-Caveat Lector- from: http://www.zolatimes.com/V3.13/pageone.html <A HREF="http://www.zolatimes.com/V3.13/pageone.html">Laissez Faire City Times - Volume 3 Issue 13</A> ----- The Laissez Faire City Times March 29, 1999 - Volume 3, Issue 13 Editor & Chief: Emile Zola ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Toward a Unified Theory of William Jefferson Clinton an answer to Edith Efron by C.J. Barr ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Way back in the November 1994 issue of Reason, Edith Efron asked the intriguing question: "Can the President Think?" Her conclusion was that the president suffers from severe cognitive dysfunction and that the resulting chaos of his mind accounts for the chaos in his administration. In her analysis, Clinton emerges as the sum of two bedeviling paradoxes. The first, the paradox of the Hollow Sun King, refers to the strange emptiness that we perceive at the center of the charismatic Clinton phenomenon. The second, the paradox of the Paralyzed Sprinter, to the utter chaos that reigns at the center of his administration -- and, seemingly, of his mind. In this essay, I will first present an outline of Efron's argument, along with her proposed etiology. I will then present an alternative theory -- one that unifies not only these two paradoxes, but also the other sordid paradoxes of Clinton's life. Efron's First Paradox: The Hollow Sun King Clinton evokes worship as no American politician has since JFK. Not respect. Not admiration. Not even hero worship. But a sort of personal fawning, by both male and female worshipers, that borders on the sexual. For example, a youthful Arkansas journalist (a male) once described the fledgling Arkansas politician, Bill Clinton, as "the Sun King. And if you look too long at him you will be blind, your senses flooded with his gold-spined brilliance.... There must be some elemental undercurrent here that generates envy in other men, not just the musk of power but something pheromonic. Since it is not polite to compare your governor to Mussolini or even Huey Long, then let's say one of those Kennedy boys.... Actually, his choice of comparisons is strangely apt -- each and every one of them. But, reluctant to leave Clinton in such company without clarification, he proceeded to call him "that rare thing, a soulful politician." Yet a soul -- or at least a unifying "self" -- is exactly what many see as missing from this man. Not his enemies, who view him as evil, but his friends and supporters. Efron writes: "Tom Rosenstiel of the Los Angeles Times, Chris Bury of ABC, Maureen Dowd of The New York Times, Richard Cohen of The Washington Post, and Joe Klein of Newsweek have all... reached a similar conclusion -- that Clinton is 'in hiding' (Cohen); that Clinton is a multifaceted being without a unifying self (Klein); that he is whatever you happen to be looking at or, as Bury resignedly put it, 'what you see is what you get.' Dowd, the most literary, climaxed a fusillade of contradictions by saying, 'In the end, the focus is the unfocusability.'" His own closest aide, George Stephanopolous likened him, as reported in Woodward's The Agenda to "a kaleidoscope. What you see is where you stand and where you're looking at him. He will put one facet toward you, but that is only one facet." Some journalists, writes Efron, have "looked behind the self-contradictory mosaic and reached the grim conclusion that Clinton has no 'self.' In his book, Strange Bedfellows, which describes the coverage of the presidential campaign of 1992, Rosenstiel writes: 'Like many politicians Bill Clinton is a man of unfinished and contradictory character--scholarly and shallow, outgoing and shy, principled and craven, the mood depending on the motive. He possesses extraordinary talent and a fierce thirst for knowledge and insight, but above all approval. One reporter who spent time with him in New Hampshire found him one of the most outwardly directed people she had ever met--as if he had little inner sense of self at all.'" Sam Smith, editor of Progressive Review and an outspoken critic of Clinton from the left, has succinctly captured the essence behind the first paradox: "It was the normal work of the politician, but with Clinton there seemed too much. Too many hands, too many friends, too many words, too many hours before he went to sleep, too many hours on C-SPAN solving the nation's problems with too many industrialists and economists--and in the end too little else. It was as though he were afraid that if he excused himself from the public eye he might no longer be real." Smith comes closer to truth than he, perhaps, realizes: Clinton is a chimera. Efron writes of the fragment of stone at the bottom of Stephanopolous' kaleidoscope -- reflecting in a unique way, showing a different facet to each person as Clinton turns. This is a metaphor for the elusive "real Clinton"; but, in truth, there is no real Clinton that we could possibly comprehend. That little fragment is so alien that it might as well not exist in our universe. At the core of this man, Clinton, where the soul is supposed to be, there is, instead, a gaping void. A black hole. The Sun King exists only as the irresistible gravitational pull he exerts on others and the dying light -- the catastrophic annihilation -- of everyone and everything that strays too close to his event horizon. Within, there is an unknowable emptiness. Efron's Second Paradox: The Paralyzed Sprinter The second paradox is that Clinton does too much, too fast and so never does anything at all. As Efron writes: "For some 15 years Clinton has been saying, over and over again, to people who have repeated it over and over again, that his problem is that he does 'too much, too fast.' Simultaneously, he has been ceaselessly reported to be an astoundingly slow worker who takes months to make a decision. Both cannot be true. And both are not true. "But it takes a long time to understand the gross contradiction between what Clinton says of himself and what the press has reported, because the answer is buried in a mysterious conflict deep inside Clinton's mind.... "...His mind races, ideas rush in on him with great speed; he fails to distinguish between having an idea and taking an action, between thinking and doing; he gets lost in details, so he cannot retain his abstract purposes; and he has great difficulty in reaching conclusions or making decisions." Clinton is a man with a photographic memory and a penchant for details. A man who lacks totally the ability to apply practical logic to the business of making decisions or even of ordering priorities. He is a man, in short, who does not know how to think. "Clinton's cognitive paralysis... affects others, it affects Clinton himself, and ultimately it affects