The word psychopath strikes fear into the hearts of most ordinary individuals conjuring up images of axe-wielding mass murderers or sexual predators stalking the wards of prison isolation wings.

But that is far from the whole truth and one of the world's experts on psychopaths arrived in Cardiff on Tuesday with some disturbing news.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/3395443.stm

The psychopaths in suits

By Joanna Hill-Tout

BBC News Online

The word psychopath strikes fear into the hearts of most ordinary individuals conjuring up images of axe-wielding mass murderers or sexual predators stalking the wards of prison isolation wings.

But that is far from the whole truth and one of the world's experts on psychopaths arrived in Cardiff on Tuesday with some disturbing news.

In a talk entitled Snakes in suits: when psychopaths go to work, Professor Robert Hare from Canada argued that psychopaths may not be what we think they are.

And as BBC News Online found out, they can exist successfully in every walk of life.

"I'm not worried about security - if they were going to get me they would have got me by now."

These were the words of the world's leading authority on psychopathy before he gave a talk in front of a packed out lecture theatre at Cardiff University.

Robert Hare, who is a Professor of Psychology at the University of British Columbia in Canada, has spent most of his working life studying psychopaths - a dangerous occupation, it seems.

"The first one I met at a maximum security prison in Canada stared at me so hard I felt like I was being pushed up against the wall," he said.

"Then he got a knife out and was moving it around in front of me.

"I didn't know what I was getting myself into."

And he has been "into it" for the past 25 years.

You can spot them quite easily in the workplace - so you may want to think about people you know Professor Robert Hare

But you would never guess this diminutive, unassuming man has been in contact with real life Hannibal Lecters.

"They get interested in me - and blame me that they're in prison," he said.

"I've had death threats as a result but I keep going - what can you do?"

So was Professor Hare in Cardiff to warn us about the proliferation of psychopaths in Welsh prisons? No, but they could be in your office right now.

Psychopaths are defined as a person with an antisocial personality disorder, manifested in aggressive, perverted, criminal, or amoral behaviour without empathy or remorse.

Is your boss a psychopath? Here are just some of the tell tale signs

They are manipulative

They lack specific goals

They have superficial relations with people

They are impulsive

They are irresponsible

They crave power and prestige

They lack empathy

They lack remorse

They lie easily

They have predatory instincts

They are cool under pressure

They seek excitement and thrills

They take credit for the work of others

They fly into rages

And Professor Hare, along with colleague Dr Paul Babiak, has developed a new 107-point questionnaire - the B-Scan - which can enable people like you and me to identify which desks those smooth-talking, manipulative colleagues might be hiding behind.

"We normally associate psychopaths with death but they're not always in prison," he said.

Former Daily Mirror tycoon Robert Maxwell, who stole £400m from pension funds to help his ailing companies, was named as a classic example of a man in a powerful position who might very well have displayed psychopathic traits.

So what should we be looking out for?

According to Professor Hare psychopaths are impulsive - they lack empathy and remorse.

They crave power and prestige, and are extremely controlling.

He described them as "knowing the words but not the music."

"They can learn to use ordinary words and to reproduce the pantomime of feeling but the feeling itself does not come to pass."

So is he describing your boss?

They interview well, they get into organisations by using people as pawns, sweet talking patrons and creating conflict.

"I don't see any difference between the people I meet in prison and those in business," he added.

So should we be running for the hills?

You have been warned.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/3116662.stm

What makes a psychopath?

By Caroline Ryan

BBC News Online health staff

Parent and children Good relationships with adults as children are 'crucial'

Many people tell the odd white lie - taking a day off "sick" or halving the amount they spend on a shopping trip

But most feel a little bit guilty about the deception.

Scientists have now found that twinge of conscience can be seen in increased activity in the brain.

In short, it takes more effort to lie than to tell the truth.

“If they have had at least one good relationship with an adult figure, they don't become delinquent”.

If they have had at least one good relationship with an adult figure, they don't become delinquent Dr Sean Spence. But people with psychopathic tendencies find lying as easy as telling the truth.

The reason is that when children develop the ability to deceive - around the age of three of four - they also develop the ability to empathise.

But researchers say people with aggressive and antisocial personality disorders do not develop this ability, and therefore they have no moral compass.

They say traumatic experiences and a lack of contact with understanding adults could be to blame.

'Deception is OK'

The reasons why some people become psychopathic will be discussed at a conference in Sheffield entitled "Psychopathy and the Problem of Evil".

Dr Sean Spence of the University of Sheffield, who is chairing the conference, has found parts of the frontal lobe area of the brain are more active when someone was lying than when they were telling the truth.

He will prevent evidence confirming earlier studies which showed the neurological activity involved in lying.

Dr Spence said: "When we're lying, there is a moral part of us that doesn't wish to manipulate others or take advantage of them.

"In psychopaths, there is no activity in that area of the brain, and deception is OK to them.

"They don't have any qualms about doing it."

He said a lack of adults displaying empathy towards them as children meant psychopaths could not learn from example, and developed the aggressive antisocial personality disorder.

"If they have experienced gross sexual abuse of severe physical violence, they may never have been in contact with the feeling of empathy."

Dr Spence said 'good parenting' was a crucial part of preventing these tendencies developing.

"Even if people have had an experience such as sexual abuse, if they have had at least one good relationship with an adult figure, they don't become delinquent."

