In leaving Scientology there seems to be no lack of ideas on who is what kind of person, be it narcissist or sociopath or psychopath. There are also the categories of people who cooperate with authority and even categories based on how we work with each other at jobs or in personal relationships.
I wanted to share some ideas from outside Scientology to show a lot of people have done a lot of work to figure this stuff out.
“10 percent of any population is cruel, no matter what, and 10 percent is merciful, no matter what, and the remaining 80 percent can be moved in either direction.”
―
According to Adam Grant, author of Give and Take, there are three different types of reciprocity types: givers, takers, and matchers.
Givers, takers, and matchers
What’s the difference between these types?
Takers are self-focused and put their own interests ahead of others’ needs. They try to gain as much as possible from their interactions while contributing as little as they can in return.
Matchers like to preserve an equal balance of giving and taking. Their mindset is: “If you take from me, I’ll take from you. If you give to me, I’ll give to you.”
Givers are others-focused, and tend to provide support to others with no strings attached. They ask themselves, “How can I add value for this person? What can I contribute?”
So what type are you? Turns out most people hover in the middle, and behave as matchers, answering option B above (I’ll introduce you to my college friend, but I need help from you).
Humans have an innate tendency to be reciprocal, and givers and takers represent two extremes.
But while givers are the most generous in our society, matchers play an important role. They make sure what goes around, comes around. They reward givers for their generous behavior, and seek revenge when they, or others, are being mistreated. End excerpt from Lemonade
Adam Grant in his book Give and Take described the three reciprocity styles in detail. He described the breakdown of percentages from thousands of people studied as Givers 25% Matchers 56%, Takers 19%.
I usually cheat and think of Givers 20%, Takers 60% and Matchers 60%. That is pretty close and I can picture five people and say if his descriptions and hypothesis are accurate one of these five on average is a taker, one on average is a giver and three out of five on average are matchers.
I usually cheat and think of Givers 20%, Takers 60% and Matchers 60%. That is pretty close and I can picture five people and say if his descriptions and hypothesis are accurate one of these five on average is a taker, one on average is a giver and three out of five on average are matchers.
That is easy to remember, one is out for themselves (only), one is looking out for others first and three out of five are looking to be fair but not taken advantage of, three out of five want an even exchange of favors, compensation, and so on.
A really different take from a disturbing source.
A really different take from a disturbing source.
From Almost a Psychopath:
Psychopathy is a psychological condition in which the individual shows a profound lack of empathy for the feelings of others, a willingness to engage in immoral and antisocial behavior for short-term gains, and extreme egocentricity.
Ronald Schouten, author of Almost a Psychopath claims that 1% of people are psychopaths.
From Almost a Psychopath:
Studies that examined the prevalence of subclinical psychopathy in student populations in the United States and Sweden showed rates in the range of 5 to 15 percent… 5 to 15 percent of the population means that for every twenty people, up to three of them may fall within the almost psychopath range.
Martha Stout, author of The Sociopath Next Door claims one person in twenty five aka four percent are sociopaths.
“About one in twenty-five individuals are sociopathic, meaning, essentially, that they do not have a conscience. It is not that this group fails to grasp the difference between good and bad; it is that the distinction fails to limit their behavior. The intellectual difference between right and wrong does not bring on the emotional sirens and flashing blue lights, or the fear of God, that it does for the rest of us. Without the slightest blip of guilt or remorse, one in twenty-five people can do anything at all.”
― The Sociopath Next Door
― The Sociopath Next Door
“Sociopathy is the inability to process emotional experience, including love and caring, except when such experience can be calculated as a coldly intellectual task.”
― The Sociopath Next Door
― The Sociopath Next Door
“And sociopaths are noted especially for their shallowness of emotion, the hollow and transient nature of any affectionate feelings they may claim to have, a certain breathtaking callousness. They have no trace of empathy and no genuine interest in bonding emotionally with a mate. Once the surface charm is scraped off, their marriages are loveless, one-sided, and almost always short-term. If a marriage partner has any value to the sociopath, it is because the partner is viewed as a possession, one that the sociopath may feel angry to lose, but never sad or accountable.”
