Cultural and ideological Psychopathology

Europe is a continent considered socially developed. It is a kind of reference for other parts of the world because of our social advances. But, is it true? I would like to analyze how the criminal life in Europe is. Are we so far from other places where they have outsourcing problems such as Latin America, Asia or Africa, or even the Unites States? It is difficult to compare these situations because criminals are different depending on where they were born. But it doesn’t mean that there is not delinquency in Europe. Maybe we have other types of crime. Our society is growing up in a capitalism system. Obviously, there is a good part of it, since we have a comfortable life in general. I mean we have a high percentage of middle class. The point is, how is influencing this ideology and life style in the society, especially in young people. Are we conveying an ideology that incites crime? People are individualist, people are selfish, people want to make money regardless of the well-being of others. This is the society we are creating. This is the new crime of the 21st century. You will not see a lot of ¨street criminal¨, if we can call like this, but you will realize there are other kind of criminals, even more dangerous, I dare say.

As a criminologist I would like to make my own hypothesis about something related to my professional knowledge. All of us have listened the word psycho, even if we have a different knowledge or approach about who they are. The psycho wants to get the control in any kind of situation. Their goal is the power, be important is not a desire, but it is a need. We need to change the idea of the seriously psychopathic killer. Of course, they exist, but they are just few of them. Psycho doesn’t mean killer, nevertheless they have higher probability to become murderers than others. Psycho is an extreme personality disorder. All of them have similar characteristics. They are egocentric, selfish, manipulative, liar, insensitive, conveniences, interested, and lacking empathy. If we think about what capitalism is teaching us, we will realize that we are not so far of the previous profile.  Do not misunderstand my words. I don’t want to say that European society are becoming psychos. I’m going farther and deeper. What I mean, the values which the neoliberal policies are instilling in us, they are characteristic of a psychopath personality. What is the difference? Psychos didn’t decide how they want to be, unfortunately they were born like this, or they learnt in the early age (sociopaths). I know it is anti-educational say something like that, but it is science. Sandra L. Brown, M.A. underscores in how to spot a dangerous man before you get involved that “Pathology is forever.” It’s the result of a faulty brain wiring, sometimes coupled with emotional trauma that occurs during childhood development, which can’t be altered in any significant way once the psychopath reaches adulthood.

If we think about the most neoliberal country in the world, we will be agreed we are talking about United States. They have 96.93 % of the serial killers in whole world. It is not an underdeveloped country, but they have the world’s highest rate of criminals. Then, we have Europe with 2.19% (England 0.61%, Germany 0.59%, France 0.29%, others 0.70%), the rest of the world only has 0.89%. Let’s focus in the first rate. Do you think all the psychopath were born in EEUU? It would be such a strange coincidence. It seems, in addition to social needs such as poverty, the culture has an influence in the type of crime there is in a specific place.

Some researches show that a great percentage of politicians and businessmen are psychopaths.  A study led by the psychologist Nathan Brooks from Bond University, analyzed 261 senior general managers, American presidents and CEOs. It was estimated that one in five had characteristics that define a psychopath. It is curious because the proportion of psychos who exist in the population, in general, it is around 1% approximately. Then, what kind of people run the world? Europe is not different of United States. We shouldn’t normalize this behavior just because we got used to ¨see¨ how all of them are stealing, laying and manipulating us. That’s why it is very important the need of care about what we are and who we want to be, as an individual person within a social group, further how the politics and ideology shape our personality through control, power, indoctrination.

From my experience, I realized how it works this business crime. I was working in a company, which I will not say the name, where I saw many… let’s say mismatches. The boss was very diplomatic and nice, but cold in the same time. She always promised to the employers everything, but she didn’t keep her word. I felt that I couldn’t trust her, it wasn’t just my intuition, my colleagues thought the same than me. She manipulated even the clients to get what she wanted, sell the product. But the reality inside was quite different. I felt I was cheating people. Once, we had an inspection from the Ministry to check if everything was working all right. We, the employers, had to support the boss to evade the justice in some issues. I realized how control this people have because this world is managing for them. All of them support each other to get what they want, control people and get money. Unfortunately, this is de reference for young people. They want to become like them, successful and rich. That’s why we need a critical educational teaching people to feel free to be what they really want. People who care about others, tolerant and fair. Let’s create an anti-psychopath model for our society to reach de human rights we need to develop our people to the right way.