670. The Compartmentalized Mind

670.   The Compartmentalized Mind

This continues entry 669.

There is one more pattern, which on a subtle and hidden level can be even more devastating to unfortunate victims.   

A person has learned a system of rules, values, morals or psychological concepts, which to him are logically convincing.   He accepts them as generally valid and as a wise basis and guideline for human interaction. 
But he nevertheless excludes himself entirely from applying this system upon himself.  He does not do this consciously, he is unaware of the compartmentalization of his mind.   He has and pursues the same goals as George Simon's (entries 629 and 661) disturbed characters.   These goals are derived only from the subjectively alleged entitlement to the unrestricted fulfillment of all own needs.  

I call him a robot, because he is controlled by two programs.    The main program is the goal program, which determines, that he always pursues his own needs and wishes with unhesitating priority.   The second program is the auxiliary methods program.  It contains all general human rules of interactions and expectations needed as instrumental intelligence.    This program is to be applied only selectively, whenever it serves to get advantages from others.   

This robot lives in a divided mental world, where real and virtual or distant people are perceived as categorically distinct.  

The robot theoretically accepts rules as generally valid for all humans but fails to ever recognize any person in real life as a human of the quality to whom to apply the rules.   Instead he experiences himself as only interacting with entities, whom he mistakingly perceives as mere commodities existing for his convenience.  He experiences them as either functioning, when they serve his needs or else as being flawed, when they refuse or fail to function.  

In the robot's perturbed minds, none of those entities, whom he meets in real life, is ever considered as a human suitable to mentally apply the system of accepted behavioral rules to. He is unable to recognize such humans, when he meets them.   Instead, the robot experiences humans as elusive abstract sources of text or other creative and intellectual stimulation.    A robot's real world is populated by commodities, while humans to be treated with respect and consideration are figures from fairy tales.   

A robot with a good memory can become an excellent bluffer as described in entry 287.   He can reproduce learned thoughts of others to an amorphous audience, while he himself does not understand any of what he is theoretically talking about.   Due to his inability to recognize real humans as non-commodities, he deprives himself of ever experiencing in real life, what he reproduces verbally like a parrot.      

The robot is impeded from the benefits of feedback.   He considers the commodified victims as too insignificant and flawed to take any heed of their disagreement.   Abstract distant humans, with whom he may have contact, are ignorant of his commodifying real people.    

The robot does not attempt to hide his intended commodification, as he is not aware of the disagreement to be elicited.  People usually are able to avoid harm from such a robot, when they meet him in real life and are immediately and overly treated as commodities.      


On the internet, such a robot is a high risk for a woman.   By any form of initial communication over any distance, a woman is represented mainly by emails, a few pictures or at the most a voice over the telephone.   Thus she is abstract and not real, as long as she is not in the direct reach of the robot's commodification.     

Under such circumstances the woman elicits initially the robot's response and behavioral disposition for humans.   She is prone to be mislead, when he talks convincingly about things, which in reality he has no comprehension for.   She develops wrong expectations, she hopes to be treated by him as in reality only the author of the parroted books would have treated her.

 
Meeting him means disaster for her.    As soon as she appears as a real person in his life, she is automatically redefined in his perception to be henceforth a commodity like every real life person.   Everything of what he had expressed to her as to someone being considered a human, is instantly annihilated.   Nothing of it remains valid.   As a commodity, she now is outside the scope of any previously accepted obligations to her.    Now he expects all to be at his convenience.           

669. The Difference Between Instrumental Intelligence And Wise Intelligence

669.   The Difference Between Instrumental Intelligence And Wise Intelligence

Entry 648 was about a chimpanzee's amazing cognitive accomplishments.    But he is not the only animal with astounding achievements:   
http://www.zoo.ox.ac.uk/group/kacelnik/lb_movie_s1.mov
This movie shows, how a cockatoo solves a complicated puzzle to get access to food.  

This is once more an example for what I consider the fundamental difference between what I will call instrumental intelligence and wise intelligence.    This difference is often overlooked and confounded.   Animals can show some form of instrumental intelligence.   But wise intelligence requires cognitive abilities, which are found only in humans, and by far not in all of them. 

