Was Ayn Rand a psychopath?

Post Reply New Topic

Thomas Edison, Lang, Jobs and co became wealthy BECAUSE of their tangible skills. The operative term here is 'seldomly'.

I am referring to the sort who 'worked the system' to their advantage, or 'old money' who were simply born into privelege without any knowledge of science, engineering, arts or academia.

Then why didn't you say so?

Yes. There are too many "suits" who occupy prominent positions in industry and finance and know very little of the technical details of how their companies run. There is dialectic at work. After an innovator founds and successful firm he often gets impatient with the business humdrum and sells out to people more interested in running the company for profit, rather than for fun and excitement.

So the "suits" take over and the company is run is a risk aversive pedestrian fashion with most attention on the bottom line and the quarterly profit and balance sheet. It is sad, but that is what often happens.

ruveyn

The point is, in the case of Rand, I dont think she was able to understand the difference between the 'suits' and the genuinely gifted.

This is where objectivism fails, and technocracy trumps.

I just have my doubts that the people in the know actually can calculate the effects of a assassination/Day trader on a political/economic system.

So I remain smugly agnostic.

How do you rate on the Cooke criteria of sociopathy?

And only *after* making another rant I noticed that you were not asking me to evaluate the Cooke criteria... You were asking for my *score* on the Cooke criteria. I include the rant below...

Couldn't find an online test on Cooke's scale, but did find one on the PCL-R, though. I scored 2 out of 40 (both points were for lack of empathy).

As it takes a score of 30 (sometimes 25) to get the diagnosis "psychopath", I seriously need to work on my raping, baby-eating, jaywalking and mass murdering skills...



Honestly, I fail to see much difference between the Hare and Cooke criteria (although they most certainly do... they even had to settle things in court).

Both rely on an inductive approach: We collect data, run some statistical factor analysis and identify "dimensions" within the data set. This is of course not bad science, but its inductive, not deductive.

In the Handbook of Psychopathy, chapter 28, Grant T. Harris and Marnie E. Rice instead provide an evolutionary theoretical perspective which I consider promising. (See Christoper J. Patrick (ed.) Handbook of Psychopathy, 2006: 563-565).

What if there is nothing *wrong* with psychopaths (once again, I prefer this term)? What if it is a frequency-dependent evolutionary adaptive strategy instead? Ooh, and they quote Dawkins!

This would explain why psychopaths respond so poorly to treatment... Perhaps there is nothing to treat...

My guess is that this "evolutionary cheater" approach would be a more fruitful approach than to have two psychology professors duke it out endlessly on who is the better statistician [Snide Remark: A little self-reflection would be in its place here, Master...] It would also make more sense from an etiological perspective; if psychopathy is highly inherited (which the existing twin-study research results suggests) we need to approach the study of psychopathy from a biological perspective. Interestingly, substituting "psychopathy" with "autism" in this thread yields similar recommendations...

Edison,Gates, Wozniack, Jobs are the exception and not the norm. The best scientists and engineers are not the wealthiest! And many of the best engineers are employees rather than employers.


thomas81: What makes people successful in business/allows them to go from rags to riches is NOT being born into privilege, but being with privilege. Business is SOCIAL. There is no getting around that. And the richest most influential businessmen in the world almost always have extremely good social skills. I cannot possible see how someone could get elected president of the United States without having them. So in essence, a free society with free markets rewards the socially adept.

Dawkins is fine as a biologist (except for his seemingly faith driven disbelief in path dependency.* ) it is just when he puts on his social theorist hat that he is out of his depth.

* understand it is nuanced and he has backed down a bit.

The Sociopath as a cheater evolutionary strategy work well in my mind.
analogous to the unflanged males in Pongo.

I reject the term psychopath because it implies a person has zero redeeming qualities. I think you could find good and bad in literally anybody, what varies is the percentage. Ted Bundy might have been only 0.5% good, same with Hitler (he loved dogs and his mom!), my grandma on the other hand was probably at least 98% good.

As far as Ayn Rand? Yes, I think she was a very selfish person and the legacy of her philosophy has been profoundly negative. I'd compare her to Edward Bernays.

Her interest in that murderer was a little odd. The guy kidnapped a girl, was paid ransom, and then sent her body parts home. She thought some part of him was Nietzsche's ubermenchen and she admired him. Just made up his own path.

there is no objective criterion for psychopathy, there is antisocial disorders that are used and by laymen called psychopaths, but the actual diagnosis doesnt exist in the dsm, same with sociopathy.

the word sociopath adn psychopath are emotionally charged buzzwords and nothing more, they are used to incite fear and provide justification for extreme punishment.
you will find people testing for psychopathy proper in the criminal justice system, no one told them that neither the DSM or the european version has ever had anything called either psychopathy or sociopathy.

if you mean tyhe actualæ anti social disorders then use their names, if you mean the layman and largely non verified classical pyschopath proper then you first have to actually find out what it is.

There is substantial scientific evidence supporting that psychopathy is in fact real. The PCL-R uses a threshold, however (a score of 30 out of 40), so it does not mean that people with some psychopathic traits are wholly evil. You actually have to be a serious ass hole to score even 25 on the scale, so the term only captures the worst of the worst.

Once again, I can highly recommend the impressive "Handbook of Psychopathy". I tried to count the actual authors cited in alphabetical order, but after having reached more than 400 when being only halfway through the letter "C", I gave up.



My concern with Ayn Rand's philosophy is that Objectivism conflates "is" and "ought" into a single philosophical construct. Clearly, she is evil incarnate.

Since you are a fellow citizen of Denmark I extend the courtesy of not invoking my full repertoire of chiding rebuttals .

Instead, I will simply suggest that you buy and/or read the "Handbook of Psychopathy" (seriously, it is an awesome book). It might change your perspective on the relative strengths of Psychopathy and Antisocial Personality Disorder as diagnostic categories. Bear in mind, by the way, that psychologists in the US (unlike in Denmark) are allowed to diagnose patients... The DSM and the ICD aren't the only games in town. And not necessarily the best games, either...

all good points, i think you misunderstood my point however.

my point is not to say that there doesnt exist a set of symptoms we might as well call psychopathy, (antisocial personality disorder and related disorders), but that there is a very good reason for us to use the actual terms for these disorders and not what in the modern day and age is a blanket statement and a word that carries extreme emotional taboo in the eyes of the "common man".

also if the evidence for psychopathy proper really was that good then why isnt it used in any of the international standards i know of?

if the evidence is that good it wouldnt excactly be hard to include them, much has been included in the DSM and the european equivelant that later was found to be absolute bull so the burden of evidence does seem rather high for psychopathy.

The reason why the PCL-R is not included in the DSM or the ICD is because it is made by psychologists, not psychiatrists. Welcome to the world of inter-profession rivalry.

Seriously, though, psychopathy is a much more scientific category than APD. The latter is mostly useless from the perspective of etiology.

Lack of altruism, sympathy, empathy and kindness is not a psychosis. It is just good sense.

Let the NTs wallow in their emotional codswallop.

ruveyn

From what I had read, the guy had dismembered the girl, then wired her back together so he could convince the father she was still alive when he traded her for a ransom payment.
Anyone who admires such a monster has serious problems.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer