Erika Kirk’s critics label her a "psychopath," but the speaker argues this term is clinically misapplied—less than 1% of people meet its criteria, including callousness and emotional detachment. Kirk’s theatricality and hypersensitivity align more with narcissism, though the speaker rejects diagnostic framing entirely, calling her opportunism and insincerity "worse" due to moral failure. They critique modern language’s overuse of psychiatric labels as insults, like "morphodites," while acknowledging personal ethical opposition to Kirk’s actions. The discussion highlights how vague terms distort real accountability in public discourse. [Automatically generated summary]
Nobody knows what that is, but psychopath, a psycho.
She joins the ranks of Hillary Clinton and anybody else whose behavior we consider cold and calculated and not real and synthetic.
I want you to sit down and I want you to hear me out.
Erica Kirk is a lot of things.
I've never met her, but I will say this.
I despise her.
I mean, as much as you can despise somebody you've never met, there's a lot of people historically I've never met either.
You know, Typhoid Mary I've never met, but I wasn't too fond of what she purportedly did.
Erica Kirk is not a psychopath.
She's not smart enough.
She's not good enough.
She's just, she's clunky.
I will explain, and I hope that when I get through with this, you will never use this term again because I've got news for you.
Nobody's a psychopath.
It's a word that it's just one of those things that we don't even know what it means.
Well, I'll tell you what it means.
I'll give you an example.
When I was a kid growing up in Florida, see, I'm from Florida, not Florida.
I'm from Florida.
And we had this one friend of the family.
And you hear every now and then.
Somebody says, no, you boys are going to that carnival.
I want you to be careful.
You got to watch out for their morphodites.
I said, what?
Morphidites.
Morphidites?
You mean hermaphrodites?
No, morphidites.
What the hell is a morphodite?
Just be careful.
Well, that's what psychopaths are.
They're morphides.
We don't really know what they are, but we know it's this word that we use for somebody who's so and weird and strange and predatory that we give them that name.
It's like in Sicilian, the word melidiki, any kind of schmutz or bodily humor.
You don't know what it is, be careful.
Don't step in that.
You got it?
So when I get done with you today, I will disabuse you of this pension, this pension that you may have for a psychopath.
And we'll explain to you what's going on.
Because by the way, Erica Kirk, oh yeah, she's a lot of stuff, but she's not smart enough to be a psychopath.
Let's talk about this.
The word itself, the word has been become the insult of the decade.
It is thrown around with the same casual ease as liar, grifter, fraud, monster, two-bit.
You know, oh, another one too is, you're going to love this.
We'll talk about this, is narcissist.
You know that very smart woman?
I don't know her name.
She's a, I think she's an Indian doctor.
She has the gray, kind of the Tulsi Gabbard, Lily Munster.
She does 12 million videos.
Narcissist, narcissist.
Are you a narcissist?
Do you want to be a narcissist?
10 signs he's a narcissist.
What to watch out for?
Narcissist, narcissist.
Oh, my God.
It's this new word.
Excuse me, my nose is going crazy here.
It's that word we just, and we use it with such frequency, it starts to gain favor.
It's like nuclear.
George Bush, a nuclear, Jimmy Carter, is called a cacoepi.
It's a mispronunciation of word.
It's anyway.
But today, if somebody disappoints you, they're a psychopath.
Somebody changes the narrative, somebody who's a disgusting politician or a psychopath, somebody who steals money from you, somebody who politically opposes you as a psychopath.
And the term has drifted far from its clinical roots, clinical roots, and now it functions as a shorthand for somebody that we don't trust.
And I know there's a wonderful piece and a wonderful reference online about Erica Kirk, and people love it.
And there's a lot of, I don't want to call out people's names, but there's a lot of wisdom there.
But no psychopath.
Psychopathy, no, no, And you'll find out.
So when people talk about Erica Kirk in those particular terms, what they're usually reacting to is not, again, clinical psychopathy.
Clinical.
It's like saying schizophrenic or psychotic.
It's another one.
Psychotic.
No, no.
Remember when schizophrenic, when people thought that meant split personality?
That's not what it meant.
What they're reacting to is perception.
