Sandra Brown, author of Women Who Love Psychopaths, and Harrison Koehli, SOTT editor, discuss psychopaths, empathy, domestic violence, and other topics.


Transcript:

Delilah: Welcome to the Susan Murphy Milano Show. This is Delilah from Imagine Publicity, and our guest host for the month of October, while Susan is on the road, is Sandra L Brown who is the CEO of the Institute for Relational Harm Reduction and Public Psychopathy Education. She is a psychopathologist, program development specialist, lecturer and an award-winning author. Her books include the award winning Women Who Love Psychopaths, Inside the Relationships with Inevitable Harm with Psychopaths, Sociopaths and Narcissists as well as How to Spot a Dangerous Man Before You Get Involved, and Counseling Victims of Violence: a Handbook for Helping Professionals. Sandra is recognized for her pioneering work on women's issues related to relational harm with cluster-B access to sociopathy, psychopathy disorders in partners. She specializes in development of pathological relationship clinical training and survivor support services. Her books, CDs, DVDs and other training materials have been used as curriculum in drug rehabs, women's organizations and shelters, women's jail and prison programs, school and college based programs, inner city projects and various psychology and sociology programs and distributed in almost every country in the world. Her website is www.saferelationshipsmagazine.com. Hello Sandra.

Sandra: Thank you Delilah, it's so good to be here for the month of October. October is domestic violence awareness month and so the Institute brings a unique twist to the issue of domestic violence, in which we are going be looking at pathology and its effect, not only on domestic violence and the quality of relationships that it impacts, but also how pathology affects our world view and affects the very culture and society that we live in, which is how we're going to kick-start this month of October, is talking about the cultural and political aspects of pathology in our world today. And so our guest joining us today is Harrison Koehli, he's an editor for Red Pill Press and publisher of dr Andrew Lobeczewski's book on pathology and power, called Political Ponerology. He's also an editor and sometimes contributor to the Dot Connector Magazine and writes on politics and psychopathy for the alternative news website Sott.net, and he also writes for us at the Institute at Safe Relationships Magazine, so Harrison thanks for joining us.

Harrison: Thanks for having me Sandra, it's great to be on your show.

Sandra: Yes, well today we're going to try to dive in and kind of lay the groundwork, you and I talking about the issues of pathology and what we mean by that, and kind of how pathology affects our world today. You want to jump in? Tell me your thoughts on the concept of pathology, what we're talking about when we use that word.

Harrison: Well, what we're talking about when we mention pathology, if you just look at the word, it means sickness, so we're looking at a type of sickness, a type of human psychology that is not normal, and the way that manifests itself in relationships with other people, is that it's often what causes anything that we think of as a problem between people, between groups. So, it can be anything from violence, physical, emotional, that kind of abuse, to the subtle manipulations that eat people and cause them to be depressed. You can have a toxic boss, what he or she is doing to you, other people can look at it and say that's not very nice, but for some people, the people with pathology like psychopathy, they can spot a person's weaknesses, and just exactly what will get them to tick and they will wear that person down. So, it's really this insidious thing that goes on between people, and it's largely not noticed, most people will suffer these kinds of things happening to them, and not really understand where it's coming from, why it's happening, who these people really are and they'll just suffer from it without knowing the source.

Sandra: Yeah, exactly, which is why the Institute has gotten involved in that whole concept of public pathology education, because we don't teach this in graduate school, we certainly don't even teach it on a public level, on how to spot this and what pathology is, and I think our country suffers from too much Oprah, where everything is treatable and curable. And I think why pathology is so often rejected by people and even survivors until they really understand it, is that we believe all things are curable. That's what I mean by that Opraism, that we accept it in medicine, we don't have an answer, we don't have a cure for AIDS, we don't have a cure for cystic fibrosis, but by god in psychology we have the hardest time accepting that. And so, that whole cluster of disorders that we kind of associate with pathology, the cluster-B personality disorders, narcissism and anti social, and sociopaths and psychopaths, that whole cluster, we just don't have successful treatment for. So, that whole issue of pathology I think is where we get stuck.