his presidency. The most visible effect, which has appalled the political-media establishment, is the disorder that reigns at the White House. In the course of the publicity debut of The Agenda on 60 Minutes, Mike Wallace said incredulously to Woodward, 'Chaos?' And Woodward replied unsmilingly, 'Chaos. Absolute chaos.'" Efron has done a profoundly important service by documenting these paradoxes, particularly the second. The president's job, after all, is to make decisions and to apply reason to intractable problems. Efron's thesis is that Clinton's mind works only with the assistance of prosthesis -- in the form of his wife, Hillary, or, to a lesser, of extent hired guns like Morris, Stephanopolous and Gergen. However, Efron goes off the rails in the second half of her essay when she attempts diagnosis. She fails, in the final analysis to explain the first paradox. She misdiagnoses the second, omitting from consideration contradictory traits that are themselves paradoxical. And she fails to reconcile even her two paradoxes into a single coherent portrait. "...Clinton's defenses against pain and suffering are almost universally observed. Because all are tied to, if not solely caused by, his cognitive deficiencies, and because they have had dreadful effects on his presidency, I'll list three of them. You know them already: "* Clinton values work and productivity, but only as a means to status and power. By his own say-so, he has valued nothing more than status and power since he was young. He is always aware of his relative status in power relationships. And he is extremely sensitive to criticism, especially if it comes from people with high status and power. His record of 'caving' under pressure, of betraying both principles and people, is due most fundamentally to his lack of confidence in his own mind. In the face of an array of power, he capitulates. He has betrayed every significant group in the Democratic party and numerous friends to win favor with their enemies. The loyalty he commands from his natural political allies is paper thin. "* Clinton's mind is out of control. He has an unusually strong need to be in control of factors outside of him. When he is unable to control others, he grows angry, although the anger is usually not expressed directly. His entire relationship with the national press has been a covert battle for control, and it has been far more intense than you may know. See Tom Rosenstiel's Strange Bedfellows for a shocking report on the spying by the Clinton campaign on the national press during the presidential campaign. "* Clinton's perfectionist demands, which delay and inhibit his decision making, are due in great part, as Lloyd Bentsen says so diplomatically, to his intellectual 'doubt.' Clinton is inordinately afraid of making mistakes. He is in so far over his head, over his capacity to do the work required for the presidency, that he exists in a state of terror. It apparently builds up in the night, and, according to Woodward, the next morning he vomits out the accumulated terror all over George Stephanopoulos in the form of uncontrolled explosions of rage. Clinton's eyes bulge, his face grows scarlet, he yells, he screams, he shrieks. While Clinton is quite capable of controlling this rage and conceals it from the public--it has only been glimpsed by accident and briefly--he does not control it in private. According to Meg Greenfield, he takes his rage out on vulnerable members of his family and on employees--on those over whom he has power. "Stand back and look at all these defenses against pain and fear: Clinton is traitorous. Clinton is a devious manipulator. Clinton grovels before the powerful. Clinton bullies the weak. "These are the attributes of Clinton that are known in both his public and his private life to those he has conned and betrayed. They co-exist with what Joe Klein calls 'his relentless huggy, weepy emotionalism' -- and relentless is a significant word. Huggy and weepy in this pale-eyed man with the eternally crooked smile are also manipulative weapons. "These do not begin to exhaust Clinton's defensive repertoire. But they are enough to explain waning political support. All of the epistemological problems and all of the emotional defenses... are too well known for Clinton to win sustained respect. When [Clinton] recites monotonously that he tries 'to do too much, too fast,' or that he sometimes 'works hard but not smart,' he is actually saying, 'I am very intelligent. I work terribly hard. I am not slow, I am fast. I think and I work with great speed.' It seems painfully clear that with those words Clinton is denying his cognitive paralysis and is asserting his self-worth.... She concludes from this that Clinton suffers from something much akin to obsessive and compulsive disorder. In fact, she refers to a comment Clinton made to a journalist about an episode in his life when he and his entire family went through counseling sessions following the conviction of his brother for drug trafficking: "I finally realized how my compulsive and obsessive ambition got in the way." Efron believes that "[t]here is no reason to doubt that Clinton was diagnosed as being 'compulsive and obsessive,' since that is what journalists have been documenting since Clinton entered the White House. "All of Clinton's thinking problems and emotional defenses described in this article are symptoms of Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder as identified by the American Psychiatric Association.... "The diagnostic literature says that at least five of the criteria of Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder must be present to identify someone as suffering from this disorder. Here are five that describe Clinton: 1. Perfectionism that interferes with task completion, e.g. inability to complete a project because [the person's] own overly strict standards are not met. 2. Preoccupation with details... to the extent that the major point of the activity is lost. 3. Unreasonable reluctance to allow others to do things because of a conviction that they will not do them correctly. 4. Excessive devotion to work and productivity to the exclusion of leisure activities and friendships. 