“Obsolete power corrupts obsoletely.”
—Jon Stewart
Not long after Carolyn took the trip to Europe with the emphysemic Ted, my mother passed away. A second aneurysm while she was sitting alone on a couch one evening erased her mind—her body failed a few hours later. I traveled from Michigan back to the Olympic Peninsula, where my brother had arranged the funeral. The Sequim Valley Chapel was small and plain; it filled quickly with people my mother had known, many of whom I'd never met. I stood teary-eyed as strangers reminded me of my mother's kindness, cheery nature, and ready willingness to help. My brother stood morosely beside me, steadily shaking hands and acknowledging condolences.
Carolyn sat in the front pew, her crutches beside her, eerily serene.
With my mother's and Ted's deaths, my sister was left largely to her own resources. Except, of course, for my father, who would stop by her tiny apartment to say hello, or to help by examining her cat with his practiced veterinarian's eye, or to take her garbage out, clinking his way toward the curb with plastic bags full of empty gin bottles. Her alcoholism left him loath to give her money; he had stopped bringing her by his cabin because of her incessant pilfering. But sometimes he would take her for outings. One rare photograph captures the two together around 1990, at the top of Hurricane Ridge in the Olympic Mountains, near Sequim. She smiles knowingly, hiding her thinness under bulky clothing. But the contrast of his rugged outdoorsman build with her wasted frame stands out despite her careful pose.
In the years not long before my father's death, as the tentacles of Alzheimer's began to slither more deeply through his mind, his thoughts turned more frequently toward Carolyn—worrying what would become of her. He made an appointment with an estate lawyer, his low-key good humor serving to make his final sentient preparations for death seem as simple as picking out a shirt at Wal-Mart. He carefully set aside part of whatever monies might be left after his illness in a separate trust fund for Carolyn that I was to administer. “Don't give her any money directly, ever,” he warned me. “Just use it to buy things she needs.” Later, I was to discover just how deeply ingrained my father's caution was. Toward the end, when he would have psychotic episodes at the nursing home a mile from my house in Michigan, the nurses would try to soothe him: “It's okay—your daughter is coming.” He would roll over, pausing his frantic, senseless kicking. “Which one?” he would ask suspiciously.
Fig. 12.1.
But Carolyn was also my father's daughter—his oldest daughter. Perhaps holding on to the image of an adorable, rambunctious three-year-old, suddenly rag doll–limp and terror-stricken through no fault of her own, he never stopped loving her, fretting about her, wondering how in God's name she had become what she had become.
As I wondered in turn.
Until January 2007. That's when an electronic prepublication version of a study popped up on one of my noodling, doodling, double-checking searches.1 My eyes widened as I read the abstract. This study—a massive one involving 4,660 Danish polio patients—was intended to discover whether polio could be associated with subsequent risk of hospitalization for psychiatric disorders.
It turns out that medical data in Denmark is tracked in a particularly useful fashion, making it relatively straightforward to compare polio survival with demographically similar individuals. It should be remembered that many polio survivors, unlike Carolyn, develop compulsively goal-oriented, high-achieving personalities—and they do not lack for kindness.2 Even so, this study found that polio survivors appeared to have a 40 percent increased risk of being hospitalized for various psychiatric disorders. This sounds high, and is high, but still, in all, equates to only a small bump in the incidence of psychiatric disorders in polio survivors. For those who contracted polio before age seven, as Carolyn did, the risk of psychiatric hospitalization was even higher.
It was no wonder I hadn't seen a pattern, despite my careful searches. Such a slight bump upward in the number of psychiatric disorders in polio survivors versus healthy people is tough to discern, except using the large numbers of patients that Danish researcher Nete Munk Nielsen and her colleagues were able to study. It's easy to suppose that if there was a bump upward in clinically diagnosed psychiatric disorders, there would have been a similar, or perhaps even larger increase in subclinical disorders. (Carolyn, remember, was never diagnosed with any psychiatric disorder.) Perhaps without polio, Carolyn would have had the creative, emotionally dynamic personality of so many in my family. But the polio left a tragic overlay on her character.
Was this due to neural damage from the poliovirus itself? Or trauma related to the horrific experience of having polio? Or genetic predisposition?
All of the above, it seems.
Part of Carolyn's problem was that she skated ahead of the wave of research findings. When the full force of her disordered personality began to flower in her teens, it was still over a decade before borderline personality would become a diagnostic entity. No one knew the real significance of the fact that poliovirus could invade not only motor neurons, but the reticular activating system—that crucial section of our brain that maintains our attention and alertness.3
Carolyn's attentional system was dysfunctional.
This would have meant that neurotransmitter systems throughout Carolyn's brain were also dysfunctional, perhaps causing her to have some of the same sweeping neurological differences we've seen in the brains of those who are clinically diagnosed with a personality disorder.
The clues were all there, even from the beginning of my research. It's just that until prompted by this final, capstone study, I wasn't able to put those clues together. I knew that polio's invasion and partial destruction of the reticular activating system also affects the survivor's attention.4 But I hadn't associated this finding with those of Michael Posner's group, which indicated that minor differences in the attentional network appear to be vitally influential in the development of full-blown borderline personality disorder—for those with the genetic predisposition. And I also hadn't connected polio's damage to the attentional network with Joseph Newman's work. Newman, if you'll remember, had shown the importance of a dysfunctional attentional network in the development of psychopathy—a disorder he has also shown to not necessarily be related to violence.
Despite her sometimes psychopathic-like behavior, Carolyn seemed so intelligent because, indeed, she was. Polio never invades the nonmotor neurons of the cortical areas; Carolyn's natural intelligence was left intact, floating on a surreal, dysfunctional emotional foundation. Through decade after decade of manipulation and deceit, no one could know that Carolyn's strange, uncaring attitude was not a conscious choice but was almost certainly due to shaky neural underpinnings, in all probability caused by a perfect storm of neural damage due to the poliovirus infection, extraordinary stress from the consequent social isolation and ostracization, and underneath it all, a genetic predisposition.
Was the genetic predisposition related to the genetics that helped form her personality? Probably. Our family certainly seems to have had more than its share of idiosyncratic personalities. But perhaps even more importantly, the predisposition related to the genetics of the receptors on Carolyn's neurons—receptors she shared with both of her similarly paralyzed cousins, each of whom was also a descendant of my mother's father. Paralysis from polio, remember, often runs in families.5
But there is another little oddity. The gene that makes the key neural receptor that the poliovirus uses to slip into a cell is found on chromosome 19. The chromosome 19, if you'll remember, is also where APOE4—the allele that predisposes people to Alzheimer's—is found. It turns out that people who have been paralyzed by polio rarely get Alzheimer's.
Why?
The same APOE4 allele that increases the risk of Alzheimer's reduces the risk of getting polio.6
Evil genes indeed.
EVIL AND FREE WILL
Did Carolyn have free will in how she led her life? In some sense, the question is meaningless. Does a cat have a choice when she affectionately licks her kittens? Does a killer whale have a choice when it toys with a terrified seal pup? If I've learned anything through these many years of research, it's that Carolyn's choices were a bit like the choices a tree on a windy shoreline has in deciding how tall and how bent to grow. Sure, others, as for example, George Washington and Mahatma Gandhi, were probably able to produce real changes in their neurological makeup through their conscious choices—strengthening their top-down control even if they were unable to adjust their bottom-up passions. Research is in fact showing that extraordinary neural shifts can take place through long-term conscious efforts.7
But what of those, like Carolyn, who don't seem to have the requisite neural apparatus to understand that there is a problem, not with drinking, or with others, but rather, with themselves? What motivation could such a person have to even attempt a change? What if the ability to exert focused mental effort is itself dysfunctional as a result of some varying combination of genetic predisposition and environmental factors, as was probably the case with Carolyn?8 In point of fact, how many people have Washington's or Gandhi's strength of character—a trait probably intimately connected with a genetically based ability to focus—to put forth the prodigious effort needed to overcome an innate predisposition?
