Hitler on the Couch

As I promised last week, a study on Hitler. My starting point was Nassir Ghaemi’s recent “A First-Rate Madness,” which raised the extraordinary proposition that Hitler was far more “normal” than we give him credit for. What Ghaemi was driving at was that evil is not the exclusive domain of people with twisted minds. Perfectly normal individuals are as capable of gross inhumanities, or for that matter being royal pains in the ass.

In a piece in August, Reckoning with Evil, I laid out Ghaemi’s position, namely that until 1937 Hitler’s bipolar (his depressions and manias are well-documented) “seemed manageable.” Moreover, his hypomania appeared to benefit him in a way that influenced his rise to power, “fueling his charisma, his resilience, and political creativity.”

Then a quack physician put him on a cocktail of amphetamines and barbiturates that turned him into a raving maniac. Next thing, he was invading Poland. By 1943, he was receiving multiple daily injections, totally out of touch with reality, and was impossible to get along with.

Ghaemi’s analysis begged an alternative viewpoint, which sent me to Barbara Oakley’s “Evil Genes: Why Rome Fell, Hitler Rose, Enron Failed and My Sister Stole My Mother's Boyfriend.” As I reported in five previous pieces, Dr Oakley sees “borderpath” tendencies as the driving force of Machiavellian personalities, what she terms as the “successfully sinister.” Thus, a supreme Machiavellian such as Chairman Mao - responsible for more than 70 million deaths - deployed a vast range of psycho/sociopath, borderline, narcissistic, and paranoid traits to his considerable advantage, managing to die in bed at age 82, venerated as a God-figure.

Dr Oakley sees Hitler cut from similar cloth. Her main source is an OSS analysis prepared by a leading Freudian psychoanalyst, Walter Langer, during World War II. Dr Langer’s research was exhaustive, totaling 11,000 pages, and from this he created a criminal profile that is still regarded as authoritative.

Dr Langer characterizes Hitler as a “neurotic psychopath.” Ghaemi in a footnote takes issue with this diagnosis (his only reference to Langer), though it is clear the label is only a starting point. A quick Google search turned up an excellent piece, Getting Inside Hitler’s Head, by military journalist Brian John Murphy, and it is instructive to go off his account ...

As a child, Hitler learned how to manipulate his mother by staging temper tantrums until she caved in. Hitler carried over the same behavior into adulthood. His screaming raging fits were the stuff of legend, and throughout his career he was able to deploy these outbursts to his advantage. His public speeches - an extreme departure from standard German oratory - can be viewed as scripted tantrums that bent the masses to his will.

His father’s death at age 12 appeared to have a lot to do with turning him into an angry young man. Soon after, his performance in school plummeted and later he dropped out. As a down-and-out young man in Vienna, he became a rabid anti-Semite and extreme pan-Germanic xenophobe, unfortunately very “normal” for the time. Soon he found his calling in the trenches on the Western Front.

Hitler’s taste for war may have resulted in two Iron Crosses, but it also completely spooked his superiors, who vowed never to make him an officer. He failed to bond with his fellow soldiers, and avoided women. His later associations with women were characterized by sexual deviances and callous behavior. Six of his former lady friends attempted suicide. Two succeeded.

After the war, Hitler’s bitterness over Germany apparently being sold out by traitors fit right in with the sentiment of the day. In no time, he hit his stride as a political rabble-rouser, deploying his strange charisma, bitter misanthropy, and inexhaustible energy to stunning effect. Along the way, he spied on his socialist-leaning comrades-in-arms in the trenches, and succeeded in getting some of them hanged.

Exhibit A in Hitler’s psychopathy, of course, is Mein Kampf, written in prison following a failed populist uprising where he fired a pistol inside a beer hall. There his pathology is revealed in his own words, not to mention his demented thinking regarding Jews and other non-Aryans. It’s all there, except the “final solution,” and that can easily be inferred. By the time Hitler completed his blood-stained ascendance to total power as Chancellor in 1933, there was nothing standing in the way. That same year, he spoke with his military leaders about “conquest for Lebensraum” (interpretation: invading Poland). At his first cabinet meeting that year, he prioritized military spending.