The perception that she exaggerates or she lies or she shapes these phony narratives rather aggressively, that she may be exploiting grief or the grift, that she presents herself in a way that feels staged and theatrical and curated and all of that stuff and self-promoting, self-enhancing, and that she wants the spotlight, that she's egomaniacal and narcissistic.
There's that word.
And she's just, you know, you got that, that something about performance fuels inauthentic, right?
That is not a psychiatric diagnosis.
That's a moral judgment.
It's probably true.
And I'm with you 100%.
But let's be clear about what psychopathy actually means.
It is a term of art.
It is not a synonym for a liar.
It's not a synonym for opportunist.
It's not a synonym for grifter or somebody who, or even murderer.
And I'm not saying anybody is, but it doesn't mean that.
It's not even a synonym for evil.
Not at all.
In clinical settings, it refers to a specific cluster of traits measured against structured criteria.
It is rare.
It is extremely rare.
And it is extreme.
And it is not diagnosed because somebody appears self-absorbed or dramatic or somebody who seems inauthentic.
Now, I have been involved in the criminal justice system for 40, what is this, my 44th year?
And I have read more psychiatric reports on clients and defendants than most people will ever see in their lifetime.
And I've been looking, looking for the psychopath.
I've seen diagnoses ranging from antisocial personality disorder to sometimes a little narcissistic.
That's more common to bipolar, to severe trauma-related conditions, PTSD, bipolar, depressed.
Borderline is a great one.
Borderline.
That's what you want to see.
Those are great.
I shouldn't say great.
If you want to talk about somebody who's really interesting, oh, borderline.
It's almost like an adjective.
Borderline, what?
You know, it's like the way chiropractic sounds like an adjective.
Chiropractic, what?
But when you talk about references to impulse control and mood dysregulation and substance abuse, oh my God, I've seen them all.
What I have almost never seen is a formal diagnosis of psychopathy.
And some, believe it or not, even in the realm of such, they're not too sure about it.
It's exceptionally uncommon, exceptionally rare as a clinical conclusion.
And that alone should tell you something.
That alone means something.
Psychopathy refers to and requires pervasive, let's go through it, pervasive cross-situational patterns of, and listen to this, callousness, lack of remorse, shallow affect, manipulative, chronic antisocial behavior.
Think about this.
It is very flat.
They don't respond.
They don't react.
Erica Kirk, whatever you want, is a drama queen.
She feels she is anything but non-reactive.
It's not about being theatrical.
It's not about being controversial.
It's not about protecting your image or curating an image.
It's not about being perceived as calculating.
It's about a profound emotional deficits and almost entrenched entrenched kind of branded behavioral patterns over time.
And even history complicates the public imagination.
Adolf Hitler is frequently cited as the archetype of evil.
Fine.
But many scholars and psychiatrists have argued that he may not fit classic psychopathy models precisely because of his volatility, his rage, his emotional intensity.
Psychopathy is often marked by cold detachment rather than explosive fury.
Think Hannibal Lecter.
And if you think these people are so good that you can, I mean, try, tell a psycho, please try to be.
Remember Erica in that famous YouTube, or not YouTube, Zoom, where she says, hi guys.
Hi.
Try that.
Try it.
It would be a disaster.
She cries.
She knows.
She feels.
She's empathic.
I think she falls in love with herself.
She's not a psychopath.
And him, when you're talking about Hitler, the way he reacted, people say, no, look at him and say, that's it.
Because they think that that means something.
See, the distinction of him matters.
Evil and psychopathy are not interchangeable categories.
There are a lot of psychopaths who do nothing evil.
There are a lot of psychopaths who don't ever do anything at all.
Opportunity doesn't arise.
They don't go looking to victimize anybody.
They don't.
And again, it's so rare.
Less than 1% of the population.
Think about this.
You can take the rarest skin rash.
You can have explosive Vesuvius-like diarrhea less than 1%.
I mean, nothing is, everything is less than what it's almost negligible.
And we have diluted the word to the point where it's lost meaning.
Hillary is a psychopath.
This one's a psychopath.
That CEO there is a psychopath.
The label is now a cultural reflex.
It signals disgust, disgust more than diagnosis.
