In the section on the question If a person has no conscience, can he be considered a person? given by the author Alexander the best answer is Can. Shameless

Answer from Anton Klyuchnikov[guru]
If an individual has no conscience, then this is a Man with a capital letter!

Answer from Iskander Iskanderov[master]
Conscience is the wealth of the soul... And we are poor people.

Answer from Vitaly[guru]
don't count....they don't care....
that many conscientious people have met lately?
Me not

Answer from THUNDER[guru]
So the main hallmark? Are you sure about that? The baby does not know what conscience is, shall we cross him off the list of people? A person without conscience is also a person, only without conscience. But a person with the main distinguishing feature is already a Man with a capital letter!

Answer from KSENIA LEON[guru]
he will remain a man in his physiology ... therefore Nikolai is canonized in Russia, and the revolution to the "one night" riot .... in which a group participated ... a small group of people .... and can this disease be considered " lack of conscience...."lack of shame and honor"? and yet it became the property of our country for many years .... so we were presented ... distorted reality ... conscience ... distorted ... but it is .... and therefore we see what we see. ... and we each choose our own truth

Answer from Irina Finarevskaya[guru]
Conscience is a state of mind and it is different for everyone, one will stretch out his hand and kick with the other foot. do I deduce

Answer from (M.S) Noon Rider[guru]
I agree, there is such a theory - according to which the presence of Reason is not yet a sign of a Man.
It's just a sign of an intelligent animal. And only the development of the Third Signaling System - that is, Conscience - allows us to talk about the development of Man!

If you were completely free of conscience—no moral hesitation and no guilt—what do you think you would do with your life?

When I ask people this question, as is often the case, the typical response is “Wow” or “Stunned”, followed by silence during which the audience scrunches up their faces in mental effort, as if someone had asked them a question on a semi-familiar language.

After that, most people smirk or laugh, apparently amazed at the authority that conscience has in their lives, and respond with some version: “I have no idea what I will do, but I am sure that it will not be what I'm doing now."

One especially creative person after "wow" and a short pause, he chuckled and said, "Maybe I'll be the dictator of a small country or something like that." He said it like it was more sensible and more impressive than the socially valuable professional career to which he had committed himself in reality.

Would it be smarter not to have a conscience? Would we be happier? We know that large groups of people will be in trouble: entire nations of sociopaths, all for themselves alone. But realistically, on an individual level, would you or I, as individuals, be happier and richer if we could get rid of the limitations of conscience? Of course, at times it seems that this is the case. Dishonest people are in positions of power and corporate thieves are buying Gulfstreams and yachts while we work hard and make "reasonable" car loan payments.

But what is the truth? From a psychological point of view, do sociopaths really live better than we do, or is having a conscience a happy fate?

In a pragmatic irony, we were selected by nature from the start to be social creatures, inclined to share what we have.

Even our brains are designed for emotional connection with each other and for a sense of conscience. Or rather, everyone, except for a few of us, went down this path.

Benefiting from a different but equally pragmatic selection process, some have evolved as outcasts, indifferent to their siblings, with emotionally disabled brains that hatch completely selfish agendas. From the perspective of the XXI century, looking through the eyes of a psychologist, which of these two ancient communities, conscientious or sociopathic, disposed of their human nature better?

Losing victory

It would be difficult to refute the observation that people who are not at all burdened with conscience sometimes achieve power and wealth unhindered, at least for a while. Too many chapters in the book of human history, from its opening lines to the latest records, are built around the stunning successes of military invaders, conquerors, oligarchs and empire builders.

These individuals are either too long dead or too privileged to be formally assessed in the way a clinical psychologist would like. But given their well-known and documented behavior, we assume, even without knowing the rating on the scalePdthat a notable number of these individuals are unlikely to have any piercing sense of duty based on emotional attachment to others. In other words, some of them were and are sociopaths.

Even worse, brutal conquerors and empire builders tend to keep their contemporaries in fear, and during their lives are often seen as role models for all of humanity.

Undoubtedly, countless 13th-century Mongolian boys fell asleep to tales of the indomitable Genghis Khan, and everyone wonders about the modern heroes we offer our children: will they not eventually go down in history as motivated by merciless self-interest?

Lack of conscience also works well for sexual conquest.

As an illustration of this aspect, we can consider the offspring of the same famous tyrant: the eldest son of Genghis Khan, Tushi Khan, is said to have fathered forty sons, by virtue of his origin, using the right to choose from among the most beautiful captives. The rest of the vanquished, along with their sons, were usually killed. One of Genghis Khan's many grandsons, Kublai Khan, founder of the Yuan Dynasty, fathered twenty-two legitimate sons and added thirty virgins to his harem each year.

