A Psychotic-Psychopathic Epiphany

CNI Psychological Defense Class - Word Illusions

In response to Counter-Narcissist Cheat Codes: Media, subscriber Swami asked the important question, “Can it be said that trump’s followers have various levels of psychosis?”

At the time, my thoughts were completely immersed in How Narcissists Can Be Instantly Revealed Via Projection, so I relayed to Swami that this was a much more complicated question than it appeared to be, and would need to follow-up after, to do the question justice.

However, as I began responding days later in a Note, what my subconscious clearly had in mind was less about levels of trump supporter psychosis and more about a psychotic-psychopathic epiphany I had during my initial narcissism studies. No doubt my focus went to this lesson because it is something that greatly surprised me early on and all successful students and practitioners of Counter-Narcissist philosophy and intelligence need to understand it with certainty.

Fortunately, it is something fairly entertaining and easy to check off the list of things you need to know to advance in awareness and clarity. If you are already there, I hope my past epiphany serves as a useful reminder that many do not know what we know, and that perhaps this and other subjects in the CNI archives can be useful for those with lingering narcissist questions or just a general desire to build up their own Counter-Narcissist defenses.

Psychological word illusions

Among the multitudes of lessons seared into my brain in late 2000s studies, among the most important was that so many words I thought I knew the definitions of were either completely wrong or a superficial half-truth at best.

As all who highly value the truth know, discovering you are completely wrong about something you thought you knew reasonably well is a memorable and humbling experience, unless you are a narcissist, because they are the people who “can’t handle the truth.”

A narcissist instantly goes into denial every time they are wrong, so based on their memory, they have never been wrong. You know the type. The truth really is they can’t handle being wrong almost always because they are too psychologically fragile, arrogant, or both. What a sad existence it must be to almost never learn from your mistakes and be incapable of admitting them to even yourself.

The ironic and scary part of my own self-discovery was when it came to general psychology, I actually did know more than “your average ranger,” but when it came to understanding the meanings or actionable intelligence signs of Cluster B psychology, or anything to do with the teachings of the father of the “Psychopath Checklist” Dr. Robert Hare, I knew nothing.

I now greatly appreciate this humbling experience as a touchstone reminder of how any reasonably intelligent person can be somewhat versed in psychology and yet still can know nothing about Cluster B personality disorders or their implications for society.

The Epiphany

I do not remember exactly when or where it happened but long ago, I was writing something involving narcissist psychology but accidentally transposed psychopathic for psychotic. I then realized I was not as certain of the precise differences between the two as I thought I was and knew I needed to be to be authoritative on either subject, so did a quick definition review.

After the fact, recognizing my own confusion over the meanings of such obviously different conditions triggered an epiphany that a large percentage of people who are not as well-versed in psychology must be conflating the two very different yet similar sounding abstract terms far more often than anyone realizes, and are thus innocently causing a great deal more psychological ignorance and confusion that must be countered and reversed.

It became obvious that through a kind of word illusion, these two very similar yet vague and abstract twin-like words of “psychotic” and “psychopathic” were being confused and conflated far too often in highly counterproductive ways. An important question became, how did these two very distinct and popular concepts and conditions become such confusing detriments to greater societal psychological understanding, awareness and progress?

The Objective and the Truth

Therefore, the main points of this simple yet important CNI defense class and minor cheat code are to ensure you also have a Psychotic-Psychopathic epiphany if needed, and that you are 100% clear on their fundamental meanings, differences and commonalities of these often elusive words and their various definitions.

You are then able to confidently help others see what an easy mistake it is to make when they make it, and that the reason they made it is not their fault. It happens because even here in touchy feely California, America has very little public school or general public psychological education beyond a few basics here and there that are soon forgotten.

However, that does seem to be changing due to the openness of the younger generation and their willingness to discuss mental health struggles. The positive acceptance many are receiving here and elsewhere should be very inspiring in the name of societal psychological progress.

According to the National Institute of Health:

“What is psychosis?

“Psychosis refers to a collection of symptoms that affect the mind, where there has been some loss of contact with reality. During an episode of psychosis, a person’s thoughts and perceptions are disrupted and they may have difficulty recognizing what is real and what is not.”