Thus, by the time Hitler invaded Poland in 1939, he had a massive and well-equipped army and air force at his disposal, which he had already deployed beginning in 1936 to re-occupy the Rhineland and in support of Franco in the Spanish Civil War, plus to annex Austria and a piece of Czechoslovakia.

According to Murphy’s piece:

The Hitler Langer profiled was a man with a boundlessly grandiose concept of himself. Langer said Hitler believed fate set him apart as a superman, a chosen one, the messiah of a future German empire, who was infallible except for when he had engaged in what he called “the Jewish Christ-creed with its effeminate pity-ethics.” When crossed, Hitler wanted retribution that was godlike in its devastation.

Dr Oakley in “Evil Genes” pays considerable attention to delusional thinking, a trait common amongst conspiracy theorists, who are capable of maintaining their crackpot beliefs with great conviction in complete defiance of the facts. Hitler, needless to say, could always rationalize as legitimate his every action, no matter how bizarre and contrary to human nature.

Murphy notes that Langer’s analysis was made without reference to Hitler’s massive methamphetamine consumption, which only came to light after World War II. Clearly, Hitler’s drug cocktail greatly worsened his pathology. According to Murphy:

Witnesses describe the 56-year-old Hitler in 1945 as a shuffling old man wearing a uniform spotted with food and grasping for a handhold every few steps. His left hand trembled violently. Cake crumbs clung to the corners of his mouth. The bags under his eyes were swollen and dark. He drooled. ... By April 1945 he had little left physically or mentally.

So, did Hitler’s quack physician light “a fuse that exploded the entire world,” as Ghaemi maintains, or would Hitler have invaded Poland, anyway? Suppose he had been able to push ahead with his irrational ambitions, but in a far more rational and drug-free state of mind? Would the Nazis have actually won the Second World War?

Very scary thought.

Chairman Mao: A Portrait in Evil

This is my fifth piece on Barbara Oakley’s eye-opening 2007 “Evil Genes: Why Rome Fell, Hitler Rose, Enron Failed and My Sister Stole My Mother's Boyfriend.” I stumbled into her book after a Google search involving Hitler and sociopathy. What prompted the search was Nassir Ghaemi’s recently published “A First-Rate Madness” that, among many other things, raised the extraordinary proposition that Hitler was far more “normal” than people give him credit for.

Yes, Hitler had a lot of stuff going on, including bipolar, Ghaemi acknowledges, but apparently this son of a Schiklgruber would have been just another Newt Gingrich had not his personal physician in 1937 turned him into the kind of raving meth addict that made invading Poland seem like a good idea.

All this begs the obvious question: What about the nutjob who published his lunatic ravings as “Mein Kampf” in 1926 - while serving a prison term for staging a shoot-out in the vicinity of a beer hall that was part of a crackpot attempt at a populist uprising?

We will save Hitler for another day. It turns out that Oakley’s book had a much better poster boy for her study in evil - Mao Zedong, “the perfect borderpath.” As you recall from yesterday’s piece, Dr Oakley views personality as far too complex to lend itself to easy DSM explanations. Nevertheless, the DSM can serve as a rough guide.

Thus, Dr Oakley sees elements of borderline and psycho/sociopathy (plus generous helpings of narcissism and paranoia) feeding into a take-no-prisoners Machiavellian mindset, what she calls “successfully sinister.” According to Oakley:

Mao was the most Machiavellian leader of the many Machiavellian leaders of the twentieth century. For three decades, he held absolute power over the lives of one-quarter of the world’s population.

To give a sense of perspective: All the wars of the world from 1900 to 1987 resulted in 34 million combat dead. Mao murdered twice as many.

As a boy, Mao rebelled against his teachers and staged highly manipulative showdowns with his father - unheard of behavior in traditional Chinese society. The pattern continued into adulthood with a succession of wives and womanizing and the neglect and cruelty he visited upon his children. As an aspiring revolutionary, he was ousted from the Communist ranks six times for his lack of ability to play well with others.

