My internet connection is very problematic today so I will keep this short.
There is a fair amount of diagnosing going on around the blogosphere related to Blagojevich and his corruption. The question of whether or not he is crazy has been raised. It is an interesting question with a simple answer that leads to a more complicated question deserving of much more invetsigation. According to any Psychiatric nosology one might peruse, Rod Blagojevich as publicly depicted through the press coverage and the transcripts of the FBI wiretaps is not "crazy", if by crazy we confine ourselves to questions of a psychotic illness. He is corrupt, arrogant, and stupid and these traits may well reflect a significant character disorder but there is not enough data to speculate on such.
The deeper question concerns a more general discussion:
When non-psychotic people do things which are certain to destroy them and they persist in the behavior seemingly unaware and unheedful of the risks they are taking, what might this reflect within their character?
That is a very complicated question but the short, non-technical answer would be that people are complex mixtures of often contradictory desires, inhibitions, impulses, drives, morals, and a host of other elements. It takes artists, novelists, neuroscientists, Psychoanalysts, and multitudes of others to attempt to understand the human psyche. We remain a young race with fairly low levels of self-awareness but we are starting to understand oursleves. I will have more on this when time permits.
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