Reply #9: Robert Hare is considered the worlds leading expert on psychopathy

[Larry Ogg]

He is also the one who developed the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R), performed brain cat-scans on psychopaths, and authored and coauthored “Without Conscience” and “Snakes in Suits”. Both books are very important, they are written for the layperson, which makes them easy to understand, which means you don’t need collage degree to understand psychopathology.

Robert Hare is adamant about, only highly trained and experienced psychologist being the ones who administer the PCL-R on suspected psychopaths, because psychopaths can easily fool the experts, in fact they make a game out of it. In addition, close examination of the individual’s history is part of determining whether someone is a psychopath or not.

But all this doesn’t mean that the layperson can’t see the warning signs, once they know the basics of what to look for.

I learned from reading several books...
Conscience is a variable between two extremes, whereas the neurotic is the exact opposite of the character disordered. Neurotic means too much conscience, and character disordered means too little or no conscience, and somewhere between the two extremes is a continuum where the majority of individuals are. The rule is that if a person is making their self miserable they are probably neurotic, whereas if their making everyone else miserable they are probably character disordered. And because every human is mostly one or the other it’s not difficult to make that distinction.

Extreme neurotics harbor guilt and lack the healthy aggression and confidence needed to fulfill their needs. Whereas the extreme character disordered has no guilt when it come to fulfilling their pathological greed, they are pathological liars and have an abundance of unjustifiable confidence, and they can be extremely aggressive, covertly as well as overtly when it come to getting whatever it is that they want.

Sigmund Freud postulated that civilization is the cause of neurosis. But there are other points of view that say, it is the willingness of most people to restrain their sexual and aggressive urges that made civilization possible. It is also believed that the moderate neurotic is the backbone of society.

My take on it is that liberals are mostly neurotic which makes them less aggressive at getting what they want, whereas conservatives are mostly character disordered which makes them much more aggressive and even deadly when it comes to getting what they want.

The point is that the layperson doesn’t need to know if a someone is extremely character disordered such as the psychopath. Fact is, most normal people are moderately neurotic, and there are a lot of easy to read tell tail signs that show if a person is mostly character disordered or not. You don't need a degree to see the obvious, but you do need to know what to look for.

This post is getting kind of long and I have to go, so I’ll cut it short by saying, Google “cluster a b c personality disorders” for further insight. And if anyone is interested I can recommend some books.