Ayumu and the cockatoo will repeat difficult cognitive task, whenever their body is inclined to eat the reward.    Nothing else has an impact upon the application of instrumental intelligence to a perceived need and to the goal of fulfilling it.   Attempting a task, no matter the amount of instrumental intelligence needed, is not a decision, but an automatic reaction to a need or an urge.  

A human too usually needs some instrumental intelligence to acquire food.   No matter if this means the skills to hunt, to gather or to farm, or if it requires to earn money and to buy food, or even to steal it.   But a human's wise intelligence first evaluates the goals in a complex mental context, before applying instrumental intelligence towards reaching it.   A human can for example decide, if he wants to spend money on food or on a book, if he wants to eat or to lose weight, if he wants to acquire food for himself or for some other person.  

Instrumental intelligence is a tool, which serves to pursue goals, which are derived from either instinctive urges or external influences or any interaction between both.    These goals are exempt from any rational evaluation.  

Wise intelligence also uses instrumental intelligence as a general principle and as much upon the own person as upon others.    Goals, attitudes, morals, value systems and behavior are chosen and evaluated by the same rationality and logical procedures as is the subsequent pursuit of the goals.   Wise intelligence includes having a theory of mind, and it is more than emotional intelligence, which can be misused to the disadvantage of others.  

To illustrate this, here are some examples of humans doing a lot of harm by using instrumental intelligence in the absence of wise intelligence:
   

• A scientist explores methods how to build lethal bombs for the purpose of serving his religion as a terrorist.
• A scientist designs weapons for war as a means of strengthening his own ingroup.
• PUAs (pick up animals) learn and teach elaborated tricks for the purpose of luring women into situations, in which they can be abused.
• Greedy sales people learn special psychological techniques to get money from reluctant customers.
• Power hungry politicians use elaborate intrigues and strategies to get to the top of hierarchies.

There are several different patterns of dynamics, when people apply instrumental intelligence as a means of asymmetrically pursuing goals.   Some believe, that the fittest and strongest are naturally entitled to privileges, whenever they can achieve them.  They outrightly reject the concept of equality.  Some believe at least, that everybody competes and fights for benefits adn that doing the same to protect themselves legitimates it. 

George Simon's (entries 629 and 661) disturbed characters are of these patterns.   The persons are aware of what they are doing and that many targets and victims disagree with how they are treated.   There is no denial of the collateral damage caused.    

While targets and victims are usually not able to stop such behaviors, they often have the option of avoiding, what can be easily recognized.   
Simon's disturbed characters do not accept the validity of other people's rules for themselves, but they pretend to do so, when this serves their purpose.
When disturbed characters fail to succeed, they are usually aware to be the losers in a competition fought with all the weapons supplied by instrumental intelligence.   

661. Comparing Disturbed Characters And Chimpanzees

661.  Comparing Disturbed Characters And Chimpanzees

I already mentioned George Simon before (entries 615, 618 and 629).  After having read his book 'In Sheep's Clothing' with unencumbered fascination, I just finished reading another of his books:  George Simon: Disturbed Characters.  

As far as he describes and analyses disturbed characters, it is also an excellent book.   But it seems that between the two books, he has relapsed into the grasp of religion.  He preaches submission under a god as an important ingredient of his suggested alternative to being a disturbed character.  This is annoying.  

I also disagree with his claim, that there is a free will, which gives people an option to either be a disturbed character or not.    

Two other books already mentioned are:
Martha Stout:  The Sociopath Next Door (entry 137)
Robert Hare:  Without Conscience (entry 160).         

All these books implicitly consider socially acceptable, considerate and responsible behavior as the baseline of what can be expected of all sane humans.   They have no answer, why and due to what reasons disturbed characters are deviant from such an baseline.

I doubt, that the qualities constituting this assumed baseline, are sufficiently frequent to justify this assumption.   With a realistic view at the amount of atrocities regularly forced by beings of the species homo sapiens upon suffering human victims, the ability to live by little or not harming others is only found in a minority.   Only they have the privilege of deserving to be called true humans.   Even they are not born like this but get there only after a long process of maturation and socialization. 

My explanation of disturbed characters is derived from looking at the power of instincts and at different levels of the evolution of cognition and rationality.