5. Indecisiveness: decision making is either avoided, postponed, or protracted, e.g. the person cannot get assignments done on time because of ruminating about priorities." Efron Has It Backwards Efron paints a moving portrait of a man in profound agony at his own cognitive imperfections. A man in emotional pain because he cannot think. A man driven by his fear of failure or of imperfection to spin forever just short of completion. She has it exactly backwards! Clinton cannot think precisely because he cannot feel, has virtually no emotional life at all. Clinton is not burdened with a hyperactive, obsessive compulsive "conscience," a paralyzing perfectionism. Clinton's conscience problem is that he has absolutely no conscience whatsoever. Clinton is not an obsessing neurotic but what I will call, borrowing the term from Manufacturing Social Distress, by Robert Reiber of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, an adaptive psychopath. Disorders of the sort we are discussing can be defined either as a constellation of social behaviors or as interrelated personality traits. The latter, of course, are deduced clinically from observation of the former. There is considerable overlap among behaviors, even those associated with quite dissimilar disorders. Efron observed a subset of Clinton's conduct and labeled it obsessive compulsive. The same behaviors, however, also correlate to narcissistic personality disorder and anti-social personality disorder. Both of these, quite closely related to each other, are entirely inconsistent with obsessive compulsive disorder. The underlying personality traits are quite different. And both of these alternatives more closely match the entirety of Clinton's observed anti-social behavior. Psychopathy is an older, more precise, name for "anti-social personality disorder." In the 1920's, psychologists adopted "sociopath" to replace "psychopath." More recently, the name "anti-social personality disorder" replaced the replacement. This terminological evolution has coincided with, as Robert Hare of the Hare Labs at UBC writes, a "dramatic shift away from the use of clinical inferences [and towards] the behaviors that typify a disorder...." The reason for this is that it is easier to describe superficial behaviors than to deduce the underlying reasons why they occur. But the unforeseen result has been a "construct drift" that sacrifices clinical validity for mere descriptive reliability. The new classifications depend "on a fixed set of behavioral indicators that simply [do] not provide adequate coverage of the construct they were designed to measure." I will use the older term, "psychopath", for two reasons. First, it is defined, as Hare notes, by "affective and interpersonal traits such as egocentricity, deceit, shallow affect, manipulativeness, selfishness, and lack of empathy, guilt or remorse..." that describe a clinically distinct syndrome rather than a mere constellation of behaviors. And second, because, as Reiber says, "psychopath" expresses more of the "awe, horror, and perplexity" that these people evoke. Because it better captures a "phenomenon so spectacularly alien that it seems almost incredible that such people can exist." As for narcissistic personality disorder: all psychopaths (I suspect) are also narcissists, although not all narcissists are true psychopaths. Since psychopathy is one of the least understood of personality disorders, let me outline the classic description of the true psychopath, drawing heavily on Hervey Cleckley's ground breaking work, The Mask of Sanity. "General poverty in major affective reactions." The psychopath, Cleckley says, "always shows general poverty of affect. Although it is true that he sometimes becomes excited and shouts as if in rage or seems to exult in enthusiasm and again weeps in what appear to be bitter tears or speaks eloquently and mournful words about his misfortunes or his follies, the conviction dawns on those who observe him carefully that here we deal with a readiness of expression rather than a strength of feeling." Cleckly describes the "emotional poverty, the complete lack of strong or tragic feeling universally found in all the psychopaths personally observed...." He comments that some ascribe to them "powerful instinctual drives and passions...." He attributes this error to the fact that "weak and even infantile drives displaying themselves theatrically in the absence of ordinary inhibitions may impress the layman as mighty forces....." "Specific loss of insight." Cleckly asserts that the psychopath "lacks insight to a degree seldom, if ever, found in any but the most seriously disturbed psychotic patients." [I]n the sense of realistic evaluation, the psychopath lacks insight more consistently than some schizophrenic patients. He has absolutely no capacity to see himself as others see him.... [H]e has no ability to know how others feel when they see him or to experience subjectively anything comparable about the situation. All the values, all of the major affect concerning his status, are unappreciated by him." Cleckly expresses astonishment at this in view of the "psychopath's perfect orientation, his ability and willingness to reason or go through the forms of reasoning, and his perfect freedom from delusions or other signs of an ordinary psychosis." Later he notes that "[s]uch a deficiency of insight is harder to comprehend than the schizophrenic's deficiency, for it exists in the full presence of what are often assumed to be the qualities by which insight is gained. Yet the psychopath shows not only a deficiency but apparently a total absence of self-appraisal as a real and moving experience." Instead of facing the facts that lead to insight, the psychopath "projects, blaming his troubles on others with the flimsiest of pretext but with elaborate and subtle rationalization." He may, from time to time, "perfunctorily admit himself to blame for everything and analyze his case from what seems to be almost a psychiatric viewpoint, but we can see that his conclusions have little actual significance for him.... The patient seems to have little or no ability to feel the significance of his situation, to experience the real emotions of regret or shame or determination to improve, or to realize that this is lacking. His clever statements have been hardly more than verbal reflexes; even his facial expressions are without the underlying content they imply." "Unreliability" Actually, an unreliable unreliability. "The psychopath's unreliability and his disregard for obligations and for consequences are manifested in both trivial and serious matters, are masked by demonstrations of conforming behavior, and cannot be accounted for by ordinary motives or incentives. Although it can be confidently be predicted that his failures and disloyalties will continue, it is impossible to time them and to take satisfactory precautions against their effect. Here, it might be said, is not even a consistency in inconsistency but an inconsistency in inconsistency." "Untruthfulness and insincerity" "The psychopath," says Cleckley, "shows a remarkable disregard for truth and is to be trusted no more in his accounts of the past than in his promises for the future or his statement of present intentions." He is "at ease" and "unpretentious in making promises or