The Psychopath

                                                                                                                                                                

          Take a second and try to picture  your self living without a conscience. Try to imagine what it would be like to be totally void of emotion. Having no feeling of guilt or remorse, a totally lack of empathy for human life, or no sense of concern for your friends, strangers or even your family. Think about living without shame no matter what kind of callus, lazy, harmful, selfish or immoral the action you have taken or decision you have made. You’re probably wondering how on earth a person can live this way. The answer is that there are people who live like this they are called Psychopaths. Psychopathy is of the most extreme of all personality disorder that is known. This personality disorder is terrifying because psychopaths are individuals that are free from the internal restraint that helps normal a human being due the right thing. The most fascinating characteristic a psychopath possess is the ability to pretend or fake being normal in order to make all those around them believe that they are, when in actually they are far from normal.

           

            Psychopathy is a mental disorder that is mainly characterized by a total lack of empathy and remorse, very shallow emotions, egocentricity, and deceptiveness. Even though psychopaths lack empathy and emotional depth, they manage to pass off as a normal person by faking emotions and lying about their past. They have hair trigger tempers or poor behavior control. They tend to throw tantrums and revert to a calm state moments after. Psychopaths are very reactive to perceived insults. While most human beings are able to control their anger   or aggression since this ability is weak in psychopaths they will lash out violently.  Psychopaths also have a low tolerance for boredom they always need excitement or some of stimulation. Most psychopaths are impulsive they search for quick gratification and participate in high risk behaviors in order to feel something (wikipedia). When you have gone through your whole life without feeling anything or never feeling an emotion you will be more likely to engage in behaviors that make you feel some sort of emotion. Psychopaths search for gratification and high risk behaviors because it allows them to feel something whether it be an adrenaline rush or the excitement one may when they have had a close call with death. The key point to realize is that all of these symptoms or characteristic of psychopathy are hidden by the psychopath’s ability to appear outwardly normal.

             

        All psychopaths have a lack of empathy especially for human life. It seems like they cannot comprehend the emotional states of other human beings except in a logical sense. They can never feel something for someone else. For example if you feel happy or sad  a normal person would be able to feel happy or sad for you or be able to relate to you on some level, but a psychopath can never do that especially when a person is feeling pain or distress. It is because of this lack of empathy that psychopaths are can commit horrifying acts of cruelty on another human being and not feel any remorse. Because they cannot be provoked by the emotions of others psychopaths tend to believe that other people are nothing more than objects that are  there for their own personal amusement (psycho).

        

       Psychopaths are great lairs and manipulators. They will lie to get what they want or to impress people and they can lie with such mastery that sometimes even the most experienced police interrogators are fooled. They are great lairs because of how they present themselves. They present themselves in a way that is confident, and never show signs of anxiety, hesitation or shame like an ordinary person would. Even when they are caught in a lie they still maintain that confident presentation and try to retile their story so it can fit with their lies. Most psychopaths are out spoken and verbally lack sincerity or emotional depth when they speak. Psychopaths can be very amusing and very entertaining conversationalist and they are always ready to strike back with a claver comeback. They are very good at telling unlikely but very convincing stories that cast them in a positive light. Also they are very good at presenting themselves well and are often very likable and charming. These qualities make it very difficult for a person to see through a psychopath’s illusion of normalcy. Some psychopaths but not all have the ability to charm and to manipulate others. Psychopaths are extroverted, charming, dominant, and confident. They see other people as objects for their own personal use. Most psychopaths will take on a parasitic lifestyle and will con people out of their wealth and other resources. When a psychopath’s victim is no longer useful the psychopath will discard the victim like a piece of trash. Not all psychopaths are charming and master manipulators for some psychopaths due to their upbringing will not have the proper social grace and education to impress people and these types of psychopaths tend to get what they want through intimidation, coercion, and violence.

            Psychopaths are a nightmare for a psychiatrist to threat. Even the most skilled and the most knowledgeable psychiatrist can easily be deceived by the psychopath’s appearance of being normal. The treatment options in the psychiatrist arsenal to treat psychopathy are extremely limited. Because there is no cure for psychopathy there is no pill or medicine that a psychopath can take that will instill a conscience or empathy. Psychotherapy is useless because the psychopaths that go through psychotherapy emerge from it even more dangerous and commit even more heinous crimes then they did before therapy.  Because as a result of therapy psychopaths have a better understanding of themselves and other people, and this allows them to strengthen their illusion of being normal and make them even more skilled at manipulating people.