And so when critics describe Erika Kirk in those terms, I think what they're actually describing is a little bit different.
They are, I think, trying to limb and explicate what they believe is grift, phoniness, shallowness.
They're describing what they see as narrative manipulation.
They're describing what may feel like self-elevation during tragedy or inappropriateness or the ability to rebound or the ability to maybe not feel anything.
That's not psychopathy.
I don't know how to tell you, but you want to come to New York?
I know women who've gone through husbands like nothing.
I mean, it's like they're raised like this.
They're just, it's, but they're not psychopaths.
You can be cold, you can be callous, you can be indifferent, you can be dim, you can be slow, you can be a lot of things.
They're describing what strikes them regarding Erica, maybe as opportunism, you know, wrapped in this theatrical grief, and they're describing inauthenticity, which is not psychopathy.
Now, those are serious accusations in a moral sense, but they don't require a psychiatric framework to evaluate.
And if somebody is exaggerating or exploiting emotion for influence, that's a character issue.
And by the way, she's got this.
And please do not think I'm letting Erica Kirk off the hook here.
If somebody is positioning themselves as a kind of beauty queen of the moment, somebody who craves validation, maybe somebody who goes online and tries to lure and 15-year-olds, that's not a psychopath.
That's not a psychopath.
People want to control the spotlight.
That may suggest, again, narcissistic tendencies, which I think is more palatable.
And by the way, why do we need these labels?
I don't know.
That's another issue.
Do these labels help?
No.
It's one thing if somebody says you have migraines, you know, you have Parkinson's, you have, you know, that means something.
But psychopath, what does it mean?
You can't treat it.
You may be able to pick out with some kind of fMRI, some functional imaging, you might be able to find out some actual neurological bases for it, but we're not even going there.
But narcissism, again, is not psychopathy.
Narcissism involves, you know, this heightened need for admiration, hypersensitivity to criticism, a strong focus on image, me, me, me.
That's not a psychopath.
It can produce defensiveness.
It can produce grandiosity.
It can create narrative management and lies and embellishment, delusions, delusions of grandeur.
Too much will get into psychotic, which is another story.
But it can also produce emotional swings when public perception shifts.
They'll do anything.
You love me?
Do you love me?
Do you love me now?
Right?
Psychopath doesn't do that.
Another Story00:07:07
It doesn't care.
That doesn't automatically make somebody devoid of conscience or incapable of empathy just because you see that.
It often reflects in the cases of this narcissistic insecurity masked by confidence.
That's another story altogether.
And we also need to acknowledge something that's kind of uncomfortable.
Sometimes behavior that feels manipulative is not the product of a personality disorder.
Sometimes it's simply ambition.
Ambition that's too much.
Sometimes it's survival instinct.
Sometimes it's ego.
Sometimes it's the ordinary human desire to control how one is seen.
I'll tell you one of the most, the vilest examples of this is Lyndon Johnson.
Lyndon Johnson.
Some people are suggesting he offed his sister.
I mean, this guy, ruthless, Bobby Kennedy, the father?
Oh my God.
Like you squash you like a bug.
They're not psychopaths.
By the way, this distinction doesn't make it admirable.
It just makes people human.
Sometimes we just go too far.
But here is the part that matters most.
Saying and using the term psychopath is overused doesn't excuse questionable behavior.
It doesn't sanitize Erica Kirk's conduct.
It doesn't absolve anybody from criticism.
I mean, you can believe someone is acting, you know, opportunistically without labeling them, you know, clinically disordered.
You don't need that.
You can argue that someone is exploiting a situation without invoking some kind of a forensic, you know, the hair checklist.
You understand how that thing works?
That's true.
In fact, relying on psychiatric labels, I think, can distract from the real issue.
In fact, it stops the analysis.
If the problem is perceived, let's say perceived dishonesty, call it dishonesty.
If Erica is acting like she's a grifter, call it a grift.
If the problem is perceived or is in fact exploitation of grill, grief, I'm getting grifted and grief, grief, then say it.
Those are ethical criticisms.
Those are valid.
They stand on their own.
They do not need some kind of diagnostic embellishment to make them legitimate.
We've got a lot of armedier people here who, again, who are rather a little too facile with the language.
