Show Me The Numbers

When I tell people I research people on the psychopath checklist, they are frequently taken aback.  Why spend my time looking at such a small and insignificant part of the population they wonder.  This misunderstanding comes from commonly held myths about psychopaths.  People assume that all psychopaths are drooling axe murders as represented in slasher films.  If we hold this view, it would appear that for there are more films about axe murdering psychopaths then exist in real life.  A small group indeed.

However, axe murders are only tiny fraction of the psychopaths who live among us.  It should also be remembered that just because someone is an axe murder, it doesn't follow that they are a psychopath.  It is far more likely that they suffer from severe mental illness, such as schizophrenia, where they are not in control of their actions and feel compelled to perform horrible acts.  Given the right circumstances non-psychopaths will also commit grisly crimes, although in that case the circumstances usually involve a psychopath somewhere behind the scene.

So what is the scope? Estimates of the number of true psychopaths in the population have been given between one to four percent of the population.  Hare started out with an estimate of three percent and later reduced it to one percent.  Why the drop?  Probably it was done as the extent of the subthreshold group, that display enough traits on the checklist to be a problem, became more recognized.  The estimate for that group is ten percent of the population, which is in addition to the true psychopaths.  These people do a lot of harm even if they do not cross the threshold.  Still they are responsible for a staggering amount of child abuse, corporate practises that hurt others, living off of others,  psychological abuse, addiction, fraud, and irresponsible behaviour.  

Keep in mind, as well, that the placement of the threshold is subjective; a point placed along a continuous line of behaviour.  Since Hare developed the checklist and the threshold to have a consistent group for various researchers to study, it would make sense that they would be looking at keeping the group they study relatively pure by having more stringent guidelines of who qualifies.  Remember, also, that Hare and Cleckley were working with convicted prisoners and the designation is weighted towards their behaviour.  And, lastly, the designation of psychopath is not one that can be achieved at birth.  Half of the checklist is made up of lifestyle choices and actions taken.  To some degree you have to work to become a psychopath.  Which means that all of the one percent who are true psychopaths started out in the ten percent group that is below the threshold.

In the the US, that one percent represents just over three million individuals, while the additional ten percent is thirty million people in the country.  To put this in perspective that is the entire population of Canada.  

Try this as an exercise.  Start your day tomorrow by counting the people you come across. Within every ten you count is someone on the checklist.  For every hundred you come across there is a psychopath.  Since this group have no problem about hurting people they don't know and cause damage to people at a distance, you should include everyone in the cars going past you, where it can be acted out in road rage, drunken driving, unsafe driving, or abductions.  Count as well those sitting on the bus or walking the street and everyone at your work or school - not just your department or class.

The number is quite large isn't it?  Now over the course of the day most of the people on the checklist will not be doing anything to hurt you; they are just going about their day as you are.  The problems arise when they want something and how they set out to get it.  It could be money, revenge, sexual satisfaction, or, perhaps, your job or partner.  They are all around us and yet most of us do not know hardly anything about how these people react and how to notice the danger signs.

Happy counting.

Post Script:  I think pictures look nice on the blog, but I will not put up endless pictures of well known murders.  So we will have to settle for other unrelated pictures. I will start with images of space taken from the Hubble to put things in perspective.

The Origins of What We Know About Psychopathy

The personality disorder that I research is psychopathy and the group of individuals that fall just below the threshold to be designated a psychopath.  In the beginning, identifying them was a harder task then it should have been and that difficulty is part of this story.  There is a lot of confusion about what psychopaths are, how they became that way, and even what to call them.  (Even more with the latter group that are below the threshold.)  This confusion does not exist because there is no research that empirically gives us a reliable profile of the disorder.  The research exists and the diagnostic tool - the Psychopathy Checklist, which is one of the most reliable diagnostic tools - has been available since 1980 (its one  revision was in 1985).  The checklist was developed, in part, because there was no consistent definition of what a psychopath was.  Each individual researcher, prior to this, could have be using a different set of criteria.  This made it impossible to develop a standardized body of results. 