            The great play write William Shakespeare once said that “all the world’s a stage, and all the men and women are merely players.” For the psychopath the world is one giant stage and they are just and actor that plays many parts. Psychopaths hide behind a mask of sanity, they hide in plain sight, they pretend to be normal, they pretend to have a conscience but they do not. Psychopaths put on a show for the whole world to see every day of their lives and they are hard to spot. You may have dated a psychopath or be friends or be related to one and not even know it. You could be with one right now and have no idea that a monster lives within them.

People Inside of Me

            Meet Tara, she is 29 years old and a Harvard graduate. She is ambitious, confident the most respected and successful attorney at her law firm. Tara loves to read and does charity work in her spare time. Tara believes that the world is filled with good people and that one should spend some of their time to help others.  But lately Tara has been experiencing severe memory loss, suffering from unexplainable headaches, blackouts, losing track of huge chunks of time and is having flashbacks to her childhood were she was abused but as far as Tara is concerned  she was never abused as a child, she had a good childhood. When she is out on the street sometimes people call her by a different name or mistake her for someone else. All of sudden Tara now is starting to hear voices in her head from time to time. She blames her symptoms on the stress that her job brings.

           

          Now let’s meet Victoria, who is also 29 years old and according to her she never graduated from high school. Victoria works as an exotic dancer, under the stage name “Ms. Peaches”. Unlike Tara, Victoria was abused as a child and remembers every detail of the abuse. As a result of her abuse Victoria is a callus, cold, selfish and a promiscuous young woman. Victoria believes that there are no good people in the world and the only way to survive in this world is to lookout for yourself. 

           

         Tara and Victoria are very different people from very different backgrounds, but what these two women have incoming is that they are the same women. Tara is suffering from Dissociative Identity Disorder. Tara is the primary personality, while Victoria is the alter ego or alternate personality. Dissociative Identity Disorder is psychiatric conditions were a person displays a number of distinct personalities, which are known as alters or alter ego (wikipeda). Each alter is different, they have their own way of perceiving and interacting with their environment. They have their own thoughts their own goals and dreams. The “alter” is a totally different person; the only problem is that they have to share a body with someone else. Let’s take a trip through the symptoms, causes and treatment of fascinating and horrifying illness.

           

          The symptoms associated with this disease are debilitating and freighting. The most common symptom is severe memory loss that goes beyond the occasionally forgetfulness. The sufferer cannot remember where they have been, do not recall conversations they have with friends or cannot remember where particular items in their possession came from. The next symptom is the blackouts. People who suffer from DID my lose consciousness and wake up hours or days later in a totally different location from where they last remember and have no idea how they got there. Also another “symptom” that is associated with this mental illness, is the sufferer, being mistaken for someone else or recognized as someone else by other people when they are out in public.  But the most chilling symptom that characterizes this disease is the voices that the sufferer may hear in their mind.

        

        Severe and prolonged or routine torture, sexual abuse or neglect experienced during childhood has been correlated to the development of D.I.D. When a child is experiencing trauma that is associated with emotional, physical, or sexual abuse or some combination of the three, they will often dissociate themselves from the abuse in order to escape it, by creating a different identities or alternate personalities. The created alter will suffer the abuse while the primary personality escapes the abuse. For children dissociation is simple and becomes a useful defense for the child. The strategy allows the child to place all the abuse or traumatic event onto another personality (Mind).

            Treating a mental illness on this level of complexity is no small task, because there is no cure for D.I.D. There is no way to get rid of alters but there is away to get them under control. Therapist or psychiatrist mainly use psychotherapy or talk therapy in combination with hypnosis to help the suffer gain control of their alter(s).  The therapist must find the personality that holds the memories of the traumatic experience in the patient’s past, the therapist does this by making  contact with the alter or alters and try to understand what role they play in the patient’s life. For instance an alter may take on the role of a protector for the patient emerging only when the patient feels threatened  or scared by someone or something. Sometimes a person can have multiple alters and there is one alter in particular that keeps the other alters in line. if the therapist can find the alter that holds the traumatic memories then the therapist can devise the best strategy to help the patient.  Also the therapist must make contact with the alter or alters that maybe responsible for violent or self destructive behavior and try to get them change or curb that behavior. The primary outcome of therapy that the therapist is trying to achieve is the integration of the personalities into single personality, but sometimes integration is not possible so the alternative is to find harmony between the patient and the alter or alters. (DID)



Project MK-ULTRA : A Search to Control the Human Mind

            We have all seen movies such as “The Manchurian Candidate” or television shows like “My own worst Enemy” where a person has been subjected to psychological experimentation such as mind control or have had their personality split into two usually the U.S. government is behind the experiments and tries to cover it up. That is what these types of shows or movies are about. We the general public assumes that this type of story line is only fiction and that the U.S. government would never even try to do something so horrific to a person just to gain a tactical advantage over its enemies. But what if I told you that mind control and alternate personalities were not fiction? What if I told you that the United States government carried out psychological experiments to develop techniques for mind control and creating alternate personalities on soldiers and innocent citizens? 