It's the way we use the word awesome all the time and the way we use hilarious and the way everything, we just use, and by the way, the PDF file, that's another story.
That's another one.
Again, I don't understand this.
I don't understand how when somebody is committing some type of awful behavior against somebody else, why their motivation is respond.
When somebody commits violent SA against a woman, do we consider their motivation?
Do we consider whether they are heterosexual or do they do it?
No.
Say you're committing a crime.
Do we care why somebody burgles?
Do we care why somebody robs?
Do we care what the motivation is?
I don't care.
What difference does it make?
Don't give it a name and make it sound clinical.
Just call it for what it is.
Look at the behavior.
Forget why.
Why means nothing to me.
That's why hate crimes are stupid, which is another story.
I hope you're keeping track of the other stories because I've got a lot of other stories to tell you.
Now, there's also a deeper point about evil itself.
Not all harmful behavior stems from pathology.
You know, sometimes it stems from indifference, and that's the worst.
Indifference to how others are affected.
Indifference and lack of concern how one's actions are perceived.
Being indifferent or having this ennui or this indifference to the cost that impose what others go through.
See, that kind of moral vacancy doesn't always require a disorder.
It can simply be a failure of character.
There are people who are spoiled.
There are people who feel entitled.
Again, I live in New York.
I can point out to you the most vile, heartless, senseless, base, venal, craven, shallow people you can imagine.
All they care about is themselves and who they're going to marry and how much money they have and all this other stuff.
You know what?
They're not psychopaths.
They're nothing.
They're garden variety.
They're just nothing.
They're trash.
How about this trash or effed up or RFU, which is royally effed up?
That would be the better diagnosis.
In public life, especially in emotionally charged contexts, political or otherwise, we're quick to escalate language.
And we reach for the most extreme term because it matches the anger that we feel.
It matches how we feel in the moment.
But extreme language narrows the analysis.
It transforms a debate about integrity or legitimacy or honor or authenticity into a debate about brain chemistry.
No.
And it shifts the focus from actions to pathology.
It's more intellectually honest to say this.
If people distrust Erica Kirk, it is likely because they perceive exaggeration, lies, self-promotion, insincerity, this inauthentic or unauthentic person, synthetic, phony, camouflaged.
And that perception may or may not be fair, but it is not the same as diagnosing psychopathy.
And invoking that label doesn't make the criticism stronger.
In fact, it makes it looser.
Don't use that term.
I'm saying it again.
Psychopathy is exceedingly rare.
It's severe.
It's not a catch-all insult for people we find morally objectionable.
And reducing it to that level trivializes it and takes a serious clinical construct and it clouds the actual real diagnosis and the discussion and conversation that we should be having about conduct and accountability and morality.
And morality is another issue.
Now you can challenge someone's authenticity all you want without calling them a psychopath.
Just do me a favor, lose that.
Because as soon as you say it, okay, one of those, one of those.
You can question their motives without medicalizing your frustration.
And you can also condemn behavior without pretending to perform some kind of forensic evaluation.
That limpidity is a good word, that pellucidity, that lucidity, that clarity, all of that, that strengthens criticism rather than weakening it.
Head and Heart Not Connected00:06:33
And that's the thing I want to tell you.
So listen, I know someone, I always got to think, now how can somebody misinterpret what I'm saying?
They're going to think that I'm somehow saying, let's let Erica off the hook.
No.
If you've heard me say one thing, that's the last thing I'm doing.
I despise her.
What she's done is just unbelievable.
It's this, you see, somewhere along the way, maybe in this DSM-5 world we live in, everybody was spectrum, everybody was autistic, everybody had Asperger, everybody was, and it goes back, remember what was it?
Well, I'm gluten intolerant, I'm sorry.
I have celiac.
I can't eat gluten.
Remember that?
All of a sudden, overnight, what happened?
I can't touch gluten.
Why?
Well, I just read about this.
You read about this?
It's the same way we have this frenetic reaction about seed oils or soy or whether it's dietary.
We get onto these kicks and we just get stuck into this.
And we're saying, that's not it.
That's not it remotely.
So what I'm saying is this.
