Mental Health Post SHTF

[CharlesHarris]

You must accept the fact that some people are not just mentally ill, but are evil sociopaths.

People with Anti-Social Personality Disorders (ASPDs) do not think like us. We should stop pretending that they do; the eventual consequences of our own stupidity in doing so is simply too great to ignore.

The biggest error that people make is assuming that criminals (anti-social personality disordered people) are normal people who are mostly a lot like us and who engage in criminal activity due to internal changes in their persona, which changes are reactions to some negative life experience they were exposed to and possibly traumatized by, like child abuse. This is completely false, but society clings to this type of belief because we've been taught that everyone can rise above themselves and be rehabilitated. This is totally wrong, but it works for the criminals if we believe it!

To get realistic insight into criminals and criminal thinking, read Robert Hare's book, "Without Conscience"; Hare is a PhD Psychologist with University of British Columbia and one of the very few out there who truly gets it. The book is a fast read and required reading for those working in corrections.

First-time criminals who get busted, weeded out at pre-trial and pre-sentence meetings between their attorney and the DA's office, will most likely be taken care of by probation, sort of like "out-patient" prison. Those folks are the ones who can often be rehabbed. Their crimes are caused by stupidity, egged on by youthful hormones and such.

Repeat offenders have a different internal motivating system - more in common with lust and addiction than it does with most other human traits. These criminals make up 99% of our incarcerated inmates, commit crime because they LIKE it! Get Hare's book - it's a great read; he has a web site you can check out too.

A significant component in the make-up of the average ASPD is genetic. There is a feral nature within them that is challenging and scary to those charged with catching them, incarcerating and rehabilitating them. A boyhood friend is a forensic psychiatrist who works in the Federal corrections system. He averages a thousand clinical interviews per year with DOC. During his 20 year career he says that he encountered ONE inmate he thought might have a chance at rehabilitation. Just one. None of the others were interested. That feral component of their personality is something they typically try to hide (except for those already in max-max and max-close - they've embraced it, they live it, they feed it and work hard to grow it, which is a hoot to them), and it always surprised me the number of veteran law enforcement folks who couldn't spot it, even when it was in the early stages of having "come out to play".

The only way to protect your family from the evil ones who walk among us is to be armed, and stay vigilant.

Martha Stout's The Sociopath Next Door is highly recommended.

Another book I recommend for anyone trying to understand criminals is Stanton Samenow, Inside the Criminal Mind. He worked under a well known psychiatrist, Samuel Yochelson, at St. Elizabeth's Hospital in DC, who was studying the criminal mind. His first book was in the 1983. In his second one in 2004, this is his conclusion after studying criminals for 3 decades:

"The person who makes crime a way of life has a radically different way of thinking from the individual who behaves responsibly. The two mentalities are so different, it's as though the criminal were a different breed."

Massad Ayoob in his book, The Truth about Self Protection, echoes, Samenow. "These predatory people don't think like you. They aren't people like you. They are a different breed. Talk to doctors and psychiatrists and lawyers and probation officers. These are all people who understand the criminal mind." I would add some cops and prison guards.