I’ve long lamented the fact that the public is not nearly aware enough about empathy-reducing conditions such as psychopathy, Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) and Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). While a growing proportion of people have at least heard of these disorders – as well as related ones like sociopathy and antisocial personality disorder – they still too often remain unclear about precisely what they are and how they differ from each other. And in so many cases where these disorders should be considered as factors, they aren’t even mentioned in media reports or public discussions.
One of the reasons this website was started is to document the evidence that this situation may be changing for the better. Awareness about these conditions is starting to spread and people are even starting to talk about them in cases where they should be rightfully suspected.
Yesterday, the bombings at the Boston Marathon took place, killing a few and injuring many more. In the wake of this event, there has been an outpouring of thoughts and feelings online.
One response that has gotten a lot of attention is the one posted on Facebook by comedian and actor Patton Oswalt.
I highly doubt that Oswalt has ever heard of the term ponerology. But his response, more than many others, especially from celebrities, actually comes close to placing the event in a ponerologic context.
So first I want to point out the particular statements that reflect a somewhat-ponerologic perspective in his writing. (more…)
In the past few years, the media has seemed to feature increased coverage regarding the influence of psychopathy and sociopathy. This website was started both because this increased media coverage helped validate the importance of the issue and because there was a need for those media stories on the issue to be more widely promoted. The increased coverage is represented throughout this site, including in our online news and television news sections.
Still, I don’t know what it says about the media that the source providing the most frequent and insightful coverage about psychopathy and sociopathy may be a satirical newspaper, The Onion.
Recently, I’ve seen several examples of The Onion’s use of humor to shine a light on this still too-often-overlooked topic. (more…)
It’s always interesting and somewhat validating to discover that ideas that you’ve only recently recognized as important were recognized as important by others a while ago. It’s especially interesting and validating to discover that they were recognized as important by someone quite insightful. I have made a few such discoveries regarding ponerology in the past several years. And last week I made another one when I came across a ten year-old interview.
The interview is of the famed and beloved late iconoclastic author and social critic Kurt Vonnegut, who skewered many aspects of our society in classics like Slaughterhouse-Five and somewhat lesser known, but also brilliant, works like Player Piano. It was originally published in the January 27, 2003 issue of In These Times, amidst an atmosphere rife with apprehension about the imminent United States invasion of Iraq.
I was quite struck by these lines of Vonnegut’s from the interview: (more…)
Ponerology is defined as the scientific study of that which is called “evil.” The reason that we explicitly specify “scientific” is to distinguish it from other approaches to considering evil, such as:
The philosophical approach – Considering evil abstractly, rather than in its real-world implications
The artistic approach – Considering evil through literature, painting, poetry and so on
The theological approach – Considering evil as potentially emanating from the supernatural realm
This last approach, the theological one, is extremely commonly employed in our present world. It may actually remain the most common approach to evil. And it was on display last week during a segment of The O’Reilly Factor. (more…)
Last summer, while searching the web for ponerology-related information and people, I came across a website discussing a movie called I Am Fishead – or, cleverly, I Am <Fishead(.
It said the film is about corporate corruption and the role that psychopathy may have played in it.
The title, supposedly, refers to a Chinese saying that a “fish stinks from the head,” implying that this movie might be an exploration of how the dysfunction of our hierarchical society originates from those at the top of the pyramid.
Well, of course, I was very intrigued as I have not only dedicated a great deal of time and energy to learning about this topic, but specifically to advocating for more – and more forms of – education of the public about it.
My interest grew even stronger since I related to the background of co-director/co-producer of the film, Misha Votruba, a former psychiatrist who moved on from that career to more creative endeavors, eventually circling back to focus on a psychiatric topic – psychopathy – from a more activist perspective as a filmmaker.
The other co-director/co-producer of I Am Fishead is Vaclav Dejcmar, an economist and businessman with a lot of experience in investing and the financial markets. This background makes him an ideal complement to Misha Votruba in making this film that includes a focus on the overlap of psychiatry and our economic systems.
I finally got around to watching the film and I have quite a bit to say about it. This piece is going to get quite into depth about the film so if you’d prefer to see it first before knowing too much about what happens, you might want to watch it (I’ve embedded it below) and then continue reading this afterwards. If you don’t plan to watch it or don’t mind going into it knowing a lot of what happens, then feel free to read on.
