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Professor Oakley explains why:
· The most malevolent killers sometimes have fine upbringings, and come from good families.
· Killers can sometimes be utterly charming people who keep their dark side hidden—until it is too late.
· Deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill has created a problem that has simmered for decades.
· Psychologists and psychiatrists can be fully aware that a person is desperately ill—and dangerous—yet have their hands tied in taking preventive action.
· The refusal by many academics to accept that genes as well as environment play a role in personality formation makes it even more difficult for the mentally ill to get the help they need.
· Some people are simply “unfixable” by current therapeutic methods.
· “Evil” people act the way they do mainly as the result of a neural dysfunction. In fact, some deceitful, manipulative, and even sadistic behavior appears to be programmed genetically—suggesting that some people really are born to be bad. But there are unexpected fringe benefits to “evil genes.” We may not like them—but we literally can’t live without them.
For more information, or to schedule an interview with Barbara Oakley, please call Prometheus Books publicity at 800-853-7545 or email publicity@prometheusbooks.com.
If you're on a tight deadline, you may also reach Dr. Oakley directly at (248) 930-0752, or at oakley@oakland.edu.
Barbara Oakley, Ph.D. is the author of Evil Genes. Michael H. Stone, MD, Professor of Clinical Psychiatry, Columbia has noted: “Professor Oakley has done that rare thing: written a scientific book that is at once informative and eminently readable. She has taken “evil” out of the realm of the religious and metaphysical, placing it instead where it belongs—inside ourselves, as in the famous Pogo cartoon: “we have met the enemy, and he is us!”
Posted February 15th, 2008 by Lpasquale
Orwell and word
http://www.huliq.com/50743/evil-genes-expert-available-comment-northern-illinois-university-killings
"Deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill has created a problem that has simmered for decades" is disingenuous at best, unethical at worst.
As it will be read, it is unethical:
"deinstitutionalization" is a state manufactured euphemism for closing mental institutions, it was implemented to remove from state budgets their high costs, and like similar false metaphors, the term itself has achieved a level of integrity it does not deserve. The Transfer of Metaphors is an interesting phenomenon, most curious and contradictory is their transfer to academia.
Similarly the implication of this "the," regardless of which group a society imposes to follow it, "the" Jew, "the" Blacks, is base stereotype unworthy of transference from whatever source to academia, assuredly unworthy of transference to journalism.
Were that it were simple carelessness with English, it is far more insidiousness than that, it is sociology, its present prejudices, imposing themselves upon us unseen.
What is most interesting about societies is each develops specific linguistics to support its prejudices, those linguistics become embedded in our language, our usage and induce conforming reactions, rather than shepherds of language, we become its sheep. The two examples above show specifically how inured we become to embedded prejudices.
States closing mental institutions without providing supports to those people abandoned in the process ( and to be honest, many were in no need of being confined) was an unethical step, but the reality is, as a society we presently appear not to care greatly. The costs states saved are now incurred elsewhere, and the human costs, once hidden in the institutions, where we could ourselves pretend not to notice (we did that very well), are now largely in our faces. We have trained our faces, as before, to look away, masking our lack of humanity in linguistics.
"The refusal by many academics to accept that genes as well as environment play a role in personality formation makes it even more difficult for the mentally ill to get the help they need" indeed intends a much more defined group. Language has disallowed definition.
Harold A. Maio
Advisory Board
American Journal of Psychiatric Rehabilitation
Board Member
Partners in Crisis
Former Consulting Editor
Psychiatric Rehabilitation Journal
Boston University
Language Consultant
UPENN Collaborative on Community Integration
of Individuals with Psychiatric Disabilities
Home:
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