it would be absolutely irresponsible to do so.

However, Smith’s mention of the topic in relation to this story is interesting from the perspective of someone interested in ponerology on several levels.

• Having psychopathy raised by a football analyst on the most popular sports television network really indicates how mainstream this topic has gone in the wake of so many movies, books, television shows, and other media focused on it being released in recent years.
• This is not the first time that psychopathy has come up in relation to sports and been covered on this site. Last year we published “Goalkeeper David James Speculates on Psychopathy in Professional Soccer.” And James was also interviewed about the subject on the British television show Psychopath Night, which aired just last month. As an overall issue, the influence of psychopathy and other conscience-reducing conditions in sports is ripe for consideration, especially in light of criminal activity among certain athletes, a subject explored in Jeff Benedict’s books such as:
  • Pros and Cons: The Criminals Who Play in the NFL
  • Public Heroes, Private Felons: Athletes and Crimes Against Women
  • Out of Bounds: Inside the NBA’s Culture of Rape, Violence, and Crime
• As far as the specific case of Jameis Winston, it is a good example of the incredibly complex dilemma that the possibility of psychopathy or related disorders poses for us in assessing others.

  On one hand, Winston is someone who has been accused of a terrible violent crime. On top of that, his alleged victim still maintains her claim that she was sexually assaulted by him and vows to bring a civil suit against him. So, although Robert Smith emphasizes that he is not claiming Winston is a psychopath, when he then points out that Winston, with his remarkable coolness under pressure, does exhibit some of the traits of psychopathy, it takes on a new meaning in light of those accusations against him. And Smith didn’t even mention another hallmark of psychopathy, superficial charm, which some could interpret as being applicable to Winston’s demeanor.

  Yet, on the other hand, Winston was not charged with a crime and may be completely innocent, in which case he is himself the victim of false accusations and it would be an utter travesty to even imply that he may be a psychopath simply for being mentally tough on the field and charming off of it. In fact, if his upbeat, enthusiastic, inspiring attitude is genuine, then the same behavior that might otherwise be viewed as psychopathic charm instead makes it even more reprehensible to besmirch him.

So what is the ultimate moral of this story? It is one that can’t be repeated often enough.

It is imperative that we learn about and discuss the influence of conditions like psychopathy. Yet, at the same time, it is just as imperative that we be extremely cautious in labeling any individual as having such a condition. It is a difficult balancing act, but one that is unavoidable in these times, not only when talking about business and politics, but in regards to all areas of society…even the world of sports.

Earlier this month, on Saturday, December 14, 2013, Channel 4 aired Psychopath Night.

Psychopath Night is an approximately 90-minute show that engages many leading experts, psychopaths/sociopaths themselves – including convicted serial killer Charles Albright and a supposed sociopathic lawyer who goes by the pseudonym M.E. Thomas – and even the parent of a child psychopath, in order to explore a number of areas relating to psychopathy.

Below is the trailer for the episode:

The areas explored include:

• How psychopaths think and behave
• How psychopaths manage to con so many people (including a vivid portrayal of how the infamous Hillside Strangler, Kenneth Bianchi, bamboozled even psychiatrists)
• How to recognize a psychopath despite the “mask” they sometimes wear
• What psychopaths do for a living
• White collar psychopathy and the prevalence and influence of psychopaths in powerful positions
• Well-known people, including a sports star, that score highly on a psychopathy scale
• Some psychological experiments that help distinguish between those that rate higher and lower on measures of psychopathic traits
• Why some psychopaths are physically violent and others physically non-violent
• The role of childhood trauma in psychopathy
• How society should deal with psychopaths, including child psychopaths
• Whether psychopaths can be healed
• The top, most realistic psychopaths in film as selected by a panel of experts
• Why we maintain such a fascination with psychopaths

The experts featured in the episode include many of the most respected in the world in this field, some of whom have also been featured before on this blog and others of whom are likely to be featured at some point in the future. They include:

Psychiatrists

• Michael Stone, originator of the “Gradations of Evil” Scale
• John Eden, M.E. Thomas’ psychiatrist
• Bob Johnson, who claims, quite controversially, to have discovered a way to heal psychopaths

Psychologists

• Robert Hare
• Paul Babiak
• Kevin Dutton
• Oliver James
• Paul Frick
• Essi Viding

Others

• Retired FBI profiler Mary Ellen O’Toole
• Neuroscientist James Fallon
• Neuroscience Journalist Maia Szalavitz
• English soccer star David James

One of the highlights of the episode, for me, was getting to see James Fallon and Kevin Dutton interact as they discussed some of the psychopath-related films and characters that most impressed them. As someone who advocates for the field of ponerology, at least in part, as a way of promoting stronger ties between those from disparate backgrounds and disciplines that are interested in the roots of harmful behavior, this was just the kind of conversation I imagine and of which I hope to see more.

The lowlight for me was that the episode didn’t discuss quite enough the implications of psychopathy in the area of politics.

Also, I’m always a bit antsy when Kevin Dutton begins giving his usual spiel about the “good side” of psychopathy. But, since it was done in the context of an episode that covered the topic from many angles in a balanced way, I could live with it.

Overall, I found the episode to be extremely well done and valuable.

For a long time, I’ve looked for one concise and intriguing resource – especially a video resource – that I could use to introduce this topic to members of the general public. I had hoped that I Am Fishead would turn out to be that resource. But, unfortunately, despite starting off well, it ultimately had too many shortcomings, which I’ve documented in my review of it, for me to recommend it for that purpose. However, I think that in Channel 4’s Psychopath Night I’ve finally found at least one such video resource.

In an hour and a half, Psychopath Night manages to touch on just about all of the most important aspects and implications of psychopathy, to introduce and share the views of many of the most respected “big names” in the field and to explore the various sides of related controversies without leaning too far to one side on any of them.

Psychopath Night Resources

Channel 4 offers an Episode Guide to Psychopath Night.

Channel 4 also has the entire episode of Psychopath Night available on its site for those able to view it.

If you are unable to watch the episode on Channel 4’s site, then, luckily, it has been posted to YouTube in 6 segments, which I’ve embedded below.

Part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3:

Part 4:

Part 5:

Part 6:

Apparently, Saturday Night Live did too, as they led off this weekend’s episode with a sketch in which this very question is asked.

Now, I am not claiming that George Zimmerman is a psychopath or has any other specific conscience-reducing disorder. I really have no ability to make a judgment on that. However, the conversation about his romantic situation did lead me to explain to my conversation partner that those that are psychopaths or do have certain related disorders are notorious for their ability to attract many romantic and sexual relationships. I mentioned some of the fascinating research, which I cover in my foundational page about psychopathy, about just how successful some of history’s most ruthless killers have been in spreading their genes.

Well, as so often happens after a deep discussion about an intriguing topic, it wasn’t more than a couple of days before a new, highly relevant story emerged in the news.

A 25-year-old woman named Star told Rolling Stone magazine that she plans to marry the now 79-year-old infamous mastermind of numerous murders, Charles Manson, who remains locked up in prison. Apparently, Star moved near the prison 6 years ago, when she was 19, so she could spend more time with Manson.

CNN also covered this story, interviewing the woman (who says her attraction to Manson was initially sparked by his environmentalism, not his crimes, which she only really became aware of later, but which did not dissuade her from her attraction.)

Now, Manson himself denies that they will be getting married. But the interesting thing is that, whether or not the marriage actually happens, a young woman would actually want people to believe it will.

What makes this story meaningful is that it is far from an isolated case. In his heyday, Manson was often surrounded by young women drawn to his charisma and aura. And he isn’t the only person associated with mass murder or serial killing to elicit such admiration. To offer just one more example among many, Ted Bundy was viewed as extremely charming and employed his skill for attracting young women in the course of carrying out his crimes.

