The Sociopath Next Door (29 page)

Where conscience is concerned, over the centuries Western culture has progressed from faith in an immutable God-sent knowledge of right and wrong to a belief in Freud's concept of a punitive superego to an understanding that conscience is based in our normal and positive relatedness to one another. As an intervening sense of responsibility seated in our emotional attachments, conscience has evolved into a purely psychological construct. But, in a kind of philosophical full circle back to its beginnings in the church, conscience is also the place where psychology and spirituality meet, an issue on which the recommendations of psychology and the teachings of the major religious and spiritual traditions of the world completely concur. In a remarkable confluence—even the radical materialists and the mystics in a tacit meeting of the minds—behavioral science, evolutionary psychology, and all traditional theologies agree that having a strong conscience is extremely advantageous, and that not having one at all most commonly leads to disaster, for groups and also for individuals.

A psychologist would say that when we take some responsibility for the welfare of others, our actions feel natural (or “ego-syntonic”) and our own life satisfaction is enhanced. The Bible says simply, “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” As a psychologist, I can tell you that the absence of an intervening sense of responsibility based in emotional attachment is associated with an endless, usually futile preoccupation with domination, and results in substantial life disruption and eventual deterioration. Buddha put it this way: “All that we are is the result of what we have thought. If a man speaks or acts with an evil thought, pain follows him. If a man speaks or acts with a pure thought, happiness follows him, like a shadow that never leaves him.”

In their psychological study of individuals with exceptional conscience, Anne Colby and William Damon write, “A positivity that includes optimism, love, and joy is . . . closely linked with morality, as we see in the lives of our exemplars.” Buddha again agrees. He says, “To walk safely through the maze of human life, one needs the light of wisdom and the guidance of virtue.”

And, of course, there is the Golden Rule, which is humankind's most ancient ethic of reciprocity, and perhaps the most succinct and clearly operationalized moral philosophy ever conceived. Confucius was merely recording an even older Chinese saying when he wrote, “Do not do to others what you would not want done to you,” and when Jesus said, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” he was referring to an already time-honored Jewish proverb that instructed, “What is hateful to you, do not to your fellow man. This is the law: all the rest is commentary.” The Mahabharata tells followers of Hinduism, “This is the sum of the Dharma: Do naught unto others which would cause you pain if done to you.” And in indigenous traditions as well—the Yoruba of Nigeria say, “One going to take a pointed stick to pinch a baby bird should first try it on himself to feel how it hurts.” And the Lakota religious leader Black Elk taught, “All things are our relatives; what we do to everything, we do to ourselves. All is really One.”

The smattering of religions that do not adhere to moral reciprocity are contemporary, and tend to make the moral warmth of the ancient Golden Rule seem even more attractive by their own blood-chilling nature. As an illustration, one can cite the Creativity Movement, a militantly anti-Semitic and anti-Christian group formerly called the World Church of the Creator, which is a religion founded on the love of the “White Race” and the prescribed hatred of everyone else. Within this doctrine, everyone who is not “White” is by definition a member of one of the “mud races.” The central moral precept of the Creativity Movement is expressed as follows: “What is good for the White Race is the highest virtue; what is bad for the White Race is the ultimate sin.” Unsurprisingly, the long-term goal of the Creativity Movement is to organize the “White Race” to achieve world domination.

In welcome contrast, most religions and spiritual traditions subscribe to the Golden Rule, and also to some form of Black Elk's belief that “All is really One.” Oneness is a more fundamental tenet for some religions than others. For example, while the Judeo-Christian tradition instructs its followers to love their neighbors, Eastern mysticism teaches that individuality, the ego, is an illusion to begin with, that we are not distinct from God or from one another, and therefore, in a spiritual sense, we
are
our neighbors. In
Peace Is Every Step,
Vietnamese Buddhist master Thich Nhat Hanh tries to explain this aspect of Eastern thought for Westerners by telling us that we “inter-are.” We are ineluctably and inextricably bound up with everyone and everything in the universe, and this state of interbeing is the reason we should not selfishly (and vainly) chase our goals of individual acquisition and power.