― The Sociopath Next Door
― The Sociopath Next Door
She has a great contrast in her description of a narcissist.
“As a counterpoint to sociopathy, the condition of narcissism is particularly interesting and instructive. Narcissism is, in a metaphorical sense, one half of what sociopathy is. Even clinical narcissists are able to feel most emotions are strongly as anyone else does, from guilt to sadness to desperate love and passion. The half that is missing is the crucial ability to understand what other people are feeling. Narcissism is a failure not of conscience but of empathy, which is the capacity to perceive emotions in others and so react to them appropriately. The poor narcissist cannot see past his own nose, emotionally speaking, and as with the Pillsbury Doughboy, any input from the outside will spring back as if nothing had happened. Unlike sociopaths, narcissists often are in psychological pain, and may sometimes seek psychotherapy. When a narcissist looks for help, one of the underlying issues is usually that, unbeknownst to him, he is alienating his relationships on account of his lack of empathy with others, and is feeling confused, abandoned, and lonely. He misses the people he loves, and is ill-equipped to get them back. Sociopaths, in contrast, do not care about other people, and so do not miss them when they are alienated or gone, except as one might regret the absence of a useful appliance that one has somehow lost.”
― The Sociopath Next Door
― The Sociopath Next Door
Regarding the prevalence of narcissists in the population Rebecca Webber :"True pathological narcissism has always been rare and remains so: It affects an estimated 1 percent of the population, and that prevalence hasn't changed demonstrably since clinicians started measuring it." 2016 in Psychology Today
“To admit that some people literally have no conscience is not technically the same as saying that some human beings are evil, but it is disturbingly close. And good people want very much not to believe in the personification of evil.”
― The Sociopath Next Door
― The Sociopath Next Door
From The Sociopath Next Door:
The first rule involves the bitter pill of accepting that some people literally have no conscience… Do not try to redeem the unredeemable.
From The Sociopath Next Door:
One lie, one broken promise, or a single neglected responsibility may be a misunderstanding instead. Two may involve a serious mistake. But three lies says you’re dealing with a liar, and deceit is the linchpin of conscienceless behavior.
Regarding crime, in particular violent crime there are some interesting quotes available:
"Alex Piquero, a criminologist at the University of Texas at Dallas, said by email: "A routine finding in the criminological literature is that about half of the crime is committed by a very small fraction of the population, around 5-8 percent depending on the sample and methodology used. This finding has been replicated in many different studies around the world. The bottom line is that a small fraction of the offending population is responsible for a great majority of crime." Piquero said most of the studies tracked residents only into late adolescence or early adulthood." W. Gardner Selby Politifact
"The Philadelphia studies and others
"Alex Piquero, a criminologist at the University of Texas at Dallas, said by email: "A routine finding in the criminological literature is that about half of the crime is committed by a very small fraction of the population, around 5-8 percent depending on the sample and methodology used. This finding has been replicated in many different studies around the world. The bottom line is that a small fraction of the offending population is responsible for a great majority of crime." Piquero said most of the studies tracked residents only into late adolescence or early adulthood." W. Gardner Selby Politifact
"The Philadelphia studies and others
Since the 1960s, researchers have probed how often youths come into police contact, consistently finding that a subset of people account for around half of the crimes reported to police.
In the seminal "Crime in a Birth Cohort" and a followup study, a team led by University of Pennsylvania criminologist Marvin Wolfgang tracked nearly 10,000 boys born in 1945 and living in Philadelphia from age 10 through 17; they ultimately gauged how often each boy came in contact with police for an offense. One upshot: 627 boys, 6 percent of the group, each accounted for five or more offenses, according to police reports. Those boys, Wolfgang wrote, were collectively identified as responsible for 52 percent of all the offenses recorded in the study and, he said, about two-thirds of all violent crimes believed to have been committed by the juveniles. In Patrick-speak, Wolfgang found that 6 percent of juvenile boys accounted for about half of alleged juvenile crimes.