This is an important topic. The ability of psychopaths and others with reduced conscience to attract mates has a number of implications and consequences:

1. It reinforces a sense of glamor about such individuals and their value systems.
2. It may increase their social standing.
3. It practically assists them in the commission of some of their crimes.
4. It leads to an increase in the proportion of their genes in the population’s overall gene pool.
5. It causes havoc for the partners and especially the children that must live with the consequences of these relationships.

I realize that there are men who are drawn to ruthless women and that is also an important topic to consider. But the Manson and Bundy examples – and, perhaps, to a lesser extent, the Zimmerman example – raise the question of why women are attracted to men of this kind.

Well, another coincidence that occurred in the wake of my conversation about this topic relates to that question. A few days after the discussion, through a completely different avenue, I ended up on the Wikipedia page for the topic hybristophilia.

Hybristophilia is described as:

“a paraphilia of the predatory type in which sexual arousal, facilitation, and attainment of orgasm are responsive to and contingent upon being with a partner known to have committed an outrage, cheating, lying, known infidelities or crime, such as rape, murder, or armed robbery.”

Apparently the term stems from the Greek word hybrizein, which means “to commit an outrage against someone” (and which, itself, stems from the word hubris) and philo meaning “having a strong affinity/preference for.”

The page even mentions the many female admirers that Bundy and Manson attracted as examples.

After reading that page, I was reminded of yet another relevant example.

As a result of running this website, I was recently sent a copy of the book Survived by One: The Life and Mind of a Family Mass Murderer, which is written, along with Robert Hanlon, a clinical neuropsychologist specialized in working with violent criminals, by a man named Tom Odle, who remains in an Illinois prison (after initially being placed on death row, before Illinois commuted all death sentences) for killing his entire immediate family – his parents and three siblings – in 1985. Odle has been diagnosed with Antisocial Personality Disorder by one forensic psychiatrist and with Borderline Personality Disorder with Anti-social features by another.

At several points in the book, he describes how women have contacted him on death row and in prison, impressed and attracted by what he has done.

“People write me letters, especially girls and women wanting to be my friend and congratulating me on doing something that they had only thought about doing because they were mistreated and abused, also. There was also some kind of fan club for me…I liked the attention I was getting, and I even reconnected with an old friend I had a crush on for years. She wrote to me, so I wrote back, and we found each other in a new light.”

And later…

“I also responded to letters from girls who managed to find my address and wrote to tell me how cool they thought I was because I had murdered my parents. That was one thing I ate up at that time because it diminished my responsibility and guilt.”

Odle had women come visit him in person and begin relationships with him while he was on death row, as well. One of those relationships even led to a short-lived marriage.

So it was fascinating to learn that there is actually a term to describe this behavior – hybristophilia. And the Wikipedia page on that topic was also fascinating because it offers some theories about why such attractions occur.

Then, just this weekend, in the wake of the Manson girlfriend story, Yahoo featured a video by Discovery News about this very topic entitled “Why Psychopaths Turn Women On.” It even mentions the term hybristophilia and Bundy’s admirers, as well as those of other serial killers. It then speculates on some of the reasons behind this attraction or fetish.

Mate selection is a crucial driver of evolution. When a person selects another person as a mate, they are, in essence, voting for that person’s traits to become more prominent in humanity’s future. And they help make sure those traits do become more prominent in more than one way simultaneously.

Biologically, they help the person pass on their genes to their children. Developmentally, they ensure the existence of children shaped by parenting based in that person’s values – or by parental abuse or neglect as a consequence of those values. Socially, they may send a message that such traits are attractive, possibly influencing others to see an incentive in exhibiting them.

This is why, even though such relationships might seem like personal situations separate from our own lives, all of us should care when we see people with reduced empathy and conscience attracting mates. This phenomenon has, historically, had a surprisingly significant impact on the state of our world today. We must live in neighborhoods and communities with people deeply influenced by such relationships. And it may well be one of the mechanisms by which the health and sustainability of humanity continues to be threatened.

So I’ve been grateful to them for connecting me to those issues and feelings through the song. But then, last night, they connected me to them in another way that is extremely relevant to ponerology.

Pearl Jam performed on “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon” last night. Well, technically, their taped performance from an earlier time was played. In fact, they played a live show in Hartford, Connecticut last night. So after watching the airing of their performance on Fallon’s show, I was just looking around on Twitter to see what people were saying about it.

Instead, I ran into this tweet from the band regarding the show in Hartford:

“Come Back” was dedicated to Avielle Richman who would’ve turned 7 on 10/17. @AvieFoundation @sandyhook #PJHartford pic.twitter.com/WCvMqlkHXt

— Pearl Jam (@PearlJam) October 26, 2013

I was instantly hit with a mix of heartbreak for the obvious tragedy the tweet alluded to and curiosity about what the “Avie Foundation” was all about.

So I clicked through to their Twitter account.

The description reads:

“The Avielle Foundation – A non-profit foundation dedicated to preventing violence through brain health research and fostering community engagement and education.”

This grabbed me immediately. In the wake of the tragic loss of this little girl and many other children at Sandy Hook Elementary School, this group is advocating for the importance of understanding the link between the biology of the brain and violence. The relevance to ponerology could not be clearer.

I then clicked through to their website.

It tells the story of Avielle’s life.

It describes the organization’s mission.

And then the motivation behind the Foundation was revealed even more when I looked at the page about its founders.

The leading founders listed are Jeremy Richman, Ph.D., trained in pharmacology and toxicology and having worked in, among many other areas, neuroscience, and Jennifer Hensel, M.S., a multi-disciplinary scientist. They are also Avielle’s parents.

As a scientific discipline, ponerology encourages us to consider and respond to events often labeled as “evil” by applying the methods and tools of science. One of the victims of the Sandy Hook tragedy, Avielle Richman, was the child of two parents who are scientists. And in response, they have created a foundation through which to apply their expertise in science toward preventing violence.

The organization’s objectives revolve around addressing the causes of violence through a focus on what the organization terms “brain health.” They have very consciously chosen this term. As they explain:

“We want to start using this term, brain health, because mental health is intangible – it comes with some degree of trepidation and stigma. But we know there are real, physical manifestations within the brain that can be imaged, measured, quantified, and understood – We can work with that, and then, we can fix it.”

Specifically, their two objectives are:

1. “Understand the Underpinnings in the Brain That Lead to Malevolent Behaviors”
2. “Brain Health Community”

These are goals at the very heart of what ponerology and my interest in it are all about.

In the wake of the events at Sandy Hook and similar events elsewhere, people have channeled their anger and despair into certain causes usually focused on gun control or generally improving mental health awareness and treatment. But far too few have focused on something even more precise and central to the genesis of violence – the very biology of the violent brain.

Progress in the objectives of the Avielle Foundation could do so much to really get at the root of why tragedies like the one in Newtown continue to occur and how to reduce their likelihood. And I cannot think of a more fitting and meaningful way for these parents to honor their daughter’s memory than in working toward these goals.

I then wondered if those at the organization were aware of the many other researchers who have done such great work on topics related to their mission, a number of whom have been featured on this site. That question was answered when I looked at their impressive Science Advisory Board, which includes some of the most outstanding researchers on ponerology-related topics, including:

• Dr. James Blair, whose name is ubiquitous whenever I look at the research on the biology of aggression and malice, and who is mentioned in this post about a researcher that did post-doctoral work with him.
• Dr. Adrian Raine, author of The Psychopathology of Crime: Criminal Behavior as a Clinical Disorder and The Anatomy of Violence: The Biological Roots of Crime, whose fascinating work and ideas have been discussed in several posts on this site.