1. Human evolution as a process.  
 

Phase 1: 
There were early ancestors, who just like animals were automatically and fully driven by instinctive urges, which had evolved for optimizing procreation.  Due to lacking any mental capacities for comprehending the consequences of behavior, instinctive behaviors of animals are not at all impacted by any awareness for harming, hurting and suffering.  

Phase 2: 
The cognition started to evolve.   Rudimentary intelligence became a powerful tool supporting and serving instincts.   But instincts still continued to completely determine the entire behavior, including the overall goal of breeding.  
 

Phase 3:  
The unique human theory of mind evolved.   This capacity of anticipating or evaluating the effects of behavior upon others or upon the own person in the future with the additional help of a memory gives a unique option only to human.    The unique ability to act in defiance of instincts, to override momentary instinctive urges in favor of cognitively preferred alternative behavior is the decisive distinction between humans and animals.    This includes also the unique ability of humans to prefer and decide to not procreate as the result of a cognitive evaluation and perception of the own identity.    Only humans can be childfree by choice.   There are no childfree animals.  


2.  Chimpanzees

Chimpanzees and humans started to evolve separately about 6 million years ago.   Either the common ancestors had at this time already reached the threshold towards phase 2, or chimpanzees continued to evolve at a slower pace in the same direction as humans.   Today's chimpanzees are a good illustration of phase 2.  They show some amazing skills, which nevertheless always serve instinctive goals.  

In entry 648 I presented the chimpanzee Ayumu, who does better than humans on a task requiring fast perception and short term memory, as can be seen in this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPiDHXtM0VA
 

While Ayumu's abilities are amazing, they yet are only isolated and not connected to any higher cognitive control.  He only does the task, because he is immediately after every run rewarded with a treat.   He cannot apply his talents for any abstract or generalized goal.  

Solving the elaborated and complex task on the screen is not different from the more simple achievement of other chimpanzees using tools to get food as is shown here. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Cp7_In7f88
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EaEDeRJKN0s

But chimpanzees also kill and are aggressive.  
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/26/baby-chimpanzee-killed-at_n_1629318.html

They are even cannibals
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uU1zUzXkTtw

Other amazing skills and behaviors have also been observed in chimpanzees, but they have never reached any ability as found in humans in phase 3.  Ultimately the chimpanzees are completely determined by instincts, and all their amazing capacities only support these instincts.    No cognition has evolved, which would enable them to act in defiance to instincts by consideration or empathy.


3.  The evolutionary level of disturbed characters

I think that the human evolution is in a state of transition.   The evolution of instincts has been established millions of years ago, while the cognitive evolution is still continuing.   I see the determination of the behavior as distributed along a bell curve between phase 2 animals at one end and phase 3 humans at the other.   The majority of people are somewhere in the middle.  They are acting by the combined impact of both subconscious instinctive urges and some cognitive control. 
 

Whenever persons, mostly men, commit atrocities of any kind like murdering, torturing, raping, cannibalism, slavery, they seem puzzling, when compared with what is required and expected from humans.   But if they were instead compared with animals, they would appear as healthy and sane chimpanzees. 

I consider severely character disturbed persons, including those labeled psychopaths and sociopaths, as beings, whose cognitive evolution has relapsed, failed or is delayed and retarded.    In spite of belonging genetically to the species homo sapiens, they are not less animals than are the chimpanzees.   Their cognition only suffices to serve their instincts and to enhance their being a hazard.  But their cognition is insignificant as a determinant of personal goals.    

Chimpanzees use skills to acquire food.  Disturbed characters have a more advanced cognitive knowledge about other human and their behavior, but they use this knowledge also only as a tool.   They succeed to get more than food, they also abuse woman, gain power or pursue other instinctive and selfish goals.   While chimpanzees just lack rationality, these disturbed characters are instead determined not only by instincts but also by irrational beliefs, which serve to excuse and allegedly justify the consequences of instinctive behavior.  

It is a very sad and unfortunate reality, that the survival of the human species depends on the worst and most devastating forces in people, their instincts.   
While the extreme disturbed characters are a hazardous minority, the same instincts are virulent to a lesser degree also in the subconscious mind of the majority of the non or less disturbed people.   This lesser degree of the impact of the same instincts leads to an unfortunate bias towards too much tolerance for and condoning of harming others.  Many damaging behaviors are thus considered as still in the scope of normality, in spite of the extreme suffering of the victims,   Their suffering is not recognized as an outrage, but as unavoidable collateral damage.   


