by Cameron Reilly | 23 Dec, 2020 | Blog
“What Else Explains America’s Bizarre, Shocking Indifference to Everything That Matters?”
From this great article by Umair Haque.
While I don’t think the United States has a monopoly on psychopaths, I do make the case in the book that capitalism has made it easier for psychopaths to get their hands on wealth and power. I also talk about how psychopaths in positions of political power can bring an entire country to exhibit psychopathic behaviours, and I think the United States is a good case study.
by Cameron Reilly | 19 Nov, 2020 | Uncategorised
It’s hard to read the details of the Brereton report and not reach the conclusion that there are psychopaths in the Australian military. As one soldier put it: “Psychos. Absolute psychos. And we bred them.”
Key findings:
None of the killings took place in the heat of battle, and they all occurred in circumstances which, if accepted by a jury, would constitute the war crime of murder.
All the victims were either non-combatants or were no longer combatants.
Evidence suggests junior soldiers were instructed by their superiors to execute prisoners in cold blood as part of a “blooding” process to give them their first kill.
“Typically, the patrol commander would take a person under control and the junior member … would then be directed to kill the person under control,” the report found. “‘Throwdowns’ would be placed with the body and a ‘cover story’ was created for the purposes of operational reporting and to deflect scrutiny.”
Unsurprisingly, the report “absolves senior command of blame or knowledge that war crimes were being committed”. However I think it’s fair to argue that the culture of an organisation is the responsibility of its leadership. To say “we didn’t know what was going on in our own military” should be completely unacceptable.
by Cameron Reilly | 6 Nov, 2020 | Blog
“A culture of the pursuit of profit at all costs”, how the former chairman of the NSW gambling regulator has described Crown Casino, sounds like a symptom of a psychopathic culture. In the book we talk about how psychopathic leadership can create psychopathic organisational cultures, whether that organisation is a business or an entire country. Look at the 66 million people in the United States who voted this week for Donald Trump as an example of how a large chunk of a country can easily be swept along with psychopathic values like putting the economy ahead of the safety of the population.
by Cameron Reilly | 15 Oct, 2020 | Podcast
Alan Blotcky is a clinical psychologist in private practice in Birmingham, Alabama. He was written a number of articles over the last year in which he says that, in his professional opinion, Donald Trump is a psychopath and a narcissist. I spoke to him today about psychopaths in positions of power in the US and what to do about them.
Follow Alan on Twitter.
by Cameron Reilly | 20 Aug, 2020 | Blog
“Just to say Trump is “unfit” and “dangerous” is not enough and the public will not understand. We need to tie his psychopathology to his presidential behavior in the observable, in the concrete. [In my view], his pandemic response and his attack on democracy are where his psychopathology is evident.”
Alan D. Blotcky, Ph.D., a licensed clinical psychologist in private practice in Birmingham, Alabama (source)
While Trump might be the most prominent potential psychopath in the world today, I still believe the bigger issue we have to face isn’t one man, but the system that allows psychopaths to hold extreme power and wealth. Trump is merely a symptom of a much bigger problem.
by Cameron Reilly | 9 Jun, 2020 | Podcast
What goes on in the brain of a psychopath? Are they really unable to control their aggressive behaviour? Would they lie on a psychopath test?
My guest on this episode is
David S. Chester, Ph.D., an Assistant Professor of social psychology at Virginia Commonwealth University, where he runs the Social Psychology and Neuroscience Laboratory in the College of Humanities and Sciences, and leads a research team that investigates the dark sides of human behavior, trying to discern the underpinnings of traits like violence, aggression and revenge.
Follow
David on Twitter to stay up to date with his research.
by Cameron Reilly | 8 Jun, 2020 | Blog
Probably no surprise if you’ve read the book, but new research by Pavel S. Blagov Ph.D. which is about to be published in the journal Social Psychology and Personality Science suggests that “people who scored higher on the psychopathic subtraits of meanness and disinhibition tended to show less interest in social distancing and hygiene”. (source)
Blagov is an Associate Professor of Psychology at Whitman College.
by Cameron Reilly | 7 Jun, 2020 | Blog
As the Black Lives Matter protests continue around the world, I’ve been doing a series of interviews on the Bullshit Filter podcast with members of our American audience, trying to get their perspectives on the causes and solutions of the current wave of anger towards police.
One of the fastest and simplest solutions I can see is to run every cop through a psychopath test to identify which of them need are more likely to do others harm. It doesn’t require entirely re-thinking policing or new kinds of legislation and it’s hard for anyone to argue with. By its very nature, policing is a career choice that would seem attractive to psychopaths, as it offers an enhanced level of personal power. While I’m sure most cops are good people, trying to help their community, it makes sense that a higher-than-average percentage of them are going to be psychopaths.
So I’d like to see a movement pushing for every police department to implement psychopath tests and then to come up with a range of strategies for what they are going to do with the cops that get a high score. Perhaps they could be required to have desk jobs; or be partnered up with someone who has a low psychopath score; or be subjected to regular review by a panel of confirmed non-psychopaths.
This isn’t going to solve all of the problems of police violence – not all racists are psychopaths – but it would have to make a huge difference and I think it would be a terrific place to start.
by Cameron Reilly | 7 Jun, 2020 | Blog
,Zarah Sultana is a British Labour Party politician who has been the Member of Parliament for Coventry South since the 2019 general election. Here she exposes some of the ways big businesses use their money to try to influence politicians. Of course, this isn’t a practice that is unique to the UK. And it’s not unique to psychopaths. But when you have psychopaths with access to wealth – and more psychopaths who have political power – just imagine what some of these transactions look like.
And ask yourself this: why haven’t more politicians, not just from the UK but from around the world, from the country you live in – exposed this practice, put a stop to this practice?
Why indeed…..
by Cameron Reilly | 24 Apr, 2020 | Uncategorised
According to the ABC:
Troy Stolz, the whistleblower who exposed a widespread lack of anti-money laundering compliance around poker machines in registered clubs, is being sued by ClubsNSW.
According to Andrew Wilkie MP “up to 95 per cent of clubs in NSW were operating illegally”. The employee – who worked in their anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing compliance department – obviously felt not enough was being done to resolve the issues and allegedly took it to the politician. He’s now being sued by his employer for airing their dirty laundry (get it? money laundering?).
My theory is that these kinds of situations are strong indications of a psychopathic culture – and a psychopath or two in senior management. A healthy organisation would say “yes, we’re not doing enough in this area, the employee did the correct thing by forcing us to take it more seriously”.