The checklist was developed by Robert Hare a Canadian who, after getting his masters in psychology in the early sixties, took a job in the B.C. penitentiary.  What he experienced there - with one inmate, Ray, in particular - lead him to his life's work.  We should be grateful that his life has turned out to be long lived instead of possibly ending soon after he left the penitentiary and Ray, who had access to his car being repaired in the prison workshop.  Soon after, Hare's breaks gave out going down a long hill.  The mechanic who looked at the car afterwards found that not only was the break-line cut, but that ball bearings had been put into the carburetor fluid system and the hoses to the radiator had been tampered with. 

It is this personal brush with a psychopath that usually leads to a person deciding to find out more about them.

Robert Hare was building on the work done by Hervey Cleckley, who is considered the pioneer of the field of psychopathy.  In 1941, Cleckley published The Mask of Sanity originally a study of male hospitalized psychopaths.  (Imprisoned psychopaths frequently manipulate authorities to move them to psychiatric wards where they believe that they will receive better treatment and more perks.  They wreck havoc there and can often be bounced back forth between the two institutions.)  He kept revising his work until shortly before his death in 1984, expanding the group he was studying in later revisions.  Over the years both Hare and Cleckley influenced each other.   However, Cleckley's work was based on observation, sometimes using psychoanalytical concepts popular at the time to explain what he saw, whereas Hare and others who came afterwards have a more empirical foundation to what they study.

Psychopaths have existed throughout the ages and they are found in every culture around the world.  They have always been present in a reading of history and folklore.  The systematic exploration of their traits and why they act the way they do, however, has a relatively brief history.  Starting in 1941 with the Mask of Sanity, it took almost forty years to develop a consistent working definition.  From these beginnings a body of research has developed.  The portrait of the psychopath is far from being filled in, but there is enough material for us to be able to confidently identify them and to look at the societal implications that stem from our shared existence with them.  

An Inadvertent Beginning

After I set this blog up and posted the Gusty photo entry, I was left to wonder where to go next.  I am an eclectic thinker and have by accident and design established a life that allows me the time to think, read, and research that which catches my fancy. And I tend to fancy a fair amount of the world around me.  Usually it is the anomalies that catch my attention and gets me to ask why and wonder what is going on behind the surface.  Once on the trail of an idea I try to treat it with respect; allowing it to unfold on its own rhythm; not preordaining the outcome of where we are going; and staying open to the teasing offshoots of enquiry whose pursuit can be immensely rewarding.  While following an idea, I cross several disciplines which both enriches what I am pursuing and adds depth to my understanding of each area I traipse through.  There are many directions that this blog could go if left to document the numerous rocks I turn over in the course of my day to day life.

Over the last decade, however, I have been drawn to try to understand one part of this world in more detail.  I became fascinated in knowing what happens when people are sideswiped by individuals with personality disorders.

I realize that this was not exactly the most mainstream interest.  Or at least I thought that in the beginning when I started to delve into the subject.   In time, I noticed that it is actually an undercurrent to many areas of our lives.  Even though they are not identified, they show up in most movies and quite a few books - the more mainstream the entertainment the more they or their values are there.  You can't get through the news without see several stories where they figure in. They fill our court system.  You can't understand the current economic meltdown without taking them into account.  Nor can you avoid them when looking at Ponzi schemes.  They are a large part of corporate greed and political corruption. They are on reality shows and they are people we talk about.  Because, by definition, they exploit others they gravitate to professions where they can do that: politics, finance, personal development, religion, celebrity, cult leader, crime - among others.  They are the people in our lives who we would like to forget about, but can't.  They are the people in our lives that draw us in and leave us mesmerized and queasy at the same time.  They are the people who hurt us and cause massive financial and emotional hardship.

For a minority of the population, individuals with personality disorders have a huge impact on how we live.

