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Feb. 12, 2012 - Davis Aurini
12:20
Psychology II - The Psychopath

The Choleric & The Psychopath www.staresattheworld.com

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This is the second video in my reboot of the psychology series.
The psychopath.
Now right off the bat, I should probably address the fact that psychopath doesn't really have a meaning.
It has about a dozen different meanings.
You'll sometimes, if you look it up on Wikipedia, they'll say that the word that what psycho used to mean, they now use anti-person, anti-was it, antisocial personality disorder.
Except antisocial personality disorder basically just means criminal.
So it's really not a very useful or descriptive term.
And the colloquial definition of psycho just means any sort of brutal killer, regardless of the reasons that drive them to be a killer.
No, the psychopath I'm talking about is far more prevalent and it's going to be far more specific than these definitions.
Every definition I've read, sometimes they get a couple of parts right, but they get it right for the wrong reasons.
Before we get to the psychopath, let's look a little bit closer at the choleric.
You know, the typical leader type personality.
Now, the leader, the choleric, is extremely ego-driven in that they're very much a thinker, a tactician, a strategist.
They are a task-oriented sort of a person.
They want to accomplish some specific thing.
They want to organize their resources to get that task accomplished.
They're extroverted, of course, so they don't mind going out into the world and organizing people as their strengths and weaknesses to get all these people together and accomplish some task.
So as the leader type, if you think about the military leader, yes, they will be willing to sacrifice people for the ultimate ends of their task, but remember, they're a human being.
They're not going to sacrifice people for no reason.
They're not going to use people.
They're going to organize people into the most effective force that they can muster.
It's very much a male proactive sort of a personality type.
Now, as the superego, because you remember I said the big difference that you get between a normal personality and a monster is that normal people have a superego.
And this is where the superego comes in.
It makes them acknowledge the id.
A leader is going to have some human restraints upon themselves.
They are going to limit what they do with compassion, with an understanding of beauty, of love, and, as I mentioned earlier, of honesty.
The id is the ultimate honest part of us.
Now the choleric, because they are very ego, they will be able to manifest fake confidence.
If they need to give a rousing speech to their troops, even if they very much expect the battle to go horribly, they'll be able to give that rousing speech because ultimately it serves the higher purpose of the truth they're trying to communicate.
The battle's going to go horribly, but if they don't rouse their troops, it'll go even worse.
And so they will be able to lie quite well when it serves a higher purpose of honesty, because their superego will not let them forget that id.
That id is a critical factor in them.
But what happens when you strip the id away when there's no superego?
What you get is a person whose ego is completely dominant.
It completely controls the id.
The id becomes nothing but a tool for the ego to use.
And you'll quickly see why the logical ego is not fundamentally rational.
So the psychopath.
The first thing you'll notice about the psychopath is that they're very loquacious.
They very much like talking.
They've got the gift for gab.
They get out there and they, yeah, they are actually very good organizers at first.
They convince you to do things.
They convince you that they have the perfect plan.
The problem is, though, that ultimately, with no id, they can't truly empathize with other people.
People are just objects to them.
The ego has a goal, a plan it's trying to accomplish, so it slaves the id, the part that emotes to other people, into nothing but a tool.
So they emote to other people to talk to them, but they don't actually feel, they don't actually have any real emotions inside of them.
Any of their emotions are transitory and goal-seeking.
Because of this, and this is one of the things, one of the warning signs that you're around a psychopath, they are extremely quick to form friendships.
If you work closely with a psychopath for a month or two, they are very, very likely to tell you that you're their best friend in the world.
Because this id that's completely enslaved, you are a best friend to them.
Because every emotion that you can feel, that id is feeling, because the ego dominates it.
And they go from seeing you as an object at that point to feeling entitled to you.
Now, a friend of mine is talking with a friend of mine about this.
And a great example is let's say you turn on your computer one day and it says that this is not a valid version of Windows, so you're not allowed to use your computer anymore, even though it is a valid version of Windows.
Imagine the annoyance that you'd feel.
Not rage, but you'd be pissed off that this object suddenly has the gall to tell you that you're not allowed to use it.
It's your computer, isn't it?
Well, that's exactly how the psychopath feels about the people in their lives.
They feel completely entitled to these people.
That you are an object in their environment that they have a right to.
What else?
What you'll often hear, and this kind of stems from this, that they feel no guilt.
They feel no obligation to you.
And this is one of the clinical definitions is that the psychopath, the sociopath, has absolutely no guilt.
And this isn't exactly true.
They do have the mechanism for guilt, except once again, guilt is part of the id.
Their guilt is entirely slave to the ego.
So they will feel guilty if there is a tactical advantage in it.
But they won't feel guilt as a permanent emotion.
The instant that guilt stops being useful, they'll stop feeling it.
The other big thing is that you hear they're master manipulators and they're incredible liars.
Well, the reason is because, yes, lying comes from, or honesty comes from the id.
The id compels you to be honest with yourself and how you feel.
And with the id has no independence, they can lie about anything.
And they will frequently lie for absolutely no reason because they're just stupid.
The smarter ones will only tell intelligent lies.
But once again, they look at it purely as a tactical standpoint.
There's no higher strategy to their life.
There's always just the immediate goal, the immediate objective that they're trying to achieve.
They're driven to control their environments, and they will use every single tool that they possibly can to do this.
They will fake friendship, they will fake love, they will make up stories, they will tell you what great experts they are at things, about how they have the perfect plan to sort out this business to make us all rich.
And then they'll expect you to be an object in their environment, and they feel no obligation to you.
If you lend them $100, they'll only pay it back to you if there is something in it for them.
So as long as you still offer something to them, they'll pay you back.
The day that there's no advantage to it, they won't.
The psychopath uses violence instrumentally.
They will initiate violence, but only if there's something in it for them.
Because they don't really feel anger.
They don't really feel anything.
They just have the goals they're trying to accomplish.
Nothing but a constant tactician with no strategy.
So watch out for them.
They will probably know how to say exactly what you want to hear.
They'll try and rush into friendship.
They'll have an answer for everything.
That's one of the big giveaways with the psychopath, is they have an answer for everything.
The only time they'll apologize is if they're trying to win you over.
But ultimately, the worst a psychopath will do is steal your money, steal your girlfriend, maybe lie about you to somebody else because it gives them an advantage.
But ultimately, they're rather petty.
Some of the more intelligent ones do rise to positions of power.
And if you have a psychopath running a corporation, then the heck will drive the corporation into the ground if there's a profit in it for him.
He doesn't care.
He has no internal metric of value or honesty.
And it's actually a very unfortunate part of our system that the way things are designed right now, psychopaths do easily rise to the top.
Ultimately, though, not particularly dangerous as long as you have some strength in your corner.
They won't start a fight that they can't finish.
So, if you have any sort of stability, they can't do that much damage to you.
The best way to make yourself immune from the psychopath is just have a stable footing in life.
The people most at risk from these people are those on the fringe of society who can be used and abused and tossed aside and have absolutely no recourse because the psychopath will do that at the drop of a hat.
Next time, be histrionic.
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