4. Distinguishing animals from humans

It is an unfortunate fallacy, that the distinction between humans and animals has always been only drawn along the genetic borders between species. 

 
In the christian tradition, humans are believed to be special, because a god allegedly created them to be so, and thus, there is a thinking taboo to reconsider and recognize anyone as an animal, no matter how much he behaves as one. 
In recent times, some people are debating, if there is really any decisive distinction at all. 

But to my knowledge, nobody has ever suggested, that the quality of being human, let alone of being more or less human, is an individual trait of the level of the individual cognitive evolution..
   
I claim:  To be considered as human requires more than the genes of homo sapiens, it also requires sufficient cognitive control over the instincts.  

This has far reaching implications.  

The concept of a general human dignity and basic human rights can rationally only be valid for humans, it is a fallacy to automatically attribute and assign it to all members of the species homo sapiens.   When someone acts like an animal, he should be treated as one.   An animal with the liberty only suitable for humans is too much of a hazard.    

The home of chimpanzees is in the wild, but in the zoo or lab, they are for good reasons kept in cages.  
http://www.ippl.org/gibbon/a-tragedy-in-eden/

If extremely disturbed characters would be recognized as animals lacking the basic human capacity of cognitive control, then this could lead to realistic methods of dealing with them.  Once disturbed characters have done serious harm, they should be recognized as animals and treated the same as dangerous chimpanzees.   The need to be protected against becoming a victim is independent of the species of the animals, which are dangerous predators.

The innate predisposition for instinctive or cognitive determination is not carved in stone, but malleable by education and social influences.    Socialization can enhance the cognitive control over instincts, when there is something to enhance.   When there is no rationality and cognition as a constituent personality trait, then no upbringing can convert an animal into a human, no matter the genetic species.   

All children start as instinct driven beings, they need socialization to develop the capacity to use cognitive control, when this talent is innate.    
When a chimpanzee is raised like a child, as in the tragic case of Moe, this does not stop him from biting off someone's finger.  
(http://www.theflamingvegan.com/view-post/Chimpanzees-as-Pets-When-Something-Goes-Wrong).  
I doubt, that a completely instinct determined disturbed character could ever become more human than Moe, no matter the quality of education.   Such a child may not bite off fingers, but bully other kids instead, before committing worse atrocities as an adult.    

Any person is entitled to be given the benefit of the doubt to be human, until he behaves like an animal and thus demonstrates, that he is an animal.   Committing atrocities as an animal forfeits the privileges reserved to humans.  Treating and considering an animal nevertheless as if he were human is an unjustifiable slap into the face to his victim(s).  


4.  The brain

Brains scans have shown differences between the brains of psychopaths and those of non-psychopaths.  

"So, once again there’s some convincing evidence that the brains of psychopaths not only work very differently from those of non-psychopathic individuals, but also may even be ‘wired’ differently than most human brains."
http://counsellingresource.com/features/2013/05/06/abnormal-brain-psychopaths/

I wonder, what would be discovered, if the brains of psychopaths were compared with the brains of chimpanzees.

629. George Simon's Book 'In Sheep's Clothing' - Comment 1

629.   George Simon's Book 'In Sheep's Clothing'  -  Comment 1

This continues entry 628 about the immature theory of mind.

In entries 615 and 618 I already mentioned and commented on George Simon's excellent approach to the problem of disturbed characters.    I just got and read his fascinating book 'In Sheep's Clothing'.

Reading it was an excellent reminder of the utter futility of any attempts to reduce being harmed by disturbed characters.  Someone with a character disturbance cannot be influenced any more than a moving steam roller.   He is determined to get by hook or by crook, whatever he wants.  Nothing can stop him from running over anybody standing in his way.   The only protection is avoiding disturbed characters.  

For me personally, contact with one of them is doomed to lead to an impasse and to unsolvable conflicts.   While I am not prone to be a submissive victim accommodating a disturbed character's objectives, his ruthlessness gives him nevertheless enough power to impose sufferings upon me, to which I react with protest and outrage.  But a disturbed character is out of the reach of any civilized and moderate influencing him by constructive communication.  His mind is surrounded by a wall, any attempts to make him change his behavior bounce off and fail without any effect.