denying culpability. His words in such matters carry "special powers of conviction.... Candor and trustworthiness seem implicit in him at such times. During the most solemn perjuries he has no difficulty at all of looking anybody tranquilly in the eyes." When detection of wrongdoing is at hand, a psychopath may "appear to be facing the consequences with singular honesty, fortitude and manliness." But this, too, is a facade. "It is indeed difficulty to express how thoroughly straightforward some typical psychopaths can appear. They are disarming not only to those unfamiliar with such patients but often to people who know well from experience their convincing outer aspect of honesty." Upon being discovered in "shameful and gross falsehoods, after repeatedly violating his most earnest pledges, he finds it easy, when another occasion arises, to speak of his word of honor, his honor as a gentleman, and he shows surprise and vexation when commitments on such a basis do not immediately settle the issue." "Lack of remorse or shame" A psychopath shows "almost no sense of shame. His career is full of exploits, any one of which would wither even the more callous representatives of the ordinary man. Yet he does not, despite his able protestations, show the slightest evidence of major humiliation or regret." However, the psychopath may, when cornered, seem to accept blame and express profound regret. But "subsequent events indicate that it is empty of sincerity -- a hollow and casual form...." His manner of delivering these perfunctory expressions will reveal nothing of this hollowness but will be "exceedingly deceptive and is very likely to promote confidence and deep trust." Which will soon prove to have been misplaced. "Superficial charm and good 'intelligence'' A typical psychopath makes a very good first impression. He is perceived as bright, well adjusted and as manifesting "desirable and superior human qualities [and a] robust mental health." Despite this, "the psychopath's inner emotional deviations and deficiencies may be comparable with the inner status of the masked schizophrenic." His surface charm coupled with his cold remorselessness makes him a superb manipulator of the unwary. "Poor judgment and failure to learn by experience" On theoretical matters, the psychopath may show superb judgment. On very complex ethical, moral or emotional issues he may also show excellent reasoning ability -- as long as they are abstract and do not involve himself as a participant. But about his own life, a psychopath demonstrates over and over an inability to learn from experience or to be deterred by punishment. "Pathological egocentricity and incapacity for love." The egocentricity of the psychopath "is usually of a degree not seen in ordinary people and often is little short of astonishing." However, a skillful psychopath may learn to camouflage it to suit his schemes. It is a "self-centeredness that is apparently unmodifiable and all but complete.... [I]t is an incapacity for object love and... this incapacity... appears to be absolute." A psychopath may be capable of "casual fondness, of likes and dislikes, and of reactions that, one might say, cause others to matter to him." These are, however, "always strictly limited in degree" and "durability." And "[w]hat positive feelings appear during the psychopath's interpersonal relations give a strong impression of being self-love." He has "absolute indifference to the financial, social, emotional, physical, and other hardships which he brings upon those for whom he professes love...." "Sex life impersonal, trivial, and poorly integrated" "The psychopath's sex life," says Cleckley, "invariably shows peculiarities." There is not a strong congruence with any specific sexual deviancy, but deviance is not unusual and should not be surprising "in view of the psychopath's notable tendencies to hit upon unsatisfactory conduct in all fields and his apparent inability to take seriously what would to others be repugnant and regrettable." Also not surprisingly, "in view of their incapacity for object love, the sexual aims of psychopaths do not seem to include any important personality relations or other recognizable desire or ability to explore or possess or significantly ravish the partner in a shared experience." They are generally limited to "literal physical contact and relatively free of the enormous emotional concomitants and the complex potentialities that make adult love relations an experience so thrilling and indescribable." Far from being super-sexed, "their amativeness is little more than a simple itch and that even the itch is seldom, if ever, particularly intense." As for the psychopathic male, "despite his usual ability to complete the physical act successfully with a woman, [he] never seems to find anything meaningful or personal in his relations or to enjoy significant pleasure beyond the localized and temporary sensations." Psychopaths of both genders have a record of sexual promiscuity, but this "seems much more closely related to their almost total lack of self-imposed restraint than to any particularly strong passions or drives. Psychopaths sometimes seem by preference to seek sexual relations in sordid surroundings" or with inappropriate people. They go out of their way to find sexual entanglement that "mock ordinary human sensibility or what might be called basic decency...." The male psychopath, beneath "his outwardly gracious manner toward women and his general suavity and social charm... nearly always shows an underlying predilection for obscenity, an astonishingly ambivalent attitude in which the amorous and excretory functions seem to be confused. He sometimes gives the impression that an impulse to smear his partner symbolically, and even wallow in sordidness himself, is more fundamental than a directly erotic aim, itself hardly more to him than a sort of concomitant and slightly glorified backscratching." "Inadequately motivated antisocial behavior" "He will commit theft, forgery, adultery, fraud, and other deeds for astonishingly small stakes and under much greater risks of being discovered than will the ordinary scoundrel. He will, in fact, commit such deeds in the absence of any apparent goal at all." "Unresponsiveness in general interpersonal relations" A psychopath does not feel genuine gratitude for kindness or trust. Nor does he conduct his life by any recognized code of reciprocity. But "we often find him attentive in small courtesies and favors, often habitually generous or quasi-generous when the cost is not decisive." Sometimes these acts are self-serving in subtle ways, but not always. "Outward social graces come easy to most psychopaths, and many continue, throughout careers disastrous to themselves and for others, to