Based on that fairly standard psychological definition, it is easy to understand why many could wonder or believe trump’s “followers have various levels of psychosis,” Certainly nearly all of trump’s biggest fans and the Republican Party itself has “some lost contact with reality,” their “thoughts and perceptions are disrupted,” and many obviously have “difficulty recognizing what is real and what is not.”

“Who develops psychosis?

It is difficult to know the number of people who experience psychosis. Studies estimate that between 15 and 100 people out of 100,000 develop psychosis each year.

Psychosis often begins in young adulthood when a person is in their late teens to mid-20s. However, people can experience a psychotic episode at younger and older ages and as a part of many disorders and illnesses. For instance, older adults with neurological disorders may be at higher risk for psychosis.”

Psychosis life experience brings clarity

Due to personal experiences, the “psychosis” definition was once a lot more clear to me than the psychopath. My little sister’s struggles began in late childhood and then she was diagnosed with schizophrenia at 19 years old. Exactly the start of the age range the NIH states above. It is simple, if she does not take her meds and even sometimes when she does, she will have psychotic breaks with reality where she imagines things that are not true, sees “scary people,” and plenty of other things that upset and scare her.

In another touchstone experience, a close friend said they had a nervous breakdown when what they had really had was a psychotic break that progressively took them into a deeper psychosis. When they almost got out of my car at 40 mph, I was forced to do one of the hardest things I have ever had to do, which was take someone I love to a psych ward and walk away as they begged me not to leave them.

At least at that point, I had no choice because after a five-minute assessment, the doctor returned and said, “your friend is on a 72-hour police hold due to being what we call ‘acute psychotic.’”

What seemed to shock most about my friend’s psychotic break was up until that point, they were the most perfect, normal and cool person you can imagine, who never did any drugs beyond alcohol, caffeine and nicotine. What was discovered at the hospital was that they had suddenly become bi-polar and lithium made the hallucinations aka psychosis go away.

As best as I could piece together, due to too much stress and pressure from work, my friend’s chemical balances were somehow pushed beyond their limits, or some internal retaining wall inside their brain gave way, and the matter was mixed with the anti-matter. Although they were very naturally perfect, perhaps always being so perfect added unhealthy stress as well, but that is pure speculation. Thankfully, therapy, healing, retraining their mind and having the correct medications brought them all the way back, with time.

In other words, the two main ways medical psychosis happens is when those with schizophrenia or those who are bi-polar are in a state of delusion, paranoia and/or hallucination. Normally this happens due to a lack of taking or having effective medications to help control and hallucinations and psychotic breaks. Other causes include Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, epilepsy, extreme trauma, drugs and sleep deprivation, but almost none of it has anything to do with the narcissism spectrum, despite any appearances or illusions to the contrary.

However, there is certainly more than a zero percentage of pathological narcissists who also have schizophrenia or are bi-polar. A certain trump loving rap mogul seems to show most to all of the symptoms of some form of pathological narcissism and the latter above comorbidity, when he goes off into one of his insane, nonsensical and massively egotistical ramblings.

Psychopathy

As regular readers know, the CNI perspective is that only a small minority of humanity has much true understanding of the empirical psychology of malignant narcissists, sociopaths, psychopaths, and most other types of pathological narcissism (A consistent pattern of compulsive and maladaptive behaviors). Of course we are all here to change that.

As also noted above, I was forced to recognize the reality of global psychological ignorance during my personal studies, but I was first forced to recognize the reality of my own complete narcissist psychology ignorance, when I discovered a new concept to me, called Cluster B personality disorders. Up until that point, I did not even know they existed.

The further global ignorance understanding came when all my smartest friends and favorite experts in the news around the world, were just as ignorant or more-so than I was regarding the truths and depths of narcissist psychology throughout every state, country, community, culture, religion and society. This complete lack of psychological understanding is why it is so hard for me to watch the news anymore and why I wrote, How the News is Psychologically Broken and How to Fix It.

Additionally, it still seems as if almost everyone’s brain has been hacked into believing “psychopath” means “serial killer” and “sociopaths” are some other kind of rare and extreme criminal due to all the examples we see on TV, or hear about in True Crime podcasts. At least that was a discovery made when I processed what Dr. Robert Hare and others were saying about the percentage of psychopaths in every group, community, culture and nation was 1 to 4%.