The following appeared in one party circular:

He is extremely devious and sly, selfish and full of megalomania. To his comrades, he orders them around, frightens them with charges of crimes, and victimizes them ... His customary method regarding comrades ... is to use them as his personal tools.

Mao had the last word. Ultimately, he had his critics tortured to death.

His manipulative behavior continued as “Great Helmsman,” playing off members of his inner circle against each other and bringing aboard new sycophants. Li Zhisui, Mao’s doctor and longtime associate - described his hero as “devoid of human feeling, incapable of love, friendship, or warmth.”

Li recounts sitting next to Mao at a performance. A young acrobat slipped and was seriously injured. The crowd was aghast, but Mao continued talking and laughing with no show of concern. There were occasions when Mao expressed sympathy, but according to Oakley, he lacked true empathy, the ability to put himself in the shoes of others.

But to write off Mao as a garden variety sociopath is far too simplistic. Dr Oakley contends a lot of borderline stuff was going on, as well, including wild mood swings and lack of impulse control, not to mention lack of continuity with his own identity. In all probability, Mao did not even believe in Communism. As he said of himself: “My words and my deeds are inconsistent.” Speaking with a forked tongue is normal in politicians, but Dr Oakley maintains Mao took it to pathological levels, such as admiring America in private while vilifying it in public. Observes Oakley:

There is no evidence, for example, that British prime minster Winston Churchchill secretly admired the Nazis or despised Roosevelt.

Complicating matters was a heavy addiction to barbiturates, which may have exacerbated his underlying pathologies. He was also addicted to sex, any form, possibly as a comfort from psychic pain. Hypocritically, Mao required his own people to endure ultra-puritanical constraints.

Meanwhile, Mao launched his country on a ruinous course with one daft economic enterprise after another. Thirty million peasants died of the ensuing famine from his “Great Leap Forward” of 1958-60. Mao’s response was to pretend it never happened. This type of “magical thinking” was a trademark of Mao’s behavior. The trait is identified with schizotypal personality disorder (schizophrenia lite). Mao’s second son had full-blown schizophrenia.

Another schizophrenia connection was his paranoia, which most likely served him well in his rise to power. Those who found themselves on his wrong side were decidedly less lucky.

Mao’s “Cultural Revolution” beginning in 1966 resulted in at least three million dead and the persecution of another one hundred million. As opposed to Stalin, who conducted his crimes against humanity mostly in secret, Mao made a spectacle of his personal reign of terror, delighting in the public torture and execution of his victims.

For all this, Mao was a charmer, a trait he shared with Stalin and other dictators. Another trait in common was his own mystical notion of his role as leader and messiah, fed by a brand of narcissism that morally justified doing whatever he thought right, no matter how wrong.

Mao died in bed in 1976 at age 82, venerated as a God-figure while leaving his country destitute and in shambles. How, you may ask, could one man get away with wreaking such havoc? The only explanation that remotely makes sense is that time and place and circumstances created Mao, just as similar conditions had spawned Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, and all the rest. Social, political, and economic chaos gave Mao his head start. And once he gained absolute power no force stood in his way to stop him.

One could argue that in a more stable society, Mao’s outrageous psychopathy would have taken him out of the game at a very early age, but Dr Oakely reminds us that Mao was the ultimate Machiavellian, one inclined toward success. Thus:

In a capitalistic economic structure, Mao might have made his way to the top of a business enterprise. There, like a surprising number of managers today, he would have run roughshod over colleagues and subordinates while devising unreasonable programs even as he took out anyone who objected.

In politics, says Dr Oakley, an American-born Mao might have become a populist demagogue in the 1930s Huey Long mold (I will leave the obvious contemporary examples to others), rising to a high level of electoral success, but saddled with the major inconveniences of a free press and checks and balances.