conduct themselves in superficial relations, in handling the trivia of existence, so as to gain admiration and gratitude. In these surface aspects of functioning, the typical psychopath (unlike the classic hypocrite) often seems to act with undesigning spontaneity and to be prompted by motives of excellent quality though of marvelously attenuated substance." I referred to Clinton using Rieber's classification, "adaptive psychopath." In part, an adaptive psychopath is merely a successful one, one who has avoided jail or asylum. He is a psychopath more able to function in the real world whether, as Rieber says, because of "superior endowment or because their survival was facilitated by adopting an outwardly [normal] facade." But Rieber -- who has written extensively about "Psychopathy in Everyday Life" (in fact, this is the subtitle of his book, Manufacturing Social Distress) -- means something a bit more subtle by "adaptive psychopath" and presents psychopathy, itself, using a somewhat streamlined description. While accepting the work of Cleckley and Hare -- both of whom have largely studied psychopathy in therapeutic or penal settings -- Rieber writes that in his view: "the following four salient characteristics -- thrill seeking, pathological glibness, antisocial pursuit of power, and absence of guilt -- distinguish the true psychopath." 'Thrill-Seeking" This is more than merely impulsive behavior. Often considerable planning is involved, as well as the cooperation of accomplices. This behavior may be due, in part, to a higher threshold of "perceptual stimulation" among psychopaths, leading to thrill-seeking, drug use and violence (sexual or otherwise). Also psychopathic thrill-seeking is qualitatively different from normal boredom defeating pursuits. "Psychopathic thrill-seeking consists in breaking the rules, whatever they might be, or even in surreptitiously making up new rules. At a poker table, psychopaths do not want to win; they want to cheat and get away with it. That is, they want to turn the game into a new game, where they make the rules." Adaptive psychopaths, he says: "have taken this to a paradoxical extreme: They can go about their routine duties precisely because they have turned them into a dangerous game of charades, of passing for normal, while in their off-hours they live an entirely different life." Clinton manifests this in all aspects of his life; from his golf Mulligans to his interpretation of the ten commandments. His entire adult life, lived under the microscope of public scrutiny, has been one long game of charades. Friends, even enemies, marvel at the paradox that such an ambitious man would risk everything, repeatedly, to gratify his desires (which often actually seem as fleeting and trivial as mere whims). Clinton's psychopathic thrill-seeking is satisfied by precisely this inconsistency: by the incompatibility between his public ambitions and that rapacious private life. "Pathological Glibness: The Manipulation of Meaning in the Communication of Deceit" All psychopaths, at every level of intelligence, are remarkably glib and persuasive. Cleckley also talks about "semantic dementia," by which he means that the psychopath is unmoved by the ordinary emotional demands of a situation and act as if they do not exist. Rieber takes this further: "[T]he same dissociation is also manifest in their speech; words have become detached from meaning and serve instead as a means of placating a dangerous foe or of fleecing an unwary victim. By the same token, they do not allow themselves to be moved by words and concepts that their fellow citizens value." Hare has reported that the organization of the psychopath's brain seems to differ from the "normal" brain in the way it deals with language as well as emotion. It seems that language may be more diffusely and shallowly processed by the psychopath. This corresponds to the psychopath's ability to hold several, mutually contradictory concepts in his mind at once without evident discord. If there is one trait of Clinton's that stands out, even against the backdrop of hairsplitting lawyers, politicians and consultants, it is his use of language. His grand jury testimony is a case study in semantic dementia and verbal dissociation. A careful look at moments such as the lesson on the meaning of "is" reveals a tiny flash of triumph on Clinton's face. He has cheated in plain sight and won. This analysis extends, also, to public affairs. At its heart, triangulation is "semantic dementia" as a political weapon. "Antisocial Pursuit of Power" Psychopaths are preoccupied with power relationships. Not only are they interested "in obtaining maximum power for themselves, but they seem hell-bent on using power for destructive ends. Only in paranoid states and in the attitudes of career criminals can a comparable fusion of antisocial trends with the power drive be seen. It is as though, for psychopaths, power can be experienced only in the context of victimization: if they are to be strong, someone else must pay. There is no such thing, in the psychopathic universe, as the merely weak; whoever is weak is also a sucker, that is, someone who demands to be exploited." This also typifies Clinton's approach to the use of power -- over women, over opponents and even over allies. It is manifested in Clinton's justification for exploiting his lawyer's gullibility in believing his own client (Clinton, himself). It underlies his abusive relationship to women (many of whom either came to him because of his power or who were unable to resist or complain because of it). The psychopathic attitude towards power also underlies Clinton's dealings with Congress -- both majority and minority -- and his ongoing shell games with policy. Psychopaths, it has been noted, tend to invade the space of others to intimidate or dominate. Often this takes the form of a piercing, unwavering gaze. Women sometimes interpret this as seduction, as Monica Lewinsky reports about herself. Men also feel it, although in different ways. Bob Woodward mentioned on Larry King recently that this is what he first noticed about Clinton during a face to face meeting. Even a glass of diet Coke never occluded that unblinking laserlike stare. (For a jarring parallel, watch the opening scene of Kubrick's Clockwork Orange !) "Absence of Guilt" Psychopaths are not ignorant of law and its sanctions. They simply ignore the former and seek to evade the latter. They are, therefore, "skilled in evasion and rationalization. Some, gifted histrionically, can even feign remorse. But they do not feel guilt.... [W]hen psychopaths are caught they are in a profound sense uncomprehending." If one thing marked Clinton's great apology tour, following discovery of the soiled dress, it was total and