Introduction to the psychopathic life

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The problem boils down to the concept of different. No doubt some ingenious mental concepts are so far from the beaten path that they appear insane and only after evaluating new paradigms do they not only make sense but can revolutionize all basic thinking in an area. But some psychiatric disorders are the result of major neurological dysfunctions which have no new or potentially useful point of view but are mere disabilities. To generalize both conditions as the same thing can be a major mistake.

Well, that's why I put sane in quotes. The ability to think beyond how most people think is technically insane in the sense of sanity being a consensus of the majority but isn't so much a disability until you get into the mental effects that end up being caused by such isolation as being beyond popular sanity creates. There's obviously also dysfunction that's merely that: dysfunction...but the hard part, sometimes, is drawing the line between where the dysfunction is merely neurological and where the dysfunction is from the environment/social interactions.

Sanity, for most, is a subjective idea that is more determined by popular opinion/consensus. Which is both incorrect and dangerous.

The triple-edged sword topic

As far as I understand the meaning of the word, psychopathy brings to mind the amoral manipulative approach of a duping used car seller at best, and a serial murdering Ted Bundy/Ed Gein at worst.

I suppose anyone on the Psychopathic Spectrum could be called creative, in the broad sense of the word. I read the article via the link by Sand, though Van Gogh and Plath hardly fit the image painted by the OP.

Other than the extreme logical stretch of a hypothesis pursued by Vana, I see no redeeming qualities of a diagnosed psychopath, other than serving as a warning to the population. Dr. Robert Hare did just that, among others, via a checklist.

Still psychopathetic.

James Bond is a Psychopath

This is a very interesting article
The Unburdened Mind

No burd in this hand topic

Very interesting. another link in the article I chose to read was The Hidden Suffering of the Psychopath. I am not kidding.

The psychiatric community continues to be hornswaggled by these creeps.

It would be ludicrous if the stakes were not so high.

I'm wondering if vana means a 'psychotic' person

Psychosis is the pre-condition of psychopathy.

'Where do I go from here?'

Emotion is memory. Emotion is a choice, not something that happens to me.


Both of these articles are not helpful. The Hidden Suffering asked the same question as Titus and I: is a psychopath psychotic. No, a psychopath is not psychotic; but, a psychosis must precede psychopathy; it is the starting point.

Do you know any psychopaths? Could anything be more confabulated and made up that ASPD?

But people are free to use words anyway they like; and who doesn't enjoy fairy-tales of unicorns? The problem is, psychology aims to identify any difference, arrest it, and normalize it. That is what psychology is and does: it is a normalizing machine (a very large and complicated machine that uses not only people as parts, but many of its parts are even imaginary). Psychology normalizes personal values when it requires that someone should feel such-and-such way about something, or feel anything at all. Psychopathy-slander can be called one of the violations against free-though: the psychopath fits in, doesn't do anything amiss at all, goes undetected -- but isn't thinking like everyone else, and isn't feeling how everyone else does. Why would a person feel guilty about doing something they completely believe is right? Psychopathy has become a tool of political mind-control.

The psychopath is more-or-less the master in Hegel or Nietzsche's master-slave dialectic.


Obviously any Artist will be a psychopath since good Art comes from and instigates psychosis, it destroys neuroses. Bad art reinforces neuroticism.

My experience is psychosis is far too high a price for what you suggest. It's all well and good for Foucault et al to talk of how the psychotic experience can be deeply subversive but they fail to account for how terrifying and destructive an experience it can be for the person in the state of psychosis - I know I've been there twice. I don't remember bringing any dictators down or freeing political prisoners when I was waking up after 30 minutes sleep in a week screaming at the walls.

I find temporary ego death to be better.

Why haven't more people had the sense to critcize this post's painfully obvious equivocation?

Its just so psycopathic to use such words so ambiguously!

a song for Vana featuring a chorus about 'all the harmless sociopaths' so you know you're not alone

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKkffzm6L7o[/youtube]

I think the most psychotic thing in this thread is the reaction to the idea. 'Oh my *gasps* someone using a word in a way I've never seen it used before, call the witchfinder general! In fact no make it the SWAT team this is serious!'

The psychopath well? traveled topic

As long as psychopaths continue to wreak life threatening, financial and/or emotional havoc on their victims, I will continue to feel about them as I feel about Nigerian internet scammers, and skunks in the forest: to be avoided at all costs.

As I wrote in my first post in this thread: Next, please.

Um... the reaction to the misuse of the term is quite understandable.

The OP started with an argument that "psycopathic personality disorder" isn't that bad by redefining the term to mean something else other than how it is psychiatrically defined. So they're passing off a fallacious argument - and fallacious arguments deserve to be identified and condemned.

The fact that so many have argued about this without realizing how - ultimately - invalid the whole enterprise is, is what I find "psychotic".

I would imagine that interpreting this as a literal interpretation of psychology would actually be less charitable than interpreting it as a romantic assertion of counter-culture values by taking the label of something disliked by the mainstream. Once you start looking at the matter from the second position, I would imagine that some of the behavior in this thread would make more sense. (I could be wrong)

I think this thread is too deep into the grey area between metaphorical and literal definition. The OP makes it pretty explicit she's using the Psychiatrical definition of psycopathic personality disorder and trying to "romanticize" it. If she wanted to "romanticize" a countercultural movement there are much better ways to do so than murdering psychiatrical language.