The follow-up study, presented in progress in 1982, tracked more than 28,000 boys and girls born in 1958 who lived in Philadelphia from age 10 through 17. Among males, the study found, 61 percent of reported offenses were committed by 1,030 "chronic recidivists," comprising 7 percent of males in the study. That is, 7 percent of the boys accounted for 61 percent of the juvenile offenses.
David Farrington, a University of Cambridge professor of psychological criminology reported in 2006 on criminal offenses by 411 South London boys occasionally interviewed by the team starting when the subjects were 8 years old in 1961. The researchers, who also checked criminal records, found that a "small proportion of the study males (7%) were defined as ‘chronic offenders’ because they accounted for about half of all officially recorded offenses" in the study. The most common offenses, they wrote, included thefts, burglaries and car thefts followed by violence, vandalism, fraud and drug abuse.
In 2014, Swedish researchers drawing on records accounting for the experiences of 2.5 million people born in that country from 1958 to 1980 reported that from 1973 to 2004, some 1 percent of the population accounted for 63 percent of all violent crime convictions. Researcher Örjan Falk added: "Psychotic disorders are twice as common among repeat offenders as in the general population, but despite this fact they constitute a very small proportion of the repeat offenders." W. Gardner Selby Politifact
It is worth pointing out that Martha Stout in her book The Sociopath Next Door described how some predators are not violent and that depending on their impulses and personalities might never commit a violent act or crime. Some sociopaths she described as simply not caring for anyone other than themselves.
From The Sociopath Next Door:
Do not allow someone without conscience, or even a string of such people, to convince you that humanity is a failure. Most human beings do possess conscience. Most human beings are able to love.
Leonard Mlodinow in his superb book Subliminal remarked on how people tend to think of each other as either good or bad but like the characters from the classic Western movie The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, there is more to our story.
In The Good, The Bad and The Ugly we have three main characters Blondie the good does good things (relative to the other characters) because he is a good person. Angel Eyes the bad is evil to the core and does evil because he is evil. Finally, Tucco the ugly does a variety of behaviors for a variety of reasons and sometimes they are bad and sometimes they are good. He is not pure good or evil, not by a lot.
I sincerely believe that some people, I don't know what percentage, are predators as Jon Atack calls them. We have many names for these people like sociopath, psychopath, narcissist, malignant narcissist, traumatic narcissist, and even more exotic ones like dark triad and the research regarding these people is important and not to be overlooked. By any name they are real.
What percentage do they add up to ? I don't know exactly. I sincerely hope it is well under the high range estimate of maybe twenty percent and perhaps ten percent or less. I doubt it is below one or two percent.
It is worth nothing that many people go through significant changes in their lives and an unrepentant predator or criminal in his or her youth might turn their life around and change into a law abiding citizen or conversely a straight arrow type can break bad (like the TV show) in middle age or even old age (overcoming age stereotypes, in a strange way).
The idea that most of us are a combination of good and bad is, well uglier, than a pure good versus pure evil dichotomy. I don't doubt that it is possible that the givers at twenty-five percent of people are the same extra giving, extra compassionate people we meet and often admire. It is to me unproven but plausible.
This leaves us the approximate sixty percent (well fifty six as matchers according to Adam Grant) who are ugly. We are not as great, on average, as the givers and not as selfish and callous on average as the takers. You might see the bottom ten percent as extremely dangerous including violent criminals and the worst of the worst predators we have called psychopaths, sociopaths and narcissists. The next ten percent may be seen as perhaps not as overtly criminal and violent as the first ten percent but still takers and serious trouble to deal with in any way. (Well nine percent if we are sticking with the takers from Adam Grant.)
