Apparently, Saturday Night Live did too, as they led off this weekend’s episode with a sketch in which this very question is asked.

Now, I am not claiming that George Zimmerman is a psychopath or has any other specific conscience-reducing disorder. I really have no ability to make a judgment on that. However, the conversation about his romantic situation did lead me to explain to my conversation partner that those that are psychopaths or do have certain related disorders are notorious for their ability to attract many romantic and sexual relationships. I mentioned some of the fascinating research, which I cover in my foundational page about psychopathy, about just how successful some of history’s most ruthless killers have been in spreading their genes.

Well, as so often happens after a deep discussion about an intriguing topic, it wasn’t more than a couple of days before a new, highly relevant story emerged in the news.

A 25-year-old woman named Star told Rolling Stone magazine that she plans to marry the now 79-year-old infamous mastermind of numerous murders, Charles Manson, who remains locked up in prison. Apparently, Star moved near the prison 6 years ago, when she was 19, so she could spend more time with Manson.

CNN also covered this story, interviewing the woman (who says her attraction to Manson was initially sparked by his environmentalism, not his crimes, which she only really became aware of later, but which did not dissuade her from her attraction.)

Now, Manson himself denies that they will be getting married. But the interesting thing is that, whether or not the marriage actually happens, a young woman would actually want people to believe it will.

What makes this story meaningful is that it is far from an isolated case. In his heyday, Manson was often surrounded by young women drawn to his charisma and aura. And he isn’t the only person associated with mass murder or serial killing to elicit such admiration. To offer just one more example among many, Ted Bundy was viewed as extremely charming and employed his skill for attracting young women in the course of carrying out his crimes.

This is an important topic. The ability of psychopaths and others with reduced conscience to attract mates has a number of implications and consequences:

1. It reinforces a sense of glamor about such individuals and their value systems.
2. It may increase their social standing.
3. It practically assists them in the commission of some of their crimes.
4. It leads to an increase in the proportion of their genes in the population’s overall gene pool.
5. It causes havoc for the partners and especially the children that must live with the consequences of these relationships.

I realize that there are men who are drawn to ruthless women and that is also an important topic to consider. But the Manson and Bundy examples – and, perhaps, to a lesser extent, the Zimmerman example – raise the question of why women are attracted to men of this kind.

Well, another coincidence that occurred in the wake of my conversation about this topic relates to that question. A few days after the discussion, through a completely different avenue, I ended up on the Wikipedia page for the topic hybristophilia.

Hybristophilia is described as:

“a paraphilia of the predatory type in which sexual arousal, facilitation, and attainment of orgasm are responsive to and contingent upon being with a partner known to have committed an outrage, cheating, lying, known infidelities or crime, such as rape, murder, or armed robbery.”

Apparently the term stems from the Greek word hybrizein, which means “to commit an outrage against someone” (and which, itself, stems from the word hubris) and philo meaning “having a strong affinity/preference for.”

The page even mentions the many female admirers that Bundy and Manson attracted as examples.

After reading that page, I was reminded of yet another relevant example.

As a result of running this website, I was recently sent a copy of the book Survived by One: The Life and Mind of a Family Mass Murderer, which is written, along with Robert Hanlon, a clinical neuropsychologist specialized in working with violent criminals, by a man named Tom Odle, who remains in an Illinois prison (after initially being placed on death row, before Illinois commuted all death sentences) for killing his entire immediate family – his parents and three siblings – in 1985. Odle has been diagnosed with Antisocial Personality Disorder by one forensic psychiatrist and with Borderline Personality Disorder with Anti-social features by another.

At several points in the book, he describes how women have contacted him on death row and in prison, impressed and attracted by what he has done.

“People write me letters, especially girls and women wanting to be my friend and congratulating me on doing something that they had only thought about doing because they were mistreated and abused, also. There was also some kind of fan club for me…I liked the attention I was getting, and I even reconnected with an old friend I had a crush on for years. She wrote to me, so I wrote back, and we found each other in a new light.”

And later…

“I also responded to letters from girls who managed to find my address and wrote to tell me how cool they thought I was because I had murdered my parents. That was one thing I ate up at that time because it diminished my responsibility and guilt.”

Odle had women come visit him in person and begin relationships with him while he was on death row, as well. One of those relationships even led to a short-lived marriage.

So it was fascinating to learn that there is actually a term to describe this behavior – hybristophilia. And the Wikipedia page on that topic was also fascinating because it offers some theories about why such attractions occur.

Then, just this weekend, in the wake of the Manson girlfriend story, Yahoo featured a video by Discovery News about this very topic entitled “Why Psychopaths Turn Women On.” It even mentions the term hybristophilia and Bundy’s admirers, as well as those of other serial killers. It then speculates on some of the reasons behind this attraction or fetish.

Mate selection is a crucial driver of evolution. When a person selects another person as a mate, they are, in essence, voting for that person’s traits to become more prominent in humanity’s future. And they help make sure those traits do become more prominent in more than one way simultaneously.

Biologically, they help the person pass on their genes to their children. Developmentally, they ensure the existence of children shaped by parenting based in that person’s values – or by parental abuse or neglect as a consequence of those values. Socially, they may send a message that such traits are attractive, possibly influencing others to see an incentive in exhibiting them.

This is why, even though such relationships might seem like personal situations separate from our own lives, all of us should care when we see people with reduced empathy and conscience attracting mates. This phenomenon has, historically, had a surprisingly significant impact on the state of our world today. We must live in neighborhoods and communities with people deeply influenced by such relationships. And it may well be one of the mechanisms by which the health and sustainability of humanity continues to be threatened.

In addition, Kim is a writer whose bio states that she is a “former professor of languages” who was a Fulbright Scholar.

So I was quite curious when Kim let me know that she had written a new book dealing with the topic of narcissism and related themes about which we both feel strongly and was kind enough to send me a copy.

Things started off well very early on – in fact, before I even opened the envelope containing the book. Why? Check out this return address label that greeted me.

You can think and write about these issues for a long time before you come across something like that. It just reminded me all over again of how clever and insightful Kim’s work around these issues can be.