Diet and exercise

Childhood diets could also influence whether people develop psychopathic tendencies, experts say.

The conference will hear from Professor Adrian Raine, a psychologist from the University of California.

He gave a group of three-year-olds from Mauritius a programme of an enriched diet, exercise and cognitive stimulation - being read to and involved in conversation.

By the age of 11, they showed increased activity on brain scan readings, and by 23, they were 64% less likely than a group of children who had not been on the programme to have criminal records.

Professor Raine said: "This is not a silver bullet to solving crime and violence, but I think it's certainly one of the ingredients.

"The take-home point is that the seeds of crime are sown early in life."

Dr Spence added that alcohol or drug abuse could also cause damage to the brain and cause psychopathic behaviour.

But he said that even people who had never before shown any signs of psychopathic behaviour could behave very cruelly in extreme situations.

"In Rwanda, around 800,000 people were killed in 100 days.

"Most people doing the killing had been 'normal' before - it was something in their environment that changed."

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Mmm. Me temo que urge un diván en Los Pinoles. El Presidente legal está transando con viudas negras, tepocatas, cuatro narices, alacranes y todo lo peorcito de las alimañas. Cómo si no existiera toda una estela de traición, violencia, destrucción y muerte acompañando el andar de los susodichos interlocutores. ¿Acaso alguno de ellos se ha mantenido fiel a una sola promesa? Caso perdido.

Es por ello comp@as, que les comparto el perfil típico de un psicópata, que en esta ocasión aplicamos a los políticos, pero que, como anteriormente abordamos en el blog, se aplica principalmente en los negocios (recuerden el documental The Corporation). Sobre todo en las grandes empresas desreguladas que reciben “incentivos fiscales” y que ustedes van a pagar con la nueva reforma fiscal.

Pues bien, el primer mandatario con tal de obtener las “reformas estructurales” prometidas negocia con sus contrincantes; bueno, rivales en el papel nada más. ¿Acaso inconscientemente dije negocia? No, ‘iñor. Es mucho pedir una estrategia política; por cierto, desconocen tal terminología. Hoy en día en la “alta polaca” se aplica la táctica (porque ni a estrategia llega) de la zanahoria y el garrote (sin doble albur de por medio).

Así, el gobierno en turno golpea con el desconocimiento la candidatura en uno de los estados norteños, amaga con una extradición, permite socarronamente a destiempo una investigación judicial en la suprema corte, deja a la buena de DIOS un conflicto magisterial, y un largo etcétera. Y no es que sean tontos o bien intencionados. Por falta de pericia política están más que temerosos, y no saben como deshacer el entuerto en que se ha convertido la república. Quiero enfatizar lo que les he venido afirmando: el gobierno Mexicano es un gobierno acorralado. Como son malos lectores en cuanto a sutilezas políticas, piensan que el pueblo es tonto y no entiende perfectamente que hubo un fraude descomunal.

De tal modo comp@s, que el chantaje político es inútil. Lamentablemente, no es que los psicópatas sean brillantes, en eso difiero con la mayoría de los analistas. Niet, de lo que carecen es del remordimiento necesario (como parte de una sociedad sana) cuando ejecutan un acto impropio. El sentimiento de culpa con el que contamos todos los bien nacidos. Estos delincuentes en las altas esferas políticas seguramente ya notaron la debilidad de mando, si se les presenta la oportunidad van a tomar el poder, no lo duden. ¿Recuerdan la publicación de un golpe de estado en la capital del país publicado en el WSJ? ¿Ya se les olvidó el “fuego amigo” maquinado desde el congreso por “la coyota” contra nuestro anterior mandatario? ¿No estaba este mismo defensor de narcos tratando de encontrar un resquicio constitucional para revocar el mandato del Guanajuatense?

En cuanto a nosotros los renegados. Estamos en el camino correcto mientras manifestemos nuestro descontento. A casi un año del fraude electoral las protestas no han disminuido. Recuerden que estos psicópatas no son ni súper hombres ni mujeres maravilla. Deben el poder que tienen a oscuras alianzas inconfesables, que tienen como común denominador la complicidad. Hay muchos intereses económicos de por medio. Por ello, no me canso de mencionarlo, como primer paso el boicot económico es una buena estrategia; pero necesita de una poderosa aliada, el boicot necesita de la ayuda de Doña Solidaridad (la misma que prostituyó otro chaparrillo y peloncillo sin lentes). Aislados somos poca cosa, unidos seremos invencibles, nos falta eso comp@s. Carecemos de unidad en nuestros esfuerzos boicoteros, sólo entonces tomaremos lo que nos arrebataron el 2 de Julio de 2006: La Democracia.

M@rculposo;

Norwich, G(reat) B(oss);

23/6/07

P.D.CULINARIA. "...hoy quiero SABOREAR mi dolor..." - El Triste (José José).

P.D.VIOLENTA. "...Te Amaré aunque no sea la PAZ..." - Te Amaré (Silvio Rodríguez).

P.D.JUDAS. "...one man BETRAYED with a KISS..." - PRIDE (In the name of LOVE) (U2).

P.D.CALCULADORA. Tiempo estimado de decodificación: 72 horas.

Pilona Tatuada:

…

Ponme como un sello sobre tu corazón,

Como una marca sobre tu brazo;

Porque fuerte es como la muerte el amor;

…

Cantar de los Cantares 8:6. Cipriano de Valera (1569).

... ¿No hay otra alternativa, verdad?