At the time of this writing, almost eight percent of the males living in the former Mongol Empire, that is, sixteen million people, have almost identical Y chromosomes. According to geneticists, this means that about sixteen million people living in the twenty-first century bear the stamp of the legacy of Genghis Khan: the 13th century, filled with genocide and rape.

Genghis Khan is an exception among sociopathic tyrants because he did not die a violent or ignominious death. Instead, he fell off his horse while hunting, in 1227. Without a doubt, most perpetrators of genocide and mass rape commit suicide or are killed, often at the hands of fed-up angry followers. Caligula was killed by one of his guards. Hitler is believed to have put a gun in his mouth and his body was burned with diesel fuel. Mussolini was shot, and his body was hung by the legs in the town square. In Romania, Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife Elena were killed by firing squad in 1989, on Christmas Day. Cambodian Pol Pot died in a two-room hut where he was held captive by former associates, his body was burned in a pile of rubbish and rubber tires.

Sociopaths on a global scale tend to end up badly, and this drastic downward trend is seen in the smaller ones as well. Ultimately, sociopathy appears to be a losing game, no matter how big or small.

Hannah's father, for example, has lost everything he may have held dear. By the age of fifty, he had lost his job, position in society, his beautiful wife and loving daughter– all for the pleasure of being a small-time heroin game player, and he would probably die from a bullet in the head fired by some other small-time criminal.

Luke, the worthless ex-husband of my patient Sydney, also lost everything of value: his wife, son, and even the pool. Super-Skip, though he nonchalantly considers himself invulnerable and too smart to be brought down without finding the sympathy of the Securities and Exchange Commission, is likely to find that he is neither when the commission takes him seriously.

"Doctor" Doreen Littlefield, even smart enough to pose as a real doctor, instead drifts like a fake into more and more obscure establishments, playing the same tedious games with worthy people, which she envies until there are no more places where she can hide. By the age of fifty, her travels and her uncontrolled greed will empty her bank account and turn her face into the wrinkled mask of a bored seventy-year-old woman.

The list of such sad endings could go on and on. Contrary to what seems to be a fairly popular belief, unscrupulous acts ultimately bring no more than a fair share of the good in life. Rather the opposite. One could even say that one way to determine if a questionable person is a real sociopath is to wait until the end of his life and see if he has ruined himself, partially or completely. Does this person really have what you would like to have in your life, or, on the contrary, is he isolated from others, burnt out and suffering from boredom? Perhaps power ended in a deafening fall?

Ever since we started keeping records of wars, occupations, and genocides, historians have often noticed that the human race has been producing a certain type of catastrophically immoral villain over and over again. As soon as we get rid of one, the next one appears elsewhere on the planet.

From the point of view of population genetics, there is probably some truth in this legend. And because we don't understand these people, because their psychology is alien to most of us, we often don't recognize or stop them until they've harmed humanity in unfathomable ways. But, as Gandhi pointed out with surprise and relief: “In the end, they always fail – think about it: always!”

The same phenomenon occurs on smaller scales. Ordinary people without conscience sow pain in their families and society, but in the end they come to self-destruction. The petty sociopaths will live long enough to dominate the other inhabitants of our imaginary island, perhaps spread some genes, but in the end they will probably be hung up by their feet.

Some of the reasons for this failure are obvious, especially when infamous despots like Mussolini or Pol Pot are killed and mutilated by embittered former followers. If you oppress, rob, kill and rape enough people, some of them will unite against you and take revenge. We can see this in the much less epic story of Doreen Littlefield. The odds were always against her, and in the end she pissed off the wrong person.

But there are additional, less obvious reasons for the failure of a shameless life in the long run, reasons that have more to do with the psychology of sociopathy than other people's rage. And the first of them is boredom, simple and understandable.

Is that all there is?

While we all know what boredom is, most normal adults don't experience outright boredom very often. We are tense, in a hurry and worried, but we are rarely bored - partly because we are tense, in a hurry and worried. Time without everything, when we do not need to be present somewhere, is usually perceived as a respite, and not as monotony.

To experience what boredom is, we must turn to childhood. Children and teens are often bored, so bored they can barely stand it. Their perfectly normal, developmental need for constant stimulation of an ongoing learning process often runs counter to the monotony of long drives, rainy days, and classrooms.

In childhood, boredom can be excruciating, like chronic headache or intense thirst in the absence of drinks. It can hurt so much that the poor child wants to scream loudly or throw something noisy at the wall. Extreme boredom is perhaps a form of pain.

Lucky for us, adults don't need constant stimulation. Despite our stresses, we generally live in a tolerable arousal phase, without suffering from over-stimulation or under-stimulation—sociopaths except.

People who are sociopaths claim that they almost constantly need extra stimulation. Some people use the word "addiction" to mean thrill addiction, risk addiction. Such dependencies arise because the most (perhaps the only) reliable remedy for understimulation is our emotional life, so much so that in many psychology texts, the terms "arousal" and "emotional response" are used almost interchangeably.

We are stimulated by our meaningful connections, negotiations with others, happy and sad moments lived with other people - and sociopaths do not have an emotional life to live it.

They never experience the sometimes tormenting, sometimes exhilarating constant upsurge that is inevitably present in genuine attachment to people.

Laboratory experiments using electric shocks and loud noises have shown that sociopaths have much less pronounced even physiological reactions (sweating, palpitations, etc.) that are usually associated with expectation anxiety and fear. To get adequate stimulation, sociopaths only have their dominance games at their disposal, and these games quickly lose their freshness and become obsolete.

Like drugs, games need to be played over and over again, bigger and better, and depending on the resources and talents of the individual sociopath, this may not be possible. And so in sociopathy, the pain of boredom can be almost constant.

The tendency to chemically relieve boredom temporarily is one of the reasons why sociopaths sometimes become alcoholics and drug addicts. And a large comorbidity study published in 1990 in the Journal of the American Medical Association estimates that 75 percent of sociopaths are addicted to alcohol and 50 percent abuse other drugs. Thus, sociopaths are often drug addicts in the usual sense, in addition to being literally addicted to risk. Drug culture, with its peak experiences and dangers, attracts the unscrupulous for many reasons, and sociopaths are at home in this culture.

Another study published in 1993 in the American Journal of Psychiatry found that 18 percent of intravenous drug users with antisocial personality disorder were HIV-infected, while among intravenous drug abusers who did not have antisocial personality disorder, this figure is only eight percent. The higher likelihood of HIV infection among sociopaths appears to be due to their propensity to engage in risky behavior.

These statistics bring us back to the question I posed in the first chapter: Is the lack of conscience an adaptive behavior - or is it a mental disorder? One working definition of a mental disorder is any psychological condition that results in a significant "impairment of life": that is, severe and unusual limitations in a person's ability to function as one might expect, given their health and level of intelligence.

Common sense tells us that the presence of any of the recognized mental disorders—major depression, chronic anxiety, paranoia, and the like—is likely to result in a deplorable "life disruption." But what about the absence of something that we usually consider as an exclusively moral trait? What about the lack of conscience?

We know that sociopaths almost never seek treatment, but do they suffer from "life disruption"?

This problem can be approached by looking at what makes sense in a sociopath's life: winning and dominating, and then thinking about the next strange question: why don't all sociopaths achieve high positions? Given their concentrated motivation and freedom of action that stems from a lack of conscience, they must all be formidable national leaders, or international leaders, or at least high-ranking specialists, or dictators of small countries. Why don't they always win?

Instead, most of them are obscure people who limit themselves to dominating their young children, or a spouse, or perhaps a few colleagues or subordinates. A fairly significant number of sociopaths are in jail, like Hannah's father, or in danger because of their careers or lives. Very few people are as fabulously rich as Skip. They became even less famous. Never leaving a noticeable mark in the world, most of them are moving downward life path, and at the end of middle age completely burn out. They may rob and torment us for a period of time, but fundamentally their lives fail.

From the point of view of a psychologist, even those who occupy prestigious positions, and those whose names have become famous, are failed lives. For most of us, happiness comes through the ability to love, through living our lives in accordance with our highest values ​​(most of the time), through feeling sufficiently satisfied with ourselves.

Sociopaths can't love, they don't have high values ​​by definition, and they almost never feel comfortable on their own. They are unloving, immoral and chronically bored, even the few who have become rich and powerful.

They experience internal discomfort for many reasons, not only because of boredom. The absolute self-absorption of sociopathy creates an individual consciousness that is aware of every slightest pain and cramp in the body, every passing sensation in the head and chest, whose ears of acute self-preoccupation are directed to every radio or television program reporting anything from bedbugs to ricin. Because his cares and attention are directed exclusively to himself, a person without conscience sometimes lives in the throes of hypochondriacal reactions, in comparison with which even the most capricious anxiety neurotics seem rational.. Cutting yourself on the edge of a paper turns out to be a significant event, and herpes on the lip is the beginning of the end.

