I did a search on DKos on comments for "psychotic" (36) and "sociopaths"(93)for the last week It's hard not to understand the impulse to see Bush as a sociopath; his justifications seem so phoney that he looks like he has a reckless disregard for human life on a pretty big scale.
But there are some problems with calling him a sociopath, and with dismissing the rethug leaders as a bunch of psychotics who enjoy the thought of torture. Let me recognize one that others have brought up, and then move on to some others I haven't seen here before - or at least not put the way I will.
We've had some discussions about whether DKos is furthering the stigmatizing of some of suffering people; see, e.g., http://www.dailykos.com/... This is an important issue. For families living with people going through psychotic episodes, for example, there is not a lot of joking fun to be had. Laughter at the images of mentally ill people voting republican is offensive to some of our members, for very good reasons.
And there are other reasons that appeal more directly to our self-interest.
Here's the first new problem: Is it a seriously meant term or is it just a popular but pretty dead metaphor. This point to a dilemma: two alternatives and each one is bad.
Words like "crazy" are so frequently used that they fail purely on principles of reasonably good writing, unless they really are meant literally. They are dead metaphors.
So do we mean it literally when we say Bush is psychotic or a sociopath? Perhaps, but then aren't we like Frist, who offers a diagnosis of mental competence based on a tape? No, wait. Frist is a doctor, and we're doing it largely without even the credentials.
So is the point of this diary just a point about how we should be more "pure" in our use of language? No, the real point is much more serious.
The real point is that to locate the source of the bad actions as a form of mental illness is to locate the cause entirely in the individual. Sociopathic individuals do appear to have messed up brains; that may be due to all sorts of environmental features, including poor nutrition in early childhood, but once you get in that state, you may well do terrible things just because of what's inside you.
Calling Bush a sociopath distracts us then from a very important task: looking at what are his particular flaws and how the process and the institutions managed to magnify them into an international tragedy. Testing for sociopathy probably will not prevent a reoccurence of this tragedy; changing the institutions may. But we need to know what in the insitutions and what in him came together to create this terrible mess.
I can imagine this objection: but isn't anyone who can live with the consequences of bushy actions - including the thousands and thousands dead - a sociopath by definition.?
The thing is: that is not true. Sociopaths really are pretty specially configured and limited and I'd bet Bush isn't one. What he might be, however, is a narcissist or someone who suffers from Alexithymia (though goodness knows if he is). Or something else. And these people can look like very normal people who are bosses, professors and even, when luck runs out for others, leaders. What social neuroscience is showing us is that there are various breakdowns in the brain that leave us with people who can reason quite well, but who have serious problems in the social domain, such as feeling bad when they hurt people. Alexithymics, for example, are said to live at such a distance from their own emotions that they really can't understand what it is to hurt someone. They are interested in power and can feel shame, but they cannot feel guilt because they lack the ability to appreciate that they've hurt people.
Alexithymics can be a total pain when they get into power, and if they get a lot of power they can be seriously menacing. Ken Lay, I have heard some clinicians conjecture, may have been one. My own favorite example of an alexithymic colleague is someone who didn't stab colleagues in the back once he got some power, but rather stabbed us in the heart. Perfectly open about being a complete and total asshole, and he couldn't see why not. After all, he had the power.
Sociopaths really are different and they have a very different relation to society's strictures. For example, at least on many accounts, they do not have normal fear responses to the possibility of getting caught.
All these disorders are contested; the theories change and just what to believe when is a difficult question. But the bottom line is: the percentage of sociopaths is pretty small; the percentage of those who would do what Bush has done is probably much higher. We need to know that and to guard against it.
Or, we can say, what the hell, let's just use the dead metaphor to let off steam. Fine, but it is very, very dead. We use it as if it had some life, but it really just marks a divide in a debate.
To clarify:
Barney, who destroyed over a hundred valuable teddy bears is not psychotic; he just hates teddy bears.
To clarify:
And this cat, appearances to the contrary notwithstanding,
is irrelevant.