Sometimes in life, a perfect storm happens. Sometimes it is a storm we wish never did happen. But out of that perfect storm can come something special. It is remarkable that one of Sandy Hook’s victims happened to have parents like this with just the background to be able to turn this horrible event into a movement with real potential to focus people on something so crucial and so often neglected – study of the biological underpinnings of violence and how we can foster healthier, less violent brains in our world.

The fact that Pearl Jam, an extremely socially conscious band – and one whose career was, in many ways, launched by a song and video about violence in school – got involved and happened to play in Hartford, so close to Newtown, the night I was looking at tweets about them, and that I then became aware of all of this through them is just another aspect of that perfect storm. Perhaps, with all this talk of storms, it’s fitting that the band’s new album, which started me down the path that led me to learn about the Avielle Foundation, is called “Lightning Bolt.”

Thank you to Pearl Jam for helping to promote this incredibly important subject matter by bringing attention to this great organization. Thank you to the scientists getting involved in this organization. And thank you most of all to Avielle’s parents for allowing their loss and grief to be catalysts for the very sort of effort so badly needed.

This is the precise type of organization that this world desperately needs.

The other day, after playing “Sirens” over and over, I went to share the song with my father. After he heard it, he saw a link to Pearl Jam’s famous video for “Jeremy,” which he hadn’t seen before. As he played that video – directed, in yet another example of a perfect storm element, by Mark Pellington, who also signed on to direct the pilot episode of a television show based on Raine’s Anatomy of Violence - I mentioned how timely it was since just that day there was another school shooting, this time in Sparks, Nevada. He hadn’t heard about the incident. And I mentioned that, sadly, we’ve gotten to the point where a school shooting can happen and elude our radar because we are becoming so numb to it.

The Avielle Foundation is doing the kind of work that we need to really understand how to change this situation.

Learn how you can help them in their mission by donating or volunteering to get involved with the Avielle Foundation here.

The post that I came across is entitled “I am angry!” and, in it, Linda expresses her despair about the state of the world and the futility of placing hope in and comforting ourselves with small daily pro-sustainability lifestyle changes in the face of destructiveness on such a massive scale. Like many who have wrestled with this viewpoint, Linda appears to have been influenced by Derrick Jensen, since the post features an image of the graphic novel he produced along with Stephanie McMillan, As the World Burns: 50 Simple Things You Can Do To Stay In Denial.

I was moved by what Linda was expressing in that post so I left a comment to share with her the idea that psychopathology may play a key role and to let her know about the field of ponerology, which has shed so much light on issues like this for me.

Linda responded right away with a comment that showed interest in those topics.

Then, a few weeks later, I got an email from Linda. She said my comment had thrown her off on a tangent looking into the ideas I had mentioned in the comment. She also said she was inspired to write an article about ponerology and how screening for psychopaths might improve workplaces, governments, the environment and the world at large. She wanted to interview me for this article.

A couple weeks after that I received a set of interview questions from Linda.

At that time, I was under the impression that Linda was writing an article for her blog that would just consist of the text of her questions and my responses. So I answered the questions at great length, thinking these would make up the bulk of her post. Only later, after I had responded, did I learn that she was actually writing a feature article for an Australian magazine called The Monthly, whose readers share an interest in law, politics and management.

Linda was then kind enough to share the early drafts of her article with me to get my feedback. As her editing process continued, though, it became clear to her that – perhaps because I had answered the questions having misunderstood their purpose or perhaps for other reasons – the information from the interview wasn’t well-suited to this particular article that she was writing, after all. However, since her questions had helped to surface some valuable information, we both agreed that it made sense for me to just post the interview, in its entirety, here on this blog.

As of this writing, Linda’s article is not yet published. If and when it is, I will link to it here.

So, without further adieu, here are Linda’s questions and my responses.

I’m not comfortable with the word ‘evil’.

Perhaps the deepest debate of all when it comes to the issue of “evil” – and you can tell that I agree that this is a debatable point by the fact that I, too, often put the word in quotes – is whether there is or is not any such thing objectively. People’s views fall all along the spectrum in regards to that question. At one extreme, we have some people who say there is no such thing as evil and, at the other extreme, we have those who are emphatic that evil exists and that denying it has terrible consequences (and that perhaps, in some cases, this denial itself even constitutes an evil act.)

I consider it one of the roles of ponerology to determine, to our best ability, whether there actually is any such objective thing as evil or there is simply “that which we often refer to as ‘evil.’” I am not sure if we will ever be able to resolve that question or not, but striving to do so is one of ponerology’s defining tasks and, even if ultimately unsuccessful, the process of striving itself can bring great insight.

Regardless of whether you choose to use the word “evil” or not, we can find common ground around the concepts of:

• Activity that is malicious and…
• Activity that is willfully negligent despite an apparent risk of unnecessary harm or suffering

With that being the case, those who take the stance that there is no actual evil, but simply “that which we often refer to as ‘evil,’” can still clearly see the importance and potential benefits of ponerologic study.

What is your definition of evil?

I don’t claim to have a scientifically supportable definition. Like I said, developing such an objectively-based definition for the word ‘evil’ – or concluding that there is no such supportable definition – is a task for ponerology. It may be one that we cannot succeed at for quite some time. And it may be that we never completely succeed at it.

In the meantime, I focus on these two main concepts.

• Malicious activity
• Willful negligence despite apparent risk of unnecessary harm or suffering

Whether you consider these activities evil or just think of the word ‘evil’ as a shorthand term that is often used to describe them and those who partake significantly in them, seeking to better understand them and their origins and devising optimal responses to their role in our world should keep us busy for quite some time.

Are psychopaths actually evil?

Without an objectively-supportable definition of the word ‘evil,’ this question cannot be answered precisely. However, what we can say with strong confidence is that psychopaths act maliciously and with potentially dangerous willful negligence quite frequently. Thus, they often pose a threat to those around them. Pragmatically, this is all we need to know to realize that the influence of psychopathy is an issue that deserves consideration. Philosophically, the debates about the semantic use of the word ‘evil’ and whether it applies to psychopaths – or anybody else – will carry on for some time.

Have you worked with psychopaths?

Given that psychopaths are estimated to make up 1% of the population – and, as suggested by some research, possibly even more in certain sectors of society such as on Wall Street – most people have probably worked with psychopaths at some point. However, it is not often that a psychopath will tell you that they are one (if they even know for sure themselves). In fact, they may spend much of their energy hiding that fact. So we usually will not know for sure whether someone is a psychopath or not. I’ve certainly worked with people who I would consider suspect. But definitively labeling someone a psychopath is not something that I would do without their having been tested by a qualified professional.

What methods are available that reliably diagnose psychopathy?

The best available method that I know of is the Psychopathy Checklist Revised (PCL-R) test devised by Robert Hare. I’ve written about diagnosis of psychopathy here.

Do you know of any examples where organisations or businesses have screened for psychopathy?

I know of examples where researchers came in and screened this way. For instance, Robert Hare studied people in high level management positions at Fortune 100 companies to find out about psychopathy in that population. He describes that work himself in an interview in the movie I Am Fishead: Are Corporate Leaders Egotistical Psychopaths? As I detail in my review of the film, I’m not a huge fan of the second and third parts of the movie. But the first part is a great introduction to this material and includes this interview in which Hare describes his research. You can see the interview here. It runs from 22:00 (I’ve linked to this starting point) through 24:55.

Hare and colleague Paul Babiak have also written about this topic at length in their book, Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths go to Work.

However, I’m not aware of organizations or businesses having such specific screening for psychopathy done of their own accord as a matter of policy. If anyone does know of such cases, I would like to hear about them. Whether such screening should be done, and, if so, how to make sure that it is done fairly and responsibly, are certainly among the very most important and controversial questions considered within the realm of ponerology.

Do you believe labeling people as either normals or psychopaths, as  Andrew Lobaczewski does in Political Ponerology, might be counterproductive? While he does urge that we do not discriminate or persecute psychopaths, this could easily happen regardless (or am I just stuck in political correctness, perhaps the means justifies the end?)

