Psychopaths are everywhere!

Great article here in The New Yorker. I think B.'s new BF is a psychopath (and may be infecting B.). I'll xerox this and take it to B. Hell, there are psychopaths among us who don't commit crimes but succeed in business by their ruthlessness and amorality--just what the winner-take-all, laissez-faire capitalism as embraced by the Radical Right here in the U.S. (including George W. Bush and his money-grubbing cronies) extols.

Cleckley emphasized his subjects’ deceptive, predatory nature, writing that the psychopath is capable of “concealing behind a perfect mimicry of normal emotion, fine intelligence, and social responsibility a grossly disabled and irresponsible personality.” This mimicry allows psychopaths to function, and even thrive, in normal society. Indeed, as Cleckley also argued, the individualistic, winner-take-all aspect of American culture nurtures psychopathy. . . .

The most agreeable vocation for psychopaths, according to Hare, is business. In his second book, “Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths Go to Work,” written with Paul Babiack, Hare flirts with pop psychology [what? He's a real psychologist] when he points out that many traits that may be desirable in a corporate context, such as ruthlessness, lack of social conscience, and single-minded devotion to success, would be considered psychopathic outside of it. . . .

Hare rejects the notion that a distinction ought to be made between a violent psychopath, like Ted Bundy, and a nonviolent one who commits financial crimes. Both, he said, are willing to do whatever it takes. He went on, “Can you say Ted Bundy caused more disaster than the guys at Enron? How many destroyed lives and suicides followed as a result of so many people losing their savings?” . . .

And yes, it is possible to become "infected" by someone else's psychopathy.

During his years of teaching at U.B.C., Hare confided to me, he discovered that “it is possible for people who study psychopaths to end up becoming the victims of what you are looking for.” He described how, early in his career, one of his students became sexually involved with an inmate. Prison authorities caught the student having sex with the inmate in his cell. When confronted by Hare, the student “looked me right in the eye and said, ‘I didn’t do it,’ ” he recalled. The student denied everything so convincingly that Hare began to doubt what he knew to be true.

(I saw this happen with B.)