...Eng. 102 Revealing a Psychopath “If you’re in a room and at one end lies madness and at the other end lies sanity, it is human nature to veer towards the madness end” (Ronson 72). In other words what Jon Ronson is trying to say is that humans by nature are always looking for craziness. One example is a teenage boy always wondering, “What would happen if…” What would happen if I drink one of my dad’s beers instead of the Mountain Dew next to it; would he find out? Or another example when you get your first car, you want to press and investigate what each button or pedal does and you see the accelerator. The first thing that might run to your mind is what would happen if I just press this all the way down? Despite the fact that we know the consequences we still do them because humans by nature veer towards madness as said by Ronson. After reading Ronsons “The Psychopath Test” I realized that we all have some type of manic tendencies or a disorder in us, yet we are not all considered psychopaths. Once Ronson started reading the DSM he started to diagnose himself with disorders and some of these disorders also pertained to me. The disorders were arithmetic learning disorder and caffeine induced disorder. As a kid I was never the best at math so did that mean I had arithmetic learning disorder? How about when you drink coffee for the first time and you start getting the jitters, does that mean you have caffeine induced disorder? In this section of the book I believe that the procedure...
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...Psychopaths Impulsive, narcissistic, antisocial, irresponsible, manipulative, superficial charm; if you guessed that these are traits of a psychopath, you guessed right. A psychopath is someone who has reduced sensitivity to the pain and suffering of others. They can be very dangerous and sometimes fail to notice the emotional harm of certain individuals. Psychopaths are sometimes hard to identify face to face because they can easily manipulate people. Most psychopaths go unnoticed until they commit some act of violence and are put in prison for many years to then be tested by the PCL-R (Psychopath Checklist Revised). For those that do not know, the PCL-R (Psychopath Checklist Revised) was created by Robert Hare, a researcher and professor of criminal psychology at University of British Columbia. After working with thousands of psychopaths in the 1960’s, Hare concluded that psychopaths have specific personality traits and tendencies such as the ones listed above. Hare created a test that would be able to tell who is psychopathic and who is not. The test consists of 20 items that measure elements of psychopathic behavior. The test is scored on a three point scale: a value of zero means that it does not apply to you; a value of one means it somewhat applies to you; and a value of two means that it fully applies to you. For an example, if an inmate was given the PCL-R test, number one might be a visual response such as looking at a horrific picture. Based off of his response, he...
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...About Psychopaths… Psychopath is a term that is often herd in a wide variety of contexts but what does it really mean? Not to be confused with antisocial personality disorder, psychopathy is actually a more severe form of the former disorder. Sociopathy, as it is also known, is defined as “a psychological construct describing amoral and antisocial behavior.”[1] A psychopath is a person who “has deficits or deviances in several areas: interpersonal relationships, emotion, and self-control. Psychopaths lack a sense of guilt or remorse for any harm they may have caused others, instead rationalizing the behavior, blaming someone else, or denying it outright.”[2] A person suffering this disorder will exhibit behavior that does not accord with society’s laws and will lack a moral conscience that tries to control this unethical behavior. Because Sociopathy is a personality disorder there are no physical symptoms but instead one must rely solely on obeserving behavior to identify the mental illness. Psychopaths behavior can be tracked to the early years of childhood. It is very common for children with this disorder to exhibit violence towards animals, bedwetting until a late age, and pyromania. It is possible for children who are not psychopaths to display these behaviors as well so they are not a good way to measure whether a person has the disorder or not. Among adults a clear lack of nervousness and worries acompanies a lack of delusinoal thinking. As a result psychopaths tend...
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...Psychopath or human? The Talented Mr. Ripley (1955) written by Patricia Highsmith is known for exploring the gap between benevolence and malevolence. The novel engages its readers to question how far one can go to feel a sense of belonging and love. It investigates how narrow the line between evil and human is in real life. Is Tom really a psychopath or is he just a lonely soul looking for acceptance? To begin with, Tom's depiction of the ideal life is filled with wealth and reputation. He tries to mould himself into the man he thinks will be appreciated by society. This twisted image of society and its standards leaves the reader questioning who is to blame when a sociopath is born. His desire to be Dickie Greenleaf is brutal and unmoral, but still relatable and empathetic. Tom's train of thoughts about loneliness and being admired is heartfelt and impossible to ignore. The talented Mr. Ripley shows how deception and voracity can almost transform anyone into a hedonistic, merciless human. Haysmith manages to almost manipulate the reader to feel sympathy for the miscreant as she describes his thoughts about belonging: "He only wanted a home, a base somewhere, after years of not having any." (Andersson and Ernst, Streams in Literature, 2007, p. 52). In addition to this, Tom is often referred to as an anti-hero. Reason behind this statement can be explained by Highsmith's narrative flow. The novel provides a striking insight into the mind of a sociopath in his...