 

According to Simon, all exploitative and hurting behavior can be explained by only one of two cognitive dynamics, either the neurotic avoidance of too much painful emotions or the disturbed characters' conscious method to gain selfish advantages.  
I see another possibility, which I am missing in the book:  It is the incompetence to behave in an appropriate and acceptable way in spite of being motivated and believing to do so.    

Therefore I like to add one more type of a disturbed character to Simon's list: 

The self-righteous aggressive disturbed character.    This type also behaves as a wolf, just as Simon's other types, but he does not put on a sheep skin.   Instead he believes to be a sheep.   Due to his immature theory of mind and to the subsequent lack of getting or comprehending blatant feedback, he is unaware, that he is perceived as a wolf.   (More in entry 628)  

He behaves as a wolf due to immaturity and interpersonal incompetence: 
1.  He is incompetent to know and evaluate the limits of what is rightfully his due.  Thus he is unable to accept as a fair deal to give enough back in return for what he receives.   Others do not consider as justified, what he feels entitled to get.   This can be as bad as an entitlement delusion.  
2.  He lacks the communicative skills to obtain, whatever he wants, by any form of rational convincing, even when it is justified.   When what is not justified is not available, he is too incompetent to apply manipulative tactics.   His competence is so limited, that he resorts to use drastic and primitive methods of power, dominance, aggression.  

This type is very different from both the unbridled aggressive and the channelled aggressive as described in the book.   The self-righteous aggressive usually accepts simple and clearly defined rules and laws, when he understands them in spite of his immature theory of mind. 

The self-righteous aggressive is not malicious, he is just not aware of his incompetence nor of how much his behavior is selfish.   As far as the self-righteous aggressive comprehends another's needs, he is able to care.   For example, he can be a caring master to a dog, if he acquires the knowledge about how to care for a dog.   The success with the dog then reinforces his false belief to be a sheep.   He is unaware of behaving as a wolf, when he forcefully applies the very same form of care and treatment, which is appropriate only for a dog, also upon a human being.       

 

Both the covert-aggressive and the self-righteous aggressive consider themselves as justified to pursue what they want with any means, believing to be entitled to get it.   

But the covert-aggressive has a mature theory of mind enabling him to be realistic about and aware of what obstacles and resistance to expect during his pursuits.   He takes the disagreeing and resisting persons for serious enough to rationally choose the method of aggression, which promises the best success.   In the case of the covert aggressive, this includes hiding his true intentions as a part of using manipulative strategies.   He is realistic about the powers of his opponents, would they discover his aggression and true goals and react by fighting back.  

The self-righteous-aggressive lacks a sufficiently mature theory of mind.   He does not take resisting people into account as individual opponents with real or at least subjectively valid reasons for their disagreement.    He perceives them as merely amorphous obstacles to be best confronted with outright, indiscriminate and open aggression.    The self-righteous aggressive perceives any disagreement with and resistance to his allegedly entitled goals automatically as an indication of others being flawed, wrong, dysfunctional, while nothing makes him doubt his own entitlement.   Who resists is believed to be bringing aggression upon themselves as a legitimate consequence.   

By applying the same generalized standard methods of aggression to all allegedly flawed obstacles, the self-righteous aggressive character is also not able to improve his immature theory of mind.   He notices and reacts to obstacles without understanding, perceiving, evaluating or distinguishing any specific reaction or feedback.   This impedes him from learning successful manipulation strategies.   

Even the self-righteous aggressive may sometimes apply a few of the manipulative tactics described in Simon's book, when he is aware of the probable unpleasant reactions to be avoided.  

The essential difference to the covert aggressive is the self-righteous' lack of any hidden agenda.  Instead he bluntly expresses his claims and demands and what he intends to do to ascertain to get it.   Lacking any comprehension, why others disagree with his entitlement, he does not know nor learn, what to hide and what utterances and behaviors are counterproductive to his goals.   By blurring out his true intentions he provokes resistance, to which he then reacts with enhanced aggression and bullying.   This is a spiral of fast deterioration.  


