Evil Genes: Why Rome Fell, Hitler Rose, Enron Failed, and My Sister Stole My Mother’s Boyfriend
Presented by Barbara Oakley, Ph.D., P.E., Associate Professor of Engineering, Oakland University
About the Speaker
Barbara Oakley, PhD, has been dubbed a female Indiana Jones — her writing combines worldwide adventure with solid research expertise. Among other adventures, she has worked as a Russian translator on Soviet trawlers in the Bering Sea, served as radio operator at the South Pole Station in Antarctica, and risen from private to regular army captain in the U.S. Army. She is currently an associate professor of engineering at Oakland University in Michigan and holds a doctorate in the integrative discipline of systems engineering. As a recent Vice President of the IEEE-Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, as well as a Fellow in the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering, Dr. Oakley has worked hard to help build a public understanding of the bioengineering profession. Her research work involves investigations of the complex relationship between neurocircuitry and social behavior. Her recent best-selling book: Evil Genes: Why Rome Fell, Hilter Rose, Enron Failed, and My Sister Stole My Mother’s Boyfriend was researched over a period of six years, and lauded by a number of top-ranked psychiatrists, psychologists, and neuroscientists from institutions such as Harvard, Columbia, Berkeley, and King’s College, London.
About the Event
Summary and commentary for the 246th meeting of CFI-MI (the Michigan branch of the international Center for Inquiry). This meeting was held on February 13, 2008 at the Women’s City Club, 254 Fulton Street, NE in Grand Rapids, MI.
This meeting took place on the day after both Abraham Lincoln’s and Charles Darwin’s birthdays. Darwin Day celebrations are held on February 12 and days surrounding it, by groups interested in reason and sound science; so our organization considered this day a Darwin Day Celebration meeting.
Our next meeting will be on February 27 with the topic: When Logic No Longer Matters: Putting Science in the Crosshairs. This will be presented by CFI member, Gregory Forbes, PhD; Director of the Institute for Evolution Education and founding member of Michigan Citizens for Science. Dr. Forbes’ dynamic talks are always popular and not to be missed.
Evil Genes: Why Rome Fell, Hitler Rose, Enron Failed, and My Sister Stole My Mother’s Boyfriend. This was the thought- provoking title of Dr. Barbara Oakley’s presentation to us this evening as well as that of her new book. Oakley has been dubbed a female Indiana Jones; her writing combines worldwide adventure with solid research expertise. Among other adventures, she has worked as a Russian translator on Soviet trawlers in the Bering Sea, served as radio operator at the South Pole Station in Antarctica, and had risen from private to regular army captain in the US Army. Currently an associate professor of engineering at Oakland University in Michigan, Oakley is a recent vice president of the world’s largest bioengineering society and holds a doctorate in the integrative discipline of systems engineering. She has earned numerous teaching awards and performed research on noninvasive pressure- sensing and the effects of electrical fields upon cells. She has crossed many different disciplines to arrive at the thesis of her book and presentation, including wife, mother, author, game inventor, Russian translator, army officer, engineering professor and not least of all, the sibling of a sister with borderline personality disorder, who sparked her deep interest in what would result in her writing the book: Evil Genes.
There were 129 meeting attendees for Dr. Oakley’s presentation and even more impressively, 50 students who attended her talk the day before at Grand Valley State University, when the winter weather was formidable and many area places were closed. In her presentation, Dr. Oakley explored human evil from a scientific perspective. She recounted experiences that led her to research the topic, including episodes from her sister’s life and from her extensive travels. She also detailed recent advances in brain imaging and genetics that have implications for traditional views of evil, discussed why a scientific understanding of evil is important, and gave us tips to help us become aware of, and to deal with, the Machiavellian types (as she often termed them) in our midst.
Dr. Oakley’s sister, Carolyn, was the touchstone throughout both her presentation and book (Evil Genes; Prometheus Books), and while both were fashioned in a scholarly and deeply researched manner, she sprinkled them liberally with personal memories, familial anecdotes and a goodly dose of humor and wit. One often thinks of the male half of humanity when using the term evil, and indeed her book provided examples mostly drawn from this sex (Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Milosevic, Ceausescu, Idi Amin, etc.) but in her readings on what she refers to as Machiavellian types; those with borderline personality disorder, psychopathy, or that subtly shaded hybrid, the borderpath, she also came across the women who likewise exhibited these characteristics. It is just that women tend to manipulate others using different tools than their male counterparts. A book that this summary writer read on serial killers mentioned, too, how such people are almost exclusively represented by males in the popular understanding. But here again, it is just a different approach to the same ends. Female serial killers tend to make a travesty of traditional feminine ways in society; using their sexuality to ensnare their victims; feeding others (but lacing the food with poison); tucking the child into bed or caring for a bedridden adult with illness but smothering their charges or otherwise causing the death of the person who would have otherwise recovered, as examples. Men tend to use violence (rather than nurturing gone awry), which is perhaps more dramatic for headlines and is often perpetrated out of doors or in other people’s homes rather than is typically the case with the more domestic female serial killer who typically uses her home as the place for her victims’ demise. Dr. Oakley read about the alluring but sometimes sinister wives and concubines of the Roman emperors and Ottoman sultans and wondered if such women were, perhaps, like her sister. Part of the subtitle of Oakley’s book regarding Carolyn, alludes to an event that goes along with the behavior of many borderline women. Barbara’s widowed mother had attracted the attention of a wealthy, much older man in poor health who desired her companionship on a trip to France. She had never had such an opportunity to travel abroad and became very excited about this prospect and the gentleman’s attentions. Though living away from home at the time, Carolyn caught wind of this situation and swept home to steal the man away from her mother and accompany him on his European trip in her stead. Upon returning to the States, Carolyn discarded the rich elderly gentleman as if he had been a used facial tissue. Being a natural researcher spurred her on toward both deep and broad investigations into Machiavellian types; being a sibling of someone who had caused so much emotional harm in the family due to her personality disorder, made it take on a personal quality.
Such nefarious individuals are not merely curiosities of academic interest. The successfully sinister, as Oakley referred to those who rise to the top as dictators or political or business leaders with BPD characteristics, can inflict incalculable harm upon great swaths of society. As to despotic dictators, she notes in her book that collectively, they were responsible for policies that caused the murders of well over one hundred and fifty million people during the 20th century alone. One immediately associates Hitler as the poster boy for evil—and evil he was to be sure! But Stalin dwarfed him in his genocidal zeal. Millions died during Stalin’s grisly purges, which (Oakley writes) assigned quotas for executions by the thousands, and millions more died during his enforced starvation policies in the Ukraine. Mao turned all of China into what Oakley described as an uber- gulag. Pol Pot took Mao’s lead and devised the now famous killing fields which depopulated much of Cambodia.
Most of us operate with cognitive governing controls; inhibiting factors that help us to over-ride our baser instincts when these emerge. How does one systematically, methodically and with completely untroubled conscience, go about viewing almost all others as objects of no personal value—to be used and discarded without qualm? Why is it that when such Machiavellians are captured and confronted with their heinous acts, they show no remorse and automatically blame- shift or deny culpability or even pretend- convincingly at that- that the atrocities never occurred? Are there neurological underpinnings that create the successfully sinister? These are the fascinating questions that Oakley addressed. The successfully sinister may employ brutality and fear to gain the upper hand but this is not a prerequisite for them to rise to a position in which they may exert overwhelming detrimental control over people’s lives. Many use their innate wit, intelligence and uncanny ability to charm; as did Carolyn. Even Winston Churchill was charmed and dazzled by Stalin. Even after Mao’s crimes against humanity were laid bare for all to see, many still held him in reverential high esteem. While incapable of true empathy, they may- ironically- be masters of friendships and may be simply irresistible to others.
The term Machiavellian describes those who are manipulative, duplicitous and, well, evil. It is derived from the Renaissance Florentine statesman, Niccolo Machiavelli’s book: The Prince (written in 1532), which describes one who is, on the surface, charming and a genius at sucking up to power, but (as Oakley writes) capable of mind-boggling acts of deceit for control or personal gain. The field of study that encompasses such individuals, takes Machiavelli’s concepts and builds them into a sweeping- and often unsavory- portrait of humankind. Most people generally resist imbibing what research is now showing us about the inner workings of the minds of such individuals. Our own folk theories of minds—knowing how others may behave based upon the life of one’s own mind- often prevents us from easily believing or accepting that there are those among us who are so differently wired from us that they think in an almost alien fashion. We still, also, place too much emphasis on nurture alone or primarily in shaping the outcomes of people, while giving short shrift to the genetic component and the neurological functioning of material brains. Too, much of the illuminating scientific research is quite new and has been very slow to be disseminated to the general public; a public, which again, is not eager to accept the controversial scientific conclusions in this area of research. Oddly, while there has been a decent quantity of research on the followers of the successfully sinister, a paucity of studies have been done on the insidious leaders themselves. Just one reason for the dearth of subjects to examine may include the fact that many people with Machiavellian characteristics fly under the radar, don’t see themselves as having any problem in need of treatment (so do not become clinical research subjects) and are high achievers (the successfully sinister), so are not likely to be brought in for study by others.