Perhaps neuroscientist Adrian Raine put it best when he wrote:
If some individuals have damaged brains, can they be said to be fully in control of their actions and cognitions? Do they have complete freedom of will, or does the brain damage place constraints on such freedom? At one extreme, many theologians, philosophers, and scientists would argue that, barring exceptional circumstances such as severe physical and mental illness, each and every one of us has full control over our actions. We choose whether to commit sin or not, and thus our criminal actions (sins) are a product of a will that is under our full control. At the other extreme, some scientists take a more reductionist approach and eschew the idea of a disembodied soul that has its own free will. Francis Crick, for example, believes that free will is nothing more than a large assembly of neurons (probably involving the anterior cingulate cortex), and that under a certain set of assumptions it would be possible to build a machine that would believe it has free will…
I would instead argue for a middle ground between these two extremes. I suspect that freedom of will lies on a continuum, with some people having almost complete freedom in their actions, while others have relatively little freedom of will. Rather than viewing intent in black and white, all-or-nothing terms as the law (with a few exceptions) does, it is likely that there are shades of gray, with most of us lying between the extremes. I would argue that early social, biological, and genetic mechanisms play substantial roles in shaping freedom of will…and that for some, freedom of will is constrained early in life due to brain dysfunction beyond their control. Brain dysfunction would be a primary process in constraining free will.9
Carolyn was one of the unlucky ones, someone whose genes and environment colluded to give her little freedom of will to leap the narcissistic, self-serving, self-destructive bonds that guided her thoughts and actions. If my sister was lucky, it was only in the protective shield her dysfunction provided—she remained oblivious to the hurt she caused others and retained an intermittent sense she could control herself and her destiny.
There is nothing romantic about the sufferings of those with personality disorders.10 Perhaps the future holds real possibilities for altering the unlucky fates of those, like Carolyn, who are doomed by dysfunction to sometimes horrific behavior. Once the genetics and neural mechanisms underlying these multifaceted dysfunctions are more plainly understood, new cognitive therapies and drugs might be able to provide early intervention for those with unusual emotional deficits or cognitive disturbances. Already, for example, imaging techniques are being used to prove that emotional arousal to negative stimuli can be reduced in those suffering from borderline personality disorder by using dialectic-behavioral therapy.11 Someday—perhaps sooner than we think—the genes involved may even be reengineered by inserting a sly nucleotide here and a tandem sequence there, simultaneously repairing the coding that might have been altered by drugs such as alcohol. Perhaps even new growth can be encouraged in areas where neurons have been destroyed. It will be the brilliant researchers at the National Institutes of Health and at laboratories and universities worldwide—perhaps led by an ambitious, prickly narcissist or two—who will pioneer these new approaches.
But always lurking in the background is the haunting question of where pathology truly begins. Could we end up drugging ourselves into some Stepford baseline? Or, as Cambridge neuropsychologist Barbara Sahakian asks, “Do we want to become a Minority Report society where we're preventing crimes that might not happen?”12
And what will be the impact of these truly remarkable neuroscientific breakthroughs on the legal system? At this point, few believe that neuroscience will overturn the concept of free will or personal responsibility in the context of the law. Many of the nation's top neuroscientists and lawyers, believe the influence of neuroscience will be felt most strongly in mitigation (“he's not fully responsible, because his brain pathology made him unable to think rationally”) and in perception of risk (“this guy has brain factors that predict future violence”).13 We've already seen, however, that the concept of mitigation has hampered research in critical areas such as sadism. And, in a related issue, it is becoming apparent that America's high prison population compared to other countries may simply be a consequence of the fact that Americans have fewer involuntary patients in mental institutions.14 (Deinstitutionalization—a result of the political left's push for patients’ rights and the right's push for cost-savings—has had far-reaching, unanticipated consequences.) Certainly the debate surrounding free will and responsibility, which has occupied philosophers for centuries, is not likely to end soon.a.15
But let's return to Carolyn.
Was Carolyn herself “successfully” sinister? Yes and no. In some sense, she wasn't a complete failure—whatever her flaws and deceits, at the very least she stayed out of jail. In a perverse way, her handicap was enlightening. Pinned to the ground, so to speak, both physically and mentally, Carolyn settled for dating drunks, among others, and keeping letters and diaries for amusement's sake. And it is only in reading her diaries that it becomes clear that Carolyn was an impenetrable person because, in some ways, there was little there to penetrate. Her empathy was evanescent because it was only superficial. She showed little guilt because there was little to show.