Lest we congratulate ourselves on how Mao-proof our democracy is, the mini-Maos in our midst did a splendid job in running amok through the first decade of this millennium, thereby bringing the entire world economy to the brink of extinction in 2008. Ironically, the US was bailed out - at least temporarily - by post-Mao China. Scary thought ...

***

This is the fifth in a series based on Barbara Oakley's book, "Evil Genes." Previous pieces:

Figuring Out Evil
Figuring Out Behavior
Brain Science and Recovery
Why Evil Works

Why Evil Works

What does Mao Zedong have to do with that jerk brother or sister who wrecks everyone’s Thanksgiving? Funny you should ask. Barbara Oakley’s 2007 “Evil Genes: Why Rome Fell, Hitler Rose, Enron Failed and My Sister Stole My Mother's Boyfriend” masterfully connects the dots.

Her starting point is “the successfully sinister.” As I explained in an earlier piece, Figuring Out Evil, these are your classic Machiavellians - charismatic and ruthless - out for themselves at the expense of anyone unfortunate enough to happen to breathe the same air. The “high-Machs” have long been known to correspond to sociopathy, but not all sociopaths wind up in prison.

No, the successfully sinister have a way of ending up in far more desirable places. We are led to believe the cream finds its way to the surface, but at the end of the day we find the scum also rises. But don’t pin the rap on pure sociopathy. It seems high-Machs have an equally high correspondence to borderline personality disorder.

The two conditions overlap, but in key areas they are in diametric opposition. While sociopaths have no problems with their inflated sense of self (so much so that sociopathy is easy to confuse with narcissism), those with borderline tend to suffer from a breakdown in personal identity. But it’s not a case of one or the other. Dr Oakley steers clear of over-reliance on DSM labels, but is comfortable in their use as a rough guide.

Your boss from hell may lean toward sociopathy, for instance, with an assist from borderline, and a bit of paranoia thrown in. Someone else may major on borderline and minor in sociopathy with some extra credits in narcissism. In previous pieces, Figuring Out Behavior and Brain Science and Recovery, I mentioned how Dr Oakley and I rely on the same brain science (in particular the work of Daniel Weinberger of the NIMH) in support of the proposition that our genes are not coded with the DSM in mind.

The same brain science also makes it abundantly clear that we are not as in control of our thinking and behavior as our over-inflated egos would have us believe. Someone who is genetically wired to over-react to stressful events, for instance, is prone to act a lot differently in social situations than those who are not. This is neither good in and of itself. Indeed, panic is often the appropriate response. But when we need to dismantle a bomb or talk our way through airport security, cool as a cucumber is desirable.

Cool as a cucumber also works when sticking a knife in your best friend’s back.

Now multiply all the complicating factors by infinity. Certain genetic tendencies and environmental influences may either mitigate or amplify other ones. Different parts of the brain may be over-communicating or under-communicating with each other. It may be this way in that individual or that way in this individual. We’re a long way from understanding evil, or for that matter just plain being an asshole, but we all know what being victimized is like.

According to Dr Oakley, it all may have started in earnest about 10,000 years ago with the introduction of agriculture. Prior to that, there was little advantage in gaming the system. But with the beginning of densely-populated permanent settlements and sophisticated social structures came unlimited opportunities to climb to the top on the backs of others, with disproportionate benefits accruing to the successful.

The trusting and naive majority were no match for this new breed of Machiavellian. From their new positions of wealth and power, the successfully sinister acquired the opportunity to breed in vast numbers and thus pass on their genes.

But there was a major catch. As the ranks of the successfully sinister grew, there were fewer altruists left to prey upon. Moreover, the remaining altruists had picked up their own new set of coping mechanisms. Dr Oakley compares these back and forth shifts to a Darwinian arms race. Indeed, our higher cortical regions with their highly developed social software may have evolved eons earlier as protection against our scheming and opportunistic fellow humans.

Meanwhile, altruism carries its own selective advantages. Not everyone wants to mate with a Visigoth, for instance, much less have one in the neighborhood. The altruists (I’m using the term very loosely, here) may eventually gain the upper hand, but in the process they wind up sowing the seeds of a new generation of victims - ripe for plucking by a yet more sophisticated breed of the sinister. On and on it goes.