Then I opened the package to reveal the book and its title, The Sin of Omission.

This just continued the great start because this title reflects an aspect of ponerology that I have long felt it is important to emphasize. Those with reduced empathy can surely actively cause a great deal of harm. But, boy are they often also talented at strategically employing negligence to deviously enable suffering to arise while maintaining plausible deniability.

There are non-actions which, though most would deem them unethical, are nonetheless not illegal. Those who wish to do harm can engage – or, perhaps better said, willfully fail to engage – in them and rarely be held to account. They are the moral loopholes that empathy-reduced people masterfully and frequently exploit. Their existence is a problem that has long haunted me.

That haunting goes back even to my childhood. Agatha Christie’s famous novel Ten Little Indians tells the story of how a number of people who took advantage of these types of loopholes, causing suffering for which they had never been held responsible, were finally brought to a form of justice. I was assigned to read the book in middle school and, even at that young age, my life experience had already primed me in such a way that it hit me like a ton of bricks because I recognized so keenly and felt so strongly about this theme of people getting away with terribly unethical “sins of omission.”

Apparently many others also recognize and feel strongly about this theme because Ten Little Indians, which was first published under the title And Then There Were None, is one of the six best-selling single-volume books of all time, along with iconic works like A Tale of Two Cities, The Lord of the Rings, The Little Prince and The Hobbit.

Also, shortly before receiving Kim’s book in the mail, I had read Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations. I wasn’t a big fan of most of it, but there was one quote in it about which I felt strongly enough to copy it down. It was the one where the Roman Emperor says:

“Very often an unjust act is done by not doing something, not only by doing something.”

Then I looked at the print-out of a blog post regarding the book which Kim had included in the package. It said:

“There is another ‘N’ word that is often associated with hate and conflict. But this word is not about race or class. This word has no social or economic boundaries.”

What a brilliant way of making the point that the word “narcissism,” which should be a well-understood household term, viewed as quite important and relevant because of how much damage the trait can cause in a family or any other system, instead often goes barely noticed or discussed. One mention of the better-known “N word” can end relationships and careers (and, ironically, it may well be that narcissism itself drives some of the people that do hatefully utter it.) But a lifetime of actually living out this “N word” often goes unrecognized or even rewarded.

I have long been emphasizing that divisions based on race, class, gender and other more superficial categories serve to distract us terribly from focusing on the far more important division in humanity between those with and without a significant level of conscience.

I then checked out the back of the book itself, which describes it as “An eye opening portrayal of family conflict, based on the author’s personal experiences growing up in a dysfunctional family.” While many people interested in ponerology focus on the social and political levels, most of us first experience harmful behavior in our families. Some, unfortunately, experience it there to a significant degree. I suspect that if you surveyed the growing community of those who have been drawn to ponerologic topics, you would find that, for many, the threads of that attraction can be traced directly back to personal family dynamics.

So, basically, before opening her book, I had the idea that it would boil down to Taylor revealing, in a sense, how her interest in the impact of and optimal responses to the harmful influence of those with reduced empathy is rooted in her own childhood experience. Specifically, I expected that she would delve into the lessons she learned about how such people insidiously operate, harming others through “crimes of omission” that are much easier to keep hidden than “crimes of commission.”

Then, I glanced at the table of contents, which lists the titles of the book’s ten chapters. Every single one of the chapter titles was either curiosity-piquing, quirky or both. They all grabbed my attention and made me eager to delve into Taylor’s world.

And so I began reading.

Getting Personal

Those who write about ponerologic topics, even though I believe many, if not most, of us have both academic and personal interest in them, seem to fall into two rough categories:

1. Those who write very openly about their own personal experiences involving the influence of those with low empathy and conscience
2. Those who, even if they have been personally affected by the influence of those with low empathy and conscience, choose to keep their personal stories – especially the specific names and behaviors of other people they know – private, sticking with writing about ponerology from a more general perspective

The Sin of Omission proves Kim Taylor to fall decidedly in the former category. And how.

The book tells the story of her narcissistic brother, Tim, her enabling father and family system and the damage and pain that emerges from this mix. But it doesn’t just tell the story. It airs the family’s dirty laundry in the most open way. In this book, Taylor vents to the world the kind of frustration that most people in these situations save for their diaries or their close friends.

Just as one example of how personal the book gets:

There is one point at which Taylor explains that there is a letter she has wanted to send to her mother-in-law regarding her brother and his wife, but that she has not sent it because she feels too uncomfortable. So what has she done? Instead, she has published the letter in the book.

This level of openness led to mixed feelings for me.

On one hand, I felt almost uncomfortable with it. The book is so revealing that I wondered if the motive behind its writing might be something like revenge through exposure. And, as we’ll discuss at the end of this piece, there is some reason to consider that – perhaps even justly – it is.

On the other hand, I was also able to view her openness as an attempt at several worthwhile goals:

• Catharsis – Short of any effective way to find justice, and realizing that we are “only as sick as our secrets,” the book may serve as a way to at least express mourning, convey a visceral sense of how dramatic, chaotic and painful the drama of a dysfunctional family touched by personality disorders can be, and have her story actually witnessed. I imagine embodying her experiences and putting them out into the world in this book is a weight off Taylor’s chest.
• Understanding – The writing of the book may be part of Kim’s process of seeking answers. As I read, I could just feel her struggling with the painful questions that gnaw at many people of healthy conscience who find themselves in such a system.
  • Why does the narcissist act this way?
  • Why are others enabling the narcissist and suppressing attempts to restrain their abuses rather than aiding and comforting their victims?
  • How did these people become the type of people who would be willing and able to play these roles?
• Helping Others – The book is a cautionary tale.

Exploring the Dynamics of Reduced Empathy and Affected Family Systems

In The Sin of Omission, Kim Taylor touches on or delves into a number of aspects of conditions of reduced empathy and the workings of families in which a member has one. Those who have been in such a situation may relate to many of them.

Manipulative Tactics & Con Artistry

Kim explains some of the “tricks of the trade” that the empathy-reduced person uses to manipulate those around them. One entire chapter is devoted to talking about the time her brother fell victim to an even more skilled scammer than himself. She uses that story to branch out into a broader discussion of con artistry in general.

