Antisocial personality disorder, also called sociopathy or psychopathy, basically refers to a lack of empathy for the rights and feelings of other people. It is notoriously difficult to treat, partly because those who have it almost never acknowledge that they have a problem. It's the people around them--family members, neighbors, coworkers--who suffer. . . .
Personal experience tells me that coming in contact with people who have personality disorders makes life much harder than it should be. For example, if you take people with personality disorders out of the equation, my wife and I never set foot in a courtroom--except maybe as potential jurors--and never experience any of the ugly events described in this blog.
Take people with personality disorders out of the equation, and I'm still contentedly--and effectively--working at UAB.
Like Ronson, I'm not remotely qualified to diagnose an individual as a psychopath. But I can make this layman's observation: In looking back over 10-plus years of legal mayhem, I can think of at least a dozen people who exhibit many of the traits outlined in "Factor 1" of Hare's checklist--superficial charm, grandiose sense of self worth, pathological lying, cunning/manipulative, lack of remorse or guilt, shallow affect, callous/lack of empathy, failure to accept responsibility for own actions. In fact, I can point to a number of people in our Legal Schnauzer story who exhibit every one of those traits.
Most of these individuals don't really know my wife and me--and either have made no effort to know us, or have no reason to know what makes us tick. We hold these folks in contempt, but our feelings are somewhat impersonal because . . . well, we don't know them either, and we really don't want to.
The most disturbing individuals are the few who do know one or both of us. I'm talking about one or two people from my former workplace, UAB, who have known me for 10 years or more. I'm talking about one or two people who have had me in their homes on multiple occasions. I'm talking about one person, in particular, who has known both me and my wife quite well for way more than a decade. But these individuals knowingly cheated me out of my job, lied to my face about the real reasons for their actions, have even lied about their actions under oath in court documents, and have not shown the first sign of remorse, guilt, empathy or accountability.
I have no idea how such people live with themselves--and I hope I never find out. But I do think the problem of psychopaths in our midst, and the destruction they can cause, goes way beyond my little world.
Think about business scandals of fairly recent vintage. Think about individuals such as Bernie Madoff, Ken Lay (Enron), Bernard Ebbers (WorldCom), and Dennis Kezlowski (Tyco). Do you think there might be a psychopath or two in that crowd?
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