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The shrink from planet zob, psychiatry for a mad world, an extract from the book.
Outlook on Psychopathy Fighting psychopathy in oneself is not easy.
In fact, it is almost certainly the hardest thing we ever have to do, and that is borne
out by the often futile efforts of the therapists who may try to heal psychopathy in certain
individuals.
Again, we must avoid the trap of fitting the universe into labelled boxes: most genetic
psychopaths are not all bad. The old adage there is good and bad in everyone is a cliché
probably because it is true. Someone who neglects to hold a door open one day may donate
to charity the next. There is no black and white.
We have broken down the clearly defined line between ‘us’ and the psychopaths, and
rightly so since it is a part of our intrinsic genetic make-up. To varying degrees we are
all psychopaths, but that risks watering down the meaning somewhat. We can’t simply
shrug our shoulders and say, “Oh well, that’s okay then, if we’re all psychopaths
we should accept it,” because it isn’t okay. There are mildly psychopathic acts
and severely psychopathic acts, but they are all wrong and we can’t accept any of them.
It makes no logical sense to accept the lesser acts because they are not so bad. We
wouldn’t say “Well *** is a terrible thing, therefore we should allow *** to carry
on – it’s not so bad.” So we should challenge people who drop litter even though
we also need to stop clinical psychopaths from committing ***.
Psychopathy, genetically powered, is the secret pandemic. It creates most mental illnesses,
probably all crime and a whole lot more suffering as we will see. As Dr Robert Hare put it,
“[psychopathy] is responsible for more social distress and disruption than all of the other
psychiatric disorders combined.”9 Clinical psychologist Dr Martha Stout summed the problem
up well: “dealing openly and directly with the facts about [psychopathy] is a matter
of urgency for us all.”10