This discussion is based on her own research on the subject. I found this to exemplify a pattern I’ve noticed. It seems like often, once a victim of a pathological person or system comes to see through the veil of ponerologic conditions, they work to become expert on subjects related to con artistry so as to be able to protect themselves from being duped again. They may even take great pride in their newfound savvy and ability to detect deception and teach others to do so.

Jekyll and Hyde

Taylor offers the phrase “street angel, house devil,” one that her mother used, as a way of conveying how those with pathologies of conscience can charm so many people in the outside world who never see the abusive, cruel sides of them that they so openly display at home.

Vulnerabilities of the Codependent

She discusses the kinds of wounds and defense mechanisms that those with reduced empathy exploit in vulnerable codependent types of people.

The Generational Ripple Effect of Abuse & Neglect

One of the main themes of this book is how one sin – even a sin of omission – can have a deep impact, setting the stage for dysfunction to flourish for generations to come.

We often hear about how personality disorders themselves result from this generational process. But here Taylor focuses on how the aforementioned wounds and defense mechanisms that underlie the enabling behaviors of the other people around the personality-disordered person also result from this same process.

Early in the book, she tells the tale of her widower grandfather’s abandonment of his children – including her father – during the Great Depression. She goes on to reveal how this first sin facilitated a chain reaction of others, like the one carried out by a priest at the orphanage to which her abandoned father was relegated – a supposedly highly moral man – that shattered her father’s self-esteem forever. She speculates on how these early experiences of loss, abuse and neglect led her father to project his own need for care, driving him to compensate by fervently caring for others, especially the very types of people who would take advantage of him – people like his own exploitative brother and Kim’s narcissistic brother, his son.

Kim asks:

“Was it his experience at the orphanage of overdiscipline and physical abuse that made him too tolerant of a son whose behavior throughout life would be far too risk-taking for his own good? If there is a tragic flaw in all of this, that is certainly it. The orphanage might be the reason behind dad’s inability to correct a son whose narcissism ruled him.”

She contrasts her own early experience learning about the concept of reciprocity with her father’s lack of insight into its importance and compliance to those who manipulated him as a result.

How Systemic Enabling Amplifies Consequences

Kim mentions that not only did her father’s projection lead him to be compliant, but it led him to expect others to be so, as well. As a result of such a dynamic, much of the rest of the family joins in with the enabling. In her case, her mother discouraged any criticism, preferring to “keep the peace.” One of her younger brothers, who also had a vulnerable personality, became prey, at times, to the con artistry.

Eventually, any healthy limits keeping the personality-disordered person in check are discouraged and shut down. For example, Kim’s maternal grandfather tried to step in and correct Tim’s behavior for his own good and that of society. But rather than gratitude, her family responded by undermining his efforts.

It is at this point that the disordered behavior can really go off the rails.

Blocking of Family Intimacy

When some family members deny and refuse to address another family member’s personality disorder, this creates an inevitable tension and distance between them and the ones who are conscious about it. Kim talks about how the atmosphere surrounding her disordered brother prevented her from having a closer relationship with her father and, worse, how she blamed herself for that. She explains that “When one party shuts down or shuts a door because that person is not able to deal with truth and openness, it is frustrating for the other.” And in the letter to her mother-in-law she says, “It is a shame…when families end up fragmented because of one person’s disorders.”

The Extra Pain of Family Crises

Kim talks about the terrible experience of having to handle her father’s death and the decisions associated with it and its aftermath while dealing with such a difficult family system.

“Water to a Fish”

Taylor describes a key phenomenon – that, no matter how extreme, the dysfunction of our family systems often remains invisible to us when we are young since it is all we know. It is only later that life may somehow help us gain perspective and, when it does, it comes as an epiphany.

The Sickly Intriguing Nature of These Patterns

The book discusses, and, indeed, exhibits, how narcissistic-codependent types of relationships play out in toxic, yet fascinating, patterns. Once one finally does recognize them, it can become almost an obsession to study them, and it can prove difficult to look away.

Connection to Similar Patterns on Higher Social Levels

In Political Ponerology, Andrew M. Lobaczewski starts by explaining how those with pathologies of conscience can take over nations. He then goes on to show how similar, mutually reinforcing patterns play out as families and communities are corrupted, as well.

In The Sin of Omission, Taylor works in the other direction. After focusing on the patterns within her family in depth, she touches on how these mirror patterns of dependency and unsustainability at higher levels.  For instance, on page 18, she states:

“It is much like the ongoing bail-out situation related to economic crisis in the U.S. and elsewhere.”

Comparison to the Work of Barbara Oakley

Given the topic and approach of the book, I couldn’t help but compare The Sin of Omission to the work of another author that is very significant to me.

One of the most important books I’ve ever read is Evil Genes: Why Rome Fell, Hitler Rose, Enron Failed, and My Sister Stole My Mother’s Boyfriend by Barbara Oakley. Oakley, like Taylor, is a writer on the topic of pathologies of conscience who, as the full title of that book suggests, also opens up in her writing in a very personal way about her own family issues. In Evil Genes, she share stories of and examines her experience in a family that included a sister who she describes as exhibiting a combination of Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) and psychopathy as a means by which to consider these and related conditions. The Sin of Omission, full of stories about Taylor’s brother’s behavior and how the rest of the family responded and was affected, is in this tradition to some extent.

Oakley’s next work – Cold-Blooded Kindness: Neuroquirks of a Codependent Killer, or Just Give Me a Shot at Loving You, Dear, and Other Reflections on Helping That Hurts – focused on the flip side of the exploitative relationship, what she calls pathological altruism. (She also edited this well-received scholarly book explicitly about that subject.) And The Sin of Omission, as much as it is about narcissists themselves, is also a book about this crucial complementary aspect of the dysfunctional cycle. For, though she never uses and may not even be familiar with the term, Taylor’s thesis is that her father’s treatment in the orphanage transformed him into a pathological altruist, all too eager to extend himself in support of narcissistic manipulators and exploiters. She also explains how her own husband has kept her from falling into what she calls the “trap of ‘empathy’” of which narcissists take advantage.