absolute insincerity. (Where are the religious counselors now that he has escaped removal?) If you read all the statements of regret and the comments about mutual forgiveness, only one conclusion is possible: Clinton is, on the one hand, presenting a facade of guilty shame to evade repercussions while, simultaneously, taking pleasure in manipulating the words so as to never say what his "sucker" audience thinks he is saying. The Mephisto Syndrome The sum of these four parts is what Rieber refers to as the "Mephisto Syndrome." "[I]t is hard to resist the impression that the true psychopath is a personification of the demonic.... They are not social, only superficially gregarious; not considerate, just polite; not self-respecting, only vain; not loyal, only servile and down deep they are really quite shallow.... Hence the observed homologies with the figures of the demonic: ...For the psychopath, the demonic is a way of life.... "[S]ince like the devil psychopaths are inherently asocial, they are difficult to comprehend within the confines of ordinary human morality. [T]he true psychopath, like Lucifer, goes beyond the categories of evil and sin; theologically, the true psychopath is incapable of forming any relationship to God or to humans.... Not feeling remorse, psychopaths enter the confessional, as they enter psychotherapy, only when it serves some other purpose, typically that of evading punishment.... "[T]he power of the group is real; if properly organized the group can accomplish things well beyond the power of any individual. The individuals, for their part, participate in the exercise of group power through identification.... "Psychopaths, by contrast, appear to situate themselves altogether differently vis-a-vis the group. Rather than adopt a posture of identification, they appear to... proceed on the delusionary belief that in their own person they can emulate and create the degree of power that, properly speaking, only the group has. More than a law unto themselves, psychopaths act as if they were a whole nation unto themselves.... [reminding us of de Gaulle's famous saying that nations have no friends, only interests.] "Dissociation is a critical cognitive process in psychotherapy. It is manifest in the pathological glibness, in the inability to feel guilt, in the inability to profit from experience, and in the semantic dementia, generally, of the psychopath.... [D]issociation refers to the tendency of individuals to... dissociate... their 'real' selves from their 'public' selves. Such people histrionically alter their public presentations to create a succession of socially acceptable images or facades.... "With psychopaths, dissociation reaches to a deeper level; paradoxically it is also more readily put to the service of the pathologically inflated ego. Where the histrionic splits off the 'bad me' from the 'good me,' ...the psychopath's internal split seems seems to take place at an even more basic level, that of the 'me' and the 'not me....' [T]here is nothing that is 'not me' for psychopaths. There is no limit to the grandiosity of their fantasies, likewise there is no limit to what they might do.... "[The psychopath's] deeper dissociation is utterly uncontrolled, and this makes it practically impossible for psychopaths to do anything else but con at the level of social valuations.... [T]he same is true of the kind of rationalizations and trumped-up emotions psychopaths rely on.... [T]here is a level of conscious ego-involvement in these techniques, but it is a pathologically inflated ego..., an ego that has lost the ability to produce either genuine reasons or genuine feelings...." The trait at the root of psychopathy is flattened affect. The profound shallowness of the psychopath's emotional life is not only their trademark behavioral trait -- though often masked by an outward glib charm -- it has also been identified by brain scans. From this emotional deficit, all else appears to follow. A vital emotional life seems to be essential to conscience, judgment, the ability to learn from experience, insight and all the other social and moral values lacking in the psychopath. Not surprisingly, this issue of emotional deficit also underlies the difference between my theory of Clinton and Efron's. Efron's diagnosis -- which requires deep emotional suffering and conscience paralyzed cognitive skills -- is incompatible with the psychopathic traits manifested by Clinton. Her's simply cannot explain the pathological lying, the evasions, the exploitation of women and the like. On the other hand, if my diagnosis is to succeed, it must explain how a presumed emotional deficit is consistent with Clinton's "relentless huggy, weepy emotionalism," his legendary screaming fits and purple rages and his repetitious, self-pitying self-diagnosis. The answer is obvious from the very description of the syndrome. Violent emotional demonstrations by a psychopath are, as Cleckley said, always the result of a lack of inhibition rather than any genuine strength of feeling. When these outbursts are directed as rage against another, they can also be explained by the psychopath's lack of empathy for that other person and instinct to dominate him or her. Displays of rage -- like inappropriate eye contact -- are typical of animal dominance behaviors. Moreover, psychopaths are often motivated by a need for approval, which is one reason they so carefully ape genuine emotional responses. An intelligent psychopath is not oblivious to objective signs of his own failure; he is, however, more or less oblivious to his own contributing faults. To recognize them would require insight, which he does not possess. So a psychopath will often lash out at others in violent rage, blaming them for the falling polls, failed legislation, editorial criticism, etc. Paradoxically, the psychopath is also capable of putting on an outward display of insight when it suits him. It is a hollow, false insight. A psychopath can analyze his own conduct with great psychological skill, but the words are, as Cleckley pointed out, as empty as he is. A young patient cited by Cleckley had a typical history of truancy and delinquency. Finally, in desperation, his affluent family asked a friend to intervene. The friend was an older man with considerable practical experience helping troubled youths. He decided to take the boy on a long automobile trip -- with the purpose of maintaining a relaxed atmosphere while keeping his audience captive. The boy did most of the talking. He analyzed his own shortcomings with, seemingly, great insight and honesty. He volunteered that he needed to change and outlined steps that he might take to do so. The older man was very impressed. When they arrived back at the boy's home that evening, the man