Both high-tech neuroscience and Carolyn's old-fashioned journal entries have helped me to realize that Carolyn, and people like her, often don't consciously intend to be evil and certainly don't see themselves as evil—despite the blindingly obvious and sometimes terrible consequences of their actions. Instead, these are people who are constrained by the quirks of their neural machinery—often carved by both genes and environment—to act in self-serving, manipulative, and deceitful ways. Evil though the consequences of their actions may be, such Machiavellians are still real people, not caricatures—they can become heartbreakingly lonely, monumentally sad, and their eyes can become filled with tears of pity—even if it is only self-pity.
Whatever their interior feelings or potential for change, however, a dispassionate look at the evidence points to extreme caution in dealing with the successfully sinister. At the personal level, the Carolyns of the world, whether created through nature, or nurture, or both, can turn families into minefields and friendships into feuds. At the professional level, they can beguile and mislead, savaging their companies with their distorted, self-serving cognitions even as they set subordinates, colleagues, and superiors at each other's throats. At the spiritual level, they can twist good intentions into ill, and set entire populations aflame with hatred. At a political level, they can play master puppeteer in the lives of millions, snuffing out entire populations with a wave of the hand and without a second thought.
WHO ARE THE SUCCESSFULLY SINISTER?
Before Hitler's seizure of power, psychiatrist Ernst Kretschmer remarked: “In normal times we diagnose them; in disturbed times they govern us.”16 In my reading, however, Kretschmer's quip misses the mark in a number of crucially important ways.
Rather than being diagnosed “in normal times,” it appears that most people who interact with the successfully sinister, even trained psychologists and psychiatrists, have no idea with whom they're dealing—not unless these analysts are given twenty-twenty hindsight clues such as a dead body or unexplained missing millions from a company's accounts. A charming, highly successful lawyer, for example, who beats and abuses his wife and children can almost literally get away with murder without being caught.17 A major company like Enron can run a flagrant Ponzi scheme where dozens of insiders are in a position to know something seriously strange is going on—and still no one says a word publicly.18 Pedophile priests in the Catholic Church can be responsible for the rape of tens of thousands of children, and the church hierarchy not only manages to keep the offenses hidden but knowingly moves the priests to new parishes, where fresh prey await.19 Key members of the United Nations can literally be in “Complicity with Evil,” as described in Adam LeBor's meticulously researched book of that name, in the commission of genocide after genocide. And yet those who allowed these disgracefully corrupt and malign episodes to proceed are granted a golden retirement with plaudits.20 And individuals like Mao not only kill tens of millions but are worshiped in godlike fashion and touted as countercultural icons. Incidental death totals equivalent to a dozen or more Nazi Holocausts are minimized or tucked away from public discussion.
No, rather than being diagnosed, per Kretschmer's quip, highly successful Machiavellians appear to lurk in every human population. With their extraordinary ability to stack any deck in their favor, their relentless need for control, and their self-serving ruthlessness, those with at least a modicum of talent, looks, and assertiveness are more likely to be found in positions of power. This means the closer you climb toward the nexus of power in any given social structure, the more likely you'll be able to find a person with Machiavellian tendencies. It really doesn't matter what the underlying political system is—democratic, fascist, communist, or religious—or whether the social structure involves a company, university, schoolboard, religious group, city council, state government, federal government, or UN-style supragovernment; the larger the social structure and the bigger the payoff, the more Machiavellians eventually seem to find a way to creep to the top in numbers all out of proportion to their underlying percentage in society. Don't forget the growing body of research literature that reveals how people selectively sort themselves into positions congenial to their personalities.21
Machiavellians can have an incalculably restrictive, demoralizing, and corrupt effect on those in their sphere of influence. But what is worse is that Machiavellian behavior in a family, company, religious institution, school, union, or governmental unit—in fact, in virtually any social group—often seems to reach awe-inspiring proportions before anyone feels compelled to take solid action.b.22 Many people simply prefer to go about their everyday lives rather than take up a righteous cause; it is often much easier to simply ignore, evade, justify, or silence the speech of anyone who does speak out than to constructively act against unsavory activities. Ordinary people's emote control also means that sinister behavior can be seen as less important or—because of calcified beliefs about an ideology, institution, or person—even justifiable. Moreover, the utter ruthlessness of some Machiavellians can mean that even the most sincere and altruistic keep quiet because of realistic concerns for themselves and their loved ones. Taking action against a Machiavellian is often a dangerous proposition, and no one takes on such a task lightly.23 (Friends in the know are often just being reasonable when they recommend cautious silence.) All of these factors serve to keep a stable sinister system intact, despite the fact that such a system is often less effective than other, more open systems that make more effective use of the “wisdom of crowds.” (Machiavellians, in fact, often work behind the scenes to ensure their system is not put in a position of competing with other systems.)
