Psychopathy One more Time: Comment to Levenson

Abstract

Levenson (1992) has proposed a subjectivist perspective on psychopathy focused on the choices/assumption made by the individual, and he extrapolates to corporations and other aggregates as perpetrators of `institutional psychopathy'. He examines arguments from biological, sociological and developmental perspectives and finds them wanting. This comment looks again at these dismissed areas, suggesting Levenson recapitulates them at times idiosyncratically, and constructs his own alternative on the questionable foundation of abstract universal (etic) values in the face of concrete marketplace (emic) values with which psychopathy spectrum behavior shows marked congruence.