Kho
please let prayer be true
- Joined
- Apr 26, 2016
- Messages
- 147
- MBTI Type
- INxP
- Enneagram
- 4w5
- Instinctual Variant
- sx
Recently I've spotted a psychological finding, in the guise of various articles, making the rounds on Facebook.
I've traced down the epicentre:
It started with the Daily Mail online (reputable lot that they are) at 10:32 GMT, 26 April 2016.
The title:
Are YOU creative? Then you're probably a psychopath: Dark personality traits play a key role in making people more artistic
-Psychologists tested volunteers for creativity and psychopathic traits
-They found creativity was associated with emotional disinhibition
-They also found meanness and risk taking were linked to creativity
-Prosocial psychopaths seem to be the most creative individuals, they say
Here is the link.
I'll give you a minute to read that drivel.
Read it?
Here's my opinion:
1. The very label of psychopathy is severely riddled with discrepancies and bias.
Psychopathy is a fictitious, convenient term or label designed for the purposes of creating an illusory but relatively manageable all-encompassing category for certain emotionally damaged and/or deeply misunderstood individuals that have, wilfully or otherwise, hurt the ones around them.
I mean I just made up that sentence, but that's my honest-to-god opinion.
I've been accused of being both a psychopath AND an extreme wimp.
My emotional reactions are not 'normal'.
Does that make me a psychopath, then?
I have emotions. I do. And people are frightened of what I do or don't feel.
So I don't really let the real thing show too often.
I think psychopathy must be related more to hypersensitivity than the 'lack' of emotions.
Have you ever heard of a q-zombie, or a qualia zombie?
I've linked the Wikipedia description here, have a look.
I think that's what the endorsers of the term are trying to convince us the psychopaths are.
Rather than try to expand our understanding, 'they' (whoever 'they' are) are, (wilfully or otherwise,) boxing the 'misunderstood' into the non-category of being 'misunderstood'.
It's only natural that an overlap would occur between the categories of 'creative' and 'lacking'.
Their only defining characteristic is that they are 'not normal' and 'to be feared'.
1-1. The psychopath as thrill-seeking killer myth.
If they didn't have emotions, would they seek thrills at all?
Let that sink in for a bit.
If they didn't have 'emotions', how would they be motivated to do anything then?
If they really were defined by the 'absence' of emotions, the force of crushing a watermelon and the force of crushing a human skull should make no difference to them.
If they really didn't feel anything at all, what would be the point of manipulating and hurting others? Just because they 'can'?
I'd argue that, contrary to popular belief, 'psychopaths' are people who are so excruciatingly emotional that they have gradually grown fundamentally numb, shell-shocked at the pain that ensues from being in the world.
The mean ones want, subconsciously, to 'retaliate' on some level or other.
These so-called psychopaths are made, never born.
2. 'Creative' people are not 'Normal'.
Of course we aren't, and we wouldn't want to be any other way, either.
There was a train of thought somewhere there but I did lose it along the way.
I have cookies for anyone who dares to venture an opinion on this subject.
I've traced down the epicentre:
It started with the Daily Mail online (reputable lot that they are) at 10:32 GMT, 26 April 2016.
The title:
Are YOU creative? Then you're probably a psychopath: Dark personality traits play a key role in making people more artistic
-Psychologists tested volunteers for creativity and psychopathic traits
-They found creativity was associated with emotional disinhibition
-They also found meanness and risk taking were linked to creativity
-Prosocial psychopaths seem to be the most creative individuals, they say
Here is the link.
I'll give you a minute to read that drivel.
Read it?
Here's my opinion:
1. The very label of psychopathy is severely riddled with discrepancies and bias.
Psychopathy is a fictitious, convenient term or label designed for the purposes of creating an illusory but relatively manageable all-encompassing category for certain emotionally damaged and/or deeply misunderstood individuals that have, wilfully or otherwise, hurt the ones around them.
I mean I just made up that sentence, but that's my honest-to-god opinion.
I've been accused of being both a psychopath AND an extreme wimp.
My emotional reactions are not 'normal'.
Does that make me a psychopath, then?
I have emotions. I do. And people are frightened of what I do or don't feel.
So I don't really let the real thing show too often.
I think psychopathy must be related more to hypersensitivity than the 'lack' of emotions.
Have you ever heard of a q-zombie, or a qualia zombie?
I've linked the Wikipedia description here, have a look.
I think that's what the endorsers of the term are trying to convince us the psychopaths are.
Rather than try to expand our understanding, 'they' (whoever 'they' are) are, (wilfully or otherwise,) boxing the 'misunderstood' into the non-category of being 'misunderstood'.
It's only natural that an overlap would occur between the categories of 'creative' and 'lacking'.
Their only defining characteristic is that they are 'not normal' and 'to be feared'.
1-1. The psychopath as thrill-seeking killer myth.
If they didn't have emotions, would they seek thrills at all?
Let that sink in for a bit.
If they didn't have 'emotions', how would they be motivated to do anything then?
If they really were defined by the 'absence' of emotions, the force of crushing a watermelon and the force of crushing a human skull should make no difference to them.
If they really didn't feel anything at all, what would be the point of manipulating and hurting others? Just because they 'can'?
I'd argue that, contrary to popular belief, 'psychopaths' are people who are so excruciatingly emotional that they have gradually grown fundamentally numb, shell-shocked at the pain that ensues from being in the world.
The mean ones want, subconsciously, to 'retaliate' on some level or other.
These so-called psychopaths are made, never born.
2. 'Creative' people are not 'Normal'.
Of course we aren't, and we wouldn't want to be any other way, either.
There was a train of thought somewhere there but I did lose it along the way.
I have cookies for anyone who dares to venture an opinion on this subject.