Delilah: Sandra, could you and Harrison explain, just like he was talking about before where a person is up against another person that has the pathology or is a pathological, and you're the one that doesn't, so you don't understand where this is coming from and I'm sure some people think that it's them and not the other person. Can you go through for the listeners, like some of the signs that so-called normal people, whatever that might be, would see in a pathological, what buttons are they pushing and how are they doing it, and how would you recognize that the other person is the one that's causing this to happen within yourself?

Sandra: Harrison you want to jump in there?

Harrison: I'll mention a few things, you can interrupt me if you think I'm missing anything. Some of the most obvious things I think are, for one, is that people with extreme pathologies, do not, and never will take responsibility for anything. It's always somebody else's fault and they'll always find a scape-goat, someone to blame, circumstances. And just as a funny, well not so funny, anecdote, in one of the last interviews Ted Bundy gave, he was talking about, he really put on a pity ploy, a pity me show, he was saying, "oh you know what did this to me, society did this to me, when I was growing up I developed an extreme pornography addiction and that stuff just ruins men's lives." He was portraying himself as a victim of society and pornography, which is a total lie, and it was really interesting to watch that, because there he was, he was manipulating the guy that was interviewing him, I can't remember his name, he was famous.

Sandra: Dr James Dobson.

Harrison: Yeah, and so he's just playing this guy. So that's one of the things and it's pretty noticeable once you start looking for it, is that nothing they do is their fault. The way it happens is that, let's just say in a work situation or something like that, where you'll have a pretty good idea that this person screwed up or did something wrong, and it will be pretty clear to you in your mind while you see it happening. Then lets say you confront the person or someone else confronts them, and they've got this perfectly good excuse, and it happens so repeatedly that you start doubting your own perception and start believing this guy, like oh, maybe it's true, and what compounds the issue is that we have a hard time believing that people have this capacity to lie. It's like, well, if you put yourself in that situation, well, I'd take responsibility, I'd feel guilty, I'd feel remorse, but, it just slides right off of them so that everything is somebody else's fault and why should they feel bad about it, they have no reason to feel bad about it because it's absolutely not their fault.

Delilah: And there's a question in the chat room that kind of goes along with the lies, you're talking about how they lie, they want to know if you see pathological liars the same as compulsive liars. And do compulsive liars come to believe their own lies, because lying is so easy for them?

Sandra: It could be one and the same, given that most people know what pathological lying means, the whole pathological part of your behavior, all of that is fairly consistent. Pathological lying means they will always lie, given between telling the truth or telling a lie, and there's no consequence for either one of them, they will still choose to lie as a way of having power and control over someone else's emotions and reality. And so that's the ongoing thing, do they believe their own BS? The survivors want to know that all the time, does he really believe his own lies, and Harrison, I think the literature talks pretty much about this, if I'm correct, that they do know the difference between right and wrong?

Harrison: Yeah, they know the difference between right and wrong and they have some conception of what a fact is, like they know they're lying when they're lying. Now the thing is that while they know when they're lying, the strange thing and the thing that's really hard to wrap your head around is that they have a totally different conception of the truth. Because for normal people who have a functioning emotional system that works in their mind, the truth has, what I think of as this emotional component, like when you want to know something, you want to know the truth right? If you're trying to find something out, I don't think anyone actively tries to find out something that is not true to believe in, right? So we have this kind of pull towards the truth, that I think is a very deeply entrenched part of ourselves, and yet, for a psychopath, all facts are, all the truth is, it's just like a tool in a toolbox of manipulation. So if he's got a certain fact, he can take it out of his box and use it if he can get something out of it. But if that fact won't work in a certain situation, he'll just make one up and it will have an equal value to him. So it's just another...

