There are certain characteristics and mental attitudes which cause about 20% of a race to oppose violently any betterment activity or group.
Such people are known to have anti-social tendencies.
When the legal or political structure of a country becomes such as to favor such personalities in positions of trust, then all the civilizing organizations of the country become suppressed and a barbarism of criminality and economic duress ensues.
Crime and criminal acts are perpetuated by anti-social personalities. Inmates of institutions commonly trace their state back to contact with such personalities.
Thus, in the fields of government, police activities and mental health, to name a few, we see that it is important to be able to detect and isolate this personality type so as to protect society and individuals from the destructive consequences attendant upon letting such have free rein to injure others.
As they only comprise 20% of the population and as only 2½% of this 20% are truly dangerous, we see that with a very small amount of effort we could considerably better the state of society.
Well-known, even stellar, examples of such a personality are, of course, Napoleon and Hitler, Dillinger, Pretty Boy Floyd, Christie
When we trace the cause of a failing business, we will inevitably discover somewhere in its ranks the anti-social personality hard at work.
In families which are breaking up we commonly find one or the other of the persons involved to have such a personality.
Where life has become rough and is failing, a careful review of the area by a trained observer will detect one or more such personalities at work.
As there are 80% of us trying to get along and only 20% trying to prevent us, our lives would be much easier to live were we well-informed as to the exact manifestations of such a personality. Thus we could detect it and save ourselves much failure and heartbreak.
It is important then to examine and list the attributes of the anti-social personality. Influencing as it does the daily lives of so many, it well behooves decent people to become better informed on this subject.
The anti-social personality has the following attributes:
1. He or she speaks only in very broad generalities. “They say…” “Everybody thinks…” “Everyone knows…” and such expressions are in continual use, particularly when imparting rumor. When asked, “Who is everybody…” it normally turns out to be one source and from this source the anti-social person has manufactured what he or she pretends is the whole opinion of the whole society.
This is natural to them since to them all society is a large hostile generality, against the anti-social in particular.
2. Such a person deals mainly in bad news, critical or hostile remarks, invalidation and general suppression.
“Gossip” or “harbinger of evil tidings” or “rumormonger” once described such persons.
It is notable that there is no good news or complimentary remark passed on by such a person.
3. The anti-social personality alters, to worsen, communication when he or she relays a message or news. Good news is stopped and only bad news, often embellished, is passed along.
Such a person also pretends to pass on “bad news” which is in actual fact invented.
4. A characteristic, and one of the sad things about an anti-social personality, is that it does not respond to treatment or reform or psychotherapy.
5. Surrounding such a personality we find cowed or ill associates or friends who, when not driven actually insane, are yet behaving in a crippled manner in life, failing, not succeeding.
Such people make trouble for others.
When treated or educated, the near associate of the anti-social personality has no stability of gain but promptly relapses or loses his advantages of knowledge, being under the suppressive influence of the other.
Physically treated, such associates commonly do not recover in the expected time but worsen and have poor convalescences.
It is quite useless to treat or help or train such persons so long as they remain under the influence of the anti-social connection.
The largest number of insane are insane because of such anti-social connections and do not recover easily for the same reason.
Unjustly we seldom see the anti-social personality actually in an institution. Only his “friends” and family are there.
6. The anti-social personality habitually selects the wrong target.
If a tyre is flat from driving over nails, he or she curses a companion or a non-causative source of the trouble. If the radio next door is too loud, he or she kicks the cat.
If A is the obvious cause, the anti-social personality inevitably blames B, or C or D.
7. The anti-social cannot finish a cycle of action.
Such become surrounded with incomplete projects.
8. Many anti-social persons will freely confess to the most alarming crimes when forced to do so, but will have no faintest sense of responsibility for them.
Their actions have little or nothing to do with their own volition. Things “just happened”.
They have no sense of correct causation and particularly cannot feel any sense of remorse or shame therefore.
9. The anti-social personality supports only destructive groups and rages against and attacks any constructive or betterment group.
10. This type of personality approves only of destructive actions and fights against constructive or helpful actions or activities.
The artist in particular is often found as a magnet for persons with anti-social personalities who see in his art something which must be destroyed and covertly, “as a friend”, proceed to try.
11. Helping others is an activity which drives the anti-social personality nearly berserk. Activities, however, which destroy in the name of help are closely supported.
12. The anti-social personality has a bad sense of property and conceives that the idea that anyone owns anything is a pretense made up to fool people. Nothing is ever really owned.