I have probably three main points that I want to make to sum up all this information on categories of people. Scientology has categories that Hubbard used that in my opinion are inaccurate and those of many others give you far more scientific research to consider.
There are lots of us have who don't fit a pure good or pure evil model. We mess up and sometimes do the wrong thing, sometimes horribly, sometimes it is downright ugly and evil.
But not always, not without regrets, not without remorse, not without conscience. Sometimes we learn from negative behavior and work to reduce or eliminate negative behavior. Not always.
Sometimes we can do good behaviours that require no prompting or reward or threats for failing to do them. We can do good things because we have good intentions. But not always.
Our lives don't fit a pure good or pure evil description, not by a lot. They are ugly, they have moments of both good and evil, good choices and terrible errors. Summing them up as just one thing really avoids digging deep into the ugly reality that we have had tragedy and triumph morally.
Finally the last point and probably most important point. Despite the great evil of the predators, even unrepentant and persistent evil, and the moral failings of the vast majority of people including acts of genuine evil, I think that we shouldn't take the "lesson of evil" as the foundation of our identity.
Daniel Shaw described this in Traumatic Narcissism. Some people who experience abuse and trauma learn one lesson. Whether one is abused or molested or neglected as a child by trusted and even loved caregivers or abused by a boyfriend or husband as a woman many victims of abuse learn that in this world their is no guarantee of love, no guarantee of good or decent treatment, no just world in which only good things happen to good people, especially vulnerable people like children and women. This world teaches many people that this is not a just world, deserving or wanting love or giving love doesn't always result in getting love in return.
The terrible, dark lesson many victims of abuse get is that anyone can betray anyone at any time, love you give can be repaid with cruelty and abuse. The one thing some victims of abuse come away feeling was under their control while they were abused is that they loved or trusted their abuser. Some victims see that as a small child or vulnerable woman they were in no position to stop abuse physically in the moment it occurred but resent themselves for having trusted and loved their abuser and resent themselves for trusting ANYONE or believing in a just world.
Feeling betrayed and feeling foolish for trusting people is something that some victims of abuse carry with them their whole lives. They feel that trusting and loving their abuser was under their control and can vow to NEVER be fooled again, to never go through that helpless and worthless feeling again that came when they were betrayed and abused and even afterword when they realized that they were not being treated with love.
Scientology has been especially egregious in encouraging abuse and neglect of children in particular and abusive behaviors in many circumstances in general. Scientology has followed and encouraged the predatory behavior of Ron Hubbard. In other words members of the high control group of Scientology model their behavior after the behavior of Hubbard.
Scientology has many second and third generation members who sadly, tragically, have experienced enough betrayal, enough neglect, enough abuse to learn the lesson of evil.
Scientology has left many ex members wondering if they should ever trust anyone again, ever love anyone again. It's understandable if you understand what they went through and how much it hurts.
I have seen a lot of material by people who have left predators. Many women who leave abusers go through phases. They are overwhelmed and confused at first. Then they recognize that their abuser is a kind of predator like a narcissist or sociopath. They learn their abuse was not their fault. They often wonder if everyone is abusive or a predator as they learn about the deep evil in so many abusers, particularly in their behavior, and that the conduct of their abuser is consistent with patterns of behavior that many, many abusers follow. Their abuser was not a "one in a million" or even "one in a thousand" very often.
They have the good news that the abuse is not unique to them, they did not inspire some unique response. Lots of people with different behavior and character get abused. It wasn't the fault of the victim. Great. Lots and lots of people are abusers. Not great news.
So there again the victims can wonder if they should ever trust anyone again, because they have learned that there is a lot of evil in the world and innocent people do get horribly abused.
If you feel this way I can't promise you that you won't get hurt again, I wish I could. I don't know what everyone will do in every circumstance. But if you never trust or love anyone so you don't have that horrible feeling of being betrayed and fooled again what do you have ?
Do you want to have transactional relationships that some predators have ? Or the relationships of leverage and power and domination that some predators use to escape vulnerabilities ?