Sandra: Yeah, everything is a tool or as we say a weapon in their hand, anything. The women's traits, one of the things that the Institute studied was the super-traits or the elevated temperament traits that these women had, really high empathy, really high tolerance and while it makes them the wonderful people that they are, even the temperament traits become weapons, or tools in their hands. So, truth or really anything that they can twist, can be utilized. And I think that, at least from my perspective, from the work that the Institute has done, that often the best place to be able to identify pathology is in personal and intimate relationships. I think that's where the behavior really gets crystalized because people know them at a deeper level, whereas sometimes in the work place it can almost take longer to be able to identify the behaviors. And Harrison, you guys have written and talked about this, that in the work place a lot of times you're in the environments that actually reward that behavior, so they hide well.

Harrison: Yeah, absolutely, Paul Babiak and Robert Hare talk about this in their book Snakes in Suits, the traits that they have are ones that are often actively sought out in employees. But the thing is that the traits that they are looking for, they only find their kind of caricatures in psychopaths. So, while an employer might be looking for someone that needs to deal well in high stress situations, they'll see a psychopath and a psychopath is as cool as a cucumber because they really feel no anxiety. So this can look like a great thing. And they're charming, they're good with people, they're assertive, all these things, but really all these traits are just symptoms of an underlying pathology, which is a total complete narcissism, all of that is just focused around their sense of self, and their getting what they need and no one else matters. So yeah, employers might hire them thinking they're great, but then inevitably what happens, it always happens, is that these people will end up victimizing their co-workers, using people, and they will destroy lives, destroy careers. And when they're done with it, often times it's like this hurricane comes through the room but no one has seen it and no one knows what happened. It's just like whoa, what just happened?

Sandra: Yeah and some of their levels of aggression, especially in business are rewarded in certain job categories. So they slide in, mix well and climb up the corporate ladder on someone else's back.

Delilah: Would you say too Sandra that there might be people, let's say, in a situation where there's a lot of other people involved around this person, whether they work under him or work above him, but some people might get it and some people don't and therefore the ones that do get it are kind of looked down upon, or frowned upon because the others are wondering, well, what is it that you see that I don't see?Not everyone's going to see this psychopath or this pathological the same way in the same situations.So some people have an easier time recognizing?

Sandra: Well, that's what happens, Robert Hare said it's a disorder of social hiding, that it's a disorder that hides well, and even in a personal or intimate relationship. When women finally get an inkling that something is wrong, not just in the relationship, but, with him, a lot of time she does not get a lot of support for that belief system. It takes a while for people, especially if they haven't been run over or cut off at the knees by a pathological, they are less likely to be able to see the evidence of that. So a lot of times people do not see them, and like Harrison said, they're charming, a lot of them are bright, they're aggressive, some of them do super well in their careers and business, and what's not to like on the surface. It's not until people get sawed off at the knees by these guys that they realize that.

But when we were talking about when Harrison had listed a couple of the traits in pathology, the three that I always bend my ear to listen for in someone's story is, pathology and the permanence of the disorder associated with the inability to grow to really any emotional or spiritual depth. These people are incredibly shallow, Harrison referred to it as chronic narcissism, kind of thing that you can scratch the surface, I call them deepest formica. You scratch the surface and you're already through, right through to the other side. So, the inability to have any emotional or spiritual depth, the inability to sustain positive change, and that's really the one right there, where if women are wanting to look in their relationships, they can look and often spot that when there's a problem in the relationship and it's addressed, and as Harrison said, they don't take responsibility for it. But they may give lip service to it and say, "I'm going to go to counseling, ok, I'll work on that, I'll change that," but, two weeks, six weeks, maybe a couple of months at the max, and then the behavior returns back to what it was previously. I call it the rubber band theory, that you stretch the rubber band out and it always snaps back. And so when women are wondering, is this person pathological, the consistent inability to sustain positive change is one of the things that I will look for. The other one is the inability to develop insight about how their negative behavior affects other people. And those three to me are kind of the hallmarks. There's lots of behaviors in the whole spectrum of all the disorders that fall under that, but those three kind of stand out. And Harrison if you could talk a little bit about the empathy issue with them?