And yet we know almost nothing about them.  To calmly examine their behaviour is a cultural taboo.  The misconceptions about them are rampant.  Yet a growing body of work has developed over the last forty years which allows us to understand them with greater and greater clarity.  It is a body of work that is largely ignored, under reported, and unacknowledged.  The work is fascinating and the implications that derive from it will change your perceptions of what it is to be human.

That is predominately what we will cover in this blog.  Which occasional means that we get to explore a few mysteries like the one about the Gusty photos.  Sometimes to understand what happens, you have to stop thinking how you would behave in a situation and, instead, take on the perspective of someone with a personality disorder (as well as how the people around them would be reacting).

There is a lot of ground to cover.  I hope that you learn more about yourself and the world as we explore it.

Vera

The Gusty Photo - When Was It Taken?

[This is a series of comments I wrote for Palin's Deceptions.  There was a problem and not all of them were posted.  Since each post built on the other, I put them here as one long post.]

I agree with the people who have commented that Trig's birth date should be identified as alleged.  I also think that to keep with one of the objectives of the Palin's Deceptions site, which is to verify the accuracy of the evidence put forward, that the April 13 date for the Gusty photos would also have to be noted as alleged.  There are just too many questions around the photos to confidently be able to say that the pregnant Sarah was photographed on that date.   Their release on August 31, 2008 makes no sense.  Audrey has mentioned that people would have posted pictures of Palin after her nomination was announced, but the circumstances don't fit that explanation.  These pictures, at least the main part of the photos, were taken by people who were sympathetic to Palin - one even was hired by her to a position that required that Sarah could trusted him.    

Earlier release of the pictures would have been enormously helpful to Palin to dispel the rumours.  If they were released on the alleged date they would have been timely and provide a human interest angle of the pregnant governor finishing up the legislative session - definitely news worthy for the news station in question.  The footage and or pictures should have surfaced later in the week when Trig's birth was announced and there was no photo op with Palin and Trig - the very pregnant Palin would have been the closest image they would have.  It would also have linked well to the five week early birth - showing that this baby was ready to come out.  (By the way, I thought that Trig's announced expected birth date was in June, not May 23rd.  Can someone clarify this?)  The pictures would have been helpful after Trig's arrival was announced, when the rumours swelled up again.  By July, Bill McAllister was then Palin's press secretary, a reporter was asking questions about Trig's birth - releasing the pictures would have been a good idea and easily arranged by McAllister, who we know for sure was present three minutes and fourteen seconds after the picture of the pregnant Palin was taken.  Instead they didn't get a public viewing until Palin was linked to the McCain campaign.  

Recently, I have gone back and looked at the Gusty photos and thought about how they fit into this story.  There are problems with the what Palin is wearing, other than the sudden appearance, for the first and only time, of convincing padding indicating that money was spent obtaining a real pregnancy belly.  An investment which was not used later in the week when she flew to Texas.  (Should we assume that Palin was worried about her luggage being searched or  that she was too vain to appear that 'fat' when she was out of state trying to look pretty.   The other possibility is that the pregnancy belly hadn't been purchased at that time because Palin thought she could get away with it.  There is an enormous amount of contempt for the public shown in the slapdash way she padded herself - when she bothered to do it at all.)  What are other problems with how Palin dressed that day which doesn't fit in to the rest of the timeline.

1)  The shoes.  Take a look at them and ask yourself if you ever saw them before or any pair like them.  They are the shoes a pregnant woman would wear, if she was not Sarah Palin.  Throughout Palin's 'pregnancy' with Trig she wore heels when she wore dressy clothes. High ones - which would throw off her sense of balance, if she was actually pregnant.  If you wanted to believably make Palin look pregnant, the heels would have to go.

