Misha,
First of all, thank you for giving me a password to view your movie. It is a well produced documentary and I think the message is vital considering the state of our world today. I hope many people get the opportunity to see Fishhead in the future.
Below are some of the thoughts I had as I was watching the movie. I don't consider myself to be a professional expert in psychopathy or even psychology, but I have read a number of books in this area. I'm very familiar with Hare and Babiak's work. I've also been aware of the dangers of anti-depressants for a long time and some of the bizarre effects they have on the brain, including a dulling of empathy as you guys mentioned. It is interesting how you guys put these two pieces together.
First of all, the difference between the terminology of psychopath and sociopath might be more of semantics than something that has a real underlying distinction. This has come up a number of times in discussion and I believe there is still a lot of debate within the community of psychologists who work in this area as to just exactly what these terms should mean. I think you guys did a good job of boiling it down to the idea that this is basically a lack of conscience or empathy regardless of what you call it, and this can exhibit itself in a variety of forms. Psychopaths, sociopaths, etc. have a variety of masks that they wear and they may only lower the mask in a certain part of their life and only in a certain way. The corporate psychopath obviously has much more personal restraint than many of the criminal psychopaths that Hare studied. There are probably other psychopaths that only drop their mask around their wives or children, and probably many more that only operate in certain spheres of society. In addition, some might have certain personality disorders that go along with their lack of empathy; some psychopaths could lean towards being schizoidal, paranoid, etc. I think the thing to realize is that there is still a large diversity even within this narrow segment of the population.
Also, I suspect that the number of psychopaths in the general population might be close to 6% rather than the 1% that Hare quotes. Hare's work, if I remember correctly, was mostly done in prison institutions and so his psychopathy checklist is mostly geared toward detecting criminal psychopathy and not so much the 'garden variety' psychopath which some lay researchers have tried to study. In other words, he may be setting the threshold in his checklist too high in some cases. I think his work with Babiak on the "corporate psychopath" comes closer to the meat of the issue: that is, psychopaths are basically everywhere and in many forms.
A few authors you might want to check out (if you already haven't) are Sandra Brown, who has done studies on women victims of psychopaths and Martha Stout, who's work, in my opinion, compliments that of Hare's. Another author would be the late Andrew M. Lobaczewski who wrote a book titled Political Ponerology which describes much of the macro-social effects of psychopathy which you guys touched on in Fishhead. I think if you can get through the technical jagon in his book you'd find his writings highly enlightening. He also came out of the Cold War era from Poland and had survived under the brutal regimes of first Hitler and then Stalin. You don't get a better set of conditions for studying psychopathy on a macro scale than those in 20th Century Poland, I'm afraid.
I was fascinated to hear about Hare's new psychopathy study on corporate executives. I think it's interesting that he found that their scores tended towards the high side, but that percentage-wise they weren't that different than the rest of the population. Again, I think there may be better tools for evaluating psychopathy in different areas of society than his original checklist. He didn't go into details about the study in the video, however, so I'm not sure how he arrived at his conclusions.
Like I said, I thought it was interesting how you guys related the problem of anti-depressants to psychopathy. The expression "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" comes to mind. I think it's good for people to hear that using these powerful medications is really the "join 'em" part and, oh by the way, these are the people you're joining: psychopaths!
I also liked how you tried to grok with the question of "what to do about the psychopath problem?" This has been an ongoing question in the groups I partake in and it seems that there is no simple, easy solution. One thing to keep in mind, which I don't believe was mentioned in Fishead, is that these psychopaths can't stand the light of day - they will do anything to prevent from being exposed for what they are (even to the point of corrupting or diverting serious research attempts to study them). Kind of like the vampire legend, in other words. Exposing psychopaths in power and even those at the lower level, so people have a name to call what they're seeing, I believe does a great service to the large majority of humanity. If only it was taught at a young age to children that there is a predator in our midsts; we have no way of visually detecting them, but here are the signs to watch out for... something along those lines. I think movies like yours and some others I've seen recently on this subject could potentially begin this process of exposure. Future research efforts should be directed at finding ways to detect these individuals and increase the awareness of the dangers they pose for society.
I liked how you broached the topic of social networks and how these operate. I have no doubt that these will play a role in helping people understand the extent to which psychopathy permeates our world. I'm not so sure it's worthwhile helping people to feel "happy" as the authors you quoted suggest. After all, the psychopaths running the show want us to be comfortable numb with happy pills, they don't want us to feel that subconscious fear that there is a real predator out there (i.e. them). Emotions such as anger, repulsion, sadness can be great motivators for change too, if utilized. No wonder they want to flat-line everybody's emotional range with anti-depressants! The psychopaths like being on top of the heap while the rest of society rots away without a peep.
I think what's important about the whole social networking concept is spreading the truth, even when the truth makes people feel uncomfortable. The more people align with the truth and understand it vicereally, the sooner positive change can come about. We've believed in the lies told to us by psychopaths for centuries, probably millennia now, and the only way we're going to turn this ship around is if we admit that everything we've ever learned about human nature is wrong. Humans are not intrinsictly evil, psychopaths are evil and they are trying to force their pathological world view on the rest of us (and in many cases succeeding).
Anyways, I did enjoy your movie and I will be sharing it with others. Keep up the good work and hopefully you guys can expand on these topics in the future.
Sincerely,
Ryan
