What Is the Hare Psychopathy Checklist?

@Brazzlefratz: I agree that there are more people today that lack empathy for others and do cruel things for fun and seem to lack a conscience. Some of them are the folks who execute those few murderers and the kinds of things that one poster mentioned. That's what is really bad about society. Justice is not possible at all. The USA's politicians argue whether or not torture is an effective and justified means of conducting international affairs. Obviously, they lack empathy, feel no remorse, and are just looking for rationalizations to hurt people.

I'd say that Hilary Clinton is a sociopath (or a psychopath), one or another. She talks about human rights and bettering humankind in places like the Philippines and her program to better the life of young ladies who are brought from the Philippines to the USA to perform sexual acts is to punish the young ladies. Some of these young ladies are minors. Hilary's justification is "We will teach them that we don't do that here." Yep, that sounds like a sociopath to me. Then there is Myanmar. She goes to Myanmar to pave the way for better human rights in Burma – one of the worst human rights violators on Earth. She gets the grand red carpet treatment and has lots of photographs taken. She leaves and sends in the Minister of War. Thomas Jefferson had more class with the Native North American Indians. Andrew Jackson was a little more upfront without the floweriness.

There are more Hilarys and George W Bushes and bad sheriffs and bad judges who do bad things and enjoy it. They lack conscience, but some of them do tend to feel weepy if their penchants for cruelty are questioned.

Whether you lump Sociopathy and Psychopathy together, or call them separate personality abnormalities, they appear to me to be much of the same 'genus'. And I do not agree with the observation that they are rare. I think that there are a lot more of them in our society today than there were in the past, and I think that society may well carry an increasing responsibility for this.

We have gone from executing murderers to almost forgiving them; this is indicative of what happens when the pendulum is swung back too far. Correction of bad behavior has been ameliorated to the point that miscreants (particularly youthful ones) no longer see or feel the reasons to modify their behavior in order to obtain the approval of their peers. Indeed, many of their peers seem to almost encourage them to misbehave, and as a result those 'beings' consider that they can do as they please when they please without fear of any consequences.

I'm not saying that those who throw litter out of car windows are sociopaths or psychopaths per se, but the picture is reasonably clear. They only behave like that because they have been allowed to get away with it in their formative years, and once they approach adulthood, the pattern is beginning to set somewhat like concrete. By that time, the only standard that they choose to abide by is their own, and that has little to nothing to do with society's mores.

The worst of it is that eventually, they do something so bad that society is forced via the law to take action against them, and hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars of public funds are then spent on prosecuting them and removing them from society (all too often for a relatively short period of time), when what should have been spent was a relatively inexpensive firm hand at the time when those people's behavior could well have been modified to an acceptable standard with just a 'good thick ear'.

It is said that the worst thing about Democracy is that it carries the seeds of its own destruction; it allows dissent. I would venture that the same thing applies to modern society in its approach to 'political correctness' and the handling of persons who, in days gone by, would have been given a good thrashing and taught to behave themselves. The modern approach of being submissively gentle is clearly not working.

Our law makers need to take heed of what is going on instead of blindly following their political masters regardless of the (lack of) logic. When a first time drug offender with no previous record gets an automatic sentence greater than a rapist, common sense has clearly been flushed down the sewer in favor of a minority group's fervor (or fanaticism if you will).

@KoiwiGal: You really need to get rid of that belief in your so called "professionals". They've diagnosed me wrong time and time again, for ages. They have to rely on the information they are given, and then follow protocols. Trust me it really doesn't work that well, I've had "outstanding doctors"(or whatever you call these overpaid fools), they didn't help in the least.

Trust your intellect, your mind and think. Consider the information from a detached perspective, and never think of anything as a certainty. Such a thing does not exist.

I do agree with you in part though, be thorough, and don't make any hasty assumptions.

@pastanaga - Oh, I definitely agree that something needs to be done in a lot of countries in regards to mental health. However, I'm not sure that psychopathy is one of those illnesses that can always be diagnosed until something has already gone wrong.

Often a psychopath is adept at hiding their symptoms and it's not a coincidence that one of the things they look for in the Hare checklist is "superficial charm". There's a reason that so many people manage to get taken in and manipulated by psychopaths, they put up a really good front.

@KoiwiGal - I think the problem is that people think the condition has some kind of glamour to it. You hear about psychopaths on the news who get a lot of attention and perhaps people think they stand for something, even if that something is anarchy.

Young people who feel disillusioned with life can be drawn to that kind of attention and "ideals" thinking perhaps that the reason they feel different is because they have this condition (or any other number of conditions).

Generally, though, the checklist is considered one of the only ways to truly diagnose this condition and it's usually used in a more or less ethical way.

What I think is sad is when people with these sorts of traits slip through the system because the system basically can't cope with the number of people who need help. There have been several reported cases in the last few decades of people who have been known to have serious mental illness, and have been allowed to walk free and eventually kill someone because there wasn't enough funding or staff to keep them safe even if they asked for it.

You really need to be careful to put too much stock into this test if it isn't delivered by a licensed professional in clinical conditions. There seems to be a trend online that people take tests and get others to take them, and then think the results are really indicative of an illness.

But, this particular diagnosis is taken quite seriously by medical professionals and a true psychopath is rare. If someone is misdiagnosed, they could suffer from future consequences, particularly if they are already in the legal system.