The basic reason the anti-social personality behaves as he or she does lies in a hidden terror of others.
To such a person every other being is an enemy, an enemy to be covertly or overtly destroyed.
The fixation is that survival itself depends on “keeping others down” or “keeping people ignorant”.
If anyone were to promise to make others stronger or brighter, the anti-social personality suffers the utmost agony of personal danger.
They reason that if they are in this much trouble with people around them weak or stupid, they would perish should anyone become strong or bright.
Such a person has no trust to a point of terror. This is usually masked and unrevealed.
When such a personality goes insane the world is full of Martians or the FBI and each person met is really a Martian or FBI agent.
But the bulk of such people exhibit no outward signs of insanity. They appear quite rational. They can be very convincing.
However, the list given above consists of things which such a personality cannot detect in himself or herself. This is so true that if you thought you found yourself in one of the above, you most certainly are not anti-social. Self-criticism is a luxury the anti-social cannot afford. They must be RIGHT because they are in continual danger in their own estimation. If you proved one WRONG, you might even send him or her into a severe illness.
Only the sane, well-balanced person tries to correct his conduct.
If you were to weed out of your past by proper search and discovery those anti-social persons you have known and if you then disconnected, you might experience great relief.
Similarly, if society were to recognize this personality type as a sick being as they now isolate people with smallpox, both social and economic recoveries could occur.
Things are not likely to get much better so long as 20% of the population is permitted to dominate and injure the lives and enterprise of the remaining 80%.
As majority rule is the political manner of the day, so should majority sanity express itself in our daily lives without the interference and destruction of the socially unwell.
The pity of it is, they will not permit themselves to be helped and would not respond to treatment if help were attempted.
An understanding and ability to recognize such personalities could bring a major change in society and our lives.
Man in his anxieties is prone to witch hunts.
All one has to do is designate “people wearing black caps” as the villains and one can start a slaughter of people in black caps.
This characteristic makes it very easy for the anti-social personality to bring about a chaotic or dangerous environment.
Man is not naturally brave or calm in his human state. And he is not necessarily villainous.
Even the anti-social personality, in his warped way, is quite certain that he is acting for the best and commonly sees himself as the only good person around, doing all for the good of everyone — the only flaw in his reasoning being that if one kills everyone else, none are left to be protected from the imagined evils. His conduct in his environment and toward his fellows is the only method of detecting either the antisocial or the social personalities. Their motives for self are similar — self-preservation and survival. They simply go about achieving these in different ways.
Thus, as Man is naturally neither calm nor brave, anyone to some degree tends to be alert to dangerous persons and hence, witch hunts can begin.
It is therefore even more important to identify the social personality than the anti-social personality. One then avoids shooting the innocent out of mere prejudice or dislike or because of some momentary misconduct.
The social personality can be defined most easily by comparison with his opposite, the anti-social personality.
This differentiation is easily done and no test should ever be constructed which isolates only the anti-social. On the same test must appear the upper as well as lower ranges of Man’s actions.
A test that declares only anti-social personalities without also being able to identify the social personality would be itself a suppressive test. It would be like answering “Yes” or “No” to the question “Do you still beat your wife?” Anyone who took it could be found guilty. While this mechanism might have suited the times of the Inquisition, it would not suit modern needs.
As the society runs, prospers and lives solely through the efforts of social personalities, one must know them as they, not the anti-social, are the worthwhile people. These are the people who must have rights and freedom. Attention is given to the antisocial solely to protect and assist the social personalities in the society.
All majority rules, civilizing intentions and even the human race will fail unless one can identify and thwart the anti-social personalities and help and forward the social personalities in the society. For the very word “society” implies social conduct and without it there is no society at all, only a barbarism with all men, good or bad, at risk.
The frailty of showing how the harmful people can be known is that these then apply the characteristics to decent people to get them hunted down and eradicated.
The swan song of every great civilization is the tune played by arrows, axes or bullets used by the anti-social to slay the last decent men.
Government is only dangerous when it can be employed by and for anti-social personalities. The end result is the eradication of all social personalities and the resultant collapse of Egypt, Babylon, Rome, Russia or the West.
You will note in the characteristics of the anti-social personality that intelligence is not a clue to the anti-social. They are bright or stupid or average. Thus those who are extremely intelligent can rise to considerable, even head-of-state heights.