However, while they share much in these ways, there are also some differences between Taylor’s work in this book and Oakley’s.

1. Oakley uses her personal family stories as jumping off points from which to delve very deeply into the hard science behind conditions of reduced empathy and conscience. Taylor doesn’t delve into the science very much at all, sticking primarily with the personal perspective. When she does veer off a bit, it’s to discuss something more humanities-oriented, like how narcissism has served as an archetype of evil in religious and historical representations, not to consider the relevant scientific evidence and research.
2. That first difference has implications for the philosophical angle taken. The scientific emphasis leads Oakley to focus more on the genetic, neurological and other biological aspects of these disorders. The Sin of Omission focuses more on the influence of childrearing. I have little doubt that both authors realize the importance of both of these angles and their interconnection. But, nonetheless, they come at this subject matter differently.
3. Oakley’s books are quite long and dense. The Sin of Omission is a short 67 pages and can easily be read in one sitting.
4. Oakley’s writing is of extremely high quality. The Sin of Omission is not nearly as eloquent in style.
5. Oakley’s writing is highly-structured and well-organized. The Sin of Omission is rambling and sometimes even chaotic.

I make this last point not simply to put down Taylor’s book. For the rambling, perhaps, is appropriate here, serving, intentionally or not, a purpose. It matches the emotional tone of that the book conveys.

While Oakley examines her family history in Evil Genes, Taylor, in this book, expresses the frustration and anger of being stuck in her family in a more visceral way. Oakley explains, seeming, for the most part, to have come to terms with her experience and to be writing as she looks back at it with perspective. Taylor rants, pouring out the exasperation generated by a seemingly never-ending ordeal of having to put up with what she aptly calls an “upside down relationship.” It is not always coherent, not always linear, not always structured or organized. But this is because it is not just a writing, but a release of grief. For she appears, as she writes, to still be in the throes of that grief and it comes across as anger and depression in search of acceptance.

So while The Sin of Omission will not win a Nobel Prize in Literature, if you have any experience with situations like Taylor’s or want to gain some insight into how devastating such situations can be, you can get a sense of it through her writing.

Both Oakley’s and Taylor’s perspectives, though different, offer something valuable that can help others.

Broadening the Perspective

Another interesting thing about Taylor’s version of her story is that it shows how the particular way that we come into contact with and are affected by certain issues can color how we view them and shape the conclusions we draw about them. As a result of her specific experiences, Taylor expresses a couple of conclusions that she has reached that I’d like to put into a broader perspective.

Parent/Child Personality-Disordered/Enabler Orientations

It’s clear that Taylor recognizes the ethical loophole upon which Ten Little Indians was based and that has haunted me for so many years. At one point she says:

“There are crimes that occur that are punishable by law and then there are crimes on a smaller scale not punishable by law but nonetheless unethical. They are committed against our families, our friends, our neighbors, our colleagues, our brothers and sisters…”

But then she finishes that quote with…

“…and especially grievous from a standpoint of moral values are those that dishonor our mothers and our fathers.”

I found it striking that she never so explicitly addressed the case that many other people experience in which a disordered parent abuses, exploits or neglects the children. I think many would say that that case is even more grievous than when a disordered child dishonors the parents, who are at least adults and better equipped to protect themselves from and withstand such behavior.

In fact, when I first heard about her book, I simply assumed the story would be about a narcissistic parent that hurt her. I was actually surprised to find that it was primarily about a narcissistic sibling who hurt her parents. This is also a worthwhile story to tell. But Taylor seems to believe the latter is the more archetypal story from which to draw lessons.

Each of our experiences colors what we see as most grievous. Taylor watched painfully as her parents were manipulated and she generalized from that experience. But it can be just as painful and damaging, if not worse, when the parent is the disordered person rather than the enabler.

The Range of Empathy-Reducing Conditions

Often, people are first affected by or learn about one particular empathy-reducing condition and then, since the various conditions with this effect can look alike, begin labeling all empathy-reduced people with that one condition. I wonder if this happened to Taylor. Perhaps, having first become familiar with narcissism and narcissistic personality disorder (NPD), and not having necessarily studied related conditions, she conflates all empathy-reducing conditions under the rubric of narcissism.

As I read, I frequently wondered if the brother being described as a narcissist is actually a psychopath. There are a number of signs that point to this possibility, including the stark terms in which Taylor describes her brother’s “evil,” not the least part of which is his markedly parasitic lifestyle, one of the hallmarks of psychopathy tested for as part of Factor 2 of the Hare Psychopathy Checklist. At one point, she compares him to Bernie Madoff, claiming that Madoff represents the epitome of narcissism. But many actually believe that Madoff, while certainly a narcissistic person, is actually a prime example of white-collar psychopathy.

We obviously cannot diagnose her brother on the basis of just the stories in this book. But it is worth considering that not all people of low conscience have NPD. Some have Borderline Personality Disorder. Some are psychopaths. A proper diagnosis is important because these disorders, while overlapping in some ways, are also, in other ways, quite different.

There is actually one place in which Taylor does consider another diagnosis for her brother. In the letter to her mother-in-law she speculates that he may be bipolar. But she never mentions the possibility of him having one of the other empathy-reducing conditions besides narcissism. And she never really mentions psychopathy at all.

Conclusion

Millions of families struggle with the types of issues that arise when members with certain empathy-reducing personality disorders generate destructive drama and other family members, or the family system overall, consistently enable them. Each has its own tale. But most of these tales will never be told, at least not publicly.

There is enormous discouraging pressure and stigma associated with exposing such family secrets. Derrick Jensen, another writer who very openly and powerfully exposes family secrets in his work, often quotes famed psychiatrist R.D. Laing’s three rule of a dysfunctional family:

• Rule A is Don’t.
• Rule A.1 is Rule A does not exist.
• Rule A.2 is Never discuss the existence or nonexistence of Rules A, A.1, or A.2.

For better or worse, Kim Taylor decided to break these rules and “spill the beans” to the world. Her personal frustrations, born of being the caring person – one whose very life has become committed to Fair Play – in a family affected by a highly-enabled narcissist have been published.

