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The author
of the above quotation is either a physician who doesn’t
want to be suspected of professional jealousy or a cynic
who doesn’t want to be taken to a mental institution. As I
am neither, I have no opinion; I have just been in a state
of suspended inanition since I came across some reported
statements made long ago by two distinguished
psychiatrists, namely, Dr. Edgardo Juan Tolentino of the
National Health Program of the Department of Health and
Dr. Ma. Imelda B. Batar of the Philippine Psychiatric
Association. Examining myself according to their criteria,
I may well be a sociopath, for which reason I have been
questioning my right, let alone my sanity, to continue
writing articles, lest I infect readers with my mental
affliction.
The
dictionary defines sociopath as a person with a
personality disorder marked by antisocial thought or
behavior; the offensive term is “psychopath.” Antisocial
thought or behavior is simply not caring about others. But
the literature is more complicated than that, as
psychiatrists will tell you. All the same, Drs. Tolentino
and Batar suggested that we, not only politicians (who,
they say, are sociopaths lured by politics), examine
ourselves according to criteria that we can find on the
Internet. I didn’t have to, since I found them in the
newspapers. The only thing that bothered me was the memory
of Molière’s Imaginary Invalid, a legitimate warning from
physicians about the dangers of self-diagnosis by laymen.
Being a sociopath, I naturally didn’t heed the warning.
Before I
began testing myself, I took note of Dr. Tolentino’s
citation of Adolf Hitler as an “iconic sociopath,” whom he
described as charming. Well, as charming as a cobra, I
suppose. As some kind of student of politics and history,
I suspected that the good doctor was referring to charisma
(“charm of power”), which is also applicable to Charles de
Gaulle and John F. Kennedy. Skeptics, however, know that
power in itself charms: Dr. Henry Kissinger once said that
power is a great aphrodisiac—when you have it. It’s the
power itself and not the person, although confident men
and women can be quite charming, otherwise they wouldn’t
be able to swindle people. But would Stalin and Ivan the
Terrible be considered charming? Someone with a lot of
money to throw away will also be considered charming.
Where, then, does one draw the line? I have been accused
at times of being charming and turning on the charm, I
must be a sociopath, for according to our two
psychiatrists, if you have one or more of the 22 traits
that mark a sociopath, you are a sociopath: I have more
than three.
Twenty-two
signs of a sociopath
Let me
count the ways, as Elizabeth Barrett wrote to Robert
Browning:
1.
Glibness or superficial charm.
Check! You can also name many outstanding political
personalities and TV hosts who possess these traits.
(Though one man’s glibness can be another’s eloquence.)
2.
Manipulative.
Check! I can’t imagine anyone not being manipulative in
one way or another for one reason or another, whether from
good or bad intentions. “I’m doing this for your own good”
is one phrase we’ve heard from elders, doctors and
friends. I am guilty of having manipulated friends,
relations and lovers—and even chairs—at one time or
another. Some manipulators are more transparent than
others. How about doctors and dentists who manipulate
timid patients into taking the right medicine?
3.
Grandiose sense of self.
Check! In my younger days, I was sure I could set the
Pasig on fire, change the world, so I must have been a
sociopath then. Even now, as I compare myself to others, I
have this grandiose sense of self. If you want to see the
same trait in others, try slighting them.
4.
Pathological lying.
Check! This probably means lying all the time, for all of
us lie sometimes. It’s easy to say that politicians are
pathological liars, but they lie for reasons of state or
political survival: is that pathological? There is
something pathological about a politician who tells the
truth at the cost of his or her own
security.
5. Lack of
remorse, shame, or guilt.
Check! There are, indeed, some people who do not express
remorse, shame, or guilt, but who can tell if they’re
telling the truth, that inwardly they really have no sense
of guilt? How often have you heard some people in the news
who ask, “What did I do wrong?” or say, “My conscience is
clear”? That’s the reason we have law courts and
congressional investigations.
6. Shallow
emotions.
Check! I confess. I am certainly lacking in Romeo’s
passion for Juliet or Heathcliff’s for Cathy. This would
place me in the circle of Dante’s Inferno where souls who
are neither hot nor cold suffer for their shallow
emotions.
7.
Incapacity for love.
Check! I pass here, so does everyone I know. There’s no
one I know who is incapable of loving someone or
something, even if in Gabriel García Márquez’s novel, One
Hundred Years of Solitude, Col. Aureliano Buendia was said
to be incapable of loving. He wanted to elope with a young
girl who had to submit to 70 men every day to pay for the
debts of her grandmother. If that’s not love, we need a
different definition.
8. Need
for stimulation.
Check! Guilty. If no one needed stimulation, the entire
entertainment and advertising business would just
collapse. What do you think politics is—an educational
activity? Yet education, for some people, is stimulation.
9. Lack of
empathy.
Check! The rich lack empathy for the poor, the poor for
the rich, the powerful for the powerless, the powerless
for the powerful. There is always lack of empathy in
different situations. But this is judgmental, for, again,
TV shows evince a lot of empathy, and the oft-heard
expression even in the midst of war, genocide, or any form
of suffering is “I can feel your pain.” I don’t know,
however, whether torturers or sadists feel empathy for
their victims, but they feel empathy for the victims of
victims.