Fast forward to the chaos of the twentieth century and the type of environment the Emperor Caligula would have felt very much at home in. Hitler and Stalin certainly did. So did Mao.

More to come ...

***

This is the fourth in a series based on Barbara Oakley's book, "Evil Genes." Previous pieces:

Figuring Out Evil
Figuring Out Behavior
Brain Science and Recovery

Brain Science and Recovery - Knowledge is Necessity

My last two pieces - on psychiatrists behaving badly - diverted me from my true mission here at Knowledge is Necessity, namely providing food for thought in the quest of knowing thyself. A very key part of that is passing along any cool brain science stuff I happen to pick up along the way.

Brain science and ancient wisdom represent the crucial double helix in our getting well and staying well. After decades of guess-work psychiatry, researchers have finally figured out how to open up the hood and peer into the brain’s moving parts, and what they are finding out can be applied by us right now in our recovery. I have been shouting this from the roof tops for nearly ten years, and I have no intention of stopping.

My starting point this time is Barbara Oakley’s must-read 2007 “Evil Genes: Why Rome Fell, Hitler Rose, Enron Failed and My Sister Stole My Mother's Boyfriend.” Last week, in Figuring Out Human Behavior, I couldn’t hide my enthusiasm for Dr Oakley’s show-and-tell of the brain science, which paralleled a lot of my research and writing. For both of us, the focus was the serotonin transporter gene, perhaps the most-studied gene related to psychiatric disorders.

To recap: A glitch in this gene predisposes certain people to over-react to environmental stressors, which in turn makes them sitting ducks for depression and other conditions. The breakthrough work came out in the early 2000s, and makes an excellent teaching lesson for a number of points we all need to know, namely:

• Our genes and our environment interact. We may not have any choice in changing our genes, but we can often choose to change our environments in a way that lets sleeping genes lie.
• Genes are not deterministic, but they do predispose us to how we react to whatever life may throw our way.
• Stress is the key driving force in mental illness. There are other factors, but stress is invariably complicit. A good deal of mental illness can be summed up as “stress vulnerability disease.”
• Diagnostic categories useful to a point, but malfunctions in serotonin transport have been linked to anxiety, mania, depression, substance abuse, borderline personality disorder, and all manner of things that can go wrong. Likewise, malfunctions in other processes tend to have similar shotgun effects.
• It is more helpful to think of genes switching on and off certain mechanical processes in the brain than “causing” a specific disease. Moreover, these processes work in the context of whole brain systems interacting with other brain systems, which may exacerbate or mitigate the effects of the equivalent of a tap not being able to shut off.
• There are no “good” genes or “bad” genes. Inevitably, there are trade-offs. A gene variation that may predispose you to stress may also protect you from Alzheimer’s.

To give us a better understanding of the brain in action, it is useful to look at the impact of other genes. Of all things, Dr Oakley’s list and my list are virtually identical. This is no accident. Daniel Weinberger of the NIMH is Oakley’s main source. Likewise, he is mine. Dr Weinberger was part of the team involved in the breakthrough research into the serotonin transporter gene, and he and his NIMH colleagues have been involved with the following, as well:

Brain-Derived-Neurotrophic Factor (BDNF)

This protein is involved in brain cell maintenance and survival and encourages the growth of new neurons and neural connectivity. A “double-val” variation in this gene has been linked to stronger memory. The catch is those with the double-val are prone to more anxiety and moodiness and hostility, possibly due to a magnification of the serotonin transporter glitch. A “double-met,” on the other hand may offset the glitch.

Catechol-O-methyltransferase (COMT)

Mechanically, this gene breaks down dopamine and other neurotransmitters. The more slowly you metabolize dopamine (the “met” variation), the smarter you are. The unfortunate “val/vals” may be a bit less intelligent, with a slightly increased risk of schizophrenia, plus risk of antisocial behavior, and hyperactivity. The “val/mets” fall in between. The trade-off? Vals may be able to handle stress better than the mets and be more flexible to change.

