I don't understand how this^ or that other post clarifies why "psychopath" keeps getting generalized into "mental illness". The reason I bring this up is because there are distinct differences between psychopathy (or APD) and depressive disorder, manic depression, schizophrenia, etc. The distinction is psychopaths systematically dehumanize people, the others don't. That's what little or no affective/emotional empathy
is. Affective/emotional empathy is what stops other people from being nothing more than objects to use for our own ends. Where there's a lot of cognitive empathy, but not much or any affective/emotional empathy to tether down the cognitive empathy- you basically have a person who
effectively knows how to say whatever it takes to convince people to go along with being used, to assure them their feelings matter, whilst completely objectifying them. Depression, manic-depression, schizophrenia, etc- doesn't do that. So generalizing and saying "mental health" instead of "psychopathy" for the purposes of this thread completely misses the point. The indignant reaction to the 'mental illness' side tangent makes clear sense to me (and I more than agree with it), I just think it's misplaced.
It might be just my own oversensitive INFJ sensibilities, but the (seemingly) excessive emotional reaction in this thread is confusing to me (might not be excessive- again, INFJ here, sometimes we can't tell the difference between someone's phone ringing and a fire alarm). I actually don't understand what's going on, all I know is that I'm a bit mystified by the indignant reaction to the 'depersonalization' of psychopaths.
But we already have that information. I guess we want some magic stamp of approval to do the work of relieving the public of some anxiety about future bad decisions. We must have a scapegoat!
It's not our collective decisions that are responsible for anything. It must be that candidates mental health! Yeah, that's what needs to be determined because then conflict and war won't happen. Or something. I don't know.
I'm also a bit mystified about how you pulled this from the exchange about the election. But it could hardly be less important. Moving on.
You speak of psychopathy but the way you are defining this or how it is being thrown about here is vague at best. The premise, while cute as a thought exercise, has built in ignorance of how psychpathic TRAITS actually are defined and diagnosed. So the whole premise is tainted from the start.
One of the things in this thread I can say matches everything I've read*, what makes a psychopath a psychopath is little or no affective/emotional empathy with high cognitive empathy. I just explained why that's a dangerous combination. (And I say "dangerous combination" because pretty much everything I've read uses a phrase just like "dangerous combination"- it's not just me being hyperbolic.) I'm confused about exactly what's being contested. Is the argument being made that it
isn't a dangerous combination? That it's not
always used towards ill ends (which is something I'd contest in return, if this thread hasn't already sucked exactly too many minutes out of my life)? Or that it's not really at least part of what defines psychopathy? That affective/emotional empathy
isn't what stops other people from being nothing more than objects to use?
*which is more than simply Fallon's work- I mentioned that as the only source because it's the only entire book I've read about psychopathy. I've read a great deal about narcissism, in which psychopathy is brought up a lot in comparison- I assume the licensed psychologists and counselors who write these books are a somewhat credible source. I've also read Jon Ronson's The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry, which gives an interesting little history of the diagnosis and how vague the "disorder" actually is.
I agree that it has been vague. Honestly, the description nonsequiter gave matches most closely with what I've read and it would have been a good idea to find some comparable chunk of text somewhere and posted it in the op to begin with. It probably would have been best to simply ask how important people think it is for public leaders to have authentic affective/emotional empathy, and avoid the p word altogether. (And the word "test".)
But what doesn't help (and I'm not saying it's mostly you doing this) is simply getting indignant or righteous and throwing words like "ignorant" around without including very specifically what you're referring to and why/how you think it's incorrect. And it would help to cite where the information is coming from (because sorry-but-not-sorry, I'm not going to believe some nameless person over the internet simply because they're saying it's the correct information in a really hurt or accusatory tone, like it's hurtful to believe anything else- which actually makes a thing
more difficult to consider). In all the reading I've done on the subject, I've never stumbled over any "psychopaths: we get the bum rap" editorials or such. So I really don't know where to start processing the strong emotional reaction in this thread, where that's concerned.
eta:
Those traits/tendencies can co-mingle with all sorts of other diagnoses. i.e. Harmful behavior is not just corralled at the anti-social personality disorder diagnosis. (The baseline diag for a "psychopath").
Okay, you're coming at this from a way, way more practical/realistic angle than I am (which is why the first time I read through this, the above registered like gobbledy-gook). I mean, this is like taking several leaps ahead/thinking about how to implement such a thing. It obviously can't be implemented. It's kind of pointless to nit-pick the reasons it won't work in practice because there are so many it's a no-brainer. That's why I emphasized 'thought experiment'.