discharged his passenger at the curb and drove off. The boy walked past the house, through the back yard and out the back gate. He was next seen a week later, in police custody, having committed a spate of forgeries and thefts. The Psychopath Efron's excellent and convincing portrayal of the Hollow Sun King, the first Clinton paradox, is, in short, an almost perfect description of a charismatic psychopath: a soulless "intraspecies predator" (to quote Hare's "Without Conscience"). A robot without empathy, devoid of conscience or remorse, living a mere shadow of an emotional life, but able to mimic the outward manifestation of emotions on demand. Able, therefore, to manipulate the unwary to a degree that defies imagination. Presenting a different facet to each viewer. Objectively hollow, but, to the susceptible, very like a "Sun King." A Sun King who deceives, exploits, betrays and rapes his subjects. It is left for me, now, to explain the second paradox, which arises from the total chaos at the center of Clinton's mind. I need to demonstrate, at a minimum, that psychopathy is consistent with such cognitive turmoil. I intend to do even better than that: to prove that psychopathy, which is essentially an emotional (and moral) deficit, actually explains Clinton's cognitive dysfunction as described by Efron. Psychopaths have, for the most part, been studied in prisons. These studies tend to describe the life patterns of losers -- men and women incapable of maintaining a "normal" life. These people have seemingly intact intellects -- may, in fact, be of superior intelligence. However, on practical matters involving themselves, they are totally unable to plan or make sound decisions. Usually, given the population being studied, this is manifested in an aimless pattern in their lives. This is sometimes listed as a trait to be looked for in diagnosing the psychopath. The adaptive psychopath, however, by definition has avoided such complete and profound failure. Is it possible that cognitive dysfunction of the sort we see in Clinton, the successful psychopath, is the same as that which afflicts the more often studied criminal psychopath? And how does this cognitive dysfunction relate to emotional deficit? Recent research tells us how an emotional deficit can, in fact, manifest itself as such cognitive dysfunction. In 1994, Antomio R. Damasio (Ph.D., M.D.) published a seminal work on the profound interrelatedness of our intellectual and emotional processes, "Descartes' Error -- Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain." He started with a study of one Phineas Gage. In 1848, Mr. Gage was involved in a mining accident in which he blasted a sharpened sixteen foot iron rod, completely through his left prefrontal cortex. It landed some 100 yards away. He recovered consciousness almost immediately and was taken to town on a wagon. He walked unassisted to a nearby porch and sat patiently waiting for the physician, regaling his audience with the story of his accident. His brain was clearly visible pulsing beneath the horrible wound. Except for blindness in one eye, he recovered with no obvious mental or physical incapacity. But he was not the same affable, hardworking, honest man that Phineas Gage had been before. He was completely changed. He could no longer hold a job. He became irritable and aggressive. His emotional life was shallow. He drank and brawled. And he displayed no ability to make intelligent decisions about his own life. His life spiralled downward from one personal disaster to another. Gage's wound had deprived him of something besides his left eye. Something subtle. It had taken affect from him; it had stolen away his emotions. And for some reason, this produced a profound cognitive dysfunction that destroyed his life. Damasio and his wife, herself a neurologist, reconstructed the damaged brain from Gage's skull, which was on public display. And they saw many living patients with similar -- although less dramatically sustained -- trauma to the prefrontal cortex. All these patients also suffered serious lowering of affect with no direct physical damage to their motor or language capabilities. And most manifested a similar severe impairment of practical intellectual capacity: they were unable to reason about things that had a bearing on their own lives (as opposed to purely theoretical puzzles) and were incapable of making rational decisions. Allison Barnes and Paul Thagard (of the University of Waterloo in Canada) write in a paper called, "Emotional Decisions": "Damasio maintains that Gage and other frontal lobe patients with faulty decision making skills have all the information required to make decisions. According to neurological studies by Saver and Damasio (1991), social knowledge in these patients remains intact. Their experimental subject, EVR, could provide response options to social situations, consider the consequences of these options and perform moral reasoning at an advanced level. EVR had normal or better intelligence and memory. Detailed studies by Saver and Damasio suggest that even with all the necessary information, such patients are unable to implement a choice in everyday life. For example, EVR would take hours deciding where to dine by obsessing about each restaurant's seating plan, menu and atmosphere. Even then, he could not reach a final decision." Compare EVR's dilemma with Efron's descriptions of Clinton's frenzied and unsuccessful decision making. Damasio's neurological studies show, write Barnes and Thagard, that "what is damaged in these patients is not memory or intelligence, but the neural connections between the emotional and cognitive centers of the brain. More specifically, the ventromedial frontal region is reported to be responsible for emotional processing and social cognition through connections with the amygdala and hypothalamus. After a series of tests, Saver and Damasio conclude that in the absence of emotional input, EVR's decision making process was overwhelmed by trivial information. With additional studies, the researchers conclude that EVR had no internal goal representation. In order for goals to remain stable for EVR, they had to be represented externally and repeatedly. Otherwise, '...it was as if he forgot to remember short- and intermediate- term goals.... He couldn't keep a problem in perspective in relation to other goals.'" Damasio's hypothesis, widely accepted today, is that there is a strong connection between emotional processes and intellectual processes: our emotions are equal partners, if you will, in our intellectual lives. This is especially true in practical decision making. Domasio theorizes that "somatic markers" are the mechanism by which emotions conspire with thought to produce decisions. Essentially, every