2)  The lack of Palin's trademark wrinkles.  In her clothes, not her face.  People may refer to her as a clothes horse, but she has only a passing relationship with an iron; the difficulty of getting clothes back and forth to the drycleaner turns out to be part of the break down of her marriage; and, after the election, we discovered that she stuffs clothes she isn't wearing into garbage bags.  All of this is easy to see if you review the pictures of Palin while she was 'pregnant ' and after, before she gets a wardrobe person to look after her clothes and she isn't as slovenly in her presentation.  The clothes in the Gusty pictures are too crisp and well maintained in comparison to these other pictures and these shots are alleged to be taken late in the day, once everyone has gone home, on the last day of the legislative session.  Instead the jacket looks freshly drycleaned and pressed and put on for the pictures.  Why is this the only time in her pregnancy that it look like someone helped her get dressed?

3)  Her hair is too well behaved.  Where is the bumpet or the back-teasing?  Sarah likes extra volume and it is missing here.  And, look again, in what other photo is her hair this neat?  Here it looks conditioned and hangs as a nice mass instead of fly away and tangled as in the other pictures.  Are you telling me that for once her hair behaved - at the end of the day for a quick interview that was so inconsequential it was never aired and for a few casual photos for someone else.  I noticed, as well, that it seems that in that period Palin left her hair down when she was too busy to put it up (or to pad herself) and dressed more casually on those days.  Oh yes, I have been wondering how her fringe bangs - the ones that soften her forehead - suddenly appear half an inch longer than the week before when they were freshly cut and hanging in a straight line well above her eyebrow.

4)  A sudden change in style.  The jacket is the same, but the purple top doesn't appear anywhere else and conveniently and clearly shows the round of the belly.  Throughout this period Palin wore black tops with the jacket. The scarf is suddenly gone as well. 

Now I am not sure when the pictures were taken of Andrea Gusty, and the camera databank isn't clear about that either.  However, the high probability is that the images of Palin, at least her body and hair, that appears in them were not taken on April 13, but some time afterwards when she had someone who could help her get dressed and do her hair.  Palin's behaviour is very consistent and she is not good at details; spending her own money on things she doesn't want - such as an empathy belly and sensible shoes;  putting effort in doing a convincing con; or following the advise of others.  Someone was helping her here and for once she was listening.

If you include the excellent photo analysis that the other Morgan performed on these pictures, it becomes clearer how these pictures probably came into being before they became public.

What do I think this, and the other inconsistencies surrounding these pictures, could possibly point to?

It is my belief that Sarah Palin conned the McCain team when they were doing their vetting process.  They would not knowingly risk everything, if they knew what Palin was really like, and they would be doing some due diligence to figure out if she would help them get elected.  Although they did not have enough time to do a proper independent vet of her, some vetting was done.  (Later they claimed they obtained one from the FBI, which the FBI subsequently denied doing.)  They would have uncovered certain things that they would have questioned Palin about when she came down to meet McCain before he announced her as a candidate.  Palin would have poured on the folksy charm and flirtatious manner.  They would have been impressed with her charisma, but realized she wasn't the smartest person in the room and thus tragically underestimated her cunning.  This is a frequent mistake when dealing with people on the psychopathic checklist.  Thinking that she would be grateful to be mentored by McCain and politically astute enough to get ahead by being a team player, they felt that they had someone to appeal to the right wing base of the party.  During the vetting questions, Palin, of course, would lie about everything, but at this point they didn't know that this is a defining trait of hers.

The rumours about Trig would have been brought up and she would have convincingly laughed them off.  (McCain's team was almost all men and they could have been taken in by the tight abs story, just as they wouldn't know why the wild ride story was next to impossible.)  There were no rumours, at that time, about Bristol being pregnant with Tripp, so they wouldn't have asked her about it.  When they asked her if there was anything they should know, which could come forward during the campaign and cause a problem, Sarah would have kept her mouth zipped.  (There are other issues that may or may not come up at this time, such as Todd being a member of the Alaska independence party which could have come up or not and Palin would have responded in the same way, but that is not part of our story right now.)

