Was Ayn Rand a psychopath?

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In all fairness, you can admire certain qualities in a person without admiring that person as a whole. It's possible to admire Ted Bundy for his charm yet be disgusted by how he utilized that charm.

On the note of Dr. Robert Hare and the PLCR I find the causality of it problematic in that Hare described a series of traits which he deemed to be psychopathic, then went out looking for those traits, largely within the prison population. Of course, Hare based some of his traits on Harvey Cleckley's work, quite well detailed in "The Mask of Sanity" so to disregard his work as a whole is going a bit far.

The whole issue with the label of "anti-social personality disorder", "Psychopathy" and "Sociopathy" is the "core" traits. I.E. what are the core traits that make up the personality disorder and what manifest due to the core traits instead of being traits of the disorder itself.

No, no, I have no problem despising everything about Ted Bundy - charm and all.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

Some of the least altruistic and least selfless people I know are extremely NT.

If anything, in my experience the reverse tends to be the case.

You can't pin it as neurological thing, cause it ain't.

Last edited by thomas81 on 06 Oct 2012, 6:24 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Just read the "Handbook of Psychopathy". There is nothing in this thread which is not dealt with in that book...

I bet it doesnt try to pin altruism (or lack of) on being autistic or NT.

The concept of altruism is adequately described here:
http://www.cdnresearch.net/pubs/others/ ... _recip.pdf

Interesting. Do you think this is a good or a bad thing?

tldr

can you just nutshell it?

No. (I can, but I will not)

If you are only going to read one scientific article in your entire life, this is the one to read...

And did you just use "tldr" when speaking about Robert Trivers?

As Bundy - and other monsters like him - use charm as a way of luring their victims in for the kill, I think his charm was a bad thing. But his charm was nothing but a superficial mask he wore, to cover the abyss inside.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

I don't consider psychology a 'hard' science in the way physics is so I remain skeptical. I think the idea of a psychopath is popular in our culture and even academics are not immune to its influence. Believing a person is pure evil is just as illogical as believing a person is totally good.

The idealist in me thinks maybe Ayn Rand just felt like somebody needed to admire him. I often feel this way about criminals, I feel like I need to be the person in the crowd that is not throwing a stone. The cynic in me thinks she actually empathized with his behaviour.

Oh, I'll be the first to admit, it's easy to admire old west Robin Hood desperadoes like Butch Cassidy and the Wild Bunch, or even gunmen like Harry Tracy or Billy the Kid. But the guy who Rand idolized was just a sick bastard.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

Yes, there is a big difference between refusing to throw a stone, and idolizing.

I mostly agree, but that does not allow one to a priori disregard work within a specific discipline. I am highly sceptical about the scientific content of both psychology and psychiatry (especially in continental Europe, and definitely in France). But my conclusions are based on peer-reviewed scientific articles, some of which are from top tier journals (Science, Nature, PNAS etc.), and they are not just restricted to psychology and psychiatry, but also neurology and biology. And I am strong believer of the unity in science (everything is physics, even collecting stamps). A lot of psychologists (but most certainly not all of them) are not, and that is the crux of the problem.

The old purity argument still applies:

http://xkcd.com/435/

There is of course no way of arriving at a scientific concept of "evil", as this is a value judgement. But a lot of individuals who are considered by society to be evil tend to display similar traits (callous and impulsive), and the current research suggests that these traits have a significant genetic component.

We can discuss whether to call these people evil, psychopaths, ne'er-do-wells, monsters, pop musicians etc., but this does not change the fact that these personality traits exist.


I want to believe you, I really do. But when a core concept of psychopathy is a complete lack of moral emotions, then perhaps "pure evil" is not an entirely unjustified label... The rest of us are just plain and simple ass holes.

Consider this, if morals and your conscience is just an animal instinct, you would be able to ignore it much like its possible to ignore being hungry or wanting to bash someone's face in with a Texas Instruments BA II Plus Financial Calculator.

There is also the question of, exactly what kind of a moral emotion are we talking about, deontological or consequencialist ethics?

Deontological, I'll agree it becomes somewhat of an issue, however it would entirely depend upon which rules one bases what is a moral or immoral act. According to Kant, and the categorical imperative, in the naturalist formulation "So act as if your maxims should serve at the same time as the universal law (of all rational beings)", meaning that we should so act that we may think of ourselves as "a member in the universal realm of ends" However, let's say that one of my maxims is that stupid people should be chlorinated out of our gene pool, that would indicate that I would want all people who encounter a stupid person to drown them in chlorine. So, I'm moral!

If we are speaking in terms of consequentialism is somewhat solves itself, because its in essence based on the morality of actions being judged based upon their consequences. So, to use the same scenario as above, if I think stupid people will be the cause of the demise of the human race, it follows that killing them off would be a "good" act. There is also a matter of to whom the consequences need to be "good". Vic Mackey from "The Shield" is an amoral consequencialist, views acts as justifiable and "right" based on the consequences they have for the people he cares for.

In both cases, it would be entirely possible for a psychopath to be moral. However, that is of course depended on whether one views the world as having universal morality in a large majority of human beings on which one can base a standard of rigorous morals that the psychopath could be judged to be in violation of, or having a lack of.

*P.S* I love that cartoon, but I always wondered where economists would be placed, since its arguably a mix of psychology and mathematics.