In 1954, Richard Christie began to found this much- neglected area of research. He determined that Machiavellian types (as noted in Oakley’s book): View others as objects to be manipulated, rather than empathize with them; lack concern for conventional morality; perhaps surprisingly lack obvious psychopathology; and have low ideological commitment. They are more concerned with the tactics for achieving possible ends than in an inflexible striving for an ultimate goal. While psychopathy and other conditions shade into each other or overlap somewhat- after all we’re not dealing with machined parts with regard to the human state of cognition, but the very flexible and slippery state of affairs that is manifest in the mind- Christie noted that with the subjects he studied, there was something more subtle happening than the thin mask of normalcy that is worn by the psychopath. He recognized that Machiavellian types were not just represented by the Hitlers and Stalins of public consciousness, but also to be found in such fields of human endeavor as science, business, religion or even charitable work. As Dr. Oakley mentioned in her talk; the Machiavellian’s ultimate goals are self serving ones. Therefore if their superficial charitable work ends up benefiting themselves most directly, they have no internal conflict about this. After all, giving to one’s self is the highest form of noble action and most righteous way to be in their minds. Christie, in defiance of popular perception, believed that Machiavellian personalities might be present in small percentages of any group of people!
In her book, Evil Genes, Dr. Oakley discusses in some depth the clinical designations and demarcations of mental illness of those under the broad antisocial personality disorder label. One amusing line on this from her book (page 51) reads: But genetic and imaging research is beginning to provide compelling evidence that, if those with antisocial personality disorder were thought of as being at the bottom of the hole of the human race, psychopaths would form the subgroup that took out the shovel and kept digging. End of quote. There is a very real reason why sociopaths/psychopaths give us the creeps: very ancient systems deep in our brains sense within them something that triggers these systems to respond to them as predator and we as potential prey; the fight or flight mechanisms kick in.
While the main title of her book and talk was Evil Genes, our presenter gave us many examples of how nature and one’s environment interact richly in order to provide the behavioral outcomes that we see. One example from her book that Dr. Forbes also mentioned in a presentation he once gave to us on nature via nurture (see Matt Ridley’s book by the same title) had to do with the enzyme MAO-A. Quote: Decades of research have shown that both genes and environment work together in a complex tango of cause. Intriguing research has shown, for example, that abused boys who happen to have genes coding for low levels of an enzyme, MAO-A, which breaks down communication molecules in the brain, have a higher tendency to become violent or criminal than other abused boys. When these children are raised in a normal environment, however, the gene doesn’t appear to affect behavior. The low- coding MAO-A genes provide only a predisposition for antisocial behavior… End of my quotation. Forbes, in his presentation, further remarked on how timing enters into- and crucially impacts- this situation, noting that boys from abusive environments who were rescued within a certain window of opportunity, had a far greater chance of escaping their genetic destiny for criminal/violent activity, but once that window of time had closed, no matter how much subsequent intervention, therapy, etc. was done on their behalf, the overwhelming propensity for violence and criminality was essentially baked into the cake; a done deal.
Oakley also gexamined twin studies in her book, including the TEDS one (Twins Early Development Study) to show the strong influence of shared genetics upon behavioral outcomes. Fraternal twins, even when reared in the same environment, show far less behavioral similarity than identical twins reared apart. The heritability of antisocial behavior in twins who were highly psychopathic was an astounding 81%! Oakley stated it flatly in her book: Some kids are born with a marked tendency toward evil. The component of the parental environment in which the child exists is often promoted by genetics as well; genes that are passed along to the child/ren. Oakley cites a study of adult twins and their offspring that revealed that it is not the family discord that causes problematic behavior but rather the genes that troubled parents pass along. In fact, the parents’ own genes apparently determine even how often they argue with each other. She notes elsewhere in her book that stress seems to be a key trigger for development of full blown conditions that may otherwise have languished within the individual in a relatively innocuous manner. The genes one has are related to risk for an illness and are not the illness itself. There is no gene for the creation of a psychopath but there are a number of genes and gene complexes that have been found to affect brain function regarding traits such as impulsivity, mood and anxiety. This idea of groups of genes that underlie personality types has been given the name QTL (or Qualitative Trait Loci) for behavioral traits.
In her presentation, Dr. Oakley showed us drawings of the brain, that were also reproduced in her book, which highlighted the two vital emotion- related organs: the amygdala and the cingulate cortex and how they are affected by a reduction in serotonin transport, or SERT. Serotonin provides a connection between two neurons, so if something happens to that connection, problems arise, since the neurons can not communicate clearly. The amygdala deals with the fight or flight response. This impulse connects up via SERT to the cingulate cortex which then helps to tune in the thoughts and focus our attention properly. When properly communicating, the heightened anxiety and impulsivity generated from the amygdala is damped down by signals from the cingulate cortex, when there is really no cause for such arousal to persist. It is the calm- down mechanism. So when this communication is impeded by low levels of SERT, there is a sharply reduced likelihood of the individual becoming relaxed again, while the amygdala remains revved up.
