PonerologyNews.com

A couple of months ago, we shared a story about a pilot episode for a CBS television show based on the work of a very intriguing professor who works on issues at the heart of ponerology. That person is Adrian Raine, professor of criminology, psychiatry and psychology at the University of Pennsylvania.

Today’s Wall Street Journal features a sizeable piece by Raine as its “Saturday Essay.”

The title of the essay is “The Criminal Mind” and underneath the title it says “Advances in genetics and neuroscience are revolutionizing our understanding of violent behavior—as well as ideas about how to prevent and punish crime.”

It doesn’t get much more relevant to ponerology than that. And it’s heartening to see Raine given a platform to share his extremely important and provocative ideas in The Wall Street Journal just in advance of the release of his book The Anatomy of Violence: The Biological Roots of Crime.

Raine’s essay touches on: (more…)

I’ve long lamented the fact that the public is not nearly aware enough about empathy-reducing conditions such as psychopathy, Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) and Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). While a growing proportion of people have at least heard of these disorders – as well as related ones like sociopathy and antisocial personality disorder – they still too often remain unclear about precisely what they are and how they differ from each other. And in so many cases where these disorders should be considered as factors, they aren’t even mentioned in media reports or public discussions.

One of the reasons this website was started is to document the evidence that this situation may be changing for the better. Awareness about these conditions is starting to spread and people are even starting to talk about them in cases where they should be rightfully suspected.

Perhaps no case has demonstrated this more than that of the Jodi Arias trial. (more…)

Yesterday, the bombings at the Boston Marathon took place, killing a few and injuring many more. In the wake of this event, there has been an outpouring of thoughts and feelings online.

One response that has gotten a lot of attention is the one posted on Facebook by comedian and actor Patton Oswalt.

I highly doubt that Oswalt has ever heard of the term ponerology. But his response, more than many others, especially from celebrities, actually comes close to placing the event in a ponerologic context.

So first I want to point out the particular statements that reflect a somewhat-ponerologic perspective in his writing. (more…)

In the past few years, the media has seemed to feature increased coverage regarding the influence of psychopathy and sociopathy. This website was started both because this increased media coverage helped validate the importance of the issue and because there was a need for those media stories on the issue to be more widely promoted. The increased coverage is represented throughout this site, including in our online news and television news sections.

Still, I don’t know what it says about the media that the source providing the most frequent and insightful coverage about psychopathy and sociopathy may be a satirical newspaper, The Onion.

Recently, I’ve seen several examples of The Onion’s use of humor to shine a light on this still too-often-overlooked topic. (more…)

It’s always interesting and somewhat validating to discover that ideas that you’ve only recently recognized as important were recognized as important by others a while ago. It’s especially interesting and validating to discover that they were recognized as important by someone quite insightful. I have made a few such discoveries regarding ponerology in the past several years. And last week I made another one when I came across a ten year-old interview.

The interview is of the famed and beloved late iconoclastic author and social critic Kurt Vonnegut, who skewered many aspects of our society in classics like Slaughterhouse-Five and somewhat lesser known, but also brilliant, works like Player Piano. It was originally published in the January 27, 2003 issue of In These Times, amidst an atmosphere rife with apprehension about the imminent United States invasion of Iraq.

I was quite struck by these lines of Vonnegut’s from the interview: (more…)

Are you looking for a way to help that special man in your life smell wonderful while, at the same time, sending a not-so-subtle message that you think he’s pathologically self-absorbed?

Well, it just came to my attention over the weekend that now there is a way that you can!

“What is it?” you ask.

Well, it’s Narcissist cologne.

That’s right, Narcissist cologne. (more…)

When I first learned about ponerology, I experienced a huge epiphany. Suddenly, I was aware of one field that in one word brought together tens, if not hundreds, of disparate threads that I’d been tracing and trying to communicate about throughout my life. The power of that insight drove me to write extensively about the topic and to start this website.

One of the bonuses of running and promoting this site is that, in the course of doing so, a lot of relevant ideas and people come to my attention. And, once in a while, another whole field of study, related to ponerology, that also brings together many disparate threads, becomes known to me.

This happened recently. (more…)