Monamine Oxidase A (MAO-A)

This protein breaks down dopamine and other neurotransmitters. Low-functioning MAO-A has been linked to aggressive and antisocial behavior and substance abuse and more. Those with low-efficiency versions of this gene tend to display hyperactive amygdalae (involved in fight-or-flight) and low-responding orbitofrontal and cingulate cortices. In other words, the front end of the brain has problems turning down the alarm signals from the back end of the brain. Impulsive violence may be one result.

A breakthrough 2002 study found that maltreated kids with low-efficiency MAO-A developed significant antisocial problems while the high-efficiency MAO-A kids were better able to weather the storm.

Wrapping it Up

Don’t worry about understanding all the fine details. The purpose here is to simply display how the interplay between genes and environment affect thinking and feeling and behavior. We are a long way from definitive answers, but we are definitely looking ahead to what 2000 Nobel Laureate Eric Kandel describes as “the new science of the mind.”

We don’t have to wait for psychiatry to get with the program. As I said at the beginning, we can apply brain science to our own recovery right now. Dr Oakley makes it abundantly clear that our behaviors are far less governed by free will and reason than our over-sized egos would have us believe. But knowing that, we can intelligently take stock of our vulnerabilities and make the type of course corrections that allow us more control over our brains and, with it, our lives.

Be smart. Live well ...

Figuring Out Behavior

I have been writing about mental health since 1999, but only with any basic level of understanding since 2003. That year and the previous one were watershed ones in our understanding of how genes and the environment interact to influence human behavior, and I had the dumb luck to walk into a symposium to hear one of the key players explain what was going on as it was happeneing.

Daniel Weinberger is a brain scientist at the NIMH. Eavesdropping on brain scientists talking to each other is kind of like overhearing two women having a heart-to-heart coming out of the women’s room - totally unintelligible to outsiders. But this was a psychiatric conference  - the American Psychiatric Association annual meeting in San Francisco - and Weinberger compassionately dumbed down his talk. This way, I could almost understand it.

Years later, I would hear Dr Weinberger give a presentation to a room full of fellow brain scientists that included Nobel Laureate Arvid Carlsson and all I could understand were the prepositions.

In a study published in Science in 2002, Weinberger and a team of researchers scanned the brains of healthy individuals as they looked at pictures of scary faces. The scans revealed that those with a certain gene variation - a double short-allele combination to the serotonin transporter gene - lit up like a Christmas tree in a certain part of the brain. That part of the brain was the amygdala - fear central - that kicks off the fight-or-flight response.

As Dr Weinberger explained it, this may have been the first study to link genes to emotions. A few months after hearing the talk, Science published another study examining the same gene variation. This time a research team surveyed a population cohort in New Zealand for recent stressors (such as financial difficulties) in their lives. It turned out that the short-allele people who had experienced high stress suffered way higher rates of depression than the high-stress long-allele group.

(A year earlier, this same research group using similar methodology found a connection to a gene variation that acts on the enzyme MAO - involved in breaking down dopamine and serotonin - and antisocial behavior.)

So - picture me in 2003 as the light bulbs are starting to go off. We have a gene variation that appears to affect the brain in a certain way that makes some of us over-react to stressful situations. And one of the end results is depression.

No, the gene variation did not cause depression. In no way could this be called a depression gene. A stress gene, maybe. Depression was the downstream effect, perhaps just one of many possible downstream effects.

But if you looked at the gene in terms of pure mechanics, it was just a biological unit that switched on something in the brain - in this case the serotonin transporter inside the neuron. The serotonin transporter - or reuptake pump - sucks excess serotonin from the synapse - gap - between two neurons in preparation for another release of the neurotransmitter.

But if the gene responsible for efficient serotonin transporter function isn't doing its job, we have the equivalent of a traffic jam. Bumper-to-bumper serotonin in the synapse. The new serotonin has trouble reaching its destination with its important chemical message.