The covert aggressive misleads others, while the self-righteous aggressive is himself mislead.   A wolf, who believes to be a sheep, causes not less devastation than a wolf, who knows to be a wolf, but hides beneath a sheep's skin.     

In the case of the covert-aggressive, it is the victim's task to find out, that there is a wolf under the sheep's skin.   The wolf knowing to be a wolf has therefore theoretically the choice to change, if the victim refuses to remain in that role.   

The self-righteous aggressive openly behaves like a wolf and nevertheless believes his bullying and coercing as the legitimate behavior of the sheep, which he wrongly believes himself to be.   Any change is not probable, because someone believing to be already a sheep does not comprehend, why he should change to become one.   A wolf cannot decide or attempt to change into a sheep, unless he first becomes aware, that he is a wolf.  
In this situation, the victim is powerless.   A self-righteous aggressive wolf does not experience his victim as significant enough to influence him.   This impedes him from ever discovering the reality of his being a wolf, instead he continues to consider the victim as being so flawed as to warrant being bullied. 

618. What Comes First: Attitude Or Behavior?

618.   What Comes First:  Attitude Or Behavior?

In entry 615 I already mentioned the fascinating web page http://www.manipulative-people.com and work of George Simon.   I spent some hours reading his description of persons who in his words are disturbed characters.  

My writing on this blog is focusing upon my subjective and female preference of what attitudes and behaviors make a man either attractive or repulsive.    While reading Simon's texts, it has become clear to me, that those men, whom I describe as jerks, are a subgroup of Simon's disturbed character.   Jerks are male disturbed characters, whose victims of their disturbed behavior are women.    What I call commodification, objectification, domination, entitlement delusion and more, I found it all mentioned by Simon, in different words and explained in better English.  

Only he has come to a different conclusion concerning what causes, maintains, enables and reinforces the character disturbances.  

"One of the central tenets of cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) is that there is an inextricable relationship between a person’s core beliefs, the attitudes those beliefs have engendered, and the ways the person’s attitudes prompt him or her to to behave in various situations."

http://counsellingresource.com/features/2008/12/08/disturbed-characters-thinking/

I fully agree with this, because any discrepancy between core values (as I dislike the word belief), attitudes and behaviors causes unpleasant cognitive dissonance.   Getting aware of such a discrepancy motivates towards either changing the attitude or the behavior.   

If I have understood correctly, in Simon's view the attitudes and core beliefs come first and the behavior is the consequence thereof.  
Simon accepts the notion of the free will.   I have not found any explicit statement about this, but implicitly he seems to explain attitudes and core values as mainly or entirely acquired by education, socialization and external influences.  

From my point of view, which is derived from evolutionary biology and evolutionary psychology, the free will is a myth.   Behaviors are determined by the combination of the force of instinctivity, the avoidance of punishment and of dishomeostasis and the appetency of rewards and stimulation of the brain's pleasure center.   This is facilitated by the knowledge stored in the memory and anticipatory thinking.   

Subconscious instinctive urges are consciously experienced as the inclination towards specific behaviors.   Instinctive urges are mainly the animal instincts for procreation, sexuality, hierarchy, ingroup-outgroup, gregariousness.   

The cognitive and conscious attitudes follow as a justification when giving in to being driven by the urges, attitudes are formed to avoid cognitive dissonance.    These attitudes are influenced and modified by education and social norms either encouraging or repressing instinctive behavior.    

Attitudes and subsequent behaviors differ between individuals in the same society according to differing strength of their instinctivity and also between individuals with the same strength of instinctivity but living in different societies.  
The worst jerks and worst cases of Simon's male disturbed character are men with a high instinctivity, whose abuse of women is additionally enabled and reinforced in a permissive society.   

Accordingly I also disagree about how, if at all, disturbed characters can be changed:

"Changing some aspect of our behavior is always the first step toward having a change of heart. Just as our way of thinking influences our behavior, so our actions and the consequences that stem from them influence how we think about things, the attitudes we harbor, and the beliefs we hold about how to get along in life. Making meaningful changes in the way we typically do things is a prerequisite for changing the kind of person we are."

http://counsellingresource.com/features/2012/04/02/disturbed-characters-can-they-change/

I doubt, that attitudes can be changed, as long as these attitudes are an expression of an implicit identity defined by the acceptance of animal instincts.     A change of attitudes would require the conscious choice of an identity derived from the preference for cognition as superior over instincts.    But before someone is able to consider instincts as obsolete and disturbing evolutionary ballast to be overridden in favor of not harming others, he has first to get aware and recognize, how much he is driven by instincts.  
As long as someone accepts himself as an instinct driven animal and thus allows himself his instinctive urges without experiencing cognitive dissonance, he will continue to behave as a disturbed character. 