Opaque organizations, systems, and ideologies that easily allow for underhanded interactions play to Machiavellians’ strong suit, allowing them to conceal their deceitful practices more easily. Idealistic systems such as communism and some religious or quasi-religious creeds are perfect for Machiavellians because they often lack checks and balances, or don't use them.
When kindhearted people are unaware that a few leading individuals in “their group” are likely to be sinister, they are ripe for victimization. Their own kindness can be turned against them and others. Hitler's greatest strength, for example, was his ability to appeal not only to the worst characteristic—hatred—but also to people's best qualities—faith, hope, love, and sacrifice. As with most Machiavellians, he was a master at turning people's best traits against them. “He confided the secret of his approach to an intimate: ‘When I appeal…for sacrifice, the first spark is struck. The humbler the people are, the greater the craving to identify themselves with a cause bigger than themselves.’”24
Such factors as political instability with no end in sight, worsening economic disaster, and rapid social changes have been pointed out as critical to the rise of successfully sinister dictators such as Hitler.25 In reality, what these factors appear to do is merely allow the successfully sinister—always loitering near the top of every significant social structure—to not only gain ascendancy but also to rewrite the rules. As power is consolidated, the sycophantic cocoon that a leading Machiavellian is able to encase himself in can, it seems, reinforce his own narcissistic thought patterns. (As Ovid is said to have observed over two thousand years ago: “All things may corrupt when minds are prone to evil.”)26 In light of all this, it becomes clear that Kretschmer's comment “in disturbed times they govern us” is true but misleading. Machiavellians are always present in every system that relates to power. It's just that in times of troubles and in nontransparent systems, it's easier for them to reach the pinnacle.
This is not to say that everyone at higher levels is Machiavellian. (One British study, for example, found that only one in six supervisors is thought by their subordinates to be a psychopath.)27 But certainly there appear to be high enough percentages of deeply Machiavellian individuals at powerful social levels to make for very different social interactions in that milieu. In such a high-powered setting, even if one is not deeply Machiavellian by nature, it is difficult to survive without using some Machiavellian strategies oneself.
The devious methods for success used by the sinister help explain why systems of ethics can at times be so surprisingly ineffectual and sometimes even counterproductive. Altruists who draw up rules and legislation to deter Machiavellian behavior are often surprised to find their policy turned on its head and used by Machiavellians for nefarious purposes. “Bad whistle-blowers,” for example, can make frivolous allegations that trigger costly, mandatory, and ultimately fruitless investigations. “Moral entrepreneurs” can find law firm Web sites extolling the money to be made from turning in minor, easily resolvable transgressions.28 Politicians, litigators, scientists—almost anyone with a grudge—can become a Javert of their chosen Jean Valjean, raising their own profile even as they destroy careers. As Peter Morgan and Glenn Reynolds point out in The Appearance of Impropriety:
Over the last twenty-odd years, this nation has engaged in a far-reaching effort to increase public confidence in institutions through the use of ethics rules that stress appearances and procedures. Governmental ethics rules have expanded exponentially, to the point where an entire bureaucracy exists just to interpret and explain them. In the corporate world, ethics codes have proliferated wildly, and business ethics consulting is itself a major industry, worth over one billion dollars a year by some estimates. Yet judged on its own terms, that experiment has been a failure…. In fact, faith in government and corporate America has probably never been lower.29
Many, if not most, new enterprises appear to be started by talented individuals who enlist the help of their friends and others known to be competent and visionary. In evoking shades of gray, it can be helpful if some of these individuals have a few Machiavellian characteristics, such as a ruthlessly competitive streak or an ability to intimidate opponents. But, if the enterprise is successful, and as the group of people participating grows larger and gains more power, the structure begins to act like a magnet, attracting more hard-core, brutally self-serving Machiavellians who gradually find ways to insert themselves into positions of power. This is particularly easy to do if the top positions are held by leaders who are oblivious to the machinations of upwardly aspiring Machiavellians, or who want others to do their dirty work. Indeed, sometimes these upstart Machiavellians are competent—or even, like robber baron Andrew Carnegie, brilliant—and their tactics can prove helpful for the enterprise. The Machiavellian may ruthlessly eliminate business units, for example, that need the pruning others have found too painful to undertake, or they may seize opportunities others, perhaps with more compassionate concerns, have shied away from. More often, however, it seems Machiavellians use their unsavory tactics to climb above their real level of talent. At these undeserved power levels, the Machiavellian can play a cutthroat game of backbiting, back scratching, building a personal power base, reporting falsely rosy pictures of their work, demonizing adversaries, and siphoning assets—activities that strengthen the Machiavellian even as they weaken the enterprise. Such phenomena are obvious in business and academia. But they are also apparent in government, where gerrymandering and blocking of transparency rules for earmarking, for example, are the tip of the iceberg for protecting the more Machiavellian incumbents from public scrutiny and truly democratic processes.