While the 4% is absolutely terrifying and questionable, to stay conservative and non-hyperbolic in my estimates, I have used the more accepted 1% over the last several years. With 336,317,000 Americans and 8 billion humans on Earth, calculating psychopaths at 1% still gets the point across, because those numbers destroy the myth that psychopath’s are the rare aberrational serial killer we occasionally hear about in the news or movies.

Yes good folks of the world, generally conservative numbers clearly indicate that America has at least 3,363,170 psychopaths and with the Earth’s total population at just over 8 billion, that extrapolates out into a minimum 80 million psychopaths covertly roaming the planet among us. Those numbers also tell us serial killer psychopaths are just the loudest drop in a very large psychopathic global bucket.

Of course that does not include sociopaths, and the Cluster B personality disorders of Borderline (BPD), Narcissistic (NPD), Histrionic (HPD), or any other type of pathological narcissist that would receive a scientific diagnosis of being at, near, or well above a clinical-level narcissism spectrum baseline.

The Question I have kept asking over and over is, how is the prevalence of pathological narcissists and their “antisocial” effects on society so unknown to virtually every society?

The Answer I kept coming back to are those who have a duty to warn and those who are supposed to alert and help protect society from any clear and present psychological threats, have instead been essentially claiming in their words and actions, or lack thereof, that it is more important not to stigmatize malignant narcissists, sociopaths and psychopaths than it is to protect democracy, freedom and the rest of humanity’s rights to pursue a psychologically happy life.

From a CNI perspective, this kind of insane thinking is suicidal and thus needs to be seriously questioned.

Causes

While the causes of medical psychosis and its treatments are fairly well known and accepted, the causes of psychopathy are still considered by many in the medical profession to be somewhat unknown. Perhaps that is because there are no medications or effective therapies to moderate psychopathy beyond the margins.

What has proven to be the most moderating effect on psychopaths is having a patient and loving family that also knows how to keep the child out of trouble at play and at school, and opportunities to pursue their interests.

Personally, I find the brain imagery research convincing that psychopathy is primarily due to an undeveloped, underdeveloped or physically damaged brain in the areas where emotions, conscience and empathy are supposed to function. Having an incomplete brain or brain damage is the conclusion of many scientists and seems a pretty obvious answer to psychopathy’s main causes, but we should also include the significant hereditary component.

Of course psychopaths as opposed to someone in a psychotic state are not hallucinating anything beyond their inflated and egotistical views of themselves and their abilities to get away with everything. In fact, they are infamous for having excellent superficial charm, charisma and glib humor, just before they coldly turn on their prey.

They see other humans as nothing more than tools to be used, a means to an end, or narcissistic supply. It is not that they do not want to feel something. It is just certain parts of their brain are not functioning as they are supposed to, or are not there at all.

A lack of emotional limits and instinctive apex predator primal skills do cause most psychopaths to believe they are powerful geniuses because they can manipulate normal peoples’ emotions, but it cannot be done to them. Regardless, it seems an instinctive psychopath pattern to tell themselves they are superior, in part because they are not vulnerable to feelings others feel, as well as any other reason that occurs to them.

They do however usually work very hard to mimic emotions, fit in and appear “normal,” so I intuitively want to believe that if it were possible to give psychopaths the choice, almost all would choose to have the normal range of human emotions.

However, since their lack of conscience allows them to lie like breathing, and not care about social rules, norms, expectations, or feel a drop of shame, guilt or remorse when manipulating or hurting others, it makes sense that many caught ones would say they want to be normal for sympathy, when it is really just as likely to be a manipulative lie. You never know with a psychopath. As you may have heard, they are well-known for their ability to pass lie detector tests.

Psychotic vs. Psychopathic

The terms “psychotic” and “psychopathic” should be familiar to everyone via popular culture and across the full spectrum of Books, Radio, TV, Movies, the web and everywhere. In so many places in our culture, we hear people say, “He is a total psychopath, she is psychotic, or visa versa. However, I suspect most people are like I once was. Sort of knowing the words but yet also a bit uncertain. I definitely did not know what calling someone a psychopath really meant in the past.

Indeed until the late 2000s, I only sort of knew the definitions of these words that are still far too often used as catch-all phrases for saying someone is “crazy,” in the movies, on TV, and IRL. Meanwhile, the societal need is that we all clearly understand these two separate and distinct serious mental health issues, and that they should never be conflated or transposed.