615. Social Change And Psychotherapy

615.   Social Change And Psychotherapy

I have been mentioning the growing amount of harm done either carelessly or ignorantly by promiscuous jerks as the consequence of the social norm of oversexation and the subsequent desensitization and lacking empathy for the suffering of the abused women.   (Entry 493:  The Social Norm Of The Drooling Men)

In a world, where men have their on average greater physical strength as an advantage enabling them to gain power and control over resources including media by hook or by crook, the instinctive reaction of many, if not most men is subconsciously welcoming the social norm of oversexation.  While some men would not consciously admit this, I have rarely found anybody explicitly pointing out the damage caused by it.   

By considering the appropriate place for sexuality being the privacy of couples' bedrooms I am sometimes even called a prude.   But I consider it as much better to be a prude than an animal blindly driven by instincts.  

Therefore I was very pleased to have found George Simon's web page.  He is a clinical psychologist and therapist, who has described this unfortunate social development with much better words than my limited English allows me to do.     The emphasis in the following quote is mine.

"Character Disturbance is indeed “the phenomenon of our age.” That’s because the intensely socially repressive atmosphere of earlier times has been supplanted with an atmosphere of entitlement, permissiveness, and license. It’s not as common for people’s shame and guilt to be so unreasonably intense and unyielding that they become pathologically debilitated with anxiety. Rather, it’s more common for folks to lack enough shame or guilt to inhibit them from doing harmful things to themselves as well as others. So, it would be fair to say that character disturbance is indeed more prevalent these days, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that significantly disturbed characters are everywhere."

http://counsellingresource.com/features/2011/10/10/are-they-everywhere/

But Simon not only expresses with better words than myself similar concerns about contemporary permissiveness and lacking inhibitions and constraint.   Simon takes this further to a very clever observation, which had never occurred to me:  The assumptions, upon which psychotherapeutic interventions are usually and implicitly based, have become obsolete and are lacking behind and failing to react to the real problems caused by the drastic social changes of the last decades.      

Therapeutic interventions helpful for people being overwhelmed with unbearable negative emotions about themselves are counterproductive to people, whose problems is predominantly the harming and exploiting of others, while harming themselves is only secondary by depriving also themselves of the benefits of close and harmonious relationships.  

Simon explains the example of denial:

"In classical (psychodynamic) psychology, denial is an unconscious ego defense mechanism.  Basically, that means that a person unwittingly puts up a barrier to experiencing what is too painful to consciously bear."

"Sometimes, denial is truly an unconscious psychological state.  Sometimes, it’s a refusal to admit a problem.  Sometimes, it’s a tactic of manipulation and impression management.  And the basic tactic of denial can be expressed in several other subtle variations such as feigning innocence, feigning ignorance, and acting surprised.   But no matter what form in which it comes, it’s most often merely a way of lying. "

"Disturbed characters of all sorts frequently engage in denial.  It’s extremely rare, however, that they do so because they are in such inner distress over their behavior that they simply can’t consciously accept what they’re doing.  Most of the time, they know exactly what they’re doing, but they want you to think otherwise."

http://www.manipulative-people.com/denial-what-it-is-and-isnt/

"Disordered characters often won’t admit when they’ve done something wrong, and resist looking at any role their behavior patterns have played in creating problems in their lives.  They lie to themselves and others about their malevolent acts and intentions as a tactic to get others off their back.  If their denial is forceful and convincing enough, others will likely be successfully manipulated. "

"Denial is not only an effective manipulation tactic, but it’s also a sure sign someone is not about to change his or her way of behaving.  A person who won’t acknowledge their wrongs in the first place isn’t likely to feel any inclination to correct them.  Habitual denial is the way many disordered characters resist internalizing the values and standards of conduct that could make them more socially responsible."

http://www.manipulative-people.com/denial-manipulation-tactic-4/