Perhaps the most famous historical example of a body-obsessed sociopath is Adolf Hitler, who was a lifelong hypochondriac with an overwhelming fear of developing cancer. In an attempt to ward off cancer and a long list of other supposed health problems, he consumed "drugs" specially formulated by his favorite physician, Dr. Theodore Morel. Many of these pills contained hallucinogenic toxins. Thus, Hitler gradually poisoned himself for real. Most likely, it was because of this that the (real) trembling in his left hand became noticeable, and by the middle of 1944 he refused to be photographed.

Sociopaths sometimes use their hypochondria as a strategy for getting away from work. They're fine for a while, but then it's time to pay the bills, or look for a job, or help a friend move into a new apartment, and suddenly they have chest pains or a limp. Imaginary medical problems and ailments often provide special treatment, such as the last chair in a crowded room.

In general, they have an aversion to constant effort and organized work projects, and of course this desire for an easy life limits success in the real world. Getting up every morning and working for long hours is almost never considered an alternative.

Sociopaths believe that a simple scheme, one-time deal, or clever provocation is far superior to a daily commitment to work, a long-term goal, or a plan. Even when sociopaths are in high positions, these are positions where the amount of actual hard work (or lack of it) can be easily hidden, or where others can be manipulated into doing the work. Under such conditions, a smart sociopath can sometimes keep things going with ostentatious bursts of performance or through gossip, charm or intimidation.

Sociopaths pretend to be detached bystanders, or weather-makers, or priceless sensitive geniuses. They require frequent weekends or sabbaticals in which their activities are somewhat cryptic. Constant work, the true key to long-term success: working hard, enduring boredom, delving into details - too close to responsibility.

Unfortunately, this same self-limiting factor applies even to sociopaths who are born with special gifts and talents. The strong commitment and daily work required to create and promote your art, music or whatever creative project are usually impossible for a sociopath. If success can be achieved by accident, only by episodic effort, then maybe. But if art requires long-term personal investment, the case is hopeless.

A person without conscience treats his talents in the same way as he treats other people. He doesn't care about them.

Sociopathy is almost always solo work; another strategy is chosen only temporarily, but almost never in the long term. For the obvious reason of unrelenting self-interest, people without conscience play badly in a team. A sociopath acts only in his own interests. When he interacts with another person or group of people, he tries to do so through lies, flattery and fear-mongering.

These paths to success are much weaker and less durable than genuine relationships, leadership, and personal involvement, and goals that could be achieved in partnership or constant group effort tend to be ruined by the sociopath's exclusive self-care. This path to ultimate failure is commonly taken by notorious tyrants, as well as by countless lesser-known sociopathic employers, colleagues, and spouses.

When a sociopath becomes obsessed with manipulating other people, all other goals are overshadowed, and the resulting “life disruption,” albeit of a different kind, can be as severe as the limitations imposed by major depression, chronic anxiety, paranoia, and other mental illnesses. The emotional bankruptcy of sociopathy means that the sociopath is forever deprived of authenticity. emotional intelligence, the ability to understand the motives of people and what is an indispensable guide for them in life.

Like Doreen, who actually believes that you can increase your influence by humiliating others, like Skip, who imagines he is immune to society and its rules, like a defeated dictator, wondering why the hatred-burning crowd, consisting of "his people" , does not negotiate with him, a person without a conscience, even an intelligent one, as a rule, is short-sighted and surprisingly naive, and he is simply doomed to die from boredom, financial ruin or a bullet.

300 people took part in the experiment. Women suffered, men shrugged their shoulders...

Will this blush? © flickr.com

Women of all times and peoples so often and so hopelessly dejectedly accused men of lack of conscience that this, in the end, interested scientists. There is no smoke without fire - what if there really is no smoke in a strictly scientific sense, without emotions?

The experiment involved 300 men and women. They were offered "for virtual living" various life situations and then asked to describe their feelings as accurately as possible. The “performances” were programmed to arouse feelings of guilt of one degree or another and had a purely everyday plot: “On the wedding anniversary, I came home at dawn”, “I didn’t wash the dishes”, “I promised not to drink, and here it is again!”, “I left with girlfriends in the sauna”, “I forgot to sew him a button”.

The findings were startling: men did not “register” any unrest within themselves until it was about their guilt ... before themselves. The immoderate use of alcohol, shirking from classes in the gym disturbed the gentle soul of men much more than a “forgotten” visit to the mother-in-law, who sat all night at the current toilet, waiting for her beloved son-in-law, who promised to “twist and grease something”, but ... forgot.