goal, every means to that goal, every intermediate step and all possible alternatives along the way are encoded with emotional attributes of which we are not consciously aware. As Barnes and Thagard write: "The somatic marker hypothesis is presented by Damasio to explain these experimental findings. The hypothesis is that bodily feelings normally accompany our representations of the anticipated outcomes of options. In other words, feelings mark response options to real or simulated decisions. Somatic markers serve as an automatic device to speed one to select biologically advantageous options. Those options that are left unmarked are omitted in the decision-making process. Damasio suggests that patients with frontal lobe damage fail to activate these somatic markers which are directly linked to punishment and reward, and originate in previously experienced social situations. EVR's decision making defect is explained by an inability to activate somatic states when ordinary decisions arise; by an inability to mark the implications of a social situation with a signal that would separate good and bad options. EVR was therefore trapped in a never-ending cost-benefit analysis of numerous and conflicting options. In the absence of emotional markers, decision making is virtually impossible.... "Damasio claims that un-marked options are not considered by the decision maker. This biasing function of somatic markers is really what makes decision making possible. In the absence of markers, the decision maker has too much information to deal with. The computations involved are so cumbersome that they cannot yield a final decision. In short, emotions dictate and constrain which bits of information are used." There is a close resemblance between psychopathic traits and the symptoms presented by the victims of brain trauma of the sort just described. Some researchers actually argue that psychopathy is the result of either trauma to or arrested development of the prefrontal cortex and the limbic system. One theory is that the psychopathic brain is organized differently (resembling the consequences of physical trauma) as the result of imperfect socialization in the very early years -- arising either from inherited deficits or from a pathological family environment (or both). Whether this is true or not, both psychopathy and such brain trauma are functions of a similar, profound emotional deficit, both apparently arise in the same brain structures and both manifest remarkably similar symptoms. If there is a subtle difference in the descriptions of indecisiveness in psychopaths and of brain trauma victims, it is because psychopaths tend to be studied in prison settings and brain trauma patients in hospitals. All these studies -- both of psychopaths and brain trauma patients -- indicate that pure reason remains unimpaired in both. The subjects can pass tests -- entirely theoretical tests -- designed to identify intellectual impairment. If the element of practical, personal decision making is added to these tests, however, both sets of subjects fail -- flailing about helplessly. One brain trauma patient, for example, after hours and hours of questions designed to test his ability to solve theoretical ethical problems -- tests which he passed with normal scores -- commented to the clinician, "You know, after all this, I still would not know what to do." The emotionally crippled psychopath does not know, in situations calling for decision, how to think. He cannot decode the somatic markers. In the unsuccessful psychopath this results in a ruined life. In the successful psychopath, it results in a career of constant crises -- and the ruination of the lives of others. Perhaps, the successful psychopath achieves success partly through parasitism -- by using the cognitive powers of others, as Efron argues that Clinton does Hillary's. Unfortunately, I believe that there is a compelling case that Clinton is a true psychopath. That at the core of the "Sun King," William Jefferson Clinton, we see hidden in plain sight this intractable pathology, this emptiness and its horrible power. Psychopathy in the world's most powerful leader creates a terrible dilemma for a democracy. The psychopath is not mentally ill or mentally impaired as these terms apply in the law or in connection with the 25th Amendment to the Constitution. But he is, as noted by all the experts, just as dangerous as if he were, perhaps more so. Just as unfit for high office, perhaps more so. Psychopaths do not just blunder blindly into evil; they seek it out. Can the Vice President and the Cabinet remove the elected leader of the nation on the basis of "moral dementia"? Do we really want to re-enact the Caine Mutiny on a national level? Any move to remove this clearly unfit creature from office must, it seems to me, come from the Congress. This route, however, has now all but been foreclosed. A chorus of soft voices has arisen calling for "counseling" for this man who sits at the pinnacle of power -- allegedly suffering merely from some popular form of addiction. This is arrant nonsense. There is no pill, no treatment, no therapy and no exorcism that can "cure" him or those like him. Hare reports that therapy seems actually to exacerbate their antisocial behavior -- to make them worse! These creatures are profoundly alien. Visitors from a parallel moral universe. They can never interact with ours as anything but soulless predators. I believe that I have also made the case that the policy chaos and paralysis that Efron described in Clinton and his administration are symptoms of a the same profound emotional deficit arising from and underlying his psychopathy. (Or, perhaps, he suffered some youthful trauma to his prefrontal cortex. Someday, perhaps, his medical records will solve the mystery.) What is certain is that, for all practical purposes, we are governed by an adaptive, charismatic psychopath, a supreme intraspecies predator, armed with mesmerizing powers of seduction -- even mass seduction. A leader with profound emotional, cognitive and moral deficits that paralyze his reason and interfere with the simplest decisions -- and endanger this Nation. And there is virtually nothing that can be done about it. -30- from The Laissez Faire City Times, Vol 3, No 13, March 29, 1999 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Published by Laissez Faire City Netcasting Group, Inc. Copyright 1998 - Trademark Registered with LFC Public Registrar All Rights Reserved Disclaimer The Laissez Faire City Times is a private newspaper. Although it is published by a corporation domiciled within the sovereign domain of Laissez Faire City, it is not an "official organ" of the city or its founding trust. 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