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Psychopathy: A Very Short Introduction

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Essi Viding

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“Perhaps one of the reasons that psychopaths find it difficult to resonate with other people’s distress is that distress emotions are relatively alien to them. If you do not feel something yourself, it is difficult to fully orient to and empathize with that feeling in others. For example, if you are not regularly distressed yourself, why would you be able to automatically resonate with other people’s distress? This also means that you may not automatically project the consequences of your behaviour in a way that evokes feelings of guilt. In this situation, what is there to hold you back if you want to look after ‘number one’?”

“So, whenever the subject of Iraq came up, as it did keep on doing through the Clinton years, I had no excuse for not knowing the following things: I knew that its one-party, one-leader state machine was modeled on the precedents of both National Socialism and Stalinism, to say nothing of Al Capone. I knew that its police force was searching for psychopathic killers and sadistic serial murderers, not in order to arrest them but to employ them. I knew that its vast patrimony of oil wealth, far from being 'nationalized,' had been privatized for the use of one family, and was being squandered on hideous ostentation at home and militarism abroad. (Post-Kuwait inspections by the United Nations had uncovered a huge nuclear-reactor site that had not even been known about by the international community.) I had seen with my own eyes the evidence of a serious breach of the Genocide Convention on Iraqi soil, and I had also seen with my own eyes the evidence that it had been carried out in part with the use of weapons of mass destruction. I was, if you like, the prisoner of this knowledge. I certainly did not have the option of un-knowing it.”

“We have the strength to roar like lions. What intimidates narcissists, sociopaths, and psychopaths the most is when we confidently speak our minds. Embracing our voice and standing up for ourselves allows us to be our best selves. No one has the power to take that away from us, and there is no need to reinvent ourselves to adjust to any circumstances. It’s enough to be yourself.”

“Tomas thinks he is the Prince of Hungary” - Why would Adam say that to Martina? That wasn't the right question I kept asking myself. Did Adam say that to Martina or someone else? Was it meant as a message to me? How in what kind of conversation could it be said like that and why? What was Adam referring to when he said “The Prince of Hungary”? I was arguing with Rachel and Adam over the summer before. I challenged their belief that the UK was victorious in World War II and they were both puzzled, asking why. I tried to convince them by telling them the story of an Austrian Jewish lady who had migrated to the UK before the Anschluss and sensed that Nazi forces were approaching, but the UK denied her documents to stay and she ended up stuck between the Nazis in France and the UK on the Channel islands. The Nazis took all Jews from the islands, including Therese Steiner, and she ultimately ended up in Auschwitz and in the gas chambers. My point was that if the UK didn't defend its own citizens to avoid conflict, then how could they be seen as 'winners'? Who was the Jew here who was stuck between good and evil? I didn't realise that Adam in 2014 was trying to disprove my point, gaining victory without direct confrontation. Perhaps he was offended that I cared more about a poor, lonely Jewish girl trying to escape death and horrors than he would have cared himself.”