Eventually then, after decades or perhaps even centuries, a corrupt, rickety enterprise, having been kept afloat by well-meaning cadres, can be overtaken or overrun by other, newer social structures—freshly formed businesses, religious offshoots, or political parties—that have had less time for relatively untalented Machiavellians to insert themselves into the highest echelons of the system. This might also explain why the monolithic, protected, noncompetitive nature of the American educational system—which allows Machiavellians to find their secure place in faculties, unions, committees, teaching-related societies, school boards, and school districts—sometimes performs so poorly.30
HOW CAN YOU TELL?
The very rarity of Machiavellians at most social levels can make them difficult to pick out. Shades of gray involving quasi-Machiavellians, or the very real “good side” of a Machiavellian, can make detection even more difficult. (Even I am fooled on occasion. To never be fooled, though, I'd have to be completely paranoid.) But protection can be had by simply being aware of the existence of these deeply deceitful chameleons who, it should be remembered, are often propelled by very different neurological processes. On a personal level, such awareness can cause subtle investigation of relationships that look to become significant. Gossip can be surprisingly helpful here. While a Machiavellian's hoodwinked supervisor, for example, may rave about the Machiavellian's sincerity and talent, coworkers, underlings, janitors, roommates, teammates, cellmates, or simple acquaintances may have a very different story—if you happen to gain their confidence. (That's why books on hiring often recommend, after all the high-level interviews have taken place, seeing what the secretary thinks of a candidate.) Likewise, a boyfriend's mother may warble on about his giving nature, but his many former girlfriends may tell a very different story. The more powerful or influential a person's position or potential position, the more fraught his personal relations may become. Power, in fact, is a magnet for Machiavellians and brings out the very best of their beguiling charm—as when “little Kathy,” Paris Hilton's mother, targeted her mogul, megamillionaire heir Rick Hilton.31 Sometimes it can be almost impossible to believe that someone could be as chameleon-like as others say, and the tendency for those in power might be to ignore the message.c. And it's true that the source for negative gossip herself may be Machiavellian—as with the legendary Roxalena and her duplicitous tales about the sultan's beloved son.
At slightly more distant social levels, the camera goes out of focus—it is difficult to detect whether a mayor, school board member, or union leader, for example, is Machiavellian, unless one has access to people in the know. But at still higher social levels—say, senatorial or presidential—information about a person eventually becomes available, at least in open democratic societies. A strong mismatch between public and private lifestyles is a telling, though not surefire, mark of the chameleon-like behavior of a Machiavellian. Loveless marrying for money or a series of low-key scandals may also provide indicators—indicted Hollingsworth CEO Conrad Black, for example, was early on expelled from an elite private school for selling purloined solutions to examination papers, while Russian president Vladimir Putin—whose critics so often suffer unusual and horrific deaths—appears to have plagiarized large chunks of his doctoral dissertation.32 Intellectuals may snicker at journalism's bad boy Matt Drudge or at publications like the National Enquirer, but there is a reason that totalitarian regimes such as the People's Republic of China ban similar reporting within their borders. (Perhaps surprisingly, the Drudge Report is the must-see Web site for top-ranked journalists, while the National Enquirer carries an excellent reputation among those same journalists for investigative reporting.)33
At high social levels, the game of “find the Machiavellian” can become a house of mirrors, because disinformation is always rampant. Each political party, which naturally includes its own Machiavellians, has a vested interest in characterizing the other candidates and parties as Machiavellian. At the same time, each party's followers can't help but reassure themselves that their candidate and party couldn't possibly be Machiavellian, aside, perhaps, from a cursory jot and tiddle. Or perhaps they suspect “their guy” has some Machiavellian traits, but they believe the end justifies the means—at the very least, their candidate is achieving the group's desired goal. Besides, a Machiavellian—with his frequent finger-pointing and rabble-rousing—can often be a lot more exciting than a more ho-hum reasonable sort. (Sure he's a loaded cannon, but he stirs things up around here!) Machiavellian leaders might also actually attract emotionally off-kilter followers who identify with the label of victim and enjoy the heightened stimulation they receive from the Machiavellian's rants.