It should be clear to all that there is a massive chasm in between someone having a psychotic break, meaning their mind is losing its grip on reality usually through hallucinations and delusions vs. a psychopath who is normally incapable of having actual feelings for other living beings because the emotional and conscience parts of their brain does not work, and likely never worked. Just imagine what you would do and say if you never felt shame, guilt or remorse in your entire life. We would all be very different people believing in very different things if we never had a conscience nor felt the normal range of human emotions.

The Key Distinction between the two is psychosis is a symptom of more than a few different conditions while psychopathy is a compulsive maladaptive personality disorder. Sadly, no one is at fault for being born with a psychopath’s brain, and we should help them find fulfilling and productive paths in society, because if they can abide by the law and do not hurt others, they certainly deserve a chance at a normal life. Additionally, here’s to a future where we can grow consciences in brains, because it seems most psychopaths do wish they had the more “normal” range of human feelings, emotions and life.

Where the worm turns

Here is where the truth almost always lies (pardon the pun) in the eternal question of whether it is psychosis OR psychopathy. If a person is having true hallucinations and seems mentally locked into these hallucinations, that is fairly textbook psychosis.

If a person is coldly, callously, cruelly and convincingly lying, deceiving or pretending to believe in something that is not true or is not there, that is acting psychopathically. Essentially, psychopaths are the apex predator on the narcissism spectrum and vulnerable people who experience psychosis due to hallucinations or delusions rarely cross paths with psychopaths unless they present as someone to prey on or use as a scapegoat, which just about any pathological narcissist will shamelessly do, if it serves them. Thankfully, psychopaths usually like a challenge so normally only the dumbest one will prey on those who suffer from psychosis.

The trump follower “psychosis” question

When Swami asked about trump followers having “various levels of psychosis,” my first thought was I have never really found the term useful as a description, because I am trying to bring people around to understanding the language of narcissism psychology better, so adding another term that is primarily associated with other non-Cluster B conditions just seems like it would just add to the confusion.

In fact, I used to be a big defender of only using the precise empirical terms in every case. However, over time I stopped fighting the terms people were most comfortable with, as long as they were being used correctly and in a sound psychological context.

As per the definition of “psychosis,” there is certainly a little flexibility in accurately applying both individual and “group psychosis” as an accurate descriptor in more than a few narcissistic circumstances. However, again, from my perspective, the word “psychosis” is not very useful for CNI purely based on my personal delineation between hallucinations and delusions caused by body chemistry imbalances and those caused by psychological manipulation, sleep-deprived programming or pathological self-deception.

Dr. Bandy X. Lee’s “shared psychosis”

However, in the back of my mind regarding Swami’s question was the memory of the excellent work by my psychological hero Dr. Bandy X. Lee. She in fact used “shared psychosis” several years ago to describe how a narcissistic leader like trump and his narcissistic followers like MAGA can have a syndrome that is a sort of group madness and form of psychosis.

As with everything Dr. Lee says, it is brilliant, strong and insightful but from a CNI perspective, it is still a bit too abstract and complex to be memorable for the average person not well versed in psychological flow and jargon.

However, it is certainly worth a read for everyone to plant some useful seeds for the future and if her use of the word is mnemonic for you, more power to you. Here is an excerpt where she described the “shared psychosis” of trump and his supporters, and two levels of leader and follower psychosis, but Swami’s “various levels of psychosis” implies he was thinking about more than just two. After noting Dr. Lee’s brilliant analysis, we can show a CNI interpretation of “various levels,” which is hopefully the CNI related answer Swami was asking for.

“What attracts people to Trump? What is their animus or driving force?

The reasons are multiple and varied, but in my recent public-service book, Profile of a Nation, I have outlined two major emotional drives: narcissistic symbiosis and shared psychosis. Narcissistic symbiosis refers to the developmental wounds that make the leader-follower relationship magnetically attractive. The leader, hungry for adulation to compensate for an inner lack of self-worth, projects grandiose omnipotence—while the followers, rendered needy by societal stress or developmental injury, yearn for a parental figure. When such wounded individuals are given positions of power, they arouse similar pathology in the population that creates a “lock and key” relationship.