Ponerology is, by definition, a scientific field. So, like all scientific fields, it is concerned with categorizing accurately. The evidence seems to increasingly reveal psychopathy to be a neurological condition that differs significantly from the norm in deeply meaningful ways with quite serious implications. It seems unreasonable to ask scientists to pretend it isn’t a real or substantially abnormal condition simply because some people might use this information in harmful ways.

All scientific knowledge has the potential to be used for harm rather than help. If we restrict scientists to only categorizing knowledge based on whether we think the categories will be used in healthy ways by the public, we will reduce science to a public relations battle. This seems more dangerous than the alternative. What is very important, however, is making sure that science – in this area and others – is being carried out in accordance with the rigors of the scientific method and not being manipulated for the benefit of those with self-serving or potentially harmful agendas.

There is one thing worth noting that makes this case somewhat special. Using – or manipulating – scientific knowledge in order to persecute a group of people is itself something most likely to be carried out, or at least led, by those with reduced levels of empathy and conscience. Becoming aware of those with conditions that significantly reduce empathy and conscience and informed regarding the tactics they use gives us a much better chance to protect people – even psychopaths themselves – from the type of persecution you fear. When people of conscience bond on the basis of a conscious appreciation for their strong conscience itself, recognizing that there is a segment of the population that does not – and may never – share this trait, they can more passionately and effectively work toward solutions that are, on balance, healthiest for everyone involved. So, in this sense, accurately categorizing on this particular dimension, as opposed to some less ethically-relevant dimensions, could actually help reduce, rather than increase, persecution throughout society.

The incidence of psychopaths in the workplace is becoming reasonably well understood, but do you believe  psychopaths in positions of authority are having an impact on our environment, and our subsequent attempt to address climate change and other environmental issues?

I cannot say for sure whether or not psychopathy is significantly and detrimentally influencing our efforts regarding a sustainably healthy ecosystem and environment. But, given what we know, it is reasonable enough to suspect this could be the case that the question deserves serious study. One of the main reasons that I am so passionate about advocating for the firm establishment of ponerology as a respected field of study is so that more people can access a platform and the necessary resources to do just such work.

One of the benefits I’ve experienced from researching and writing about ponerology is that, in the process, I’ve come across people and related fields that I had not previously known about doing work on issues like this one. For example, a few months ago I learned about the field of Green Criminology, which studies the role criminal behavior plays in the process of environmental damage. One of the benefits of running a website dedicated to these issues is that I can then share this information with others, as I did in this feature on Green Criminology that I posted soon after learning about it.

If so, how can we, armed with an understanding of ponerology, deal with psychopathic influences?

Psychopathic influences can occur at all levels and in all facets of human systems and, in each of these, pose different quandaries that both call for and challenge our responses. Just to give some examples:

• At the family level, psychopaths can be abusive or neglectful partners or parents. So recognizing psychopathy and how it works might lead someone to make a different choice about becoming involved or staying involved in a romantic relationship. If they choose to leave, it may inform how they do so in order to be as safe as possible. It may help them understand the trauma undergone by themselves and their children during the period of exposure to the psychopath and to seek the most effective counseling to help them recover.
• In the workplace, an understanding of psychopathy could inform wiser hiring and firing decisions and help in ensuring that roles involving important ethical decisions are filled by those with empathy and conscience.
• At the community level, understanding psychopathy could affect our approach to crime. We might see efforts to prevent or reduce crime in a different light when we realize that a certain percent of the population fundamentally lacks empathy and conscience.
• At the political level, we recognize that it is crucial that those who make decisions deeply affecting the lives of thousands or even millions of people be capable of empathizing with those over whom they exercise this power. But we can only work to ensure this is the case when we become informed about the range of levels of empathy that exist in different human beings.
• At the most basic level, the very existence of the field of ponerology can help provoke people to recognize that these challenges even exist. And, as that recognition grows, its findings can help us better strategize in the pursuit of optimal solutions.

Lobaczewski’s experience at the university – the new lecturer espoused views that appear to influence a formerly benign group. Are we ‘normals’ to a greater or lesser extent, vulnerable to their influence?

I think that, when uneducated about ponerologic issues, ‘normals’ are indeed vulnerable. The vulnerability stems from the fact that we tend to assume, on a very deep level, that other people are fundamentally like us. We realize that they differ in more superficial ways such as gender, skin color, ethnicity, talents and skills and so on. But we assume that they all share the most basic human traits and abilities such as the capacity to experience pain and pleasure, sleep and waking, heat and cold and so on. Experiences like these are so basic as to seem elemental to what it means to be human.

Along the same lines, we assume that the capacities to empathize with others and to experience pangs of conscience are also elemental to being human. Yet psychopaths, while often pretending to experience these, may not actually do so. And, at the same time, they realize that ‘normals’ around them are under the impression that they do. And this is the misinformation gap, the area of ignorance, that they are often able to exploit.

If so, how does a psychopath influence others to behave against their ethical beliefs?

There are a number of tactics that psychopaths use in manipulating others. Lobaczewski talks about and names several of them in his book Political Ponerology. Just a few examples:

• Paralogisms – Particular manners of twisting logic to falsely make the
  illogical appear logical and vice-versa
• Paramoralisms – Specific methods of twisting morality to falsely portray the unethical as ethical and vice-versa
• The appropriation and exploitation of ideology

You’ll notice two things that these tactics have in common:

• They all involve the manipulative use of language. Psychopaths are often very skilled at employing language in ways that mislead and fool people. This is why Lobaczewski proposes the study of what he calls “patho-semantics” to help us recognize how certain forms of communication are used for deceptive and malicious purposes.
• They all work best when the person using them is assumed to have working capacities for empathy and conscience. If we understood or even strongly suspected that this person lacked such capacities, we would be much more guarded against these tactics and skeptical of them. But when we believe they are a person of conscience like ourselves – and, in fact, as we believe in our ignorance, like every human being – we are much more likely to be taken in by their ruse.

Of course, when these tactics alone don’t work, many psychopaths, lacking a conscience to restrict them, are not averse to using explicit or implicit threats or even brute force to get their way.

If an organisation wanted to screen for psychopaths are there legal ramifications? What would they need to do?

As I alluded to earlier, screening for psychopathy – like any form of screening – raises serious concerns about issues ranging from privacy to unfair discrimination. So, if it is done, it needs to be done with care by highly responsible and competent people. I am not expert in exactly how the law applies here, since I’m not a lawyer, but I find it hard to believe that there wouldn’t very quickly be legal challenges as soon as anyone was refused a job or fired or forced to change positions as a result of being identified as a psychopath.

So I think it will be very important to involve legal experts, preferably with specialized training, ideally including education regarding ponerology itself, in developing any solutions in this area.

Having been interviewed numerous times myself I always wish they’d give me a completely open question. So here goes. What is the most important aspect of ponerology that you would like to share?

There are several important points I’d like to make that I don’t think have been raised in the rest of the interview.

1. Not all psychopaths are the same. Lobaczewski, in Political Ponerology, distinguishes several different types of psychopaths.
2. We have recently seen increased recognition regarding those who are not technically psychopaths, but share many of the same traits to a significant and troubling extent. These people are often referred to as “almost psychopaths.” Ronald Schouten, an M.D. and J.D. affiliated with Harvard Medical School, along with criminal defense attorney James Silver, has written a book about this subject called Almost a Psychopath: Do I (or Does Someone I Know) Have a Problem with Manipulation and Lack of Empathy? I covered this topic, a television news story about it and Schouten’s and Silver’s book on this blog post.
3. We have focused entirely on psychopathy here. But, as I emphasized in the title of one blog post, ponerology is not only about psychopathy.There are other conditions marked by significantly reduced levels of empathy and conscience that also play a role in the development of unhealthy systems. Lobaczewski’s name for a process by which human systems become pathological is ponerogenesis. And, in Political Ponerology, he goes into some detail about the various roles that his work revealed not only different types of psychopaths, but those with conditions besides psychopathy – as well as vulnerable normal people – to play in this process.