Harrison: Well, yeah, there's something I want to go into that kind of gets into the empathy issue. I think that one of the reasons that pathology remains hidden and why there's so many people that don't see it, mainly those that haven't experienced it, is because, just as pathology is hidden, I think that in our culture our emotions and our emotional being is really hidden and we're really not aware of what goes on in our emotions at all, for the most part I think. And when we look at this, I think it's kind of helpful to go into some science. Like if you think about the brain and the different systems of the brain, how there's the sensory motor system and there's the limbic emotional system and then there's the cortex, the thinking part, the higher centers of the brain. But if you look at that mammalian, the part that's in all mammals, the emotional part of the brain, that is really the key, the key to pathology, I think.

It's like, pretty much everyone is aware of and recognizes that there are, let's say genetic, or just disorders of the mind and body. So let's say a baby can be born without certain limbs, without certain organs, or a baby may be born with some kind of defect in their brain that leads to learning disabilities or language problems, and so we're really familiar, and we don't really question at all the idea of these intellectual or physical problems from birth, but we don't really pay attention to the idea, or even the possibility of emotional problems, and that's what, psychopathy for example, is, at the root it's a psychological hole, it's an emotional hole in these people, and that's the essential part about empathy.

Because if you look at animals, and animals for the most part are where we've inherited all of our emotions, all of our emotional being is from animals, if we observe animals we see the way they interact, we see the nurturing for the young, we see playing behaviors, we see shame, we see animals that do something wrong and there's certain behaviors that are right and wrong, and if you break a social rule you feel a shame and there's punishment and there's love, and there's all these different emotions that happen between animals and it's a social thing. These emotions that the animals feel and that we feel as a result, emotions are a function of that self/other relationship, it's how we interact with each other, and without that emotional being, without those emotions driving us and pushing and pulling us away from each other, there would be no social harmony and we would get nothing done, basically, empathy is at the root of what it means to be human.

So when you look at a psychopath, a psychopath has no empathy, it's as if they completely lack that ability for social emotions. Now, what Lobaczewski says in Political Ponerology, he describes it as a psychological deficit, it's a deficit of instinct. So it's like whatever is a part of us when we're conceived and when we grow in utero, and then when we're born, whatever part determines that emotional structure and expressed through and by the emotional centers in the brain, there's something that's wrong there, that's lacking.

And so, when they interact with other people, other people they just take their emotions and their social emotions that we feel for each other and the drive of socializing, they take that for granted and they're not really aware of it, so we just kind of assume that everyone operates the same way. So, when we interact with a psychopath, we see them, and they might act strange and we might have a little instinct that something's not right with them, but because we've got this belief that everyone is the same and everyone feels and reacts the same way to these situations, we completely miss that, and that's the thing.

Sandra: I've talked about that the women project onto the psychopath or any of the other types of personality disorders, their own normality. They believe that everyone sees the world through who they are, they see the psychopath even, through who they are. So, they're open, they're giving, they're caring, they for the most part are honest, they tell the truth, and so they project those traits onto them and do not see what's projected. And I like what you were talking about, those deficits that, the best place to see all the things that did not correctly develop in the pathological is in the relationship, starting with the bonding and attachment, the women bond, and these guys superficially attach, and even without bonding is empathy possible.

So the issue of empathy in these relationships is often huge, and it's what I refer to as inevitable harm because when people have low or no conscience, low or no guilt, low or no empathy, people who have normal amounts are inevitably going to be harmed by that. I think that's where the dynamics and the relationship part just get, where the women get so hurt.

But I want to take a minute if I can, just to try to tie this in to the domestic violence piece since this is domestic violence month. And about the impulse control problems that are often inherent in these disorders. Harrison, do you want to touch on that, about the impulse control problem?