10. Poor
behavioral controls/impulsive behavior. Check! I have been impulsive many times. There are also a lot of people
who say, “I can’t help loving you” so that it has become a
song. How many other things that we can’t help doing or
just did “on the impulse of the moment”?
11.
Juvenile delinquency.
Check! A broad spectrum, for there are “delinquents”
driven by poverty and not just by a drug habit.
12.
Promiscuity/infidelity.
Oops! Hi, there! Sociopaths of the world, unite! You have
nothing to lose but your monogamy!
13.
Parasitic lifestyle/lack of realistic plan.
Check! That’s probably 90 percent of the population.
Judgmental again, for that’s what the middle and upper
classes say of the lower classes. Haven’t you been told at
one time that your plan was unrealistic?
14.
Criminal/entrepreneurial versatility.
Check! It depends what you mean by entrepreneurial
versatility. I remember Balzac’s famous dictum that behind
every great wealth is a great crime. Is that why only the
well-heeled lie on the psychiatrist’s couch and the
have-nots are taken to mental institutions?
15.
Contemptuous of those who seek to understand them.
Check! I am contemptuous of people who seek to understand
me—when I don’t care for them. But I welcome the
understanding of people I like.
16. Does
not perceive anything is wrong with them.
Check! I know that many things are wrong with me, but
won’t admit them. That’s not lack of perception but just
stubbornness, like some officials we know. We should be
careful of accusing them of an inability to tell right
from wrong; it’s more likely that they just think they can
get away with it.
17.
Authoritarian.
Check! Who isn’t? Unless we mean that when we speak “with
authority,” we actually don’t have it.
18.
Secretive.
Check! Wonder why the Freedom of Information act is just
an act? If one keeps certain things to one’s self or is
punctilious about privacy, is that being “secretive”? How
many secrets is one entitled to without being regarded as
secretive?
19.
Paranoid.
Check! While I don’t have any bodyguards, I always look
back when I hear horns blaring behind me, I avoid certain
roads at night, I look at people who laugh loudly (they
could be talking about me!), I’m queasy when I come across
some idiot whom I have criticized in my column, I get
uneasy by screaming sirens, I fear for terrorists hiding
in the trunk of my car (so I’m thankful for the security
check at airports and hotels), I’m afraid of people with
guns tucked inside their shirts…of strangers who smile at
me (sometimes for good reason, they could be
creditors—which makes me parasitic), of slipping in the
bathroom…of heights…of psychiatrists who are reading
this.
20.
Ultimate goal is to create a willing victim.
Check! This happens many times in politics and the office
politics of business organizations. The question here is
whether it can be helped.
21.
Incapable of human attachment.
Check! That’s some form of incapacity to love. I’m
thinking of Raskolnikov. Also of animal lovers, including
tycoons, men and women, who leave millions to their pets.
Yes, indeed, I wish they were attached to me.
22.
Narcissism.
Check! Narcissus is the incredibly handsome young man of
Greek legend who gazed too long at his reflection in the
pond that in attempting to kiss it, he fell off and
drowned. I couldn’t do that in
Manila Bay, the water
is murky, while swimming pools yield no reflection; I have
been reduced to gazing at myself in the mirror. As a young
man, I did this for five minutes, long enough to shave and
comb my hair. I still do this for the same amount of time,
except that I concentrate on the day’s growth of beard
instead on the face, for obvious reasons. But what the
psychiatric test means is probably inordinately admiring
one’s face and body, which, I tell you, would be quite a
feat even for a sociopath. (Think Mr. Universe.) Besides,
that would put down many women—and men—as sociopathic,
when the fact is that they’re only fussing. (Narcissism
also means self-indulgent, which is related to onanism, a
misnomer because Onan spilled his seed on the ground not
out of pleasure but for fear of impregnating his brother’s
wife, for he couldn’t safely claim fatherhood.)
I am
simplifying a complex business, but it’s not my fault (not
having a sense of guilt) since the psychiatrists
themselves consented to the publicity and did not bother
to issue the usual professional qualifications. By the
psychiatric criteria they recommended, the entire
population is sociopathic, since they said that possession
of any one or more of the so-called traits would mark a
person a sociopath.
That
“iconic” blurb about Adolf Hitler doesn’t say why so many
Germans after World War I saw him as a savior. Are they
sociopaths themselves in being seduced by a sociopath? Was
Hitler just a case of a personality disorder or something
more?
“Anyone
who would go to a psychiatrist ought to have his head
examined.”
—Samuel
Goldwyn
The MGM
mogul was fond of quotations, like “Include me out,” but
there may be something in what he said, for Sigmund Freud,
the father of psychoanalysis, once said to Smiley Blanton
on February 27, 1930, in her book, Diary of My Analysis
with Sigmund Freud:
Do you
know why psychiatrists go into their specialty? It is
because they do not feel that they are normal, and they go
into this work because it is a means of sublimation for
this feeling—a means of assuring themselves that they are
really normal. Society puts them in charge of the mentally
abnormal, and so they feel reassured.
Which
raises the question: Was Sigmund Freud a sociopath, too? |