   I believe the other conditions most often involved are some of those that psychiatry has, for quite some time, classified as the Cluster B personality disorders, namely:

   • Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD)
   • Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD)
   • Antisocial Personality Disorder (ASPD)
4. Finally, I just want to say that, like many fields of science, but perhaps to an even greater extent than most, ponerology attracts its share of pseudoscientists – people who either speculate in a non-scientific manner on the material within its purview or take scientific findings that it has revealed and then twist and misuse them to serve an agenda. Since ponerology is a relatively new and unknown field, many people, when first investigating it, may come across the pseudoscientists first, recognize their work as not credible and then dismiss ponerology as a whole. This is a shame because there are also many very credible scientists in a variety of related disciplines doing fantastic and responsible work on these issues.

   I hope that people will not let the fact that some misappropriate the name and ideas of ponerology keep them from putting in the effort to learn about the solid and important work being done in this area. I try to encourage this effort by documenting the growing body of such critical work at PonerologyNews.com.

That evening, on his CNN program, Anderson Cooper 360, Cooper discussed with a number of guests the events of the hearing and Castro’s behavior during it, including his persistent shirking of responsibility. Throughout the show, the topic of psychopathy was front and center. In fact, the words “psychopath” or “psychopathy” were used 19 times during the episode. And, unlike in many cases, they were used appropriately and accurately.

What was most heartening was that Cooper, as well as several of his guests, exhibited a genuine understanding of how important it is to expose the public to and educate them about the true nature of psychopaths. A number of important lessons about them were conveyed during the episode.

The focus on psychopathy was evident right from the get-go. At the beginning of the show, before playing the first footage from the hearing, Cooper prefaced it by saying:

“Now it’s very rare to see someone who may be a true psychopath justify their crimes. Today in court on live television, we saw just that.”

After the footage played, Cooper first spoke with reporter Pamela Brown and started the interview by asking her:

“What struck you the most in the court today? Because watching this, I just found it — don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like this, hearing this man who — we’re going to hear more from experts ahead, but I mean, his — I mean, he seems to be a psychopath that he actually believes these things that he was saying.”

After the segment with Brown ended, Cooper played a clip from the hearing where Castro appears to blame his victims even while denying doing so.

He then asked former FBI profiler Mary Ellen O’Toole about the clip. She responded (watch  :38-1:11 in above video):

“He’s absolutely blaming the three survivors. He’s taking no responsibility for his behavior. And that’s very classic psychopathy. We were – all of us – witnessing, in my opinion, a classic psychopath today…He’s not out of touch with reality, he knows right from wrong, the rules don’t apply for him and the hallmark again is this inability to empathize or feel guilt. It was all about him today. All about him.”

Cooper then asked O’Toole to explain why the prosecution’s forensic psychiatrist stated that Castro has no mental illness. O’Toole explained that this is accurate since Castro is not delusional or psychotic and knew right from wrong. (watch 1:11-2:15 in above video)

“Psychopath is not a mental illness. Psychopath is a personality disorder, it’s not a mental illness. We sometimes confuse those two, but someone who’s mentally ill may not understand the nature or the consequences of their actions. Not the case with Ariel Castro.”

Cooper then turned to Dr. Drew Pinsky, who agreed fully with O’Toole, stating that Castro is a “full-fledged psychopath.” Dr. Drew said (watch 3:47-4:03 in above video ):

“When you listen to this guy your brain just goes out of kilt, like how could he possibly be this way. I see the astonishment on your face, Anderson. And it is astonishing when you hear how a psychopath thinks and then you see what they have done to other people and don’t seem to be able to understand that.”

Cooper’s response:

“Well, that — I mean, that’s why I do think it’s important to — you know, as hard as it was, important to actually listen and see this guy’s face because it’s rare to actually see a psychopath — you know, you see them in movies and stuff and they’re kind of — you know, an actor kind of make — this is apparently, it seems like a true psychopath and just the coldness of it, it was — just stunning to watch. And you found it hard to watch.”

Later in the episode, attorney Mark Geragos called into question the value of Castro’s sentencing hearing for the public, referring to it, from a legal perspective, as “a parade of lunacy.” But Cooper stood his ground:

“I found — I mean, maybe just because I work in television I’m interested in people’s stories and try to understand people, and Mary Ellen, I want to talk to you about this, but I do find it valuable to look into the face of a psychopath…And to actually identify and say you know what? There are psychopaths among them — among us, this is what it looks like.”

At this point, while very glad to see some public education on the issue, I worried that perhaps Cooper was misleading people a bit into thinking that psychopaths generally are violent abductors like Castro. But he soon assuaged that concern.

O’Toole spoke further about how stunning the psychopath’s bald-faced lying and manipulation is.

Dr. Drew agreed with Cooper’s response to Geragos, saying:

“I think they have done a public service by taking a good, hard look at this guy. These people tend to be manipulative, charming. They are in many of our lives. If you — you cannot believe what many people say and if you see any evidence that someone is behaving inappropriately you must act no matter what they say and really be suspicious.

A lot of people lie in our country, a lot of people have sociopathic and psychopathic tendencies and you’re looking quite squarely in the face of it tonight. There it is. That’s how they think. They don’t understand emotions. They only act as if they had emotions because they have none.”

And then Cooper made the point I was hoping he’d make and, in light of the book Snakes in Suits, made it very appropriately:

“And I — you know, I think that’s a good point, Dr. Drew, because you put that guy in a suit, and he could be — look, I mean, he could be a college professor. He could be anybody that you run across at any point of the day.”

The point was then made that, in her speech at the sentencing hearing, one of Castro’s victims, Michelle Knight, mentioned how Castro would go to church each week before coming home to his captives chained up in his house…

– an incredible example of the double life that people like Castro can pull off for years.

In a later segment, Cooper interviewed Rebecca Bailey, the personal therapist of Jaycee Dugard, another woman who was abducted as a child and whose rescue, after 18 years of captivity, made headlines in 2009. Bailey made some key points about the psychopath’s remorselessness, stating:

“I was saying earlier that’s a psychopath in there, they never have to say they’re sorry. They never feel it. They never have to experience it. That’s part of the seduction of being a psychopath in my mind.”

Cooper then reinforced the crucial lesson of how difficult psychopaths can be to detect, asking her:

“And Rebecca, you’ve written about what parents can tell their kids and how to keep kids safe. Do you think there’s value? Because, I mean, I found there value today in looking in this man’s eyes, seeing this man’s face, and seeing that you know what, this is what a psychopath looks like and it’s not necessarily on the face of it someone you would pick out of a lineup as being a monster.”

Bailey responded:

“I agree. Absolutely. That’s why we say the notion of stranger danger doesn’t really work because there is no absolute prototype of what they look like.”

Kudos to Anderson Cooper and his staff for using this high-profile event to shed some light on the realities of psychopathy. In under an hour, he and his guests managed to get across several of the most important lessons about psychopaths that the public should know, including that:

• Most psychopaths do not resemble the sensationalized psychopaths of the movies, such as Hannibal Lecter. There is no particular look that can allow us to easily detect them. They could truly look like anybody and, often, they are the people you’d least suspect from appearances. We need to be aware that they are simply around us in our everyday lives. They are also in positions where you might not expect to find them, including, frighteningly, powerful positions.

  To quote Cooper speaking about Ariel Castro again, because I think the quote’s message is so crucial:

  “…you put that guy in a suit, and he could be — look, I mean, he could be a college professor. He could be anybody that you run across at any point of the day.”