Though less conspicuously, a belief in oneness is part of the Judeo-Christian tradition as well. In 1939, as yet another shattering attempt at world domination rumbled in Europe, Jewish theologian and philosopher Martin Buber addressed the National Conference of Palestinian Teachers in Tel Aviv. He concluded his address by saying, “Nothing remains but what rises above the abyss of today's monstrous problems, as above every abyss of every time: the wing-beat of the spirit and the creative word. But he who can see and hear out of unity will also behold and discern again what can be beheld and discerned eternally. The educator who helps to bring man back to his own unity will help to put him again face to face with God.”

In whatever tradition they occur, spiritual practices focused on an awareness of interbeing tend to have the intriguing psychological side effect of bringing significant earthly happiness to their most devoted practitioners, almost regardless of external circumstances. In a book that is a collaboration between psychologist Daniel Goleman and His Holiness the Dalai Lama, entitled
Destructive Emotions: A Scientific Dialogue with the Dalai Lama,
Goleman writes, “The very act of concern for others' well-being, it seems, creates a greater state of well-being within oneself.” In recent years, increasing numbers of scientists have echoed this impression. At a 2002 conference on science and the mind, attended by the Dalai Lama, distinguished Australian neurobiologist Jack Pettigrew remarked, “If you go to Dharamsala [Indian home of the Tibetan community in exile], you go up through the fog in midwinter and you come out in the bright sunshine, it's like going to heaven. What strikes you immediately is the happy, smiling faces of the Tibetans, who don't have much, have been terribly deprived, and yet they are happy. Well, why are they happy?”

The Dalai Lama himself is interested in answering this question scientifically, and in finding a secular way to create the compassionate sense of interbeing that is achieved by devout practitioners of Tibetan Buddhist meditation. To this end, he has launched an international series of dialogues between scientists and Buddhist scholars, the most recent of which, in 2003, was cosponsored by the Mind and Life Institute in Colorado and the McGovern Institute of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He intends these dialogues to yield practical solutions to the destructive states of mind that both the Buddhists and the scientists view as the root of human conflict and suffering.

As a psychologist, I am particularly taken with the Dalai Lama's description of those whom I might refer to as sociopaths, or as people devoid of an intervening sense of obligation based in connectedness to others. He refers to such individuals as “people who don't have well-developed human lives.” More specifically, the Dalai Lama said of the World Trade Center attacks, “Technology is a good thing, but the use of technology in the hands of people who don't have well-developed human lives can be disastrous.”

To the extent that a person's capacity to have a well-developed human life is facilitated or limited by his or her particular gray matter, this Buddhist conception of sociopathy highlights what is one of the most interesting confluences of all, that between religion and neuropsychology. Perhaps sociopathy is a life lesson that is taught not by some physical facility or limitation, but by an emotional debility. In other words, some people must learn what it is like to live with extreme beauty, or no legs, or as a beggar, and others, those with no conscience, must learn what it means to live without being able to care about others. There is an irony here, in that this karmic state, if you will, may indeed be a reason to find sociopaths pitiable, as we might pity blind orphans, whether or not we believe in the devices of karma.

Though psychology recognizes the value of compassion and of sensing oneness, psychologists have so far not researched any direct methods to achieve these, thus leaving sociopaths and especially our healthier disciples somewhat in the lurch where the heightening of conscience is concerned. As ways to increase life satisfaction, psychologists increasingly recommend moral education for normal children and giving and volunteerism for adults, but psychologists have traditionally been much more interested in endeavors such as “strengthening interpersonal boundaries” and “assertiveness training.” In this regard, psychology relative to spirituality reminds me of the hungry traveler in an ancient parable from India called “The Wise Woman's Stone.” A version of this parable, the author of which is long lost to antiquity, can be found in a collection of stories compiled by Arthur Lenehan, published in 1994 by, ironically, The Economics Press:

A wise woman who was traveling in the mountains found a precious stone in a stream. The next day she met another traveler who was hungry, and the wise woman opened her bag to share her food. The hungry traveler saw the precious stone and asked the woman to give it to him. She did so without hesitation.