“Shared psychosis”—which is also called “folie à millions” [“madness for millions”] when occurring at the national level or “induced delusions” refers to the infectiousness of severe symptoms that goes beyond ordinary group psychology. When a highly symptomatic individual is placed in an influential position, the person’s symptoms can spread through the population through emotional bonds, heightening existing pathologies and inducing delusions, paranoia and propensity for violence even in previously healthy individuals. The treatment is removal of exposure.”

Wow, that was pretty deep, huh. So deep! If CNI filters are applied to the same question, the answers would be from a different narcissism spectrum angle and more “common tongue” vector. Do not get me wrong. Almost without exception I trust and support Dr. Lee’s psychological expertise, conclusions and theories. We may differ in a few political science areas, but her psychological work is the best I have found from a CNI perspective, and she is my #1 psych-pro hero now that my previous #1 psych-pro hero, Dr. Robert Hare, is hopefully enjoying his emeritus professorship and a well-earned contented retirement at 93-years-old.

If I had not remembered Dr. Lee’s use of “psychosis,” I probably would have answered Swami’s question of, “Can it be said that trump’s followers have various levels of psychosis?”, in a very CNI way like this.

Again, I would have said that while I do not find the umbrella term of “psychosis” very useful due to its lack of precision and because it is more applicable and descriptive of the hallucinations and delusions of people suffering from schizophrenia, bi-polar disorder or other biological causes, it can still be argued that trump followers do have “various levels of psychosis.”

However, if one has read and has fully processed the Dr. Lee approved trumpism is Narcissism, you know what I think about most of trump’s followers, and their “varying degrees of psychosis” and narcissism.

“the most vulnerable of all to falling under the spells of toxic manipulators are the children of narcissists, sociopaths, and psychopaths; because they were raised from birth to serve their primary narcissist and to see selfish behavior as normal. This is why I highly suspect that many, if not most, of trump’s supporters were children of narcissists.” - Sam Ray - 5/6/21

This means that while I have concluded that trump’s followers are groomed or naturally predisposed to think quite narcissistically, because pathological narcissists stop themselves from seeing any difference between their fantasy world and reality psychologically, they each could be considered to have “various levels of psychosis.” in individual self-delusional regards, up and down the narcissism spectrum.

Therefore, there are a few ways to show how trump supporters have varying degrees of psychosis. In Dr. Lee’s version, it is more the cult leader/follower narcissistic dynamic while the CNI version is more about how everyone who crosses over into the pathological narcissist realm up and down the spectrum, has varying degrees of self-delusion that could be described as a form of “psychosis.”

Still, in the end, CNI rejects the use of the word “psychosis” for our purposes since it does not really fit into CNI philosophy, because as long as psychopathic and psychotic are both used as catch-all phrases for, “they’re crazy” or even used interchangeably by the general public, it is not useful.

As long as there is this public confusion between the two words, it makes far more sense to keep the psychotic in the psych ward and to keep psychopaths, sociopaths and narcissists from using a false “psychotic break” insanity defense, when they get caught. Ironically, the Republicans have made insanity defenses much harder to prove in recent decades. Who knows? trump’s lawyers may come to regret that.

Regardless, based on a fairly standard psychological definition, it is easy to understand why many could wonder or believe trump’s “followers have various levels of psychosis,” Certainly nearly all of trump’s biggest fans and the Republican Party itself has “some lost contact with reality,” their “thoughts and perceptions are disrupted,” and many obviously have “difficulty recognizing what is real and what is not.”

Conclusions

Hopefully now everything is crystal clear if it was not before about these two massively different conditions. One is usually an unfair and cruel chemical imbalance that causes innocent victims like my little sister to see and hear “scary people” that are not there, without effective meds.

The other is a victim too in that they have a physically underdeveloped or damaged brain that feels no empathy, shame, guilt or remorse for anyone or anything, so society must still act accordingly to protect itself, but should also help them find productive paths that do not require a conscience to be done safely, because it is in our interests.

Ironically, a psychopath would have zero qualms about acting as if they were in some sort of psychotic state if it benefited them, because they will never feel any shame in doing anything that benefits them, or in doing almost anything else for that matter. Shame is just not in them. Thankfully, around the majority of psychopaths seem to know they want to keep their freedom, which means the law and prison do actually serve as deterrents that keep the smarter ones from crossing most legal lines.