Erica Kirk is not smart enough to be a psychopath.
Erica Kirk is too facile with emotions.
Erica Kirk, I think she's too, she's not indifferent enough.
The real psychopath whom you have never met is somebody who is beyond beyond description.
In prison populations saying maybe 25%, maybe.
See, it's almost like the term serial killer.
My favorite particular subject is serial killing.
It's my favorite because it is the rarest.
And I don't understand why.
You can go to the prison population, talk to the most vile people you've ever met in your life, and none of them will be serial killers.
None.
None of them will feel the need to go out and to serialize homicide.
None of them will do this without feeling cooling off periods.
I mean, it is the rarest of the rare of the rare.
And the people who are the serial killers exhibit nothing that you would ever think they would exhibit.
They're very fluid.
They can weave in and out of society like you can't believe.
Ted Bundy was probably the best.
BTK, Green River Killer, Gary Heidnick, Ed Gein.
Just go down the list.
They're almost camouflaged, and they're really, again, they may not be psychopaths.
That's the part.
The real psychopaths, the people who, and I guarantee you, if you're going to meet someone, if you're going to meet someone, you're going to meet somebody who doesn't raise their voice, doesn't get upset.
And I'm going to leave you with one thing.
This is the most important.
This is to me the best definition there is.
A psychopath is somebody whose head and heart are not connected.
When I tell you something, it's like, hey, listen, isn't it great working for this charity?
Yeah.
Isn't it great that we're working for this charity?
Yeah.
Let's just imagine we're doing that.
And, you know, we're counting the money that was raised this week for the, yeah, why don't we keep it?
Why don't we steal the money?
Now you see what you just said?
You would say, what?
Your heart kicks it.
Wait, We could get caught.
It's dishonest.
We'll lose our reputation.
It could be going to a good cause.
What are people going to think of me?
Head and heart are connected.
Your head says, let's do it.
But your heart reacts.
No, Consequence.
No, no, no.
Consequence.
A psychopath would look at my thing about how did we not get caught?
But there would be no connection.
He'd have to learn how to react.
He'd have to go to somebody and say, would you show me how to react this way?
It's almost the way people used to think about classic Asperger's, but that's not really true.
But there's nothing there.
The reason why sometimes they do terrible things is because their head and heart aren't connected.
They're not necessarily liars.
They just don't put any connection as to the cost of lying, of mendacity.
They don't think.
By the way, psychopaths, heroes, great on the battleground.
I'm hit.
I'm going.
Wait a minute.
You're going to get shot.
What?
You're going to get, you could get killed out there.
Okay.
Anyway, you and I would say, whoa, whoa, wait a minute, hold it.
I'm all for being a hero, but you see all that machine gun fire?
I'm not going to lose my...
See what we're doing?
Our hearts connected.
Common sense.
Consequence.
Wait a minute.
Hold it.
Psychopaths are terrible chess players.
Oh, got my queen.
Oh, well.
Maybe this time they won't see me.
You just left your queen open.
Maybe this time.
Oh, yeah, I did.
You're going to lose.
It's that part.
Head and heart are not connected.
Very difficult.
Very difficult to have.
And by the way, I didn't talk about the actual, the orbital cortex and the amygdala and all these parts that Imaging research shows might or might not be working.
We'll talk about that later.
But that's the thing that gets these people.
Erica Kirk knows about reacting and what happens.
And if I do this, this.
It's that calculating the emotion.
She's too fluid.
She's too protean in her reactions.
She's not a psychopath.
She's worse.
A psychopath I can deal with.
This is somebody who doesn't have to do this.
This is somebody who could feel empathy, but by virtue of this weird kind of morality that she has, says, I'm not interested.
What do you think?
Please disagree with me.
Tell me why I'm wrong.
Please Disagree With Me00:00:39
I love this, but I know what I'm talking about.
So help me.
Help me get the word out.
Let us keep our focus correct.
Let us not lose ourselves in the word de jour, du jour, the phrase or the pejorative that is that is popular today.
Please like this video, my friends.
Like this video.
Please subscribe to my channel.
Please, it means a lot.
And also, I've got some questions for you.
Put down what you think.
And more importantly, above everything that we do, comment.