Genetic predispositions for one negative result may also come with trade offs for other positive ones. It would be virtually impossible for us, given our current state of knowledge, to tease apart the detrimental from the positively- enhancing factors within our genomes. Many highly accomplished people suffer from a personality disorder, but their condition has the trade off of spurring them on to do amazing things. The allele APOE4 may predispose someone to getting Alzheimer’s disease. However, it may also promote a sharper memory in youth and may, if switched on by nutritional stress, help children survive malnutrition early in life. But, of course, in older age, they are prone to the mind ravaging effects of Alzheimer’s disease. Dr. Oakley writes about the BDNF (Brain- Derived Neurotrophic Factor) and the COMT gene which both come in two versions; valine and methionine. Both provide trade- offs as well. The detrimental effects of one may be a boon in certain situations that the generally more positive version would be a hindrance in. As to COMT (catechol-O-methyltransferase), its methionine and valine versions are often memorably described as warrior versus worrier, with the val version tending to denote a bit less intelligence and more aggression, yet be better for handling stress and more flexible for rapidly changing situations. The met version produces a deeper thinker but also one with lower emotional resilience against negative mood states. They (those with an emphasis on the met variety) are also more susceptible to feeling pain more acutely and over a sustained length of time.
Several other examples of trade offs were given, which helps explain why factors that seem superficially to be bad for the organism, do not die off but instead persist in the gene pool. This summary writer has come across the thought that those with ADHD were well suited to an active, bold and highly stimulating, quickly changing environment such as was the lot of humanity for most of its tenure on Earth. But in modern times; times that are more sedentary, agricultural, and where higher learning is done in large seated groups, those with this trait are, as Thom Hartmann- who has written extensively on ADHD calls them, hunters in a farmer’s world and not so well suited to their environment any longer. Still enough such people are needed and continue to be reproductively viable- even desirable, to perpetuate the continued existence of those with this trait.
Because there is a confluence of factors that produce the borderline personality type, there is no one known way to eliminate this disorder from the gene pool. There are instances of the perfect storm of genetic elements coming together in just the right way to set up the being toward expressing full blown BPD (borderline personality disorder) or other antisocial behavioral outcomes; ones that require a stressful environment to ignite the genetic predisposition, into a full blown condition. This is why although the tendency for such outcomes are highly heritable among closely related individuals, it does not mean that siblings, for example, will ever exhibit any of those antisocial traits. In Carolyn’s case, there was also a viral influence on her becoming a borderline. More on this later.
As to psychopathy, the corpus callosum (which serves to send information back and forth among the two brain hemispheres) seems to play a role, in that a poorly- structured one, where hemispheric communication is damped down, inhibits the left brain from exerting control over the negative moods that may be generated by the right brain, which may result in aggressive, unregulated behavior. Some researchers point to amygdala dysfunction as being the core of psychopathy, however. When this pair of organs is not functioning properly, those with the dysfunction may have an increased need for excitement to counteract the blasé state of these organs, such as aggressive acts. Without well- running amygdala, there is a decreased fear response, and this in turn may throttle in the development of a psychopath’s conscience. Also, damage to the dorsolateral, ventromedial and orbitofrontal structures of the brain appears to be strongly associated with antisocial behavior. Orbitofrontal dysfunction, for instance, allows hostility to go unchecked, while dorsolateral dysfunction contributes toward an inability to learn from punishment. One needs the structures of the orbitofrontal cortex and other related neurological features to have a feeling of compassion. Without these, one grows up morally blind.
Psychopaths also have more difficulty in processing abstract, big picture ideas and in comprehension of nonverbal cues. This processing is associated with the right brain’s anterior superior gyrus which is less active in sociopaths. Abstract social emotions that are troublesome for these individuals include ones regarding love, remorse, empathy, and guilt. The posterior superior temporal cortex is involved in perceiving others’ intentions and actions. When this is impaired, it is harder for individuals with this impairment to view another as a full person who has intentions and goals. One may now see, thanks to our new imaging technologies, how the various overlapping regions in the brain contribute to moral reasoning and how the unique set of dysfunctions to those regions contribute toward psychopathy. Impairments to those areas that create the moral feeling sense create an individual who may intellectually know right from wrong, but who cannot experience this as a feeling to either inhibit negative behavior or to act on more positive impulses.
Mirror neurons, which weren’t discovered until the 1990, also play an important role in how we regard – and respond to- each other. One’s mirror neurons fire when one witnesses other people engaged in the same activity the viewer is. It causes people to relate to actions and feel them and even goes toward allowing the experience of empathy. Psychopaths, in effect, have broken mirror neurons and they have trouble projecting onto others what they themselves do not feel. They especially have trouble understanding sadness and fear in others. A superabundance of white matter in the brain serves to establish more connections between otherwise contradictory compartmentalized data. Therefore it is easier to lie, without guilt, with this extra matter.
Christie’s research assumed the equivalence between psychopaths and Machiavellian types. Another researcher, McHoskey, saw that while there was a goodly amount of dovetailing between the two personality types, there were also aspects that did not fit well. Might there be, he wondered, some other syndrome that might even more closely match the characteristics of Machiavellianism? In testing individuals, McHoskey found that the Cluster B category correlated most strongly with Machiavellianism; this Cluster being related to dramatic, emotional personality disorders. But antisocial personality was not the only disorder that related with Machiavellianism. Another one that did was borderline personality disorder.