            During the Cold War the United States government conducted illegal mind control experiments on U.S. and Canadian citizens. Project MK-ULTRA was a covert and illegal human experimentation program controlled by the CIA’s office of scientific intelligence. The program main goal was to develop methods of mind control and methods of influencing an individual’s mind to enhance the CIA’s ability to extract information from suspected or confirmed Soviet spies and turn innocent citizens or soldiers into Manchurian Candidates by creating alternate personalities. Project MK-ULTRA was designed to develop tools or methods that could unravel  or unlock the human mind, so the U.S. could not only be one step ahead of the Soviets but be able to infiltrate the Soviet government without the Soviets knowing. The Manchurian Candidates are people who are programmed to become assassins without their knowledge and under the control of someone else. A post hypnotic trigger is used to switch the individual into “assassin mode”. The project was led by a scientist named Dr. Sidney Gottlieb of the Technical Services Division of the CIA. Over 25 million dollars of federal money were used to fund project MK-ULTRA, which was active for at least 23 years (1950-1973). Then in 1977 under the Freedom of Information Act the Senate ordered all of the documents regarding Project MK-ULTRA to be declassified (governmentconspiracy). 

             

Based on the evidence published Project MK-ULTRA used a combination of psychoactive drugs LSD, hypnosis, shock therapy, sensory deprivation, isolation and even verbal and sexual abuse were used to alter the psyche and brain functioning of the” participants “.  Even one of these methods is enough to crush someone mentally the researchers in MK-ULTRA used them in combination (MKULTRA).  These methods were used to destroy, control and alter individual’s state of mind. The methods that were used in this project over a period of time would force the” participants “to become more suggestible, easily influenced, and more willing to obey commands to put it simply the “participants” would be more susceptible to brainwashing. But the researchers involved in Project MK-ULTRA involved “participants” from all walks of life like doctors, CIA agents, prostitutes, military personnel, people suffering from mental disease, and innocent citizens. These experiments were done on these people without their consent and against their will.  Illegal methods were often used to recruit subjects. Theses experiments were unethical, inhumane and in direct violation of the Nuremberg Code.  Also the researchers violated the most secrete oath that all medical professionals make the Hippocratic Oath.

The creation of a Manchurian Candidates is one of the most controversial topics to come out of the declassified documents from Project MK-ULTRA. It is a controversial topic because on one hand you have actual participants that were subjected to these inhumane experiments and some of the people who were in charge of Project MK-ULTRA saying that they the project was successful in creating Manchurian Candidates and on the other hand you have the CIA saying that creating Manchurian Candidates was one of the goals of the project but they were not successful in creating them.  The biggest piece of evidence that the CIA was successful in creating a Manchurian Candidate is the story of Candy Jones. Candy Jones was a model in the late 40’s to early 50’s. Tapes made by her and her husband, while Candy was under hypnosis revealed systematic programming to create and manipulate different personalities. During these hypnotic sessions Candy also say that she was trained in a CIA mind control program, which started in 1960 in Oakland, CA. On the tape recordings Candy says that she was trained to be a courier for the CIA, trained to be resistant to torture and trained in self defense. What gives Candy’s story merit is that these tapes were made in 1972 and Project MK-ULTRA was not made public until 1977 (Jones). The one thing the CIA knows how to do is to keep a secret, so how did a semi will known model know so much about a mind control program ran by the CIA before it became public? Candy also described in great detail the experiments and treatments that she was put through and the person who administered them. Also other survivors of Project MK-ULTRA have come forward with similar stories.

Project MK-ULTRA was not just a crime against psychology, science, and medicine but a crime against humanity itself. Over a thousand people have come forward to tell their story about their experience through this program and over 20,000 documents have been declassified about the project. But in order to learn more about something or how it works one must break it and then build it up from scratch, that it what the researchers did in Project MK-ULTRA. Most of the psychologist and psychiatrist that were a part of the project went into other areas of research and one may speculate that they took what they learned from Project MK-ULTRA with them.