     The traveler left, rejoicing in his good fortune. He knew the stone was worth enough to give him security for a lifetime. But a few days later he came back to return the stone to the wise woman.

     “I've been thinking,” he said, “I know how valuable the stone is, but I give it back in the hope that you can give me something even more precious. Give me what you have within you that enabled you to give me the stone.”

The wise and happy Tibetan Buddhists, and certainly the Dalai Lama himself, are reminiscent of Colby and Damon's exemplars of extreme conscience, such as Suzie Valadez, who feeds the poor in Mexico, and former college president Jack Coleman, who tried to foster his own sense of interbeing and compassion by being a ditch digger, a garbage collector, a homeless person. Both the Buddhist monks and the psychological exemplars illustrate that the awareness provided by extreme conscience improves people's lives and makes them happy. This happiness is not the product of any cognitive strategy or reattribution of temporary failures to the cosmos and long-term successes to oneself. In fact, Colby and Damon report that most of their moral exemplars are insistent realists regarding the circumstances of human life and their own limited potential to alter these conditions. No, rather than mere cognitive adaptation, exceptional conscience involves the strong and steadying sensation of being part of something greater than oneself.

Indeed, conscience would seem to be the nexus of psychology and spirituality, as revealed by what psychologists now know about the singularly uplifting effects of a moral sense based in emotional connectedness. In religion and spirituality, the experience at this locus is called by names such as oneness, unity, interbeing. In psychology, it is called conscience or the moral sense. Whatever its name, it is a powerful integrator of human thought, emotion, and action that knew its origins in our primeval biological past. Through our genes, our brains, and perhaps our very souls, it has become a protective, productive, and mood-sustaining force in our psychological and social lives, and for thousands of years has spoken to our most transcendent traditions and to the most admirable members of our race. Conscience is the still small voice that has been trying since the infancy of our species to tell us that we are evolutionarily, emotionally, and spiritually One, and that if we seek peace and happiness, we must behave that way.

Conscience, and uniquely conscience, can compel us out of our own skins and into the skin of another, or even into contact with the Absolute. It is based in our emotional ties to one another. In its purest form, it is called love. And wonderfully, both mystics and evolutionary psychologists, who concur on not much else, agree that people by their normal nature are more likely to be loving than malevolent. This conclusion signifies a breathtaking departure from our usual, more cynical view of ourselves.

Theologians and scientists agree also that the human mistakes tending to contravene our normally benevolent nature are twofold. The first mistake is the desire to be personally in control of others and of the world. This motivation involves the illusion that domination is a worthwhile goal, an illusion that is most fixed in the sociopathic mind. And the second tragic error is moral exclusion. We know there to be endless danger in deciding that the “other” is something less than human—the other gender, the other race, the foreigner, the “enemy,” and perhaps even the sociopath himself—which is why the question of what to do with the moral outlaw is such an uneasy one in theology and also in psychology. How do we face the potentially cataclysmic challenge of people who simply “don't have well-developed human lives”? So far, psychology has left this question completely unanswered, though it would seem an ever more pressing issue as time goes by and technology is proliferated. After all, the devil is evolving, too.

As for the question of who is more fortunate, the person ruthlessly engaged only in exactly what he wants to do, or you, who are obligated by your conscience—once again, I ask you to imagine what you would be like if you had no seventh sense. But this time as you envision your huge influence and wealth, or your permanent leisure without guilt, imagine it while bearing in mind what conscience and only conscience can bring to a life, what it
has
brought to yours. Picture clearly the face of someone you love more than all of your earthly possessions, someone for whom you would run headlong into a burning building if this were required of you—a parent, a brother, a sister, a dear friend, your life partner, your child. Try to picture that same face—a parent's, or a daughter's, or a son's—weeping in grief, or smiling in peace and joy.