Well, men's souls do not feel guilt from such trifles and that's it! Nerve receptors are silent, the mechanism does not turn on ... And it is useless to appeal to something that, in principle, is not there ...

But why?

Men are accustomed to think globally, - scientists explain, - without exchanging for trifles. They don't want to waste their nerve strength on something that doesn't matter. In the head of every man there is an invisible boundary between "significant" things and "trifles". And if anniversaries, bouquets and mother-in-law fell into "trifles", no reproaches will unbalance a man. The maximum that they are capable of is to express sincere surprise at such a warm reaction to the sweetheart.

The situation changes if a man is reproached for inattention to himself, his beloved. For example, a regular reminder that smoking kills his lungs puts a man out of balance - after all, we are talking about himself, a priori falling into the "global" column.

Accept men for who they are! psychologists advise. This will save your energy and save the relationship.

Perhaps they are right ... It's stupid to ask a caterpillar to fly over the garden - it's not given, it's not given!

But they have a lot to learn!

Psychologists classify guilt as one of the most unconstructive of all emotions. And the ability of a woman to suffer remorse over the fact that she failed to console her friend who quarreled with her husband, did not wash all the linen of an elderly mother in one sitting, but allowed herself a "bachelorette party" - a fair amount of stupidity. Moreover, it has nothing to do with the concept of "conscience."

Conscience is what pushes a person to self-improvement, causes a desire to become better. Guilt is a stupid reaction to someone else's expectations, nothing more. A black hole where your energy goes. And a great tool to manipulate you.

So men, not burdened with pangs of conscience, do very well. And we need to learn from them, and not waste our energy on trying to change what is a priori impossible to change. Yes, and it is not necessary.

Join the group, leave your comments

In everyday life, we often say the phrases: "A man without conscience", "unscrupulous", "no shame, no conscience", "completely lost his conscience", "live according to his conscience". What is conscience? Conscience is the noble element of the soul.

However, not everyone has a conscience. Some have it, others - dormant, for the time being, others - absent altogether or lost due to zombie or degradation of the soul. Those people who have a conscience act according to their conscience, according to the principle: "Do with others as you would like to be treated with you."

A conscientious person weighs his actions, corrects mistakes, restrains irritation and negative emotions. Even when you really want to answer the offender with rudeness for rudeness, he finds words and expressions to stop an unpleasant conversation, a scene. Such a person can lose loved ones, friends, but he will never lose himself, because he has a conscience - a good adviser in life. A sense of conscience in an unusual way protects its owner from losing the most important thing - honesty and decency. Those whose conscience is dormant for the time being, one day realize that they have lived their lives wrong, violating natural laws.

The conscience of such people wakes up, and with it come problems related to working out everything that is done in life not according to conscience, but as you want. Repentance comes: "Why did I then do this (-la)?" Sometimes this “why” hangs in the air, because you can’t fix the situation, the problem - it just took time, and with it the people who participated in this situation.

Let's talk about the third - who has no conscience at all. I think that they are the most unlucky in life. A person without conscience is an aggressor, a ruthless person. It seems to him that he is strong, cunning, dexterous. He is lucky, and everything turns out for the time being, for the time being, because his soul is slowly smoldering. Today he deceived, tomorrow he stepped over love, friendship, family relations, betrayed or sold someone for money. Sooner or later, such a person becomes lonely, unnecessary to anyone. And even those for whom he especially tried leave him. There is nothing more terrible than oblivion and loneliness. There comes a time when a man meets his conscience. It gives rise to a feeling of shame in the soul, for all those actions that have already been committed and are left in the past.

The past cannot be returned, cannot be corrected, and already there, according to conscience, one cannot act. In the present, because of this, chaos and imbalance occur, we lose the most precious thing that we have. Conscience clearly regulates all values ​​from spiritual to material. Therefore, a man without conscience clings to material values, losing the most important - spiritual. And then they say about him: "He has neither shame nor conscience."

Those who have a conscience cannot understand those who do not have it at all. Do not try to explain to an unscrupulous person that he is doing wrong, unworthy - he will never understand you, because he has no conscience, which means his own views on life and values. It should be noted that a person who has no conscience is energetically infectious for others, he, like a parasite, wants more and more, but, as a rule, at someone else's expense. And since he has no conscience, he is not able to love, pity, be merciful. Do not knock on closed souls, just give all the problems associated with this person to freedom Higher Forces and time - so you save your bright soul from destruction.