It is unnerving. The Sin of Omission reveals the kinds of family conversations that most people dwell on privately and never share with everybody else. The eighth chapter of the book is entitled “Those are the Sacrifices You Make for Family.” Often, secrecy is one of the ultimate sacrifices made in dysfunctional families.

But Taylor has refused to make that sacrifice anymore. She waited until her parents were gone to do so. But her brother, Tim, is still alive.

Yet, if we are ever to really see clearly what is happening in our culture and our systems, conversations like these will have to be exposed to disinfecting sunlight. We see it happening with leaks at other levels of human systems. And Taylor’s book is, in a sense, a whistleblower leak of her family secrets.

It is hard to know for sure what the truth is in situations like this. Family dynamics are complex and one is hesitant to make a final judgment without hearing everyone’s story. But, at the same time, this careful deliberative approach, if it leads to too great a hesitancy to make decisions, is something empathy-reduced people can sometimes exploit.

I cannot definitively say exactly what really happened in Taylor’s family. But I can confidently say that what she describes happens in families every day causing untold pain and suffering, often with the most undeserving suffering the most.

I loved the idea of Narcissist cologne and a company based on the concept of Fair Play. Having read Taylor’s book and been granted a view into her experience of her family, I now have a much better insight regarding why she became so personally passionate about these endeavors and the issues that they involve in the first place.

The motive behind this book, and perhaps much of Taylor’s life and work, became most clear to me when she explained:

“Tim’s anger was always turned outward rather than inward. He chose from among those closest to him as a target for this anger. More often than not, he chose to target me both verbally and physically. He saw me as a competitor. I was a threat to him because of my abilities and accomplishments.”

It is in light of a comment like this that the book could be interpreted as an attempt at revenge. But, if you really consider this statement, it is a deeply tragic one. You can empathize with Taylor’s agony at being a good kid, doing her best to be a caring person and, nonetheless, being abused by an envious Machiavellian sibling.

And, worse, hidden in those words, is the pain that inheres in the question “Why didn’t my parents protect me from him?” Her parents’ indulgence of their empathy-reduced son left their daughter vulnerable. This is the central recent sin of omission that we can trace all the way back to her grandfather’s original sin of abandoning his children. It is an archetypal example of how those of healthy conscience so often pay the price when those with pathologies of conscience are not held accountable or even identified as such. That rank injustice is what is so unconscionable to those who have a conscience to care.

As Kim says, “There is nothing like paying for others’ mistakes.”

The ultimate lesson of The Sin of Omission might be summed up when Taylor points out that children need a healthy balance of discipline and freedom and that that healthy balance must be determined not in a formulaic way, but taking into account a particular child’s ability to self-monitor. We must incorporate individual differences in these assessments. But, whether because an empathy-reduced parent cannot read and reflect back to a child properly or because an empathy-reduced child is not recognized and appropriately adjusted to by a misguided or naïve parent, this process too often fails. And, when it does, as Taylor’s book shows – cries out about, in fact – the ripple effect of suffering can be tremendous.

Our last post focused on Raine’s essay “The Criminal Mind,” featured in the April 27, 2013 Wall Street Journal, in which he discussed how advances in our understanding of the genetic, neurological and environmental bases of violence are influencing our view of and approach to crime.

Now another large media outlet, CNN, has run not one, but two segments featuring Raine’s work.

In a segment entitled “The Anatomy of Violence: A look inside the minds of killers,” CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta talked to Raine and discussed his work’s possible relevance in understanding why the Boston Marathon bombings occurred.

The segment opens with footage of the bombings, over which Gupta says:

“In the wake of tragedy come the inevitable questions. What makes a killer? Is there a switch that turns on a rampage? And why? Why would someone do this?”

Adrian Raine then appears on the screen and says that to simply label a person that commits such acts “evil” is “13th-century thinking.” Gupta introduces Raine, explaining that Raine believes there are “biological explanations for violence” and Raine then explains why he believes that brain dysfunction may partly explain the Boston Marathon bombings.

One interesting condition that Raine mentions that he found relevant, given that the older of the two brothers charged with the bombings, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, was a very skilled boxer, is a recognized brain abnormality called Cavum Septum Pellucidum. Raine says that this condition, in which a maldeveloped limbic system fails to normally put pressure on and thus fuse the leaflets of the Septum Pellucidum, predisposes to a psychopathic personality marked by fearlessness and the ability to commit remorseless violence. For whatever it is worth, he says it has also been found in boxers.

In fact, in reading Wikipedia’s page about Cavum Septum Pellucidum, I became aware that perhaps the most famous fictional boxer of all time, Rocky Balboa, was specifically told in Rocky V that he had this very condition.

I could only find video of the scene in which Rocky receives this diagnosis online in Italian. And the translation has “pellucidum” apparently incorrectly transformed into “pelliculum,” which may be why the poster put a question mark at the end of the video’s title of “Cavum Septum Pelliculum?” You can see an English translation here. But here is the clip.

Gupta then shows us, using imagery from a psychopath’s brain, the smaller amygdalae found in psychopaths in Raine’s research, which also contribute to the fearlessness and disinhibition that could enable one to commit harmful acts like the Boston bombings.

Gupta also discussed the possible link between Raine’s work and the Boston Marathon bombings in another segment on the CNN program The Lead with Jake Tapper.

During the segment, which begins with the lower third title again saying “The Anatomy of Violence: A look inside the minds of killers,” host Tapper says, in reference to those bombings, that we are trying to “understand this unmitigated evil.” In that spirit, he asks Gupta about the bombers, Dzhokar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev themselves, as well as about the three men later arrested for having attempted to help Dzhokar cover up his involvement. Gupta mentions having spoken to Adrian Raine about this topic and says it may be relevant to understand that Dzhokar and the three arrested later, all being just 19 years old, may have had a combination of fully developed and fueled emotional brain centers along with not-yet-fully-developed judgment centers in their frontal lobes.

The title in the lower third then changes to “The Mind of a Terror Suspect: Could brain chemistry have played role in bombings?”

