According to research by Dr. Paul Babiak and Dr. Robert Hare, one in 25 business leaders may be a psychopath. Their research will be presented in a BBC Horizon documentary called Are you good or evil?, Wednesday, September 7, at 9 p.m.
Read One in 25 business leaders may be a psychopath, study finds, on Guardian.co.uk.
Story suggested by a Lovefraud reader.
Ox Drover
Dawn,
I imagine too, that the good guards have problems reporting the bad ones to authority too because they know that ini the event of an inmate attack on them, those that they had reported would just stand by and watch while an inmate hurt them. It is an evil world inside the prisons I have no doubt.
In Texas many of the guards take money for smuggling in cell phones and tobacco products and even when they are caught the worst they get is a slap on the wrist and lose their jobs…even when they smuggle in the cell phones which is a felony. It’s like it is a big game with them, just like it is with the inmates.
Dr. Liane Leedom’s X who was in prison MARRIED the prison nurse! Then he got arrested again after he got out because he was trying to pass himself off as a doctor (he is not a doctor) and trying to get a job as a doctor. DUH?
DawnG
Ox,
They are a small group standing against a large number of criminals. They stick together even when they despise each other. Like police officers = “the thin blue line”
Ox Drover
Dawn, I understand completely….they are dealing with a group of which 25 % scores 30 or above on the psychopath check list revised, and the AVERAGE score is 22 which is still a pretty rough bunch of folks. The corrections officers MUST stick together for survival. “The enemy of my enemy is my friend” under some circumstances and that is one of them. It is still a hard way to make a living.
DawnG
Ox,
Yes, its a terrible job for my brother. Steady paycheck, state pension, but it changes them, the people who work there. They’re warned in the beginning that they will change. And it’s not for the better, I think.
Ox Drover
Dawn, I think it is like continual COMBAT, that constant being on ALERT for danger. I noticed that my son and other prisoners, could not sit and talk to you and make eye contact, they were continually scanning the room for danger. That state of hyper alertness, wondering from which corner of the room an attack is going to come from must be something that would prey on your nerves.
“As nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs” I remember well when I would JUMP any time there was a car going up or down the road a half mile away from me, and if someone drove up in the yard and I didn’t recognize the vehicle or them my stress level went up to HYPER ALERT… I am STILL cautious, but not living in terror, but I could not work at a prison where I had to be on guard all the time.
I worked at a locked mental facility a couple of times, and when one of the kids tried to kill me (and almost succeeded) I decided it was God’s way of telling me to look for a job and I did….didn’t look back. Someone has to do it, but it isn’t gonna be me.
MiLo
I was telling my hubby about this discussion last night. I have been married to him for 42 years this month and I have never known him when he wasn’t wearing a uniform. I told him about your comment Oxy about no “normal” person … He laughed and asked me what I wrote. I said “nothing, yet” He wanted me to share the following story. He spent 30 years as a firefighter, before retiring. It was required by the city that after a traumatic event, such as a fire or accident where there had been fatalities, that anyone involved attend counseling sessions to see how they were handling the aftermath. These sessions were usually conducted by Dr. B, an older gentleman who “understood” how these men dealt with these type of situations. The men that lasted at this job, who could turn right around and go back into a burning building, pick up body parts from under a car, etc., and stay at least somewhat sane, usually cope by using what us “normal” people would consider the most disgusting type of humor about the situation.
After one particular event with multiple deaths, Dr. B wasn’t available so they sent a young, just out of school, psychologist to conduct the session. To make a long story short, she went running out of the station yelling, you’re all a bunch of crazy, sicko’s. When Dr. B got the report, he knew they were all coping and would be OK.
IMO ONLY – Oxy “normal”, not hardly, not in the conventional sense of the word, and if they are “normal” when they go in, if they last, the don’t stay that way long.
Now hubby works as a Sheriff Deputy, same deal. I think many times when we see “lack of empathy” could just be “temporarily turned off empathy”, a coping skill. When we mention the thin blue line or the brotherhood, it isn’t a club, they depend on each other with their very lives. They deal with more crap than most of us can even imagine, they see the worst of the worst, the craziest of the crazies, etc. Then they must remember to “turn the empathy” back on and become “normal” again when they come home to their families. This is where many of them have a hard time.
Now, before anyone tells me about all the “bad cops” and/or public servants, ofcourse they are out there, after all we know too well the spaths are in every walk of life and there may be more in the safety forces just for the power trip, who knows.