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...The huge key feature towards attributing moral responsibility to psychopaths is tied to their amount of self awareness. By this I mean just how aware they are of what space their psychopathy is mostly likely to be able to manifest in a harmful way towards others. Psychopaths whom become serial killers typically have a consistent type of target and often a type of space where they carry out acts that are morally wrong. In having an awareness of their own patterns psychopaths become morally responsible for their actions as they are presented with a means of control. Upon having such a realization whenever it occurs, if at all, a decision is being made at that point deeming the psychopath morally responsible for their actions. I find that judging...
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...Topic: Do you agree with the film's diagnosis that the corporation is a psychopath? Psychopathy in a psychiatry terms refers to a personal disorder. Later the name 'psychopathy' was changed to ' personality disorder' due to its inability to grow any attachment or lack of empathy. It is hard to say if the cause of this mental disorder is genetic or it resulted from a previously experienced trauma. The very important characteristic of a psychopath is their ability to successfully deceive people with their main motive being unrevealed. In the documentary movie by M. Achbar, J. Abbott, and J. Bakan the term 'psychopath' is used to describe the big corporations of our time. A corporation might not be a person but it is controlled by the people at the top and everything depends on their ethical standards and morales. If they fail to maintain it at an appropriate level the corporation becomes a psychopath in itself. Now I would like to discuss the characteristics of a psychopath listed by DSM with a reference to th corporations: Failure to conform to social norms: here, lawful behavior is the key topic. Psychopaths do not adapt their behavior to fit into the society, they rather look for an opening to use in order to fit the society to their behavior. So do the corporations. Very often corporations look for a situation (mostly in law) to take advantage of it using their workers as tools and means to reach their goal of power and profit. Deceitfulness: deceiving others...
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... He is the author of four bestsellers, Them: Adventures with Extremists, The Men Who Stare at Goats, The Psychopath Test, and Lost at Sea: The Jon Ronson Mysteries. In an interview, Ronson stated his reason why he wrote The Psychopath Test, “I wanted to write a book about madness because it has always been—I think— the elephant in the room of my other books. Do the people I write about behave the strange ways they do because madness is the engine that powers them? I felt I needed to address this question head-on. Is madness the force that makes the world go around?” The Psychopath Test: A Journey through the Madness Industry starts out with a mystery. A group of the world’s top researchers are plagued by an elaborate riddle, set in a series of curiously handmade books, and Ronson is called upon to investigate. He is of course, an established London writer, and by this time, fairly well-known for his taste in investigative journalism. Ronson is sucked into the mystery immediately, with an obsessive, infectious fervor. It’s through the riddle Ronson was introduced to, when he unwittingly stumbles into the world of psychopaths. Once solved, he finds that the world is populated by a group of people he had never truly examined—people that act without empathic reason and wreak havoc on the world simply because they can. This realization is what sparks the hunt for psychopaths and what makes this book such a captivating read. He moves from influential psychologists who teach him how...
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...Good morning class, my name is alyazia al kamda, i would like to present about psychopaths in general. According to urban dictionary: psychopath is a person tend to lack normal human emotion such as guilt and empathy. they are also often high skilled at manipulating others. so who are they? they can be your neighbours, person sitting next u and person serving you in cafe or restaurant or minimarket, person you walked past this morning. Then There are 20 characteristics according to robert hare , psychopathic and criminal behavior; Psychophysiology. Hare has been devoted to understanding the nature of psychopathy. Those are the 20 characteristics belong to Hare Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R) that the FBI and other american agency use...