Harrison: Well, how about you start off with that and I'll add my thoughts?

Sandra: Ok, well, one of the things that has really helped us in domestic violence, understanding the issue about domestic violence as the information under neurosciences have come out over the last decade, I guess, in that all abusers are not created equal. Some of them have the capacity for change, based on that they are not pathological and don't have some of the permanent personality deficits and even the neuro stuff that we now see in some of the chronic relapsing abusers. In fact, women who are in domestic violence situations, the more times that there is violence, the closer to 100%, it moves towards that the person does most likely have pathology or personality disorder.

And what we learned from the neuroscience thing is that there is at least four different brain regions that are impacted by the impulse control problem. And so while we think that this is willful behavior, that the reason he hits is only because of the power and control that we've all been taught, then he can stop hitting. And I think examples like O.J. Simpson, Mike Tyson, are such real clear pictures of the impulse control problems that are inherent in someone who is pathological. I think we can agree that these guys are up and beyond your sort of average abuser and that the impulse control regions of the brain that are effected is what I believe makes these people so chronically at risk for violence.

Delilah: And why is it so hard, Sandra, why is it so hard for some of us to leave a relationship like that? With someone who comes across very charming, maybe to the outside world he looks like the greatest thing since sliced bread, people get a different perception of this person until they get behind closed doors. Or do we often see it that way, is it always happening behind closed doors or does it just kind of gradually come out?

Sandra: Well, two things. First of all, I think most of the women have continued to stay because they believed he could change, and they are not given a pathology education. It's my big beef about domestic violence, if we have domestic violence month we might as well talk about domestic violence, which is the power we control to define some of the external situations that impact domestic violence, but the women still believe that he has the capacity for change. And some of them do, but some of them don't, and the ones that don't, if she does not have that information then she will continue to believe it's willful behavior and she will continue to try other avenues with him, like counseling, better intervention, anger management, medication, whatever.

And I think our outcomes and people returning to those relationships are so astronomically higher than regular domestic violence programs. The percentage of the women that go back that go through the Institute's program is so miniscule. We just talked about the power that when women get the education about what pathology is, and the permanence of the disorder, and that we can so identify these guys' patterns of behavior in the past, in their current relationships and even predict the future with what they're going to do in a relationship, because they don't change.

Delilah: How do you access whether a person can change, if they're not into therapy or they haven't been mentally assessed? I'm sure with your experience you can see them coming with lights on, but the average person, how would you be able to assess whether that person can really change or if they are truly pathological?

Sandra: Well, when women come here to put that issue to rest, we have a checklist of symptoms, we don't tell them what the symptoms are associated with, we give them a blank sheet of symptoms and they go through and check off all that apply and they're right of the diagnostic mental health manual. So once they've checked them out we can tell them the criteria that they checked off for the person, which pathological mental health issues they just checked off for them. But people can go on-line, women can google 'narcissistic personality disorder', 'anti-social personality disorder' or 'psychopaths' and get a behavioral trait list to look at.

Delilah: Do you see women who go through that checklist and they're faced with the realty, and it's staring them right in the face and yet they go, "Oh, but I love him!"?

Sandra: They may still love him, but that's not something that saves right away, but the pathology education that goes with it, it creates this paradigm shift in them. Women really turn a corner when they have the information about who can change and who can't, and I think that is and has been key for us. Sure they're going to still fall in love or be in love, it takes a while for them to be able to reconcile the illusion of who they thought they were in a relationship with. They were not in love with who they thought they were in love with. These guys hide who they really are, that's the whole mask of sanity, the whole Jekyll and Hide piece, where, he's good, he's bad, he's good, he's bad. They're charming, if they were all Satan, if they only showed up with all the bad traits and none of the good, the women would have an easier time leaving. But, it's this ping ponging back and forth between the good and charming and fun aspects of the guy, and the damaging, horrible, hidden life part of that. So the more information that they get about his behavior, the relationship dynamics in these kinds of relationships and the permanence of his disorder, the more it helps them get on the reality page.