Just for a light chuckle, Hubby’s story from last night’s shift. He gets a call to go back up a young newbie deputy who is having trouble with an elderly woman. Elderly woman had called in a reported a horse in her house. Newbie could not find a horse in her house. Elderly lady was very irritated and was becoming violent because newbie didn’t see the horse. Hubby entered, checked in the bedroom, told elderly lady he apologized for the young deputy, he was a city boy and did not know where horses like to hide. He went out to his unit and retrieved a halter and lead line that he keeps there for getting stray horses off the street. He put the halter on the pretend horse and led it out the door. He sprayed the outside of the door with a water bottle and told the elderly lady no other horses would be able to get through the shield.
“Normal” never.
Ox Drover
Dear Milo,
LOL ROTFLMAO Your husband is WONDERFUL!!!!! What a great guy!!!! I was on my local volunteer fire department for 13 years and retired after my husband was killed….and I know what you mean about picking people off the road side or out of burned homes….and especially if it is your neighbor you are doing CPR on.
Yea, none of us are “normal” either. LOL and As medical personnel I think we have always got to have some “black/gallows” humor in order to survive and to be able at times to turn our empathy off.
Being able to turn the hyper vigilance off though, I’m not sure I could do it any more if I worked in a violent atmosphere. Working in the inpatient unit with the VIOLENT youths for a year and a half (and almost getting stabbed by one–thank goodness I didn’t actually GET stabbed, just ALMOST) but that attack made me realize I couldn’t face any more attacks. Just the anxiety of wondering when it was coming (and yes, it was almost like a prison atmosphere, these kids were very out of control, most had committed violence) was more than I could take after that.
Tell your husband BTW that I am glad to know that someone who SEES invisible horses is protecting me and keeping me safe form those invisible horses and unicorns. LOL ((and give him a hug from me for being such a WISE man!))))
superkid10
Oxy, you wrote this:
Some psychopaths are oppositional, especially as teenagers, and if you tell them not to do something they will do it or die, but I think it is about control, and if you are telling them something you are attempting to control them and they will NOT allow someone else to Control them. I know my P son would do the exact opposite of what I told him to do as a teenager, even if it brought consequences on him”he still sees himself as a winner not a loser even though he’s spent more than 50% of his life in prison. Just like You mentioned in the quotes about Ted Bundy, my son will NOT ACCEPT RESPONSIBILITY for his crimes, they are all my fault because I was such a mean parent and tried to control him”.like keep him from stealing. Mean old me.
Oh my god what you said is so, so true. My oldest son, who has a “N” father, was oppositional since the day he was born. I had the nursery schools calling me when he was 2 years old telling me they couldn’t “control” him and that I needed to come pick him up. At age two! By age 4, I had him in weekly psychotherapy. He was raising hell everywhere. By age 13, he was involved in gangs, drugs, you can’t imagine. He got expelled. But he followed through with therapy. At the same time all this chaos was going on, he had this very soft side and always rooted for the underdog. I was SO AFRAID of how he might turn out. If he even survived.
But somehow this kid pulled out of it. He went to psychotherapy regularly. He saw the truth about his dad (that he was truly a N, not the “hero” that he purported to be), he found his empathy, he accessed his heart.
Today we can talk about when he feels oppositional and controlled, and it’s usually that he’s feeling some sort of anxiety, and he needs to “control” the situation to feel better. When he was little, as I do now, I give him as many choices as possible. And now he is much more self aware than most 18 year olds.
He made the choice to go to therapy.
He turned out to be a wonderful, smart, loving kid who tells me every day he loves me.
Superkid10
Ox Drover
Dear Superkid,
You did a great job with this young man, and you also got lucky, so I think it was a combination of good parenting and good luck that you came out with a son who makes you proud, and has found his empathy. I am so glad that you were able to pull this kid out of the abyss. I could see my kid jumping into the abyss, and me trying to hold on to him by my finger nails and him fighting me all the way. He never did quit fighting me, he just learned to fake remorse and fake a conscience because he learned the WORDS to the song, but never learned the MUSIC OF EMPATHY. (To paraphrase Dr. Hare)
As a young child, my P son was a darling….it was when he hit puberty that he “morphed” into the oppositionally defiant monster that he became. As a young child he appeared to have empathy, and I took him and his brother to counseling for years after my divorce, and in fact, I overheard him “counseling” a friend of his and our family about age 10 (he was about age 10-11 at the time) when her father had died and he was counseling her on the grief process, he sounded like an adult professional. LOL
Donna Andersen
Superkid –
Such a wonderful story about your son. I worry that the prognosis for defiant kids is so grim. I’m glad to hear a success story. It gives me hope.