That message may be trying to tell the other neurons in the brain to calm down, that the situation is OK. But if the message is tied up in traffic, the amygdala - fear central - may be the dominant voice in the brain, sending out a far more alarming message.

But wait - the meat inside our skull doesn’t just operate in a vacuum. It is reacting to what is going on around us. So, if the world out there is just fine, if our lives are just humming along, maybe it doesn’t matter that some rogue gene variation is messing with our serotonin traffic.

It’s amazing how long it took scientists to get this basic point. A PubMed search I did some years back revealed that researchers were hot on the trail of this gene variant at least as far back as 1992. They knew there had to be some mood disorder and other behavior connections somewhere, but the standard gene association studies came up empty.

Basically, to figure out how the gene variant affected behavior, scientists had to tickle it. Expose its owners to stress. As I heard Dr Weinberger explain three years later, this particular gene "impacts on how threatening the environment feels."

By now, the studies were coming in thick and fast. A totally new picture of how our genes and the environment interact and how this played out in the brain and affected behavior was beginning to emerge. The old diagnostic categories - useful to a point - were far too simplistic. So was our conception of biological psychiatry.

I have written on these studies many times, here on Knowledge is Necessity and elsewhere. What caused me to revisit the topic was picking up Barbara Oakley’s 2007 "Evil Genes" two days ago. (See my previous piece, Figuring Out Evil).

“If you ever want to know whether your tax dollars are being used for a good purpose,” she writes, “go take a look at the extraordinary work that the National Institute of Mental Health and other National Institutes of Health are doing in digging out the genetic bases of psychiatric illness.” Dr Weinberger is mentioned often.

It turns out that Dr Oakley and I shared very similar voyages of discovery. The studies I have cited here feature very prominently in her book. She also cites related studies that I have also referred to here and elsewhere, illustrating the vast complexity of the brain as it attempts to simultaneously grapple with the genetic hand it has been dealt and the environment that turns these genes loose.

As I read her words, I found myself re-experiencing the thrill of my awakening that began eight years ago. Call it reverse post-traumatic-stress. The memories joyfully came flooding back. Naturally, I had to write about it.

Much more to come ...

Further reading on mcmanweb: Psychiatry's Big Bang

Figuring Out Evil

I just started reading Barbara Oakley’s 2007 “Evil Genes: Why Rome Fell, Hitler Rose, Enron Failed and My Sister Stole My Mother's Boyfriend.” Trust me, this is a must-read.

Dr Oakley is a bio-engineer, and in her past lives served as an Army private (who rose through the ranks), a translator aboard Russian trawlers, a radio operator at the South Pole, author, and a mom. What got her started on her new voyage of discovery was coming to terms with her deceased sister, Carolyn, who really did steal her mom’s boyfriend.

Chances are there is someone like Carolyn in your own family, probably at least two or three. At other times in your life, you’ve had to contend with abusive bosses, backstabbing colleagues, clients from hell, and other forms of human unpleasantness. Call me a proctologist - I’m forever dealing with assholes.

Dr Oakley’s term is “successfully sinister.” These are your classic Machiavellians, out for themselves at the expense of anyone unfortunate enough to cross their field of vision. It turns out that “high-Machs” correspond very well to sociopathy, psychopathy, and borderline, though it is not as simple as that. We tend to associate a sociopath, for instance, as someone who resides in a maximum-security prison, but his or her more successful counterpart could be running a Fortune 500 company or heading up a university department or leading a government.

These are your master schemers and manipulators, socially charming, charismatic, and smart, not prone to making mistakes, indifferent to your needs, willing to squash you like a bug with no remorse.

But then we have the people who don’t grow up to be CEOs or professors or dictators. They simply make your life miserable. People like Carolyn, who break their mother’s hearts. 

The human condition is complex, and psychiatric/psychological labels and descriptors can only take us so far, as Dr Oakley makes abundantly clear. But we all know what it’s like to be abused and violated and taken advantage of, not to mention recoil in the presence of evil. But, what, precisely, are we contending with?

Ah, that is the question.

Much more to come ...