Delilah: At what age do you think these traits start coming out, in childhood, teenagers, puberty? Or how would you recognize it and can you divert it? Can you divert someone from turning into a pathological or psychopath or narcissist? Is that able to be diverted in the child environment, in the way that they're brought up, or is it just something that parents are going to have to deal with?

Sandra: Harrison, what do you think about the early dynamics of that?

Harrison: Well, first of all, I think the traits are there from the very beginning. Now, of course they won't all be there because the child has to go through some development, but I think it probably starts with the attachment phase because, well this is just what I think, I don't know if there's a scientific consensus on this, but the way I see psychopathy and other personality disorders is that they're basically hard wired into you and there's nothing that can change that, the only thing that can really change is how that personality disorder is expressed. So I think it probably starts with attachment because if you're lacking this capacity for social emotion, then you won't respond at all, normally, to your mother or to anyone really in that attachment phase. And so then, as you get a bit older, you develop all the normal intellectual, mental cognitive abilities, but because that emotion is lacking, that's when things start to come out and if you read a little bit on the literature on psychopaths you'll find that it's called, what the scientists say it is an association or correlation between conduct disorder as a youth and psychopathy as an adult.

Now I think that these scientific terms, they're there for certain, lets say, politically correct reasons, like conduct disorder, it's really just a name for psychopathy in youth, and so from a really young age you get behavioral problems, violence, precocious sexuality, you get animal abuse, and from a very young age, this is one of the interesting things that Hervey Cleckley wrote about in his first book on psychopathy, and then it was really well described in a novel by Mary Astor called The Incredible Charlie Carewe. Charlie in the story is a psychopath and it's kind of a novel about this man's life from when he's a child to when he's an adult, and Cleckley called him a prototypical psychopath. He recommended that anyone involved in mental health, all psychiatrists should read this novel because it's such a good portrayal of a psychopath.

And it's really kind of a revelation reading this because as a child you can see this boy, and lets say he does something wrong, so his father calls him into the office, and his father's trying really hard to, on the one hand his father feels bad because he has got to punish his son, on the other hand he is trying to be strong because he knows that he's got to do something about this. And all the while this is happening, the boy, Charlie, can kind of see all these things that are happening, he's saying, "oh, ok, I see my father, he feels bad because he's hurting my feelings, and he's not sure how to discipline me," and so throughout this Charlie decides the best thing to do is to cry, because he knows his father will react well to that, so he puts on these crocodile tears and cries and says, "oh I understand papa, I'll never do it again." Then later on he goes up into his room and he does some practicing in front of the mirror, he's like, ok, how will I respond to this situation, and so he puts on a certain facial expression, then he's like, no that's not the right one. And so, that's the reality of psychopathy, that these people lack the normal emotions that we all feel.

Sandra: They learn to mimic and parrot.

Harrison: Exactly.

Delilah: So children are born with this, is this something that a child is born with, like a birth defect or a handicap?

Harrison: Yep, that's the idea I was trying to get across, exactly like you said, like a birth defect or a handicap. It's like we automatically just accept intellectual and physical handicaps like this, but we have such a hard time accepting that these handicaps exist in the emotional sphere.

Sandra: And when you think about that, the emotional deficits that happen in childhood, I've seen children diagnosed as early as four. It's usually a lot older, like Harrison said, they have to miss some of the emotional milestones where you start getting some of the conduct that starts to be an indicator, but they just learn really early on to mimic and parrot back. So the psychopath is born that way, sociopaths are more the nature versus nurture argument, where as sociopaths may have been brought up in abuse and neglect, some other kind of trauma or by pathological parents that have influence on them. So when you think about that, whatever level, whatever type of pathology they have, it began in childhood, so by the time someone's dating him, at nineteen, twenty, twenty five, thirty years old, this guy has had a lot of time in order to get down the mimic and parroting, where he can pass off, at least initially as having a normal range of emotion. And I think that the scary thing for women is they come to the Institute because they are scared to death that they're going to pick this way again, that these guys are so good at disguising the disorder until they're in a relationship with them, that they're really afraid.