Having cleared the vetting process, there would have been brainstorming about how to handle what was seen as the few tricky issues.  The Trig pregnancy rumours would be one of them - perhaps the most pressing.  They would probably have asked her for Trig's birth certificate and Palin would have agreed that Todd could bring it with him (he would subsequently 'forget' it while getting the family ready to fly down).  This is similar to when Palin announced in a joint interview with McCain that she would produce her medical records and McCain, who by this time knew or strongly suspected the real circumstances, looked surprised.  One of Palin's tactics is to agree to produce something and then stonewall.  To the team, however, showing the birth certificate would be viewed as being on the defensive.  It would make far better political sense to have a picture, that showed an obviously pregnant Palin, quietly made available by someone who wasn't connected to the campaign.   Palin probably offered Bill McAllister's help on the project and Todd was told to pack the black jacket, which he definitely didn't forget.

Two to three more people had to be brought on board to pull this off.  A wardrobe person, who would easily and discretely be able to get her hands on an empathy belly, sensible pregnancy shoes, the purple top and black maternity pants.  Being a professional, she would have quickly had the jacket drycleaned and pressed.  She would also have kept Palin's hair neat after the the hair person had finished styling it earlier.  In keeping with being done by a professional, Palin's hair was properly washed and groomed; there was no back teasing.  A photographer was needed, who could also have done the photoshopping afterwards.  Or, that could have gone to a separate person.  

McAllister would have provided pictures and footage of Gusty that was either done earlier in the year and would work or he could, with the access his new position provided him, got the four of them into the legislation building after hours.  Everyone was probably excited by the news; willing, or pressured, to do a favour for McAllister in his new job; and, possibly, thinking it could lead to a more lucrative position, if everything worked out right.

There was an obvious problem.  Sarah Palin had been losing weight over the summer and her face was noticeably thinner than it was earlier in the year.  Morgan, in her analysis of the photographs, caught that when she found the pictures from that period where they lifted Palin's face from existing photos and put them in place on the new pictures.  One was a shot from the LA film shoot and I can't remember where the other one originated from.  If the pictures were staged in the spring, there wouldn't be a need to change the face.  Morgan also noticed that Palin's body was different than the rest of the picture and, in the uncropped interview picture, the perspective of the rug and wall didn't line up, which suggested the camera man possibly had to be moved to get the picture to work.

Once the pictures were deemed good enough - this would have been a rush job done in less then two days - the altered pictures were sent back to Alaska to discretely and quickly be uploaded on the internet.  Here people choked.  It was one thing to help out a former colleague, but quite another to be directly implicated.  There had to be plausible denial in case anything went wrong.  So the pictures went up on an anonymous account that had no other images on it. 

Does the above explanation of actions around the Gusty photos make it a conspiracy?  No.

I have learned through the years that jumping to conspiracies allows the individual on the check list to get off the hook.  These people work by exploiting others through manipulation and coercion.   The only people out of this group who would have known for sure that Sarah did not give birth to Trig would have been Sarah, herself, and Todd.  All the others, to various degrees, probably did not know and would not think that what they were doing was so bad because, in their minds, it wasn't deliberating covering the truth.  Nor would many of them be doing this for Palin.  On the McCain side they would be doing it because it was their job and for the party.  Gusty, the photographer, and the camera man probably did it as a favour to McAllister.  After working for Palin for two months McAllister was probably compromised enough that he felt compelled to go along.  What was he supposed to do?  Tell the McCain team that Palin had lied to them?  She would have fired him if he had done that or backed out in any way.  

Once they committed the first act of deception, wittingly or unwittingly, Palin would have a hold over them that she could use to coerce them into doing other things for her.  Such as the story that Gusty did later on about the pictures and Morgan's blog.

Besides, you have to be a team player to be part of a conspiracy and Sarah Palin has repeatedly shown that she is not capable of working with others.

I have been commenting on the Palin's Deceptions blog and my comments are having trouble appearing in order.  So I've gathered them together here.