Tapper raises the issue of whether defense attorneys will use our increased insight into the genetic and neurological underpinnings of harmful behavior to argue that their clients’ actions should be excused. Gupta calls our advancing understanding of the biological roots of crime and violence “an emerging science” and then offers two examples that really highlight the difficulty of assigning appropriate levels of blame to those that commit harmful acts while suffering from certain biological conditions.

• First, Gupta mentions that Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, in which a mother’s drinking during pregnancy harms the developing fetus’ brain, leads that baby in later life to have a much higher likelihood of committing crimes and a nineteen times greater chance than otherwise of ending up in prison.
• Gupta also mentions how a brain tumor can drastically change an otherwise normally-functioning person’s behavior.

This is one of the first times I have seen ponerologic material discussed so explicitly on CNN. However, it isn’t the first. For instance:

• In the wake of the Newtown school shootings, I saw Erin Burnett interview Dr. James Fallon about the biological markers of psychopathy and whether he expected them to be discovered post-mortem in shooter Adam Lanza.

• I also saw a recent segment in which anchor Don Lemon intereviewed criminal profiler Jim Clemente and forensic psychiatrist Helen Morrison about the prevalence of sociopathy. (I tried to find video of this latter segment to share on this site but it seems it was never posted online. However, the transcript of the segment can be found about 1/4 of the way down the page of this transcript of Lemon’s entire show that night.)

But it was really nice to see Sanjay Gupta, who I believe is deservedly highly regarded as a physician, scientist and journalist, covering this topic from a professional and medical perspective. This is the type of coverage I would love to see more of on CNN and similar networks. And I’m glad that I have seen a lot more of it in the past few months than I can remember ever seeing before.

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:

• The history of criminology as a science and its sometimes unfortunate devolution into pseudoscience
• The rise of neurocriminology
• The roles of genetics, environmental and developmental factors and brain structure and function in the emergence of aggression and antisocial behavior
• The political and social implications of a focus on biological bases for crime
• Recommendations for legal policies that account for our growing ponerologic understanding by both assigning appropriate levels of responsibility to offenders and optimally protecting the rest of society from the threats they pose
• Measures – including some relatively non-invasive ones – that can help significantly reduce the likelihood of harmful behavior in children that display signs of severe aggression

The article is accompanied by the video below. In it, Raine explains the relationship between diminished prefrontal cortex activity and violence, how such prefrontal dysfunction originates and possible treatments for such conditions, as well as how those with normal prefrontal activity but undersized amygdalae can also commit violence in a more planned and calculating fashion.

Raine also offers his opinion in the video about the Tsarnaev brothers who bombed the Boston Marathon.

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.

Several weeks ago, I wrote about a study led by criminal justice professor Volkan Topalli. After publishing that piece, I found and followed Dr. Topalli on Twitter. Soon after that, Dr. Topalli retweeted a tweet by the criminology division of the publisher Routledge about a new book, the Routledge International Handbook of Green Criminology.

Green Criminology?

The term intrigued me and I was motivated to do a little more research on it. I’ll share with you some of what I found shortly. But first I’d like to provide some context regarding how this topic relates with the wide-ranging audience interested in ponerology.

I know that, among those drawn to ponerology by a desire to understand the roots of what they consider “evil” behavior, there are those of all political stripes holding every possible view on environmental issues.

There are those who believe that:

• Evil is embodied in corrupt corporations and their possibly pathological leaders who rape and pillage natural resources for profit without concern for sustainability
• Stronger government regulation is needed to restrain these out-of-control, environmentally-damaging companies

There are some who:

• Share concern about environmental sustainability
• Believe that governments, expressing themselves through directly destructive activity related to natural resources, crooked politically-motivated subsidies and establishment and enforcement of the very legal structures that prop up corrupt corporations in the first place, are the real seats of “evil” responsible for environmental damage
• Advocate for less government and a laissez-faire, free-market policy that maximizes privatization as the strategy most likely to move us toward sustainability

Others believe that

• We are in no actual danger of running up against natural resource limits or threatening environmental sustainability
• Those claiming we are in such danger are, in reality, either evil people promoting self-serving political agendas or hoaxes or alarmists scared into their views by them
• We should ignore these malicious or misguided voices and continue, unrestrained, an aggressive policy of industrialization without concern for limits

And there are many who hold some combination of these views on the subject or still other views entirely.

In my case, concern about ecological sustainability was very instrumental in propelling me along the path that brought me to ponerology. The work of Daniel Quinn and Derrick Jensen, in particular, influenced me to focus, at a relatively young age, on the damage engendered on many levels by a cultural mindset, sanctioning infinite growth in spite of finite natural resources, that has become the basis for our economic system and both shaped and been shaped by deeply unhealthy psychological attitudes and belief systems – and, quite possibly, by those with pathological conditions.

During the many years spent following up on the ideas Quinn and Jensen helped introduce to me, I explored, from every angle I could, the environmental debates and the many subjects they involve. Over time, I’ve come to a deeper understanding of people who approach environmentalism from a variety of different perspectives.

The epiphany that I experienced upon discovering ponerology sprung in part from the fact that it clarified a mindset regarding questions about the emergence of harm that were woven through myriad areas that concerned me and to which I was having great difficulty formulating an approach. It embodied the idea that our starting point should be to learn all that we can about the scientific facts relating to these questions. While conceding that we will never know everything we need to know to make perfect decisions, it argues that maximizing our systematic, objective knowledge will provide us the firmest basis on which to make them.

When I saw Topalli’s retweet about the Routledge International Handbook of Green Criminology, that term – green criminology – provoked in me another similar epiphany.

We may not, in the near future, all come to agree on either what is really happening environmentally or what we should do about it. But hopefully many of us can at least agree that we should establish, to the best of our ability, the facts regarding any egregiously reckless malicious or negligent behavior implicated in ecosystem damage and the people involved in it. Green criminology sounded to me like a field devoted to doing just that from a scientific perspective.

So I did some searching to learn about what green criminology is and what resources are available for people that want to know more or get involved.

One of the first resources I found is the GreenCriminology.org website. This site is run by the International Green Criminology Working Group (IGCWG), which is “a group of academic professionals, students, and others that practice Green Criminology and collaborate on projects and discussions” and was crowdfunded through a Kickstarter campaign that featured the video below.