So the simple difference is psychosis is usually someone bi-polar or with schizophrenia seeing things that are not there due to a chemical imbalance, while psychopaths are primarily people born without a conscience. Certainly there is overlap but a CNI cardinal rule is narcissistic people will always use anything that works to justify acting narcissistically, sociopathically and psychopathically toward others.

Ergo, they would certainly fake a psychosis as an excuse, but I do not recall seeing it happen. Not surprisingly, I suspect it is hard for a narcissist to psychologically claim insanity, because that is an admission of mental weakness, which seems something a narcissist can never admit.

i.e. to answer Swami’s question, physically caused hallucinations and delusions aka psychosis are not the underlying issues for the vast majority of trump followers from a CNI perspective. However, since I stopped fighting others using non-preferred CNI terms if they are using them correctly, it can certainly be said there are some sorts of individual and “shared psychosis” when it comes to trump and his followers, and that can be stretched into “various levels” if used in conjunction with the various levels of the narcissism spectrum.

One of the things that disappoints me most from the psychological establishment is of course the low hanging fruit of jargon overuse but perhaps even more importantly are the word illusions that have been placed inside our heads because of misuse of words. I am certainly not saying psychotic and psychopathic were picked to confuse public understanding but a complete lack of any public education on the stark differences between the two conditions, certainly allows for regular conflation and confusion between one word often being used when the other was the accurate choice.

For example, if I understand the character of Norman Bates in Psycho correctly, although he was somewhat based on serial killer Ed Gein, he was not really a “psycho” at all. He had a split personality/Dissociative Identity Disorder due to trauma. One personality was a kind man and the split was his judgmental and cruel sociopathic mother who was always seemingly in a state of murderous psychosis, so the most historical and classic pop culture reference to a psychopath in entertainment history has misinformed society’s perceptions of what a “Psycho” is for decades.

Obviously psychopaths like all humans have the potential for psychotic breaks that would fall under the umbrella term of psychosis, while most people who will have hallucinations and psychosis can be pretty stable with effective medication.

So strange those likely innocently blurred lines by Alfred Hitchcock never seem to have been clarified by the psychological establishment. Certainly clarifying a movie cannot be a violation of their antiquated Goldwater Rule, could it?

That is why a main purposes for this piece is to make extra sure that you are staying clear on the true meanings of easily conflatable words like these, and that our community has useful class to share with those who could use some clarity on the stark differences between psychosis and a psychopath, because it only serves the darkness to ever let them be conflated or confused.

Know that we can no longer afford to let the specific dangers that psychopaths present to society due to their primal worldview ever be obscured or conflated again with those who innocently and bravely struggle to stay in reality. It’s not right and it is no longer safe to let malignant narcissists, sociopaths and psychopaths stay hidden and obscured in the shadows of psychological ignorance, confusion and conflation.

Finally, I want to thank Swami for the reminder about my psychotic-psychopathic epiphany. There are several other tricky yet important word illusions that belong in the CNI library and I have actually been working on perhaps the worst culprit for a while. In time, more classes on word illusion will come to the CNI library, so when anyone needs a reminder or wants to help someone else gain greater understanding, our intelligence will be there to assist.

At least for me, this epiphany is still such an obvious yet tricky “hiding in plain sight” illusion, and it can also be connected to the institutional suppression of the public’s psychological awareness, thus it sets off a big CNI red flag.

Yes, this lesson and cheat code almost seem like minor honest mistakes and a simple correction, but when it comes to countering narcissists, calibrating your radar to detect similar word illusions they will compulsively exploit is a crucial magnifying glass you should have in your Counter-Narcissism toolbox.

It is always so important to be sure that you have thoroughly, completely and ACCURATELY mentally dissected any narcissists you are forced to deal with, or the best laid plans can quickly turn to dust, or worse. This is why your own word precision and certainty is so important to your own cause. CNI certainly does not want anyone suffering unnecessarily due to paralysis by over-analysis, but as should always be the case with every pathological narcissist interaction, safety first!

Apologies that the comments for this particular defense class are limited to paid subscribers. I need to give them something unique every once in a while and after a 5000+ word piece like this, I have mostly said everything I want to say, so if someone wants to talk about it further in the comments, they can buy me a coffee, unless they already have ; )

Cheers and thanks for your interest, support and understanding of the time-consuming high wire act CNI takes on when attempting to balance such treacherous and explosive subjects most others avoid.