On Wed, 19 Mar 2008 13:14:50 -0800, "L.W.\(ßill\)Hughes III"
<BillHughes@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
Nothing's changed, your still a pathetic loser, and you will die that
way!!
>
>"Terry Dactille ©~®" <pterry@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message
>news:9afft39t35796anpiciai22p6pmsfht1a3@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>> >On Mon, 28 Jan 2008 00:04:42 -0800, "Stupidman Hughes the Troll"
>> ><BillHughes@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>>
>>
>> Beyond therapy: Some evil can't be cured
>> Norman Doidge
>> National Post
>> What, other than our wish that it be otherwise, makes us think that
>> every human vice is treatable by some form of psychotherapy?
>>
>> That this wish is not just naive, but, at times, harmful is
>> illustrated by a recent Canadian study on group treatment for 238 ***
>> offenders (rapists, ***** offenders) from Warkworth penitentiary in
>> Ontario. These prisoners included some well-do***ented psychopaths.
>> All were taught to "empathize" with victims, and understand their
>> "offence cycle" as part of treatment. After their release, it was
>> found that those who had scored highest in terms of "good treatment
>> behaviour" and who had the highest "empathy" scores were the more
>> likely to reoffend on release into the community. Hannibal Lecter
>> Charm School teaches good manners, but not morals.
>>
>> The im****tant study by Seto and Barbaree replicated -- unintentionally
>> -- a 1992 Canadian study that found treated psychopaths reoffend more
>> than psychopaths who are not treated. A larger study, just completed
>> in Britain, shows the same. It may be that all psychopaths learn, in
>> our new ersatz empathy institutes, is how to manipulate better by
>> appearing more caring. But should we be surprised at the duplicity,
>> since such treatments are generally mandated? And are such mandated
>> treatments really psychotherapy?
>>
>> Just because a self-described "patient" is in a room with a
>> self-described "therapist" doesn't mean psychotherapy is going on.
>> Freud argued psychopaths are untreatable in psychotherapy precisely
>> because having a conscience is a prerequisite for being able to use
>> psychotherapy. It is the conscience, and the related capacity for
>> concern for others, that drives the serious scrutiny of one's motives,
>> which underlie one's behaviour. Yet psychopaths lack conscience and
>> concern by definition.
>>
>> But these new psychopath-friendly treatments focus only superficially
>> on motives or matters of good faith by tracking attendance and overt
>> co-operativeness. Mostly they focus on impulse control and teaching
>> new behaviours and mindsets. Past naive, they hope that because a
>> psychopath can appear remorseful, or change his behaviour at any given
>> moment, his overall mindset or deeper intentions will follow suit.
>> Three cheers for us: We have invented treatments based on theories
>> that are less complex than the impoverished minds of psychopaths.
>>
>> Psychotherapy doesn't just require a good theory and an astute
>> clinician. It also requires a patient. The word patient comes from
>> Latin, and means "to suffer." A patient, by definition, is bothered by
>> something. Yet most treatments of prisoners originate not from the
>> prisoner's suffering, but are mandated by the justice system.
>> Corrections Canada knows many psychopaths will be released into the
>> community eventually, so it attempts to change them, even though any
>> psychotherapy for adults that has to be mandated is suspect.
>>
>> The "treatment" re****ted on in the Canadian study lasted 300 sessions.
>> To their credit, the treaters didn't believe they could work their
>> miracles overnight. Yet, more and more, mandated treatments are
>> short-term: eight to 10 sessions. Most people can't quit smoking in
>> eight to 10 sessions, never mind do a Karla Homolka make over.
>>
>> I refer here to the same Karla Homolka who expressed concern for her
>> boyfriend's happiness by helping him kill her sister and a number of
>> other young girls, and who is re****ted recently to have benefited from
>> a self-esteem course in prison. Such courses, which presume
>> self-esteem can be taught, generally involve telling a person she can
>> raise her esteem in her own eyes by interrupting their self-reproaches
>> or "negative tapes" in her head.
>>
>> Applying these self-esteem techniques to psychopaths requires an
>> ability to get everything about the psychotherapeutic enterprise
>> backwards. Psychopaths don't need lessons in clearing their
>> consciences; if anything, it is they who ought to be teaching the rest
>> of mankind how to be remorseless.
>>
>> But mushy-gushy therapy is not just confined to therapists. It is part
>> of a dangerous denial of the nature of psychopathy and evil that is
>> sweeping through our correctional services. A recent federal task
>> force on security, released on Nov. 2, advised getting rid of guards
>> with guns, unseemly razor-wire fences and intimidating towers around
>> prisons (National Post, Dec. 15). It even advised that inmates should
>> carry the keys to their own cells so they could make "responsible
>> choices." "Restorative justice" based on "a culture of respect" would
>> be practised.
>>
>> So here is a respectful way of framing things. Psychopaths constitute
>> 1% of the population, but are so talented they conduct 50% of all
>> crimes. Since it might be hurtful to say they are incurable, let's
>> just say they are beyond therapy.
>>
>> That much said, surprising as it sounds, not all *** offenders are
>> psychopaths; some, who have been involved in *****, apparently have
>> low rates of reoffending. Some may benefit, at times, from long-term
>> intensive interventions and monitoring. But there is no empirical
>> evidence that *** offenders who are psychopaths benefit from
>> treatment.
>>
>> The federal re****t is a miscarriage of justice, and a miscarriage of
>> mercy. It is based on a distortion of religious notions of
>> forgiveness, political notions of equality, a scientific zeal and an
>> unwillingness to make basic distinctions.
>>
>> In ancient times, Aristotle made those distinctions, and developed a
>> hierarchy of virtue and vice. At the top of the ladder is the virtuous
>> person, who only aims toward good things; he is not "conflicted," as
>> we would say, because there is no war between virtue and vice in his
>> soul. Next, comes the continent person, who behaves well, but is
>> always a bit tense because he is struggling, albeit successfully, to
>> control his vices. Then comes the incontinent person, who knows what
>> is right, but who frequently slips up, failing in his struggle. At the
>> bottom of the hierarchy is the brute -- our psychopath. Like the
>> virtuous person, he, too, is not at war with himself, is not
>> "conflicted." Unlike the virtuous person, it is vice, and not virtue,
>> that rules. Aristotle thought there was something different in the
>> physical makeup of such people. Indeed, recent brain scan evidence
>> shows some psychopaths do have altered brain structure and
>> functioning. Our mistake (based on mindless extrapolations of our
>> notion of political equality) is to collapse all these distinctions
>> into the continent or incontinent categories. Indeed, we are as irked
>> by notions of the virtuous as we are of the vicious.
>> --
>>
>>
>> "A winner makes commitment. A loser makes promises."
>>
>> "The path of least resistance is the path of the loser."
--
“A winner makes commitment. A loser makes promises.”
“The path of least resistance is the path of the loser.”
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