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Oh yes. I used to work with one who wouldn't let the programmers print anything. He once stormed into the programming room after someone called and asked to l

by mrlyc 10y ago

Oh yes. I used to work with one who wouldn't let the programmers print anything. He once stormed into the programming room after someone called and asked to leave a message for one of the programmers. "In my next company," he yelled, "there will be no phone system!" He also bragged about taking a whole year to pay a bill. Creative accounting was used to calculate my wages, something I didn't realise until after I had left as there were no payslips.

taway_1212 10y ago
I'm not sure it's psychopathy. Maybe the guy can function properly around his family and friends, and just has this idea of business world being "dog eat dog". Some of the worst German war criminals during WWII seemed to have a decent family life etc. - they were just great at compartmentalizing.
- mathgeek 10y ago
  Might be venturing into the difference between a psychopath and a sociopath.
  - dsacco 10y ago
    There is no difference, because both refer to what is clinically considered antisocial personality disorder. Both terms are too colloquially loaded and ill-defined to be very useful outside of the clinical context. People use "psychopath" to describe people across a wide spectrum, from asshole to antisocial personality disorder. There has been a misconception that sociopaths are psychopaths without violent tendencies but with the same lack of empathy, but there's really no rigor in any of it.
    - shubb 10y ago
      It's interesting - masks of sanity was an attempt to explain low level serial criminals who were unable to hold a life together. Those folks have little in common with a successful but amoral ceo, or even our powertripping middle managers. For one thing they are in jail most of the time. In life you see folks with different abilities, like the ability to make people like them, or bullshit thier way out of situations. And sometimes those people also happen to be assholes. I'm not sure diagnosis is the right approach here. Maybe a better approach would be to tackle the problems, which seem to be the same workers rights issues government regulations have tried to tackle for a long time. But this is Silicon Valley where you too will be rich after IPO if you just forget all that right. This is Holywood, back in the bad old days, just without the unions. The trouble with diagnosis as a moral judgement is that it detracts from thier use in describing ill people and how we should regard them. If your boss is evil because he's a sociopath, what about jack cheating on his wife during a bipolar manic phase? Neither of them can help it. And your boss is evil. It also shows the way medical diagnosis which had a specific meaning, and applied to people we don't meet, get mapped to perfectly well people who we do. Once a child, who would have been in need of guidance a decade before, is told they are a psychopath and taken from main stream schooling, there will be little help for them.
    - Nomentatus 10y ago
      I'm mostly with you, no diff - but some psychologists do make a distinction, both have no empathy, but the sociopath has spent much more time learning how to manipulate others and may have a desire to appear normal in order to get away with more stuff; whereas it may never have occurred to a purer psychopath that he or she should really try not to stick out so much, since s/he doesn't naturally see things (including him or herself) from anyone else's point of view. Historically, the term sociopath was first introduced as a replacement for "psychopath" since, for some reason, there seemed to be stigma attached to that term. Later introducing "Antisocial Personality" was tried as another attempt to duck the stigma. Somehow it didn't work, can't imagine why, and the terms have been at least slightly repurposed by at least some psychologists.
      - deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]

by mrlyc 10y ago

taway_1212 10y ago

I'm not sure it's psychopathy. Maybe the guy can function properly around his family and friends, and just has this idea of business world being "dog eat dog". Some of the worst German war criminals during WWII seemed to have a decent family life etc. - they were just great at compartmentalizing.

mathgeek 10y ago
Might be venturing into the difference between a psychopath and a sociopath.
- dsacco 10y ago
  There is no difference, because both refer to what is clinically considered antisocial personality disorder. Both terms are too colloquially loaded and ill-defined to be very useful outside of the clinical context. People use "psychopath" to describe people across a wide spectrum, from asshole to antisocial personality disorder. There has been a misconception that sociopaths are psychopaths without violent tendencies but with the same lack of empathy, but there's really no rigor in any of it.
  - shubb 10y ago
    It's interesting - masks of sanity was an attempt to explain low level serial criminals who were unable to hold a life together. Those folks have little in common with a successful but amoral ceo, or even our powertripping middle managers. For one thing they are in jail most of the time. In life you see folks with different abilities, like the ability to make people like them, or bullshit thier way out of situations. And sometimes those people also happen to be assholes. I'm not sure diagnosis is the right approach here. Maybe a better approach would be to tackle the problems, which seem to be the same workers rights issues government regulations have tried to tackle for a long time. But this is Silicon Valley where you too will be rich after IPO if you just forget all that right. This is Holywood, back in the bad old days, just without the unions. The trouble with diagnosis as a moral judgement is that it detracts from thier use in describing ill people and how we should regard them. If your boss is evil because he's a sociopath, what about jack cheating on his wife during a bipolar manic phase? Neither of them can help it. And your boss is evil. It also shows the way medical diagnosis which had a specific meaning, and applied to people we don't meet, get mapped to perfectly well people who we do. Once a child, who would have been in need of guidance a decade before, is told they are a psychopath and taken from main stream schooling, there will be little help for them.
  - Nomentatus 10y ago
    I'm mostly with you, no diff - but some psychologists do make a distinction, both have no empathy, but the sociopath has spent much more time learning how to manipulate others and may have a desire to appear normal in order to get away with more stuff; whereas it may never have occurred to a purer psychopath that he or she should really try not to stick out so much, since s/he doesn't naturally see things (including him or herself) from anyone else's point of view. Historically, the term sociopath was first introduced as a replacement for "psychopath" since, for some reason, there seemed to be stigma attached to that term. Later introducing "Antisocial Personality" was tried as another attempt to duck the stigma. Somehow it didn't work, can't imagine why, and the terms have been at least slightly repurposed by at least some psychologists.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]