Delilah: How often do you see it the other direction, where it's the woman who is the pathological, I know that you and Susan both deal mostly with woman, how often is it seen the other direction?

Sandra: It is, and because we mostly work with women that's why we phrase it that way, but pathology is not a gender issue, it's a mental health issue, so yes, a lot of the women are often under-diagnosed and misdiagnosed. Women who actually are psychopaths or have psychopathic features are often under-diagnosed with other types of disorders, borderline or bi-polar or whatever, and I don't know, for me in some ways women are scarier, they're sneakier, I'd rather go up against a male psychopath any time, than a female, they scare me.

Delilah: You gave an example of like Ted Bundy, looking through history or something, who would you put up as an example of a female psychopath?

Harrison: I've got a perfect one, if I could jump in here. Well, this woman, she's alive, and I think she's one of the most dangerous people on the planet and her name is Sarah Palin. Now, you might wonder where that's coming from, but I've done a bunch of reading lately and from all appearances, from everything that I can read, Sarah Palin appears to me to be just a totally typical psychopath. Now, that's a scary thing, and it's hard to believe because she just looks like a kind of silly, friendly soccer mom, right? But that's the image that she portrays, the image she consciously puts out there.

And if you read about, there was a great article just recently, I forget the name of it, but this guy wrote it, he went around interviewing everyone he could find who had ever known her and he discovered the strangest thing, that most people, almost everyone that he talked to was terrified of telling him anything, a lot of them wouldn't even speak off record. It was because she had such a reputation, she would, like behind closed doors, she'd threaten people, she'd say, "if you say anything about me, if you say anything, you know what I can do, I can ruin you," and behind the scenes, she terrifies people and people are still, even years after interacting with her, even when she's off doing her thing now, she's no longer in the same environment that she was, people are still terrified of her.

Delilah: And you're not just giving your political opinion, you're looking at it from a scientific standpoint?

Harrison: No, not at all.

Sandra: Well, you know, that brings up the point that people have these preconceived ideas about who's pathological and who's not. They talk about in the book that everybody thinks that on the male version, that it's Charlie Manson, with a swastika between his eyes. Well if they all came marked like that we wouldn't need pathology education. We have these preconceived ideas about what pathology is and Harrison writes a lot about pathology in the political realm, about how we get kind of blindsided with our own political opinions, if we like Sarah, we would never say she is pathological, which has impacted, I think, our country through the White House in many, many ways because there is lots of pathologicals in Washington.

Harrison: And, if I can just add one thing, what I think is probably the most important point of doctor Lobaczewski's book, what the book is about basically, all the processes, all of the parts that get put together in a society to lead towards, basically what's been called a totalitarian government.

Lobaczewski lived in Poland, he was a Polish man, so he lived through the Nazi invasion and occupation and then the Soviet takeover and so he lived through communism for all those years. That was the impulse for writing this book, and for all the processes that lead to that final step, where we have a closed society lead by a pathological elite that just terrorizes the population. He said the first criterion for that process, the first sign that that's going to happen is the inability to recognize pathology in your own group.

So that's very dangerous, so when I go online and I see the people defending Sarah Palin just because she's Sarah Palin, "because I'll support her, right or wrong, you've got to be lying because that can't possibly be true," that's the first criterion for these kinds of things to happen. That gives a pathological the support, the network that they need to be able to do what they do.

So if you look to the clichéd examples from history, if you look at Hitler, Hitler couldn't have done what he did without the support of people who didn't realize what he was really like. And we've seen that in American politics a lot. I'd say that, from what I can tell, Lyndon Johnson seemed like a psychopath to me. Bill Clinton had some psychopathic traits, I don't know if he was a clear psychopath or not, I don't know enough about him. George Bush definitely had some things wrong with him.