Some relationships, like some people are good, some are bad and some ugly.
It would be wonderful if everyone was a great person who created loving and caring relationships. I am sure some people are like this. They may even live happily ever after if two really great people get together.
But that is not in the cards for some people. Some are going to have to work extra hard to trust again, some are going to have to work extra hard to love again, some are going to have to work extra hard to not see the worst in other people, some are going to have to work extra hard to build relationships and the relationships they pursue will sometimes take a lot of hard work to just have with genuine love and trust and as relationships that aren't abusive. Some people have to work hard to not follow the pattern of abuse they themselves experienced. (This is not an excuse or justification for abuse, just because something is hard to do doesn't justify failing to do it)
So I can only say for the people hurt by Scientology or anything in life who wonder if they should ever trust or love anyone again given what they went through that frankly relationships are probably going to be hard work. They are probably not going to be easy and run smoothly.
At times they may be terrific and other times extremely challenging. To an outsider these relationships may be messy, sloppy, inconsistent at times and even ugly.
But I would rather have something that is made by admittedly flawed, even ugly people in a sincere effort than something less, without love or trust.
For some of the people who have been abused in Scientology there are two options: trying despite everything you have experienced and done to have a genuine loving trusting relationship or relationships or not trying.
If you don't try what can you have ? That is something truly ugly.
What percentage do they add up to ? I don't know exactly. I sincerely hope it is well under the high range estimate of maybe twenty percent and perhaps ten percent or less. I doubt it is below one or two percent.
It is worth nothing that many people go through significant changes in their lives and an unrepentant predator or criminal in his or her youth might turn their life around and change into a law abiding citizen or conversely a straight arrow type can break bad (like the TV show) in middle age or even old age (overcoming age stereotypes, in a strange way).
The idea that most of us are a combination of good and bad is, well uglier, than a pure good versus pure evil dichotomy. I don't doubt that it is possible that the givers at twenty-five percent of people are the same extra giving, extra compassionate people we meet and often admire. It is to me unproven but plausible.
This leaves us the approximate sixty percent (well fifty six as matchers according to Adam Grant) who are ugly. We are not as great, on average, as the givers and not as selfish and callous on average as the takers. You might see the bottom ten percent as extremely dangerous including violent criminals and the worst of the worst predators we have called psychopaths, sociopaths and narcissists. The next ten percent may be seen as perhaps not as overtly criminal and violent as the first ten percent but still takers and serious trouble to deal with in any way. (Well nine percent if we are sticking with the takers from Adam Grant.)
I have probably three main points that I want to make to sum up all this information on categories of people. Scientology has categories that Hubbard used that in my opinion are inaccurate and those of many others give you far more scientific research to consider.
There are lots of us have who don't fit a pure good or pure evil model. We mess up and sometimes do the wrong thing, sometimes horribly, sometimes it is downright ugly and evil.
But not always, not without regrets, not without remorse, not without conscience. Sometimes we learn from negative behavior and work to reduce or eliminate negative behavior. Not always.
Sometimes we can do good behaviours that require no prompting or reward or threats for failing to do them. We can do good things because we have good intentions. But not always.
Our lives don't fit a pure good or pure evil description, not by a lot. They are ugly, they have moments of both good and evil, good choices and terrible errors. Summing them up as just one thing really avoids digging deep into the ugly reality that we have had tragedy and triumph morally.
Finally the last point and probably most important point. Despite the great evil of the predators, even unrepentant and persistent evil, and the moral failings of the vast majority of people including acts of genuine evil, I think that we shouldn't take the "lesson of evil" as the foundation of our identity.
Daniel Shaw described this in Traumatic Narcissism. Some people who experience abuse and trauma learn one lesson. Whether one is abused or molested or neglected as a child by trusted and even loved caregivers or abused by a boyfriend or husband as a woman many victims of abuse learn that in this world their is no guarantee of love, no guarantee of good or decent treatment, no just world in which only good things happen to good people, especially vulnerable people like children and women. This world teaches many people that this is not a just world, deserving or wanting love or giving love doesn't always result in getting love in return.