BPD’s coping characteristics include splitting behavior, projection, blame- shifting, control issues, interpersonal insensitivity, issues of situational competence, narcissistic demands, gaslighting and chameleon- like behavior. It’s symptom complexes are: impulsive and self- destructive behavior, rapid mood swings with anxiety and depression, feelings of boredom and isolation, and intense and unstable personal relationships. BPD is still a poorly understood condition even though one to two percent of the population of the US alone is thought to suffer from its most profound effects. The term was coined to describe what was theorized as a form of pathology lying on the border between psychosis and neurosis. This no longer fits well with our current knowledge but the name abides. Oakley asserted that a more descriptive term now would be emotionally unstable, since instability is the central feature of this disorder.
At the top of the above paragraph, a number of terms were thrown out. I will now, using information gleaned from Dr. Oakley’s book and presentation, elucidate what some of them refer to more clearly. Splitting is a coping process where the borderline swings between idealizing and devaluing people in relationships. Not only are people strictly divided into the white hats and the black hats but this may shift without any externally motivated reason (from the outsider’s perspective), so that the former ally would now be a potential foe; the former vilified person or group, conversely, may now be valued. There are no shades of gray for the borderline; people are either all good or all bad. As to brain function, splitting may involve overactivation of the emotional processing ventromedial cortex as opposed to the rational processing dorsolateral prefrontal cortex.
Projection occurs when the borderline projects some characteristic that is deemed too painful onto others. The borderline will not admit to having a problem because he has transferred it onto others. The chameleon effect is one where the borderline takes on the coloring (so to say) of others around him and then uses this in a manipulative manner for personal gain. Gaslighting is a term derived from the 1944 film: Gaslight, where the husband turns down the gas to the lighting in the house in order to unsettle his spouse. When the wife comments on this dimming she perceives, he assures her that she is imagining things. He does other things to make her feel that she is losing her mind and cruelly says that she is becoming like her mother who had gone insane. This results in her self confidence and emotional equilibrium being destroyed. Gaslighting, therefore, refers to a technique used by borderlines (and others with a similar agenda) to attempt to deny another person’s perceptions, memory or very sanity.
Dr. Oakley wrote and spoke of Slobodan Milosevic, called the Butcher of the Balkans, due to his four- war (in Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, and Kosovo) decade of ethnic cleansing that resulted in the deaths of over two hundred and twenty five thousand people and created over a million refugees. In keeping with the instability aspect of borderlines, Milosovic was deemed to have identity disturbance, that is: having a markedly and persistently unstable self- image or sense of self. He could switch moods with astonishing speed; going from extreme anger to calm in a heartbeat, for example. Some components of identity disturbance include role absorption, painful incoherence and inconsistency. The first term refers to how the individual will absorb or utterly adopt some role or ideological identity or label, usually around some cause that may shift. The second term comes from not feeling one’s persona matches one’s inner sense of self. This may impel the individual to adopt chameleon strategies in order to take on a different persona and to change one’s unstable personality in different situations. Inconsistency relates to the borderline’s propensity toward making declarations for all others but not personally subscribing to those dictates him/herself. Mao was a prime example of this behavior, as when he mandated chastity or else very tightly controlled sexual activity for those he ruled over while entertaining several women at a time and otherwise letting the satisfaction of his libido roam far, wide and unchecked.
On page 162 of Evil Genes, Oakley brings together many of the ideas and terms so far mentioned, as exhibited in Milosevic: Milosevic also exhibited the frequent narcissistic and antisocial characteristics of a pattern of grandiosity, need for admiration, and lack of empathy; Serbian psychologist Zarko Trenjesanin described him as a cold narcissus. Oddly enough, the exaggerated sense of self- importance associated with narcissism- the slippery twin sister of both antisocial and borderline personality disorder- can motivate Machiavellian manipulation and lying. After all, for many people- even normal people with no personality disorder- a laudable end can justify many means. And for the narcissist, nothing is more laudable than the grandiosity of the narcissist himself. End of quote
Just as various disorders and syndromes can shade into and overlap each other to some degree, there is not a purely evil or purely good person to be found in humanity. Hitler was good to his dogs and seemed to have a genuine affection for children (of Aryan stock, anyway). Milosevic was, by all accounts, a devoted father to his children and adoring husband to his wife, whom he cherished deeply. Also, because of the fuzzy boundaries between categories of borderline behavior and that of the psychopath, psychologists Nicholas Swift and Harpal Nandhra have coined the term borderpath to capture a fuller and more characteristic- inclusive portrayal of those with a blending of borderline and psychopathic behavior.