Sandra: That's an understatement.

Harrison: Ok, he was a psychopath.

Sandra: I don't know if he was smart enough to be a psychopath, I know it's not based on IQ, but good god, he gives psychopaths a bad name.

Harrison: Yeah, I'd agree with that, but I think that a lot of the most dangerous people in politics are the ones that operate behind the scenes, those are the people, the psychopaths with the most intelligence, the most control over themselves, and the greatest ambitions towards power. And they're smart enough not to get involved and not to put themselves way out there in public. They're smart enough that they can, whoever is in politics, they can push their buttons, they can convince them, coheres them, one way or another, to do what they want them to do. And those guys are the most dangerous, those are the guys in the, lets say, well, first of all in the corporations, and the economic world, the foreign policy, like the steering groups.

Sandra: And we see the same thing even in personal relationships, some of what Susan does, and we've done a little bit of this, on legal retreats, when the women come to talk about these high conflict cases. One of the girls that was just here, sixty seven times in court, and so the inability for people to spot them, just like Harrison says, when they lay low instead of being out in the spotlight, and even in the personal relationships when they're going to court over and over again for restraining orders that have been violated, or custody or divorce hearings, and the less emotionally reactive the guy is, the more normal and the more his pathology can fly under the radar, and then the more hysterical she looks, so she's the one that starts looking pathological. And I think the same tactic works in court, you know, that these guys, or women, when they learn to lay low and stay out of the limelight, they get away with a horrendous amount of things.

Delilah: You think there's a real misunderstandingeven even within the court system, that it's not recognizing...

Sandra: No, it isn't, it's not recognized. Part of what the Institute is trying to do is do training within the legal system, the judicial system. Which brings me kind of up to the point where, as we're getting towards the end of the show, is that, yes the judicial system definitely does not have a clue about pathology, it's like they separate, they understand criminal and criminal mindsets, but they don't somehow connect it to the chronic ongoing problem. When we ask who does that, who rapes, who murders, who child abducts, who stalks, who has chronic repeating domestic violence problems, who is that? If we stop just calling it an abuser, or we just stop saying some generic title to that and we keep asking the question who, and what are the disorders most associated with the most violent acts, and we come down to this pool or pit of pathology, as they say, points to this ongoing cluster of disorders. If domestic violence and the court system ever want to really get a handle on this, they've got to start looking at the issue about pathology and separating out, stop wasting our time and tax dollars and resources on the pathologicals they can't change and start putting the money into victim education so these women stop picking these types, and put the dollars into the men and women that actually can change.

Delilah: I think we're also missing some things to, the legality assessments are very, very good, however, what steps are being done after an illegality assessment is done, where are we taking it at that point within the court system? We might not have time to answer that, I'm sorry.

Sandra: Yeah, this month during October, we're going to talk about high conflict cases and pathology in the courts and stuff like that, so we'll pick up and talk about that.

Delilah: And I hope everybody will tune in all through the month as we do pick through different topics and go a little bit more in-depth in recognizing what to do, how to get out. And Sandra we've got about a minute left if you and Harrison would like to go ahead and wrap up and then we'll close the show.

Sandra: Harrison is there any last points on pathology you want to make?

Harrison: One thing I want to say is that I would highly recommend for anyone in a situation of domestic violence or involved with a pathological or even out of a relationship with one, to really try out and get into a stress reduction program that stimulates your vagus nerve, and I actually do one very day called Eiriu Eolas and it's actually developed by Laura Knight-Jadczyk whose books Red Pill Press publishes, so if you go to redpillpress.com they've actually got it available there and it's great because it utilizes your body's own knowledge of how to reduce stress, so try it out.

Sandra: And the women definitely need that.

Delilah: I want to say thank you to Harrison for joining us.

Sandra: Thank you, Harrison.

Harrison: Thank you, that was fun.