Homestead mailing list

[Gene GeRue <genegerue AT ruralize.com>]

> Geez Louise, will folks never get it straight.  Sociopath, not psychopath.
> Sociopaths pass as ordinary folks.  Psychopaths rarely do.

"sociopath" n (ca 1944): PSYCHOPATH

"psychopath" n (1885) a mentally ill or unstable person; esp: a person 
having a psychopathic personality"

"sociopathic" adj (1944): of, relating to, or characterized by asocial or 
antisocial behavior or a psychopathic personality"

"psychopathic personality" n (ca 1923) 1: an emotionally and behaviorally 
disordered state characterized by clear perception of reality except for 
the individual's social and moral obligations . . . ."

--Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary

As a writer, I am sensitive to the changing use of our language so to check 
myself I did the following Google searches:
george bush sociopath = 18,900 entries
george bush pyschopath = 27,700 entries

I also restate that I probably should buy a newer dictionary. But this 
tattered old friend has so many notes in it that I resist.

As for narcissism, I think most of us have a healthy dose.

I read a bit of an Executive Intelligence Review interview with Justin 
Frank, the author of "Bush on the Couch." Frank is a practicing 
psychoanalyst in Washington, and is on the faculty of the George Washington 
University Medical School. He used applied psychoanalysis to analyze Bush. 
He notes that psychoanalysts and psychiatrists who are not very familiar 
with applied psychoanalysis feel it should only be used on foreign leaders. 
Which is how we know that Saddam Hussein is also a psychopath.

Here is an excerpt from that interview:
EIR: One of the things that we've focussed on a great deal, more from the 
standpoint of a political assessment of the Administration, is that Bush 
seems to have developed a rather deep psychological dependence on Vice 
President Cheney as the person to make most of the really tough decisions 
in the Administration. Would you share that view?

Frank: I don't entirely share that view, because my view is that he is a 
puppet who chose his puppeteers, so in that sense he is dependent on him, 
but in another sense I think he is dependent on him for supporting his 
decisions, but I think that Bush makes the decisions. I think that he is 
dependent on Cheney for thinking them through in public, and for 
articulating them. And for being the kind of public, outspoken person, and 
so he had to go with Cheney to the 9/11 Commission. And that's about 
dependency, I agree with you. But my sense is that he really knows what he 
wants to do once he hears stuff, and he is basically focussed on very few 
things. The main reason for depending on Cheney, and I can see that 
politically, the main reason is that he does not like to do the work of 
thinking, because it makes him too anxious. And most of the ideas in my 
book are about Bush's functioning to defend against anxiety. And that's 
really basically what he's about.

EIR: What I found particularly striking is a kind of a deadly mix of 
experiences: the trauma over his sister's death, and the way the family 
handled that. Then developing an at least alcohol—some people say alcohol 
and drug dependency—for quite a number of years. It seemed to me that this 
is almost a kind of very extreme clinical case of somebody who's nominally 
walking around as functional, but really has got deep, deep psychological 
scars.

Frank: Yes, it has to do with the fact that he was never able to mourn, and 
when you don't mourn, you can't integrate your inner life. What happens is 
that, as I write in the book, sorrow is the vitamin of growth, and until 
you face who you are and what you've lost, you really can't organize your 
mind, and so what happens is when you're the first born, and the next one 
dies, you're left with a lot of unworked-out hostility, anger, guilt, that 
maybe your wishes killed them. You have lots of magical thinking, and if 
you don't have a family that helps you gather those things together, you 
can be in a lot of trouble.

So then you have to manage your feelings yourself. And one of the ways 
people do manage them when they are that age, is they have friends to talk 
to; but he doesn't seem to have had anybody to talk to much. But they also 
read, and pay attention to things, so they learn about human beings from 
reading about other people, if their parents aren't responsive to them. But 
he really has such a hard time reading, that it's like swimming with 
weights. I mean, it's just too much for him. So he didn't have that avenue 
either, so he became sometimes cruel to people, with animals, which is one 
way of managing your aggression, and then to drink in order to manage his 
anxiety, and he became a very heavy drinker, that's very clear, till he was 
40, at least.

http://www.larouchepub.com/other/interviews/2004/3133dr_justin_frank.html