  Professor, indeed. Or CEO, lawyer, surgeon, police officer or even religious leader. Check out the top 10 jobs that attract psychopaths according to Kevin Dutton in The Wisdom of Psychopaths.

• They can lead double (or even more) lives, fooling people by presenting different personas in different social circles. In some of their “lives,” they may even pretend to be highly moral, engaging in religious or charitable (think Jerry Sandusky) endeavors.
• They are fully in touch with reality and aware of what is considered right and wrong – in other words, not “mentally ill” – but simply choose to ignore this distinction in pursuit of that which, due to their personality disorder, they value.
• They simply do not experience and cannot relate with the normal range of human emotions. They will, however, mimic the outward expressions of many emotions to trick others into believing that they experience and understand them.
• They feel no remorse for their actions or negligence no matter how much harm is consequently incurred by others.
• They often manage to evade being confronted regarding their actions at all.
• When they are confronted regarding their actions, they are skilled at employing “patho-semantics,” the clever, manipulative use of language, in order to avoid responsibility and sometimes to frame others, including their victims themselves.
• Even when lying, they can appear extremely convincing because of their ability to project strong belief in their own stories.
• The psychopath’s evasions and manipulations can have a powerful befuddling – or to use, once again, the word that Anderson Cooper used – stunning effect on the average person. As Dr. Drew put it, engaging what I believe are some highly technical terms, “your brain just goes out of kilt” watching and listening to them.

The entire transcript of this episode of AC360 is available here.

More clips from the episode are available here on the AC360 Blog.

In addition, Kim is a writer whose bio states that she is a “former professor of languages” who was a Fulbright Scholar.

So I was quite curious when Kim let me know that she had written a new book dealing with the topic of narcissism and related themes about which we both feel strongly and was kind enough to send me a copy.

Things started off well very early on – in fact, before I even opened the envelope containing the book. Why? Check out this return address label that greeted me.

You can think and write about these issues for a long time before you come across something like that. It just reminded me all over again of how clever and insightful Kim’s work around these issues can be.

Then I opened the package to reveal the book and its title, The Sin of Omission.

This just continued the great start because this title reflects an aspect of ponerology that I have long felt it is important to emphasize. Those with reduced empathy can surely actively cause a great deal of harm. But, boy are they often also talented at strategically employing negligence to deviously enable suffering to arise while maintaining plausible deniability.

There are non-actions which, though most would deem them unethical, are nonetheless not illegal. Those who wish to do harm can engage – or, perhaps better said, willfully fail to engage – in them and rarely be held to account. They are the moral loopholes that empathy-reduced people masterfully and frequently exploit. Their existence is a problem that has long haunted me.

That haunting goes back even to my childhood. Agatha Christie’s famous novel Ten Little Indians tells the story of how a number of people who took advantage of these types of loopholes, causing suffering for which they had never been held responsible, were finally brought to a form of justice. I was assigned to read the book in middle school and, even at that young age, my life experience had already primed me in such a way that it hit me like a ton of bricks because I recognized so keenly and felt so strongly about this theme of people getting away with terribly unethical “sins of omission.”

Apparently many others also recognize and feel strongly about this theme because Ten Little Indians, which was first published under the title And Then There Were None, is one of the six best-selling single-volume books of all time, along with iconic works like A Tale of Two Cities, The Lord of the Rings, The Little Prince and The Hobbit.

Also, shortly before receiving Kim’s book in the mail, I had read Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations. I wasn’t a big fan of most of it, but there was one quote in it about which I felt strongly enough to copy it down. It was the one where the Roman Emperor says:

“Very often an unjust act is done by not doing something, not only by doing something.”

Then I looked at the print-out of a blog post regarding the book which Kim had included in the package. It said:

“There is another ‘N’ word that is often associated with hate and conflict. But this word is not about race or class. This word has no social or economic boundaries.”

What a brilliant way of making the point that the word “narcissism,” which should be a well-understood household term, viewed as quite important and relevant because of how much damage the trait can cause in a family or any other system, instead often goes barely noticed or discussed. One mention of the better-known “N word” can end relationships and careers (and, ironically, it may well be that narcissism itself drives some of the people that do hatefully utter it.) But a lifetime of actually living out this “N word” often goes unrecognized or even rewarded.

I have long been emphasizing that divisions based on race, class, gender and other more superficial categories serve to distract us terribly from focusing on the far more important division in humanity between those with and without a significant level of conscience.

I then checked out the back of the book itself, which describes it as “An eye opening portrayal of family conflict, based on the author’s personal experiences growing up in a dysfunctional family.” While many people interested in ponerology focus on the social and political levels, most of us first experience harmful behavior in our families. Some, unfortunately, experience it there to a significant degree. I suspect that if you surveyed the growing community of those who have been drawn to ponerologic topics, you would find that, for many, the threads of that attraction can be traced directly back to personal family dynamics.

So, basically, before opening her book, I had the idea that it would boil down to Taylor revealing, in a sense, how her interest in the impact of and optimal responses to the harmful influence of those with reduced empathy is rooted in her own childhood experience. Specifically, I expected that she would delve into the lessons she learned about how such people insidiously operate, harming others through “crimes of omission” that are much easier to keep hidden than “crimes of commission.”

Then, I glanced at the table of contents, which lists the titles of the book’s ten chapters. Every single one of the chapter titles was either curiosity-piquing, quirky or both. They all grabbed my attention and made me eager to delve into Taylor’s world.

And so I began reading.

Getting Personal

Those who write about ponerologic topics, even though I believe many, if not most, of us have both academic and personal interest in them, seem to fall into two rough categories:

1. Those who write very openly about their own personal experiences involving the influence of those with low empathy and conscience
2. Those who, even if they have been personally affected by the influence of those with low empathy and conscience, choose to keep their personal stories – especially the specific names and behaviors of other people they know – private, sticking with writing about ponerology from a more general perspective

The Sin of Omission proves Kim Taylor to fall decidedly in the former category. And how.

The book tells the story of her narcissistic brother, Tim, her enabling father and family system and the damage and pain that emerges from this mix. But it doesn’t just tell the story. It airs the family’s dirty laundry in the most open way. In this book, Taylor vents to the world the kind of frustration that most people in these situations save for their diaries or their close friends.

Just as one example of how personal the book gets:

There is one point at which Taylor explains that there is a letter she has wanted to send to her mother-in-law regarding her brother and his wife, but that she has not sent it because she feels too uncomfortable. So what has she done? Instead, she has published the letter in the book.

This level of openness led to mixed feelings for me.

On one hand, I felt almost uncomfortable with it. The book is so revealing that I wondered if the motive behind its writing might be something like revenge through exposure. And, as we’ll discuss at the end of this piece, there is some reason to consider that – perhaps even justly – it is.

On the other hand, I was also able to view her openness as an attempt at several worthwhile goals:

• Catharsis – Short of any effective way to find justice, and realizing that we are “only as sick as our secrets,” the book may serve as a way to at least express mourning, convey a visceral sense of how dramatic, chaotic and painful the drama of a dysfunctional family touched by personality disorders can be, and have her story actually witnessed. I imagine embodying her experiences and putting them out into the world in this book is a weight off Taylor’s chest.
• Understanding – The writing of the book may be part of Kim’s process of seeking answers. As I read, I could just feel her struggling with the painful questions that gnaw at many people of healthy conscience who find themselves in such a system.
  • Why does the narcissist act this way?
  • Why are others enabling the narcissist and suppressing attempts to restrain their abuses rather than aiding and comforting their victims?
  • How did these people become the type of people who would be willing and able to play these roles?
• Helping Others – The book is a cautionary tale.

