sidney crown

In July 03, i quoted this article from the NewStatesman, titled: "So were the Tories right after all? - Feaures - British Prime Minister Tony Blair provides fodder for psychologists"

The question of Tony Blair's sanity is one that can no longer be avoided. PETER DUNN canvasses opinion in the couch community and comes to disturbing conclusions

{snip]

For several weeks, I have been talking to psychologists and psychiatrists about what drives the Prime Minister. One view emerged strongly: there appears to be something worryingly adrift in the mind of Anthony Charles Lynton Blair, a man who doesn't really know who or what he is. More technically, he is diagnosed as a psychopath capable of reinventing himself with remarkable dexterity, like an actor. What most people call "spin", the routine lubricant of all political gearboxes, is, in Blair's case, eloquent self-delusion on a heroic scale. He is one of the few politicians who has never told a lie because his belief in whatever he says--about public transport, hospitals, schools, weapons of mass destruction--is total.

[snip]

Then, in Prospect magazine this month, the neuropsychologist Dr Paul Broks, usually a fan of the PM'S, went further. "Suppose it turns out that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction," he wrote. "Suppose the Prime Minister was indeed party to the ramping-up of what flimsy evidence there might have been... in order to keep us on a pre-set course for war... Set this against his affiliative personal style and the profile that begins to emerge is that of the plausible psychopath--charming, intelligent, emotionally manipulative, ruthlessly ambitious and self-serving."

I found Dr Sidney Crown, a former consultant psychotherapist at the Royal London Hospital, in agreement with Broks's diagnosis. "One of the biggest things about him [Blair] is that he doesn't exist," says Crown. "I know this sounds an odd thing to say but I mean it seriously. Right from the beginning, he's always trying to establish some sort of existence which would make sense to him. I get this with actors who come to see me. They'll say, 'I don't know who I am until I'm on stage.' He loves being photographed because he knows he's good-looking whatever the cartoonists say about his ears. And yet, he's a scaredy-pants. The vanity and fear area all part of a devious personality and he's extraordinarily clever about it. Right from the beginning, with anything difficult or unpleasant, he's deputised someone else to handle it--like Alastair Campbell...Campbell is very much represented in Blair's dark side, which is why they like each other. It's amazing how he's got away with it until now, but then, the psychopa thic personality is very quick to pick things up and shift and move about."

Therapists agree that the ability to disassociate yourself from the consequences of what you have done is a classic ingredient of the psychopathic condition. Dorothy Rowe, a much-published Australian psychologist, compares Blair's style to that of Michael Jackson, the singer. "Both are dominated in adult life by fantasies," she says. "I don't see it as self-destruct; you just start to lose control over what's happening to you. Jackson bought this huge tract of land and built his Neverland. Then he lost control of the way people saw his relationship with children. Blair has much the same sort of problem.

[snip]

Rowe insists that Blair is not a liar as defined by dictionaries; rather, as experts of the psychopathic condition will tell you, he has a gift for making unpalatable facts disappear. "There are lies we tell ourselves when we say 'that didn't happen' when we know it did," she says. "I don't think Tony is the kind of person who would say, 'I'm going to construct some lies about weapons of mass destruction.' What he's done is read the stuff the intelligence people have given him and he's been highly selective, seeing just the things that appeal to him. He literally doesn't see the things that tell him he's wrong."

"With all forms of psychotics," adds Crown, "if you ask people about the consequences of what they've done they can't tell you, because they've no ability to see the future."."

today, from the server logs, I see that someone at the UK police is looking into Sidney Crown.