PonerologyNews.com

From Tiger Woods to Lance Armstrong, we’ve seen numerous examples in recent years of more or less pathological behavior from those in the sports world. Simply displaying unsavory behavior doesn’t mean someone has a condition as fundamental as a personality disorder or psychopathy. But these cases have at least raised questions about the culture of professional sports and the types of characters that sometimes flourish within it.

Enter David James, a British professional soccer goalkeeper.

James, in a column entitled “Psychopaths haunt the Beautiful Game – and I may be one of them” published in The Guardian, writes about these very questions from his perspective.

James says he has been reading a lot about psychopaths lately. Many of us have, which is a reflection of the growing awareness about this and other related conditions – fostered by a recent proliferation of books, films, articles and other works on the subject – that this site exists to help document. And when people first start learning about the subject, it often provokes an epiphany and leads them to start considering and noticing its influence within their life sphere.

Naturally, James began to consider his own arena – that of professional soccer. And, in doing so, he was struck by how many of the traits of psychopaths are common among his colleagues. In his column, he especially raises the issue of how professional sports, despite often involving teams, has become very much focused on glorifying individual participants.

He also looks at: (more…)

In my in-depth piece about ponerology, I devoted a great deal of real estate, including, for instance, this section, to explaining how any ideology or religion – even one whose actual teachings would seem antithetical to “evil” – can be hi-jacked by pathological people who then use it to cloak their malicious activity. This is a very important point to understand. Pathological people often draw sympathy and support from others by espousing admirable sounding ideals, even while flouting those very ideals with their behavior.

A new study, described in the Vancouver Sun, touches on this interplay between ideology/religion (in this case, specifically religion) and harmful activity.

The study, led by Volkan Topalli, a criminal justice professor at Georgia State University, was published in an article entitled “With God on My Side: The Paradoxical Relationship Between Religious Belief and Criminality Among Hardcore Street Offenders” in the journal Theoretical Criminology. (more…)

For years, I’ve lamented the dearth of television spots educating the public about the nature and impact of conscience- and empathy-reducing conditions, such as the Cluster B personality disorders (Narcissistic Personality Disorder, Borderline Personality Disorder, Histrionic Personality Disorder and Antisocial Personality Disorder) and psychopathy.

I frequently see spots focusing on other mental health conditions, such as depression and bipolar disorder. This is partly because these conditions are prime treatment targets for drug companies, who then have an incentive to run advertisements about them. Perhaps it is also partly because awareness about these conditions poses less of a threat to fundamental cultural beliefs and, thus, they are less controversial to discuss on television.

And of course you can barely turn on the television at all without seeing spots focused on lifestyle issues of all kinds ranging from dry skin to erectile dysfunction.

And yet, the conditions that may affect human relations at the deepest level of all – that may even shape whether our species (and many others) can sustainably survive on this planet – are barely mentioned at all.

This background explains why I was so glad to come across this “Healthy Living” news segment from Denise Dador of Los Angeles’ KABC-TV called “Are you dealing with an ‘almost-psychopath’? Are you one?” (more…)

One of the most pressing and controversial questions in ponerology is this:

Are there any biological markers by which we can identify people likely to harm others?

For example, as Dylan Stableford of Yahoo News puts it:

Can you spot evil in an X-ray?

Stableford’s article, entitled “‘Dark Patch’ Visible in Brain Scans of Killers and Rapists, Neurologist Claims,” tells of University of Bremen neurologist Dr. Gerhard Roth’s claim that, indeed, we can.

In fact, Roth claims to have identified “the region of the brain where evil is formed and where it lurks.” (more…)

Last night, a friend of mine read over the blog post that introduces the series I wrote on a number of topics centered around ponerology. Since that post is rather long, it gave us some time to chat as she read and we were discussing why ponerology is such an important subject. I had just explained to her how pivotal the issue of those with reduced levels of conscience and empathy attaining positions of power is when, just to check the news, I surfed over to Yahoo.com.

I found it remarkably coincidental that, at that very point in our discussion, Yahoo’s homepage happened to be featuring the story highlighted in the image below.

This is not the first time a story of this kind has been prominently featured in the news in recent years. In fact, the frequency with which it seems to be happening has added some validation to my sense of how crucial a topic this is and helped confirm my suspicion that my own dedication of time and energy to learning and writing about it is part of a growing awareness about it in the world as a whole. Each time I witnessed the release of another article or news story or book representing that growing awareness, my desire to document this dynamic and catalog these examples grew. (more…)