Exploring the Dynamics of Reduced Empathy and Affected Family Systems

In The Sin of Omission, Kim Taylor touches on or delves into a number of aspects of conditions of reduced empathy and the workings of families in which a member has one. Those who have been in such a situation may relate to many of them.

Manipulative Tactics & Con Artistry

Kim explains some of the “tricks of the trade” that the empathy-reduced person uses to manipulate those around them. One entire chapter is devoted to talking about the time her brother fell victim to an even more skilled scammer than himself. She uses that story to branch out into a broader discussion of con artistry in general.

This discussion is based on her own research on the subject. I found this to exemplify a pattern I’ve noticed. It seems like often, once a victim of a pathological person or system comes to see through the veil of ponerologic conditions, they work to become expert on subjects related to con artistry so as to be able to protect themselves from being duped again. They may even take great pride in their newfound savvy and ability to detect deception and teach others to do so.

Jekyll and Hyde

Taylor offers the phrase “street angel, house devil,” one that her mother used, as a way of conveying how those with pathologies of conscience can charm so many people in the outside world who never see the abusive, cruel sides of them that they so openly display at home.

Vulnerabilities of the Codependent

She discusses the kinds of wounds and defense mechanisms that those with reduced empathy exploit in vulnerable codependent types of people.

The Generational Ripple Effect of Abuse & Neglect

One of the main themes of this book is how one sin – even a sin of omission – can have a deep impact, setting the stage for dysfunction to flourish for generations to come.

We often hear about how personality disorders themselves result from this generational process. But here Taylor focuses on how the aforementioned wounds and defense mechanisms that underlie the enabling behaviors of the other people around the personality-disordered person also result from this same process.

Early in the book, she tells the tale of her widower grandfather’s abandonment of his children – including her father – during the Great Depression. She goes on to reveal how this first sin facilitated a chain reaction of others, like the one carried out by a priest at the orphanage to which her abandoned father was relegated – a supposedly highly moral man – that shattered her father’s self-esteem forever. She speculates on how these early experiences of loss, abuse and neglect led her father to project his own need for care, driving him to compensate by fervently caring for others, especially the very types of people who would take advantage of him – people like his own exploitative brother and Kim’s narcissistic brother, his son.

Kim asks:

“Was it his experience at the orphanage of overdiscipline and physical abuse that made him too tolerant of a son whose behavior throughout life would be far too risk-taking for his own good? If there is a tragic flaw in all of this, that is certainly it. The orphanage might be the reason behind dad’s inability to correct a son whose narcissism ruled him.”

She contrasts her own early experience learning about the concept of reciprocity with her father’s lack of insight into its importance and compliance to those who manipulated him as a result.

How Systemic Enabling Amplifies Consequences

Kim mentions that not only did her father’s projection lead him to be compliant, but it led him to expect others to be so, as well. As a result of such a dynamic, much of the rest of the family joins in with the enabling. In her case, her mother discouraged any criticism, preferring to “keep the peace.” One of her younger brothers, who also had a vulnerable personality, became prey, at times, to the con artistry.

Eventually, any healthy limits keeping the personality-disordered person in check are discouraged and shut down. For example, Kim’s maternal grandfather tried to step in and correct Tim’s behavior for his own good and that of society. But rather than gratitude, her family responded by undermining his efforts.

It is at this point that the disordered behavior can really go off the rails.

Blocking of Family Intimacy

When some family members deny and refuse to address another family member’s personality disorder, this creates an inevitable tension and distance between them and the ones who are conscious about it. Kim talks about how the atmosphere surrounding her disordered brother prevented her from having a closer relationship with her father and, worse, how she blamed herself for that. She explains that “When one party shuts down or shuts a door because that person is not able to deal with truth and openness, it is frustrating for the other.” And in the letter to her mother-in-law she says, “It is a shame…when families end up fragmented because of one person’s disorders.”

The Extra Pain of Family Crises

Kim talks about the terrible experience of having to handle her father’s death and the decisions associated with it and its aftermath while dealing with such a difficult family system.

“Water to a Fish”

Taylor describes a key phenomenon – that, no matter how extreme, the dysfunction of our family systems often remains invisible to us when we are young since it is all we know. It is only later that life may somehow help us gain perspective and, when it does, it comes as an epiphany.

The Sickly Intriguing Nature of These Patterns

The book discusses, and, indeed, exhibits, how narcissistic-codependent types of relationships play out in toxic, yet fascinating, patterns. Once one finally does recognize them, it can become almost an obsession to study them, and it can prove difficult to look away.

Connection to Similar Patterns on Higher Social Levels

In Political Ponerology, Andrew M. Lobaczewski starts by explaining how those with pathologies of conscience can take over nations. He then goes on to show how similar, mutually reinforcing patterns play out as families and communities are corrupted, as well.

In The Sin of Omission, Taylor works in the other direction. After focusing on the patterns within her family in depth, she touches on how these mirror patterns of dependency and unsustainability at higher levels.  For instance, on page 18, she states:

“It is much like the ongoing bail-out situation related to economic crisis in the U.S. and elsewhere.”

Comparison to the Work of Barbara Oakley

Given the topic and approach of the book, I couldn’t help but compare The Sin of Omission to the work of another author that is very significant to me.

One of the most important books I’ve ever read is Evil Genes: Why Rome Fell, Hitler Rose, Enron Failed, and My Sister Stole My Mother’s Boyfriend by Barbara Oakley. Oakley, like Taylor, is a writer on the topic of pathologies of conscience who, as the full title of that book suggests, also opens up in her writing in a very personal way about her own family issues. In Evil Genes, she share stories of and examines her experience in a family that included a sister who she describes as exhibiting a combination of Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) and psychopathy as a means by which to consider these and related conditions. The Sin of Omission, full of stories about Taylor’s brother’s behavior and how the rest of the family responded and was affected, is in this tradition to some extent.

Oakley’s next work – Cold-Blooded Kindness: Neuroquirks of a Codependent Killer, or Just Give Me a Shot at Loving You, Dear, and Other Reflections on Helping That Hurts – focused on the flip side of the exploitative relationship, what she calls pathological altruism. (She also edited this well-received scholarly book explicitly about that subject.) And The Sin of Omission, as much as it is about narcissists themselves, is also a book about this crucial complementary aspect of the dysfunctional cycle. For, though she never uses and may not even be familiar with the term, Taylor’s thesis is that her father’s treatment in the orphanage transformed him into a pathological altruist, all too eager to extend himself in support of narcissistic manipulators and exploiters. She also explains how her own husband has kept her from falling into what she calls the “trap of ‘empathy’” of which narcissists take advantage.

However, while they share much in these ways, there are also some differences between Taylor’s work in this book and Oakley’s.

1. Oakley uses her personal family stories as jumping off points from which to delve very deeply into the hard science behind conditions of reduced empathy and conscience. Taylor doesn’t delve into the science very much at all, sticking primarily with the personal perspective. When she does veer off a bit, it’s to discuss something more humanities-oriented, like how narcissism has served as an archetype of evil in religious and historical representations, not to consider the relevant scientific evidence and research.
2. That first difference has implications for the philosophical angle taken. The scientific emphasis leads Oakley to focus more on the genetic, neurological and other biological aspects of these disorders. The Sin of Omission focuses more on the influence of childrearing. I have little doubt that both authors realize the importance of both of these angles and their interconnection. But, nonetheless, they come at this subject matter differently.
3. Oakley’s books are quite long and dense. The Sin of Omission is a short 67 pages and can easily be read in one sitting.
4. Oakley’s writing is of extremely high quality. The Sin of Omission is not nearly as eloquent in style.
5. Oakley’s writing is highly-structured and well-organized. The Sin of Omission is rambling and sometimes even chaotic.

I make this last point not simply to put down Taylor’s book. For the rambling, perhaps, is appropriate here, serving, intentionally or not, a purpose. It matches the emotional tone of that the book conveys.