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...Different Types of Psychopaths And Successful Psychopaths Antisocial Personality: Personality disorder characterized by egocentrism, lack of conscience, impulsive behavior, and charisma. The term antisocial personality is often used interchangeably with the terms “sociopath” and “psychopath”. (Fast Facts about Psychopathic or Sociopathic Personality Disorders) There are four different subtypes of psychopaths; primary, secondary, distempered, and charismatic. Primary and secondary distinctions were made back in 1941 by Harvey Cleckley (What is a Psychopath?). Primary psychopaths seem not to experience any real emotion, they do not respond to punishment, apprehension, stress, or disapproval. Words do not seem to have the same meaning for them as they do for us, we are unsure if they even grasp the meaning of their own words, Cleckley called this condition “semantic aphasia” (What is a Psychopath?). Secondary psychopaths take more risks, react to stress, worry more, and feel more guilt. They are just as vulnerable, but tend to expose themselves to stress more than the average person. These people began developing their own rules at a young age; they tend to be adventurous and daring. Secondary psychopaths have a much like that of a child, the more something is forbidden to them the more they are attracted to it. They have a strong desire to avoid pain but are often times unable to resist temptation. Primary and secondary psychopaths are then subdivided...
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...population, but when that one percent is psychopaths, it becomes exponentially more influential. According to Robert Hare (Hare, Focus on Psychopathy, 2012), a professor of psychology at the University of British Columbia, that one percent of psychopaths also make up ten to fifteen percent of the offenders in the United States. He defines these people as “manipulative, deceptive, self-centered, lacking in empathy and guilt, callous, and remorseless.” (Hare, Focus on Psychopathy, 2012, p. 2) These people pose a serious potential problem to society when nonviolent. However when violent they are very dangerous and are easy to spot (e.g. Ted Bundy). They act in severe, harmful and often...
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...The Mind of a Psychopath Research on Psychopathy Disorder Randall Parker Jr St. Johns River State College When beginning my research on Psychopaths I believed that I would find an abundance of information and research on psychopaths and their behavior; however, after following my research I seen that Psychopaths are one of the most under studied disorders in society. Have you ever taken the time to really ask yourself what types of people really surround you in everyday society? Most people in society are fairly normal and then there are those that do not live amongst the social norms, they tend to break all barriers for what we would consider moral and just. People dealing with the disorder are display a lack of remorse or guilt associated...
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...about a monster? Of course it must be scary looking creature. We tend to realize whether it is a monster usually by appearance, following by personality. For now, we are talking about personality that can be categorized as a monster, psychopath. In ancient Greek, pathology means experience or suffering that occurs in medical environment. “Pathology” is a medical thriller movie directed by Marc Scholermann in 2008. Teddy Grey, who graduated from Harvard University, and decided to join the most prestigious pathology programs for his career in Metropolitan University Medical Centre. Being a genius, Teddy piqued the psychopathic group of interns’ attention and soon enough, the group’s leader, Jake Gallo, decided to appoint Teddy as a rival. The rivalry is not to compete about grades but some kind of a vile game which one...
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...If there’s one thing helpful to learn from psychology it’s the dangerous characteristics of these social predators, so that we can recognize them more easily and avoid them when possible. Unfortunately, their personality disorder often passes unnoticed until they commit a horrific crime. Some psychopaths would seem crazy to a normal person even from miles away, But most psychopaths move among us undetected. Brain scans found a critical connection between two regions of the brain, which controls behavior and aggression, is different in psychopaths which could explain their aggressive behavior. A psychopath is a person who has the tendency of manipulating people and using violence in addition to intimidation to gain control over others so as...
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...Mad Man A psychopath, according to Kent A. Kiehl, Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience, and Morris B. Hoffman, District Judge and research fellow for Gruter Institute for Law and Behavioral Research, is a person who possesses the qualities of “lack of empathy, guilt and remorse… and impulsivity,” (Kiehl and Hoffman 1). While it can be common for a psychopath to hide these qualities from outsiders, Edward Pierce, the mastermind behind the Great Train Robbery, exhibits these qualities excessively throughout the novel The Great Train Robbery. It is reportedly unknown what the motive behind the Great Train Robbery truly is, yet it can be argued that Edward Pierce committed this outrageous crime because of the fact that he is a psychopath. Since Pierce has a lack of empathy, guilt, and remorse and acts impulsively, it can be proven that he is a psychopath, and, therefore, shows that Pierce executed this robbery because he is a psychopath....
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...For my argument book, I chose The Psychopath Test by Jon Ronson, and much unlike many of the other blog posts so far, I enjoyed it. The book is sort of like a diary that Ronson writes in as he learns more about psychopaths and how they are studied. He gets his information from multiple different sources; some chapters are about the extremely anti-psychology scientologists, and some are about psychologists who have spent their whole life studying psychopaths and how to identify them. Ronson writes the book in such a way that you feel as if you are right beside him, interviewing and exploring together. In this book and a couple of others of his that I have read, there are interesting people with interesting stories. There is one story that I...
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