Originally posted by Maxi
Interesting site on people without conscience:
www.hare.org
Lots of research has been done on these folks. It's all pretty scary, but we've probably all known someone like this.
...compelling (partial post of url above) read ...I'm off ordering the book.; Maxi:THANK YOU!
To put the situation in perspective, in the fifth edition of The Mask of Sanity, published in 1976, Cleckley used the metaphor of electricity conductors. A pair of copper wires carrying 2,000 volts of electricity, kept apart, offers nothing to indicate what the wires may do. "When we look at them, smell them, listen to them, or even touch them separately, [they] may give no evidence of being in any respect different from other strands of copper." However, connect these seemingly innocuous wires to a motor to make the circuit, and the unmistakable evidence of electricity appears. "So, too, the features that are most important in the behavior of the psychopath do not adequately emerge when this behavior is relatively isolated." To see the "symptoms" of psychopathy, they need to be "connected into the circuits of a full social life." In short, we see the psychopath best, not in the clinic or prison, but in situations in which he can best operate as a manipulative con man.
Hare's work was influenced by Cleckley's writings but, in turn, Cleckley was influenced by Hare's research. In their correspondence Cleckley described himself as a "voice crying in the wilderness," and his work as having little impact on psychiatric thinking. In a signed copy of The Mask of Sanity, Cleckley inscribed: "For Robert Hare, whose impressive studies of the psychopath have encouraged and stimulated me over the years and have played an important part in enabling me, after long frustration, to complete this fifth edition. With profound gratitude."
