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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: stockman_scott who wrote (212259)	1/9/2007 5:29:33 PM
From: geode00	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Justin A. Frank, M.D.: I really think that Bush is not competent to be President. He is unconsciously destructive. He is out of touch with his cruelty. He is unable to think clearly when presented with new information. He cannot do it. He cannot read. He cannot pay attention to the Baker-Hamilton Report. He never looked at that report. He looked at the opening title, about a new way forward or something, and that’s what he’s been using as his slogan now. He is not able to process information. I think Cheney, as much as he is malevolent and destructive and greedy and self-interested as an oil executive and wants absolute power, he’s out front about it. I think that he would have to negotiate in a way that’s different because he can’t not think, whereas Bush doesn’t think.... A sociopath is just what you said -- a person who can be very charming, but psychologically is so massively defended against experiencing guilt that he cannot feel empathy. If you don’t feel guilt, you can’t empathize, because you never can feel concern about having hurt somebody else, or anybody else suffering. Guilt reins in destructive behavior. But if you don’t have any guilt, you don’t have to feel any anxiety or anything that will hold you back in terms of being destructive or being hurtful. And that leads you to being unable to feel empathy, because empathy actually threatens your safety. If you feel somebody else is in trouble, then you may feel you are obligated to do something about it. That’s something that is anathema to a psychopath, and it’s certainly anathema to Bush. So he is really incapable of feeling empathy. What he has figured out, with the help of his advisors, is to run as a "compassionate conservative" so he looks like a person who’s empathic. And his affability is what fooled a lot of people into making them feel that he really was connected to them, because he’s so charming. That is classic psychopathy.... Psychopath is the old word for sociopath. It’s the same term. But even sociopaths have an unconscious. They have to do something with guilt and with conflict. They’ve wiped it out overtly, so what we are left with is a sociopath. Unconsciously, there is a tremendous amount of anxiety and fear, and fear of shame, and fear of humiliation, and a desperate need to maintain psychic integrity above all else. That’s why he also has no empathy -- because he is desperately devoted, which I wrote at the end of my book and concluded with, to protecting himself more than anything else. That’s ultimately what a sociopath is. workingforchange.com