No. 77 – December 19, 2013 - The Economic Melt Down - Praying for Psychopaths

by Melinda Pillsbury-Foster

Father Teo is a former Catholic priest who started a ministry to Hispanics after founding, and running, a high school in Bolivia in the 70s. Several years ago he started another ministry, assisted by members of his congregation. This ministry is a prayer outreach to psychopaths, individuals who are characterized by lack of empathy, compassion and conscience.

To date, the group has managed to alleviate the lack of empathy and conscience in one young woman after two years. Since experts in the condition hold out no hope for change this is really quite amazing.

Psychopathy was once thought to be a psychological condition. This is untrue. According to neuroscience the issue centers in the amygdala, a portion of the brain. It is not working correctly and so causing the problem.

An article in Scientific American by neuroscientists Kent A. Kiehl and Joshua W. Buckholtz states, “They lie and manipulate yet feel no compunction or regrets—in fact, they don’t feel particularly deeply about anything at all.” The article sets the cost to us for just those psychopaths who are engage in criminal behavior to be between 200 – 400 billion dollars in a year.

Psychopathy was also believed to occur only in criminals. This has now changed.

The projected cost of psychopathy shifts dramatically when the arena is not just crime, but the larger economy. Clive R. Boddy, a British academic propagated the theory the present financial crisis was caused by “corporate psychopaths” at the helm of financial institutions in a recent issue of Journal of Business Ethics citing lack of “conscience, have few emotions and display an inability to have any feelings, sympathy or empathy for other people.”

This certainly would explain how Cadawalder, Wickersham & Taft, the law firm who did the registration for the first securitized derivative could have ignored what is now being recognized as a blatant fraud.

How many kinds of psychopaths are there? Have they always been with us? Think charismatic, narcissistic, people who use lies and manipulation to get what they want.

Father Teo's group also works with individuals displaying these characteristics who appear to suck the life energy out of others. This raises the question of whether energy vampirism is actually a psychic form of psychopathy.

Some have asked if psychopaths and energy vampires are, in fact, the demons we read about in the Bible since their behavior is strikingly similar when described.