Dr. Oakley has a deep interest and expertise in languages, and in her writing on Lenses and Frames she deals with the underlining neurology and cultural influences behind the differing perceptions between native speakers of different languages. On page 175- 176 of Evil Genes she writes: Those who grow up speaking Chinese, for example, process mathematics in different areas of the brain than those who grow up speaking English as their first language. Both groups use the inferior parietal cortex, but Chinese speakers also use a visual processing area, while English speakers use a language processing area. [...] Other studies have shown that gyri in the frontal, temporal, and parietal lobes develop differently in Chinese speakers than in English speakers- acquisition of a different language appears to cause actual anatomical differences in the brain. Chinese speakers, in fact, literally see the world differently than English speakers- eye tracking studies show that English speakers tend to first focus on individual items in the foreground of the picture, while Chinese speakers tend to first take in the back ground and the picture as a whole. [...] In some sense, then, language and culture might be thought of as helping to structure the neurologically based lenses that people use to perceive reality. End of quotations.
Some brain structures related to handling emotion that Dr. Oakley wrote of are the orbital frontal cortex, which is designed to inhibit inappropriate actions; the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, which is where plans and concepts are held and manipulated as well as being deeply involved in the ability to think logically and rationally about various topics; the ventromedial cortex, which allows us to consciously experience our emotions and helps to link conscious to unconscious thought; and the anterior cingulate cortex, which helps us focus our attention and to tune in our thoughts. When there is impairment or dysfunction to this area, as is seen in borderlines, it makes it harder for them to hear and attend to information they do not wish to contemplate. It is also an area involved in producing feelings of empathy. On page 183 of her recent book, Oakley writes: Most emotions are born in the limbic system, along with our appetites and urges. Even though this part of the brain is below our level of awareness, its constant feeding of impulses to the conscious cortical areas profoundly affects us. End of quote.
She goes on to explain how connections with these and other brain structures is crucial to forming a proper emotional response to one’s environment. These connections are made via neurotransmitters such as serotonin and dopamine. When this system is running aberrantly, as with borderline personality types, the emotional response itself is affected. Machiavellians can use their own neurological quirks to fool us into actively working against the very ideals we hold most dear. The aforementioned systems and brain structures, when disturbed, can lead to emotional dysregulation, impulsivity and cognitive- perceptual impairment in the borderline. As to the problem in regulating emotions from the top down (higher executive functions to mitigate or blunt the limbic system’s unbridled emotions), Oakley noted that this capability may be one of the defining differences between a clinically diagnosed borderline and a person who shows many borderline traits.
Volumes of the left orbitofrontal cortex, right anterior cingulate cortex, amygdala, and the hippocampus are all smaller in the borderline type. With regard to the hippocampus, this may be a remarkable 17% decrease in size from the norm. This shrinkage forms a distinctive pattern seen only in those with borderline personality disorder, but it is unclear if the smaller sizes of those neural features causes the disorder or if the disorder causes them to deteriorate. The confluence of behaviors seen in the borderline are impulsivity, moodiness ( borderlines experience only inconsistency and have more mood swings [affective instability], without visible provocation, in an average day than most people do in a month) and cognitive dysfunction, with an underlying issue of problems with identity. This last characteristic includes the previously- discussed chameleon- like behavior as well as the curious mixtures of inflexibility and malleability. The affective instability, mentioned above, have been found to be related to borderline symptoms of identity disturbance, chronic emptiness or boredom, inappropriate anger, and the defenses of splitting and projection.
Chairman Mao was dubbed the perfect borderpath by Dr. Oakley and further, was considered the most Machiavellian leader of the many such of that type of the twentieth century. For perspective on Mao’s bloody rule, Oakley reports that if one takes the death toll for all wars, worldwide, between 1900 and 1987, Mao alone murdered over twice as many as were killed in all those wars. Not being able to feel true empathy and having no managing –or very limited governing- controls over emotions, the borderline, when he feels hurt by others, may lash out in a rage that may be intense, cruel and devoid of any concern or understanding of the other party. Mao understood human suffering chiefly as a way to control people. He seemed genuinely incapable of confronting the effects of the famine he inflicted on the population which killed an estimated 30,000,000 people. His general reaction to the policies he created which caused this devastation was to pretend it simply was not happening. The psychologist Robert Jay Lifton dubbed Mao’s Great Leap: psychism, which he explained as being the attempt to achieve control over one’s external environment through internal or psychological manipulations, via behavior determined by intrapsychic needs that are no longer in touch with the actualities of the world one seeks to influence. It has since been re-named: magical thinking. The inconsistency that is part and parcel of the borderline was seen as pathologically extreme in Mao and he even said of himself that his words and deeds were inconsistent.
Mao had an intense need for control and micromanagement over the lives of all he ruled over. Control slid into vengeance in the borderpathic mind of Mao, and he could wait for decades to exact retribution against those who had differed from him. This instigated the Cultural Revolution, or what Oakley termed: the parent of all purges, where at least three million people died violent deaths and another one hundred million are thought to have suffered from persecutions. Foreign minister Chen Yo called the Cultural Revolution one big torture chamber. Mao enjoyed slow deaths during public executions for maximum psychological affect on the witnesses of these gruesome killing displays.