Importance and ability or wish to rise above others are likewise not indexes to the anti-social. When they do become important or rise they are, however, rather visible by the broad consequences of their acts. But they are as likely to be unimportant people or hold very lowly stations and wish for nothing better.
Thus it is the twelve given characteristics alone which identify the anti-social personality. And these same twelve reversed are the sole criteria of the social personality if one wishes to be truthful about them.
The identification or labelling of an anti-social personality cannot be done honestly and accurately unless one also, in the same examination of the person, reviews the positive side of his life.
All persons under stress can react with momentary flashes of anti-social conduct. This does not make them anti-social personalities.
The true anti-social person has a majority of anti-social characteristics.
The social personality has a majority of social characteristics.
Thus one must examine the good with the bad before one can truly label the anti-social or the social.
In reviewing such matters, very broad testimony and evidence are best. One or two isolated instances determine nothing. One should search all twelve social and all twelve anti-social characteristics and decide on the basis of actual evidence, not opinion.
The twelve primary characteristics of the social personality are as follows:
1. The social personality is specific in relating circumstances. “Joe Jones said…” “The Star Newspaper reported…” and gives sources of data where important or possible.
He may use the generality of “they” or “people” but seldom in connection with attributing statements or opinions of an alarming nature.
2. The social personality is eager to relay good news and reluctant to relay bad.
He may not even bother to pass along criticism when it doesn’t matter.
He is more interested in making another feel liked or wanted than disliked by others and tends to err toward reassurance rather than toward criticism.
3. A social personality passes communication without much alteration and if deleting anything tends to delete injurious matters.
He does not like to hurt people’s feelings. He sometimes errs in holding back bad news or orders which seem critical or harsh.
4. Treatment, reform and psychotherapy particularly of a mild nature work very well on the social personality.
Whereas anti-social people sometimes promise to reform, they do not. Only the social personality can change or improve easily.
It is often enough to point out unwanted conduct to a social personality to completely alter it for the better.
Criminal codes and violent punishment are not needed to regulate social personalities.
5. The friends and associates of a social personality tend to be well, happy and of good morale.
A truly social personality quite often produces betterment in health or fortune by his mere presence on the scene.
At the very least he does not reduce the existing levels of health or morale in his associates.
When ill, the social personality heals or recovers in an expected manner, and is found open to successful treatment.
6. The social personality tends to select correct targets for correction. He fixes the tyre that is flat rather than attack the windscreen. In the mechanical arts he can therefore repair things and make them work.
7. Cycles of action begun are ordinarily completed by the social personality, if possible.
8. The social personality is ashamed of his misdeeds and reluctant to confess them. He takes responsibility for his errors.
9. The social personality supports constructive groups and tends to protest or resist destructive groups.
10. Destructive actions are protested by the social personality. He assists constructive or helpful actions.
11. The social personality helps others and actively resists acts which harm others.
12. Property is property of someone to the social personality and its theft or misuse is prevented or frowned upon.
The social personality naturally operates on the basis of the greatest good.
He is not haunted by imagined enemies but he does recognize real enemies when they exist.
The social personality wants to survive and wants others to survive, whereas the anti-social personality really and covertly wants others to succumb.
Basically the social personality wants others to be happy and do well, whereas the anti-social personality is very clever in making others do very badly indeed.
A basic clue to the social personality is not really his successes but his motivations. The social personality when successful is often a target for the anti-social and by this reason he may fail. But his intentions included others in his success, whereas the anti-social only appreciate the doom of others.
Unless we can detect the social personality and hold him safe from undue restraint and detect also the anti-social and restrain him, our society will go on suffering from insanity, criminality and war, and Man and civilization will not endure.
Of all our technical skills, such differentiation ranks the highest since, failing, no other skill can continue, as the base on which it operates — civilization — will not be here to continue it.
Do not smash the social personality — and do not fail to render powerless the anti-social in their efforts to harm the rest of us.
Just because a man rises above his fellows or takes an important part does not make him an anti-social personality. Just because a man can control or dominate others does not make him an anti-social personality.
It is his motives in doing so and the consequences of his acts which distinguish the anti-social from the social.
Unless we realize and apply the true characteristics of the two types of personality, we will continue to live in a quandary of who our enemies are and, in doing so, victimize our friends.
All men have committed acts of violence or omission for which they could be censured. In all Mankind there is not one single perfect human being.
But there are those who try to do right and those who specialize in wrong and upon these facts and characteristics you can know them.