The titles of Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3 in the sections immediately below are those from the actual film, but names given to other segments in this synopsis/review are my own. (more…)
Historically, the images of psychopaths in the public consciousness have tended to focus on sensationalized serial killers, whether fictional like Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs and Patrick Bateman in American Psycho or real like Ted Bundy.
Increasingly, people are recognizing the exponentially greater damage that can be done when “snakes in suits” exert their influence over powerful institutions as compared to when lone individuals commit gruesome, but isolated, acts. In the latter case, several people and families may be tragically affected. In the former, entire economies affecting millions, if not billions of people can be put at risk.
In the wake of this increased awareness, the Journal of Forensic Psychology Practice features a two part review by Angela Dawn Pardue, MS and Matthew B. Robinson, Ph.D. of Appalachian State University and Bruce A. Arrigo, Ph.D. of University of North Carolina entitled “Psychopathy and Corporate Crime: A Preliminary Examination.”
Last week, The Huffington Postfeatured someone whose name should always be in the mix when discussing ponerology: Philip Zimbardo, Ph.D., a man who has spent much of his life investigating the science of what makes people act in ways we might deem “good” vs. “evil.”
In our recent piece about Dr. James Fallon, we discussed the three ingredients that Fallon believes are required for the creation of a psychopathic killer.
These included:
Certain structural and functional characteristics of the brain
Certain variants of particular genes
An environment that triggers the expression of these biological predispositions
While psychopathic killers can cause great harm to a certain number of people, they are relatively rare. The greater danger, from the perspective of society at large, is the emergence of “evil” on a broader scale within systems. And, as Andrew M. Lobaczewski makes clear in Political Ponerology, for that to happen, not only must people with disorders other than psychopathy be drawn into harmful activities, but so must some percentage of biologically healthy, normal people.
Zimbardo’s work has primarily focused on investigating how this latter event occurs – how everyday, average people can end up participating in destructive events.
Zimbardo has been a psychology professor at Stanford University for over forty years. He is best known for leading the team that conducted what has come to be known as the Stanford prison experiment back in 1971. (more…)
In my original writings about ponerology, I briefly mentioned its implications for our educational systems. In addition to asserting the importance of preventing pathological people from exerting undue influence to bias curricula or personnel decisions, I said that we should decide how to include age-appropriate lessons about ponerologic material.
Apparently someone agrees.
Months ago, I was reading an article on CNN.com called “Grants Help Abused Women Start Over” by Danielle Berger. The article tells the story of Johanna Crawford, who runs a nonprofit called Web of Benefit that provides “Self-Sufficiency Grants” averaging $500 to female domestic violence survivors in Boston and Chicago to help them with the bare necessities of re-starting their lives. The “web” in the name emerges from a novel part of the program whereby, as part of the terms of their grant, recipients must “pay it forward” by performing three good works to help other survivors like themselves.
What caught my attention was a discussion that broke out in the comments section. It centered around whether the signs of abusive relationships should be taught in schools. And in the midst of this, one comment in particular jumped out at me so strongly that I immediately took a screenshot:
When we speak about ponerology and consider, from a scientific perspective, the conditions that underlie acts of commission or omission that some might term “evil,” it’s easy to get caught up in the one that dominates discussion in this area – psychopathy. We might even focus on psychopathy so much that we forget that other conditions and disorders can also be involved in these harmful situations.
In Political Ponerology, Andrew M. Lobaczewski details an entire process, which he calls ponerogenesis, by which “evil” emerges in human systems. While it’s true, in his model, that various kinds of psychopaths play a central role in that process, he also elucidates how others, including those with what he calls characteropathies – which we would refer to as personality disorders – are essential for it to play out to its destructive potential.
But as disproportionate an impact as people with these disorders can have on their surroundings, they still make up too small a proportion of the population by themselves to bring about a system dominated by the pathological. Thus, Lobaczewski details how a certain percentage of non-pathological people must also be coopted to participate in ponerogenesis if such a system, which he calls a pathocracy, is ever to come about.
Every now and then, however, we are reminded that there are still other conditions – beyond psychopathy and the personality disorders – that can play a role in unnecessary harmful events. (more…)