The narcissism that is typical of the borderline rose to the level of a religion with Mao. In a statement he made, many of the aforementioned characteristics of the borderline are bundled together succinctly; the narcissism, the objectification of others, lack of empathy, the end justifying ANY means, and believing that achieving their own personal desires are the ultimate good—even altruistic. He said: I do not agree with the view that to be moral, the motive of one’s action has to be benefiting others. Morality does not have to be defined in relation to others… People like me want to… satisfy our hearts to the full, and in doing so we automatically have the most valuable moral codes. Of course there are people and objects in the world, but they are there only for me. End of quotation cited on page 243 of Oakley’s book.
Mao’s successor, Deng Xiaoping, created economic reforms that helped pull China back out of ruination, but during Mao’s rule of more than a quarter century, seventy million Chinese died needlessly (often gruesomely) at his behest, and the economy was in utter shambles. Yet the control and reverential sentiment toward himself that he was able to exert among the populace was incredible and, for many, abiding.
Dr. Oakley, primarily in her book, but touched upon in her talk as well, discussed the ways that women with borderline characteristics had found to exert their own control over large numbers of people; typically by taking the reins of power afforded to them by their liaisons with powerful men. She ran through various examples from the past right up to the present, including the House of Hilton. A phenomenon has been noted where powerful men (who often come with their own set of psychological quirks), attract charismatic, troubled, and sometimes deeply sinister women. Psychologist Kreisman, quoted in Evil Genes, says: Typically, the borderline seeks partners who are in a position of power. The most common scenario involves the younger, attractive, borderline woman and the older, narcissistic man: the secretary embarks on an affair with her older, married boss; a student becomes involved with her professor; a patient with her doctor. End of quote from Dr. Kreisman, but Oakley goes on to write in the same paragraph: Marriage into aristocracy or royalty, in times of old, or for Diana in modern times, offers the readiest route for borderlines to partners in positions of power. End of quote.
Oakley also dealt with the mixed bag (alluded to previously in this summary) that comes with borderline personality disorder types in power, or who have gained center stage in some sphere of influence or achievement. Just some she wrote about include Pinochet, who was responsible for torturing and killing thousands who opposed his regime yet most agree that his policies left Chile the economic envy of South America; Mussolini caused the deaths of, among others, thousands of Ethiopians in his grand imperialistic schemes, yet made the proverbial trains run on time; Pilsudski could be ruthless in his use of dictatorial methods but left his country (Poland) better off than it was before he took power.
In discussing the Enron scandal, Oakley pointed out the many borderline characteristics (some positive features, others more along the lines of the successfully sinister) of its top executives, including Skilling, whom she described as Machiavellian, imbued with an amazing memory (however, the successfully sinister are able to possess such astounding memories while conveniently forgetting, when it benefits them), cognitively dysfunctional, egotistical, charismatic and almost borderpathic. The narcissism of the borderline is yet another feature that is a double edged sword; too little can result in talented and capable people being passed by, while too much- in concert with other Machiavellian traits- can lead to the worst sorts of social disasters, including what Oakley listed as: Skilling, Fastow, and Lay’s Enron on an organizational level; Hitler’s Nazi Germany, Stalin’s Soviet Union, or Mao’s China on a broader historical level.
Dr. Oakley also considered the temper of the borderline (she wrote of Skilling’s shocking volatility, as but one example) and wrote: If there is a difference between normal and sinister behavior, it is that the successfully sinister often appear to use their temper in a more consciously manipulative fashion for malevolent ends. End of quote (page 300). In addition to temper, Oakley wrote a great deal about the phenomenal memory of borderline types, used as a means of exercising control over others or winning others over to them (the famous leader who recalls your name or something unique to you is a flattering event for many). Another characteristic seen in the successfully sinister, whether a true borderline or not, that Oakley highlighted was their hypomania or indefatigable- almost supernatural, in some cases- endurance and drive. Of those we universally deem evil, such as dictators Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, Mao, Ceausescu, Castro, Papa Doc Duvalier, and Robert Mugabe; each of these individuals, Oakley asserted, were capable of almost unimaginable human effort- so long, she added, as the work pertained to the all- consuming desire to achieve control.
People simply cannot relate to what the Machiavellian successfully sinister person is capable of doing. Since it is unimaginable and so alien to their own thinking, many become self- blinded to what is going on all around them, as it is implemented by the Machiavellians in their midst. Even genocide falls into this category; people simply cannot believe that such horrendous and unthinkable atrocities may be happening. Rational actors will not inflict seemingly gratuitous violence on scores of others, we naïvely believe. But Barbara Oakley advises, that only by recognizing Machiavellians for what they are and how they operate can we begin to stop them. Our own sense of morality appears to be hardwired into us and is not a result of one’s education, religion, or even family values that were thought to be instilled within us. However, as Dr. Oakley notes: Those few who are wired differently- and we are beginning to learn how the wiring’s awry [thanks to new neurological imaging technologies]- march to their own moral tune, no matter what they are taught. End of quote (322).
