Personality Disorders And Choice

According to some in psychology, evil in humanity stems from narcissistic and sociopathic personality disorders.

This is just as wrong as Buddhists claiming that suffering is based in desire or New Agers claiming that negative thinking is at the root of what is wrong with the world.

Certainly a person who cares only about himself can do wrong, sometimes massive wrong. But so can a man who cares about his country, or about his community, or about his religious sect, enough to go to war against others. Even people who care about humanity as such can go wrong, as when they create things such as Communism. To see narcissism or sociopathy as the root of all evil is ridiculous.

What concerns me is when I asked a counselor how they deal with sociopaths, she said, “lock them up.” Now I take the Constitution seriously, and nowhere in the Constitution does it say that you can lock people up for their psychological makeup. If the claim is that these people are evil and can only be evil whatever they do, that claim is irrational, it is cruel and it is wrong. Anyone capable of choice is capable of rightful choice. That includes sociopaths. And I say this as somebody whose score on the sociopath dimension was quite low.

Instead what we have seen is a hysteria. It has been a persecution of people for how they think. This smacks of Orwell and his concept of crimethink. It is criminal to think in certain ways. And a person who thinks in those ways is rendered a criminal and persecuted even if he has not committed a crime.

Now I have absolutely no personal reasons to speak in defense of sociopaths. I do however have very valid reasons to confront hysterical and oppressive thinking and to stand in defense of people's rights. Once again, what we are dealing with here is cruel and irrational. Anything capable of choice is capable of rightful choice. Claiming anything to the contrary is wrong absolutely.

At core of this is this question, Are people responsible for their character? If they are, then even if they've adapted as sociopaths during childhood they can choose to improve their character in adulthood. And if, as many in psychology say, they cannot do that and can only be bad, then people are not responsible for their character. In either case what the psychologists are doing is wrong. They are damning people. They are blaming them for their problems while denying them the ability to fix their problems. And that is a completely irrational and cruel stance to take.

If the claim is that one should confront things such as cruelty and destructiveness, that claim is correct. However to damn people and to deny them the capacity for rightful conduct or thought is wrong absolutely. No, narcissism and sociopathy are not the only possible sources of evil. There are many possible sources of evil. As for the people who have these disorders, they are still people. And that means that they are capable of righful choice.