Sociopathy and Dick Cheney

“Socrates” of the New York Times commentariat wrote this interesting comment yesterday:

Dick Cheney doesn’t have all the key behavioral characteristics that define sociopathy and psychopathy, but he has the most important ones:

(The DSM – Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders – published by the American Psychiatric Association prefers the term ‘antisocial personality disorder’ to psychopath and sociopath)

Superficial charm and good intelligence

Absence of nervousness or neurotic manifestations

Untruthfulness and insincerity

Lack of remorse and shame

Inadequately motivated antisocial behavior

Poor judgment and failure to learn by experience

Pathologic egocentricity and incapacity for love

General poverty in major affective reactions

Specific loss of insight

Unresponsiveness in general interpersonal relations

Dick Cheney’s rigid and remorseless certainty of the impeachable ‘success’ of the Iraq debacle and the CIA torture debacle – among many other Bush-Cheney debacles – cement him as one of the preeminent sociopaths in American history.