While Oakley examines her family history in Evil Genes, Taylor, in this book, expresses the frustration and anger of being stuck in her family in a more visceral way. Oakley explains, seeming, for the most part, to have come to terms with her experience and to be writing as she looks back at it with perspective. Taylor rants, pouring out the exasperation generated by a seemingly never-ending ordeal of having to put up with what she aptly calls an “upside down relationship.” It is not always coherent, not always linear, not always structured or organized. But this is because it is not just a writing, but a release of grief. For she appears, as she writes, to still be in the throes of that grief and it comes across as anger and depression in search of acceptance.

So while The Sin of Omission will not win a Nobel Prize in Literature, if you have any experience with situations like Taylor’s or want to gain some insight into how devastating such situations can be, you can get a sense of it through her writing.

Both Oakley’s and Taylor’s perspectives, though different, offer something valuable that can help others.

Broadening the Perspective

Another interesting thing about Taylor’s version of her story is that it shows how the particular way that we come into contact with and are affected by certain issues can color how we view them and shape the conclusions we draw about them. As a result of her specific experiences, Taylor expresses a couple of conclusions that she has reached that I’d like to put into a broader perspective.

Parent/Child Personality-Disordered/Enabler Orientations

It’s clear that Taylor recognizes the ethical loophole upon which Ten Little Indians was based and that has haunted me for so many years. At one point she says:

“There are crimes that occur that are punishable by law and then there are crimes on a smaller scale not punishable by law but nonetheless unethical. They are committed against our families, our friends, our neighbors, our colleagues, our brothers and sisters…”

But then she finishes that quote with…

“…and especially grievous from a standpoint of moral values are those that dishonor our mothers and our fathers.”

I found it striking that she never so explicitly addressed the case that many other people experience in which a disordered parent abuses, exploits or neglects the children. I think many would say that that case is even more grievous than when a disordered child dishonors the parents, who are at least adults and better equipped to protect themselves from and withstand such behavior.

In fact, when I first heard about her book, I simply assumed the story would be about a narcissistic parent that hurt her. I was actually surprised to find that it was primarily about a narcissistic sibling who hurt her parents. This is also a worthwhile story to tell. But Taylor seems to believe the latter is the more archetypal story from which to draw lessons.

Each of our experiences colors what we see as most grievous. Taylor watched painfully as her parents were manipulated and she generalized from that experience. But it can be just as painful and damaging, if not worse, when the parent is the disordered person rather than the enabler.

The Range of Empathy-Reducing Conditions

Often, people are first affected by or learn about one particular empathy-reducing condition and then, since the various conditions with this effect can look alike, begin labeling all empathy-reduced people with that one condition. I wonder if this happened to Taylor. Perhaps, having first become familiar with narcissism and narcissistic personality disorder (NPD), and not having necessarily studied related conditions, she conflates all empathy-reducing conditions under the rubric of narcissism.

As I read, I frequently wondered if the brother being described as a narcissist is actually a psychopath. There are a number of signs that point to this possibility, including the stark terms in which Taylor describes her brother’s “evil,” not the least part of which is his markedly parasitic lifestyle, one of the hallmarks of psychopathy tested for as part of Factor 2 of the Hare Psychopathy Checklist. At one point, she compares him to Bernie Madoff, claiming that Madoff represents the epitome of narcissism. But many actually believe that Madoff, while certainly a narcissistic person, is actually a prime example of white-collar psychopathy.

We obviously cannot diagnose her brother on the basis of just the stories in this book. But it is worth considering that not all people of low conscience have NPD. Some have Borderline Personality Disorder. Some are psychopaths. A proper diagnosis is important because these disorders, while overlapping in some ways, are also, in other ways, quite different.

There is actually one place in which Taylor does consider another diagnosis for her brother. In the letter to her mother-in-law she speculates that he may be bipolar. But she never mentions the possibility of him having one of the other empathy-reducing conditions besides narcissism. And she never really mentions psychopathy at all.

Conclusion

Millions of families struggle with the types of issues that arise when members with certain empathy-reducing personality disorders generate destructive drama and other family members, or the family system overall, consistently enable them. Each has its own tale. But most of these tales will never be told, at least not publicly.

There is enormous discouraging pressure and stigma associated with exposing such family secrets. Derrick Jensen, another writer who very openly and powerfully exposes family secrets in his work, often quotes famed psychiatrist R.D. Laing’s three rule of a dysfunctional family:

• Rule A is Don’t.
• Rule A.1 is Rule A does not exist.
• Rule A.2 is Never discuss the existence or nonexistence of Rules A, A.1, or A.2.

For better or worse, Kim Taylor decided to break these rules and “spill the beans” to the world. Her personal frustrations, born of being the caring person – one whose very life has become committed to Fair Play – in a family affected by a highly-enabled narcissist have been published.

It is unnerving. The Sin of Omission reveals the kinds of family conversations that most people dwell on privately and never share with everybody else. The eighth chapter of the book is entitled “Those are the Sacrifices You Make for Family.” Often, secrecy is one of the ultimate sacrifices made in dysfunctional families.

But Taylor has refused to make that sacrifice anymore. She waited until her parents were gone to do so. But her brother, Tim, is still alive.

Yet, if we are ever to really see clearly what is happening in our culture and our systems, conversations like these will have to be exposed to disinfecting sunlight. We see it happening with leaks at other levels of human systems. And Taylor’s book is, in a sense, a whistleblower leak of her family secrets.

It is hard to know for sure what the truth is in situations like this. Family dynamics are complex and one is hesitant to make a final judgment without hearing everyone’s story. But, at the same time, this careful deliberative approach, if it leads to too great a hesitancy to make decisions, is something empathy-reduced people can sometimes exploit.

I cannot definitively say exactly what really happened in Taylor’s family. But I can confidently say that what she describes happens in families every day causing untold pain and suffering, often with the most undeserving suffering the most.

I loved the idea of Narcissist cologne and a company based on the concept of Fair Play. Having read Taylor’s book and been granted a view into her experience of her family, I now have a much better insight regarding why she became so personally passionate about these endeavors and the issues that they involve in the first place.

The motive behind this book, and perhaps much of Taylor’s life and work, became most clear to me when she explained:

“Tim’s anger was always turned outward rather than inward. He chose from among those closest to him as a target for this anger. More often than not, he chose to target me both verbally and physically. He saw me as a competitor. I was a threat to him because of my abilities and accomplishments.”

It is in light of a comment like this that the book could be interpreted as an attempt at revenge. But, if you really consider this statement, it is a deeply tragic one. You can empathize with Taylor’s agony at being a good kid, doing her best to be a caring person and, nonetheless, being abused by an envious Machiavellian sibling.

And, worse, hidden in those words, is the pain that inheres in the question “Why didn’t my parents protect me from him?” Her parents’ indulgence of their empathy-reduced son left their daughter vulnerable. This is the central recent sin of omission that we can trace all the way back to her grandfather’s original sin of abandoning his children. It is an archetypal example of how those of healthy conscience so often pay the price when those with pathologies of conscience are not held accountable or even identified as such. That rank injustice is what is so unconscionable to those who have a conscience to care.

As Kim says, “There is nothing like paying for others’ mistakes.”

The ultimate lesson of The Sin of Omission might be summed up when Taylor points out that children need a healthy balance of discipline and freedom and that that healthy balance must be determined not in a formulaic way, but taking into account a particular child’s ability to self-monitor. We must incorporate individual differences in these assessments. But, whether because an empathy-reduced parent cannot read and reflect back to a child properly or because an empathy-reduced child is not recognized and appropriately adjusted to by a misguided or naïve parent, this process too often fails. And, when it does, as Taylor’s book shows – cries out about, in fact – the ripple effect of suffering can be tremendous.