• “What crimes or harms are inflicted on the environment, and how?”
• “Who commits crime against the environment, and why?”
• “Who suffers as a result of environmental damage, and how?”
• “What are the social, economic and political conditions that lead to environmental crimes?”
• “Which types of harms should be considered as ‘crimes’ and therefore within the remit of a green criminology?”

I then found that University of Colorado Denver, through their School of Public Affairs, supports a research working group on green criminology.

Of course, the Routledge International Handbook of Green Criminology, which was where I first came across the term, looks like a thorough overview of the subject.

And Amazon also features some other books when I do a search for "green criminology". Some of the ones that look interesting include:

It’s somewhat surprising to me that, despite all the investigation I’ve done of pathological conditions and environmental issues, as well as their overlap, I’d never even heard the term “green criminology” before.

Derrick Jensen has explicitly linked our culture’s high level of environmental damage to the influence of psychopathy and has written thousands and thousands of pages and done countless talks on these issues. Yet even in all of his work that I’ve read, seen and heard, I don’t recall him using the term “green criminology.”

I’m thankful that, through promoting this site, I came across people who were able to finally bring it to my attention.

I hope to have more experiences like that in the future. And I am looking forward to learning more about green criminology.

I realize that not everyone interested in ponerology will be similarly interested in this angle on it. Some may even disagree with green criminology’s basic premises for various reasons (though I think, if they take a closer look at some of the writing on GreenCriminology.org, they may find some of their concerns are addressed more openly than they would have expected). And that’s fine. The goal of this site is simply to bring information related to ponerology to people’s attention. From there, they can do with that information what they wish.

But I believe green criminology is a discipline that anyone who cares about ponerology should at least be aware of.  It shines a light on what has often been a blind spot in the consideration of evil. Those who commit “evil” in which the damage is externalized to the broader environment, even if it then indirectly harms a large number of people, have been able, relatively, to escape notice as compared with those who do damage directly to even a small number of others. A tighter integration with green criminology may help correct this imbalance within ponerology’s perspective.

At the same time, I think those interested in green criminology should be aware of ponerology because the information it helps reveal can potentially inspire a more profound level of understanding about why the harmful events that field studies come to pass.

It’s always exciting for me to see connections and relationships develop amongst people with overlapping interests of great depth that pertain to improving health and sustainability. I hope this article will help catalyze some new connections and relationships between the emerging green criminology and ponerology communities. Not everyone in those communities will see eye to eye on every topic. But, surely, there are many within them who will find common ground and can share with each other a good deal of meaningful dialogue and support.

In Political Ponerology, Andrew M. Lobaczewski details an entire process, which he calls ponerogenesis, by which “evil” emerges in human systems. While it’s true, in his model, that various kinds of psychopaths play a central role in that process, he also elucidates how others, including those with what he calls characteropathies – which we would refer to as personality disorders – are essential for it to play out to its destructive potential.

Most commonly, when it comes to this process, those with the Cluster B personality disorders, especially Borderline Personality Disorder, Narcissistic Personality Disorder and Antisocial Personality Disorder, all of which profoundly impact the capacity for empathy, would be expected to be involved to some extent.

But as disproportionate an impact as people with these disorders can have on their surroundings, they still make up too small a proportion of the population by themselves to bring about a system dominated by the pathological. Thus, Lobaczewski details how a certain percentage of non-pathological people must also be coopted to participate in ponerogenesis if such a system, which he calls a pathocracy, is ever to come about.

Every now and then, however, we are reminded that there are still other conditions – beyond psychopathy and the personality disorders – that can play a role in unnecessary harmful events.

Schizophrenia, for instance, was likely involved in motivating Jared Loughner to open fire at a 2011 constituent event for Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, killing six and injuring thirteen, including the congresswoman. A review of research published in 2009 found that “a man with schizophrenia was four to five times as likely to commit a violent act as a man in the general population.” The risks are especially high when a schizophrenic is also abusing substances.

A more recent news event brought to the forefront a less commonly discussed disorder that can also be associated with harmful activity.

Raulie Casteel is accused of shooting at people and motorists, apparently randomly, in metropolitan Detroit and nearby areas over the course of several days in October 2012. Communities in the vicinity remained in a constant state of anxiety and fear until the suspect was finally captured. He is now awaiting arraignment.

Last week, it was reported that Casteel has been diagnosed not with psychopathy or a personality disorder or even schizophrenia. Rather, he has been diagnosed with delusional disorder. A psychology professor quoted in the article explains that someone with this disorder would seem completely normal unless the subject about which they are deluded arises. That would seem to make them potentially difficult for those in their lives to detect as possibly dangerous.

Of course, it remains to be seen whether Casteel’s diagnosis is confirmed as being accurate or if he is found guilty. But regardless, delusional disorder is an existing condition. And it is easy to see how someone suffering from it could, while under sway of certain delusions, do things that cause significant harm.

It’s just another reminder that ponerology is not all about psychopathy. In fact, it isn’t even just about mental illness, as people without mental illness can also be drawn to do things we might consider “evil.” But, even when it does focus on mental illness, ponerology must take into account a range of conditions and disorders.

One of the first such people I “met” after starting this website was Jack Pemment who runs the brilliantly titled Blame the Amygdala site. Jack is an eloquent writer and a graduate student at the University of Mississippi who passionately studies, among other things, the neurological basis for moral decision-making. This includes consideration of autism, psychopathy and antisocial personality disorder. He is also investigating the biology of aggression.

All of these subjects lie right at the heart of ponerology and are talked about often on this site.

I highly recommend you check out Jack’s site.

It only took me a short time reading his site to realize that Jack has a talent for thinking and writing about these crucial matters in novel ways. But that was really confirmed when I discovered that recently he released an actual novel about these matters.

It’s called Seeing Red.

As Jack explains it, the novel was spawned from the recognition that people with atypical neurology, who see the world in ways startlingly different from most of us, make for intriguing characters.