Perhaps at these high levels, the best an ordinary person can do is to try to lay aside his or her own ideological blinkers and look honestly at public figures. If a given individual seems most interested in vilifying others, proceeds to characterize his own in-group as having been unduly victimized, is ruthlessly vindictive, and finally, is discovered to have cozy, self-serving financial deals, there are reasonable grounds to assume that a person is more than a little Machiavellian and that his or her leadership may be aimed more toward self than public service. Unfortunately, our own tendency, at least regarding leaders who purport to share our ideology, is often to avoid looking too closely.
Both at home and in other countries, the choice is sometimes more difficult, with no right answer at hand. As psychiatrist and political commentator Charles Krauthammer has written: “The essence of foreign policy is deciding which son of a bitch to support and which to oppose—in 1941, Hitler or Stalin; in 1972, Brezhnev or Mao; in 1979, Somoza or Ortega. One has to choose. A blanket anti-son of a bitch policy…is soothing, satisfying and empty. It is not a policy at all but righteous self-delusion.”34
Sometimes, in other words, there are no satisfying choices to be had.
CAROLYN
So many years chasing Carolyn. I understand better now how my sister's life was spent tracing the skewed patterns of her neurons. Did she have a deep-seated genetic predisposition for her sinister behavior? Quite possibly. Did the polio exacerbate her instability? Almost certainly. Did she drink to fill the emptiness of her ephemeral, underperforming neurotransmitters, and did that contribute to her behavioral problems and her anorexia? Absolutely.
Fig. 12.2. Carolyn's final photo album is packed with photographs of feline knickknacks and her cat. But this haunting picture—different from all the others—somehow meant enough for her to keep.
Carolyn's ultimate psychiatric diagnosis? Perhaps it doesn't matter. After all, borderline, psychopath, and any number of other diagnoses are all just words we clumsily apply to the complex processes that can be associated with both nature and nurture as a dysfunctional brain develops.
Do I forgive Carolyn?
Certainly writing this book has given me a compassion I never felt before. I can understand now some of the neurological and genetic quirks that spun Carolyn in directions she had little control over, whatever her conscious feelings to the contrary. But I also know that if, through some cosmic trick, Carolyn were to suddenly be alive again, smiling in my living room as she played with one of my children, something visceral would still rise in me, as if I'd just found my children toying with a snake. Perhaps surprisingly, I think this means I'm “at a good place” now. Reason has given me an understanding and peace that might be called forgiveness. But emotions remain, serving as a shield that helps protect both my loved ones and myself from Carolyn and people like Carolyn. Researching this book hasn't saddened me, or at least not too much, about the things that can't be changed in people like Carolyn. It has just given me a gentle reminder that in the end, we should perhaps not worry so much about changing others. Rather, we might think instead about changing ourselves.
Still, when all is said and done, I can't but wonder—did Carolyn have the capacity for love? Not cheaply expressed “love” for an easily manipulated paramour or for an obedient and at least temporarily useful caretaker, but real love that included the idea of sacrifice and sorrow and joy for another? Did she love, for example, our father—the person who, through all the years, loved her most unwaveringly, most loyally, most honestly?