The terrible, dark lesson many victims of abuse get is that anyone can betray anyone at any time, love you give can be repaid with cruelty and abuse. The one thing some victims of abuse come away feeling was under their control while they were abused is that they loved or trusted their abuser. Some victims see that as a small child or vulnerable woman they were in no position to stop abuse physically in the moment it occurred but resent themselves for having trusted and loved their abuser and resent themselves for trusting ANYONE or believing in a just world.
Feeling betrayed and feeling foolish for trusting people is something that some victims of abuse carry with them their whole lives. They feel that trusting and loving their abuser was under their control and can vow to NEVER be fooled again, to never go through that helpless and worthless feeling again that came when they were betrayed and abused and even afterword when they realized that they were not being treated with love.
Scientology has been especially egregious in encouraging abuse and neglect of children in particular and abusive behaviors in many circumstances in general. Scientology has followed and encouraged the predatory behavior of Ron Hubbard. In other words members of the high control group of Scientology model their behavior after the behavior of Hubbard.
Scientology has many second and third generation members who sadly, tragically, have experienced enough betrayal, enough neglect, enough abuse to learn the lesson of evil.
Scientology has left many ex members wondering if they should ever trust anyone again, ever love anyone again. It's understandable if you understand what they went through and how much it hurts.
I have seen a lot of material by people who have left predators. Many women who leave abusers go through phases. They are overwhelmed and confused at first. Then they recognize that their abuser is a kind of predator like a narcissist or sociopath. They learn their abuse was not their fault. They often wonder if everyone is abusive or a predator as they learn about the deep evil in so many abusers, particularly in their behavior, and that the conduct of their abuser is consistent with patterns of behavior that many, many abusers follow. Their abuser was not a "one in a million" or even "one in a thousand" very often.
They have the good news that the abuse is not unique to them, they did not inspire some unique response. Lots of people with different behavior and character get abused. It wasn't the fault of the victim. Great. Lots and lots of people are abusers. Not great news.
So there again the victims can wonder if they should ever trust anyone again, because they have learned that there is a lot of evil in the world and innocent people do get horribly abused.
If you feel this way I can't promise you that you won't get hurt again, I wish I could. I don't know what everyone will do in every circumstance. But if you never trust or love anyone so you don't have that horrible feeling of being betrayed and fooled again what do you have ?
Do you want to have transactional relationships that some predators have ? Or the relationships of leverage and power and domination that some predators use to escape vulnerabilities ?
Some relationships, like some people are good, some are bad and some ugly.
It would be wonderful if everyone was a great person who created loving and caring relationships. I am sure some people are like this. They may even live happily ever after if two really great people get together.
But that is not in the cards for some people. Some are going to have to work extra hard to trust again, some are going to have to work extra hard to love again, some are going to have to work extra hard to not see the worst in other people, some are going to have to work extra hard to build relationships and the relationships they pursue will sometimes take a lot of hard work to just have with genuine love and trust and as relationships that aren't abusive. Some people have to work hard to not follow the pattern of abuse they themselves experienced. (This is not an excuse or justification for abuse, just because something is hard to do doesn't justify failing to do it)
So I can only say for the people hurt by Scientology or anything in life who wonder if they should ever trust or love anyone again given what they went through that frankly relationships are probably going to be hard work. They are probably not going to be easy and run smoothly.
At times they may be terrific and other times extremely challenging. To an outsider these relationships may be messy, sloppy, inconsistent at times and even ugly.
But I would rather have something that is made by admittedly flawed, even ugly people in a sincere effort than something less, without love or trust.
For some of the people who have been abused in Scientology there are two options: trying despite everything you have experienced and done to have a genuine loving trusting relationship or relationships or not trying.
If you don't try what can you have ? That is something truly ugly.
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