And so he created Daniel Harris, a man with synesthesia, a condition in which stimulation of one sense triggers responses in other senses. A synesthete may, for example, experience a visual color in response to a sound or a taste in response to a spoken word. Harris’ synesthesia consists of him experiencing different colors around the bodies of particular people he meets, with each color evoking an associated taste.

What makes the story relevant to ponerology is that Harris’ quirk turns out to enable him to instantly identify psychopaths. Soon he is being engaged in the search for a psychopathic serial killer.

Pemment’s tagline for the novel says it all:

Synesthesia is learning to kick psychopathy’s ass!

I haven’t read the book, but it sounds fascinating and reminds me of one of the great science fiction stories relevant to ponerology, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Phillip K. Dick, which was the basis for the film Blade Runner. As long as it is done with responsibility, taking care to convey the science with basic accuracy, I think embedding ponerologic science in gripping or entertaining art is a fantastic way to get these ideas out more widely to the public. And having read Jack’s site and seen his writing talent, I suspect Seeing Red will prove worth a read.

It reads “Kids Can Be Psychopathic, Too.”

The article focuses heavily on – and introduced me to – the work of Adrian Raine, a professor of criminology, psychiatry and psychology on the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania’s Jerry Lee Center of Criminology.

Raine is the author of the textbook The Psychopathology of Crime: Criminal Behavior as a Clinical Disorder. And, as described in the article, he holds two highly controversial and enormously challenging beliefs:

• He believes that we will soon be able to use medical tests to determine whether a child is predisposed to grow up to be a psychopath.
• And he also believes that, once we are able to do that, we should screen children for traits linked to psychopathy.

The Philly Mag article itself is well worth the read, as it offers a fascinating look at:

• A brief historical overview of criminology and the nature vs. nature debate
• Structural and functional differences in the brains of psychopaths as opposed to those of non-psychopaths
• How psychopaths are responsible for crime at levels vastly disproportionate to their numbers
• What separates successful from unsuccessful psychopaths
• Genes influencing brain structure that are associated with antisocial and aggressive behavior
• Raine’s research showing certain differences among young children, which he believes are innate and biologically-based, that help predict which ones will exhibit future aggression and criminality
• Why, when it comes to the “chicken or egg” question regarding biological differences and psychopathy, Raine falls on the “biology as cause” side of the debate
• Why many resist biological explanations of “bad” behavior
• Interventions that might help children predisposed to criminal behavior
• Responses from others to Raine’s suggestion that we screen children for psychopathy-linked traits

I highly recommend taking the time to check it out.

But I bring up that article here in order to preface a new and exciting development regarding Adrian Raine that has come to my attention.

One other phenomenon that Hingston’s piece touches on is the recent explosion of media – including films (such as We Need to Talk About Kevin) and television shows (such as Dexter) – dealing with the subject of psychopathy. The article credits Raine’s investigations into the brains of criminals – neurocriminology research – for providing the platform for this explosion. If attributing this credit to Raine is appropriate then it is only fitting that his work will now serve as the basis for a television show in an even more direct manner.

Raine has a new book schedule for release on April 30, 2013 entitled The Anatomy of Violence: The Biological Roots of Crime.

According to TV Guide, the highly successful producers of the show Homeland, Howard Gordon and Alex Gansa, sold a show based on that book to CBS and will write and executive produce a pilot episode.

Deadline.com reports that a third Homeland producer, Alex Cary, has also joined the team.

Another Deadline.com article reports that the pilot will be directed by Mark Pellington (perhaps best known for his work on the powerful video for the Pearl Jam song “Jeremy”) and that David Harewood, who appears in the cast of Homeland (and whose brief but theatrical appearance as the Prince of Morocco in Michael Radford’s film version of The Merchant of Venice I found memorably amusing), is the first actor cast for it. It describes the show as featuring “Raines, a criminal psychologist with an expertise in sociopaths”

It should be very interesting to see how the pilot is received and if the show can go on to further promote Adrian Raine’s deeply important work and provide even more public awareness and education regarding research into the biological roots of aggression and harm and other ponerologic themes.

I found it remarkably coincidental that, at that very point in our discussion, Yahoo’s homepage happened to be featuring the story highlighted in the image below.

This is not the first time a story of this kind has been prominently featured in the news in recent years. In fact, the frequency with which it seems to be happening has added some validation to my sense of how crucial a topic this is and helped confirm my suspicion that my own dedication of time and energy to learning and writing about it is part of a growing awareness about it in the world as a whole. Each time I witnessed the release of another article or news story or book representing that growing awareness, my desire to document this dynamic and catalog these examples grew.

Seeing this story featured on Yahoo at such a coincidental time in the midst of a discussion with a friend on that very topic rekindled my desire to create a resource to carry out this documentation.

Noticing that the story was going to be about a “psychologist’s book,” I assumed this would be another article – adding to a recent flood of such articles – about Kevin Dutton’s book, The Wisdom of Psychopaths. But when I clicked through and found out it was actually about yet another new book related to ponerology, this was the last nudge I needed to finally create this site.

The headline actually links to the video below and discusses research described in the book Office Politics, which is the latest from the British psychologist Oliver James. James is also the author of Affluenza. Since I have long promoted many of the ideas featured in – and implied by the title of – Affluenza, I was further validated that James’ path, just like mine, has led from concern about those topics to awareness of the role played by these ponerologic issues and the importance of educating people about them.

The video is actually a segment of the “Broken News Daily – a ridiculous take on the headlines” and has a comic tone to it, even as it describes very important information. It also alludes to the comedy film Horrible Bosses, jokingly modifying the title to Psycho Bosses. I think it’s great that information related to ponerology, so often delivered in a serious fire-and-brimstone tone, also be, at times, promoted with some levity. There is a long history of comedy helping make the medicine of potentially disturbing but crucial information go down easier.

The segment focuses on James’ message that an increasing number of white collar workers are displaying traits associated with the “dark triad” – a term referring to psychopathy, narcissism and Machiavellianism – and his identification of what he calls the “triadic person” who displays a combination of traits associated with all three and often ascends the hierarchy in work organizations

Judging from the comments on the piece, the segment seems to have done a great job stirring up discussion and a lot of people relate to the concept of authority figures with psychopathological traits.