A journal entry tells me:
May 6th: Penny watered the artichokes and fed the birds; also, cleaned up the dried parsley I accidentally spilled. Barb called—Dad died. My request for help with periodontal care seemed self-serving; but apparently this will be handled through a trust fund.
I page onward through the entries. The diary continues on routinely through May, June, and July: she changed sheets, read cookbooks, pulled a muscle while inebriated, went shopping, watched television. One Thursday she presciently notes: “There is absolutely no reason to keep a journal. Actually self-indulgent! My hubris will catch up with me.”
Actually, it wasn't hubris. It was her boyfriend, Jack.
Jack himself had apparently called 911 to report Carolyn's death, but when the police arrived at the apartment, Jack had proved curiously evasive. When asked if Carolyn drank, after much prodding, Jack confessed she drank a third of a bottle of alcohol a day. As Officer Crispin related in his subsequent phone call to me, this amount of booze was unimpressive: “Most alcoholics drink about a half gallon a day,” he told me. “A third of a bottle shouldn't have killed her.” Crispin had ordered toxicology tests; he suspected by Jack's jittery demeanor that he had somehow drugged her.
And we did our own investigating. According to her caretaker, Carolyn had apparently been edgy over the previous month about pains in her chest. Jack had moved in to ease her fears and be around in the case of emergency. Instead, the visit had somehow turned into a two-week mutual bender.
Three days after Carolyn's death, Jack himself called, voice slurred though it was only mid-afternoon, and admitted that Carolyn was in no pain when she died. “She was just setting there and she got kind of quiet.” By then we'd talked with the forensic pathologist, who'd penciled in coronary artery atherosclerosis as the cause of death. (Actually, the pathologist added offhandedly, the cirrhosis of the liver was so bad that it could really have been a toss-up.)
Fig. 12.3. Carolyn circa 1948.
“What time of day did Carolyn die?” my husband asked Jack inanely. It's a little hard to know what to say to someone who's just intimated he was too drunk to call for help when Carolyn had had, right in front of him, the heart attack she'd been fearing.
“By the time I was available again,” Jack answered elliptically, “it was history.”
Carolyn's last written words reverberate: “Back to the real world after panic attack. Must ease Jack out. Can't tolerate the smoke or the late night ‘sloppies.’ He is still a good friend to have.”
I rifle through her diaries. Nothing more. Nothing of interest.
Except one day. August 9th—three months after my father died. Two years before her own death.
Nancy did nice lady visitation to thank me for goodies. I fell very much in like with her. I was too talky—I had lost last night's supper and had swollen eyes from tears shed over that actor Charlton Heston's announcement of Alzheimer's diagnosis in lieu of Dad's recent demise. Great buy on ripe brie at Sunny Farms Grocery with sour grapes and mediocre plum and nectarine.
a.Stephen Morse, the Ferdinand Wakeman Hubbell Professor of Law & Professor of Psychology and Law in Psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, notes that “free will or lack of it is not a criterion for criminal responsibility or non-responsibility.” He also adroitly points out the corollary that free will is also not used as a basis for any psychological diagnosis. Fundamentally, if a psychiatric “syndrome does not sufficiently impair the defendant's capacity for rationality, it will have no excusing force [from a legal perspective] whatsoever, no matter how much of a causal role it played…. To say that a syndrome caused a crime tells us nothing about whether the defendant deserves excuse or mitigation (except in New Hampshire…).”
b.This behavior can't help but evoke shades of psychologist Stanley Milgram's work. In a classic set of experiments, Milgram revealed that many ordinary people will go to absurd lengths—even giving electric shocks to shocking screaming victims—in their blind tendency to obey authority. Perhaps this relates to Posner's research involving people's varying ability to resolve conflicting information and Wilson's studies related to decision making and synchronized neural rhythms.
c.When I served as a communications officer in the army in the late 1970s, I still remember the enlisted men complaining to me about one of my sergeants. “He's a completely different person around us than around you,” warned one of the cable apes, as they called themselves. One day I happened to overhear my creepily servile sergeant abusing the company clerk, and I suddenly understood what the men were talking about. Becoming aware of this type of brown-nosing was good preparation for becoming a professor. It's amazing how often I'll hear a professor proudly describe how his firm chewing out set a cheating student back on the right path. Yet I hear through the grapevine how that same student continues to brag about his cheating prowess.