Continuing with the idea of both recognizing and safeguarding against the effects of the Machiavellians around us, Dr. Oakley noted that gossip can be a surprisingly helpful tool to employ. Machiavellians use their unsavory tactics (she writes on page 336) to climb above their real level of talent [...and…] play a cutthroat game of backbiting, back scratching, building a personal power base, reporting falsely rosy pictures of their work [see Enron executives again], demonizing adversaries, and siphoning assets- activities that strengthen the Machiavellian even as they weaken the enterprise. End of quote. The Machiavellian may hoodwink supervisors or others closer to the top of the power structure, but those beneath them see a different story. Gossip helps to inform the underlings of the reality of the Machiavellian’s behavior and its costs to others, as well as for those who gain their confidences.
Closer to home, Dr. Oakley wrote of her sister Carolyn, who had contracted polio as a child. The poliovirus not only invades the motor neurons, causing the withering and weakening of limbs, but also goes to the midbrain, which includes the reticular activating system; this system ties into a number of neurotransmitter systems including those, Oakley informs us in her book, using serotonin, norepinephrine, and, especially, dopamine. The poliovirus can have a powerful effect on the brain, but the connection between this and what could result in the Machiavellian behavior that Carolyn exhibited was not known at the time. But one example of Carolyn’s bizarre behavior included her going to the grocery store to pick up a few items and then not being seen again for five years! She had bumped into a man there and lived with him for the duration of the week then moved on from there without a backward glance. Perhaps even more shocking to our sensibilities was how Carolyn, who kept a diary, could write- in the same sentence- something of little consequence, such as a meal she ate, along with a matter of fact announcement that her father had died, and then, going on to some other toss- off comment.
Oakley explored what we now know about how polio can help produce a Machiavellian type in the right circumstances, as it had in her sister, but also noted environmental assaults upon the no- doubt terrified 3 year old Carolyn, as she had been ensconced in an overflowing iron lung ward, immobilized and given scant attention within the sea of other encased children. Too, once she emerged from the hospital for home, this was only for brief periods between more hospitalizations and painful operations and withstanding the less than enlightened therapies of the early 1950’s. And when she was finally able to be in the midst of other children, she would have stood out as the poor crippled girl; a target of bullying and teasing.
A Danish study that Oakley cites in her book, found that polio survivors have a 40% increased risk for being hospitalized for various psychiatric disorders. More amazing is that for those who contracted polio before age seven, as Carolyn had, the risk of psychiatric hospitalization was even higher. Our presenter believes that Carolyn had the right confluence of factors to become a borderline: the poliovirus itself, the trauma she experienced as a result of having it, and a genetic predisposition toward how her behavior would emerge. Carolyn was never diagnosed with any specific psychiatric disorder; the research hadn’t been done, or was inchoate and fragmentary back when she was exhibiting her aberrant behavior and connections had not yet been established between various seemingly disparate factors. Dr. Oakley knew that the polio virus’ invasion and partial destruction of the reticular activating system also affects the survivor’s attention but she hadn’t initially associated this with what Michael Posner’s research group found, which indicated that minor differences in the attentional network appear to be vitally influential (as Oakley writes on page 326) in the development of full- blown borderline personality disorder- for those with the genetic predisposition. Furthermore, Joseph Newman’s work established the connection between a dysfunctional attentional network and the development of psychopathy.
Carolyn’s natural intelligence was left untouched by the virus that wreaked havoc upon her motor system and reticular activating system. This intelligence, Oakley wrote: 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 neurological underpinnings, in all probability caused by a perfect storm of neural damage due to the poliovirus invasion, extraordinary stress from the consequent social isolation and ostracization, and underneath it all, a genetic predisposition. End of quote. Oakley notes of her sister, that Carolyn, due to her physical challenges, was simply unable to rise to the level of a truly successfully sinister individual. Furthermore, she was impenetrable, Oakley expressed, because there was little to penetrate; her empathy was evanescent because it was only superficial; she showed little guilt because there was little to show.
People like Carolyn and Carolyn herself, Oakley asserts, do not intend to be evil and do not see themselves that way. They are, as Dr. Oakley writes on page 331 of Evil Genes: 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 only self- pity. End of quote.
The author of Evil Genes, writes that reason has given her an understanding and peace (Carolyn died in sinister circumstances that I’ll not disclose here but will leave for the reader of her book to learn, as those of us who attended her presentation had) that might be called forgiveness. She is still wary but in an informed way. This serves as a shield that helps protect her and her loved ones against the Carolyns of the world.
Synthesized by Charles LaRue.
