The criminal mind
Ajay is a 38 year-old builder. He has an outstanding debt of 4 crores. He refuses to pay the money even though he has it. The apartments, which he has built, are damaged every now and then and the tenants are always complaining of poor construction. He can cheat on almost anything and everything without remorse. His employees are bitter about the way he exploits them. He has a very poor relationship with his clients and only as long as the relationship is self-serving. His wife and children are tired of his dominant and demanding behavior. All efforts at making him mend his ways are met with anger and hostility.
Ajay is a criminal mind. He is a person who takes a different direction to achieve his ambitions and that may be detrimental to the people whom he associates with. People have often tried to find out the reasons for such criminal minds. Some attribute it to heredity, some to environmental difficulties. However, not always. Ajay comes from a family of irreproachable reputation. Others believe poverty, adverse familial environment, physical deformity, childhood over permissiveness, over-pampering, indulgence, corporal punishment and physical abuse as contributing factors. However, all these factors by themselves are not the only ones. The failure is in not being able to arouse interest in other people. Due to this, he never learnt the respect for others and their feelings. He has taken to manipulation as an imitation of heroism. There is a certain element of a “kick” in committing a crime or manipulation and getting away with it. He considers himself important through the mere fact of existence, without making any effort to deserve the good opinion of others. He expects to be taken notice of without sustained effort. He is striving for a fictitious goal of leadership but in essence, it is a very cowardly way of avoiding the difficulties of striving hard. He is fooling himself and feeding his vanity and pride in outsmarting other people. The starting point is in committing acts, which have never been found out, and this makes him think that he can get away with it all the time; he has achieved his goal through his cleverness. It is very important to dispel this myth.
Whenever he is chided for his behavior, he takes it as a challenge. He feels that he is fighting everyone and the scolding is an even bigger kick. Another factor is the perception of his needs. He feels overwhelmed by his needs and in order to avoid the misery resorts to easier ways of fulfillment. Moreover, it is not the true hardship that drives him to manipulation. If that were to be true, the whole world would turn to such behavior as everyone faces problems some or the other time. It is his personal limit for tolerability that drives him to antisocial behavior. It is his style of facing problems. He considers friendships and relationships as conquests and acquisition; a means by which he can seek to possess others rather than a part of a lifelong relationship. He has a private logic; a private intelligence which can explain his behavior; it is sensible but not in a common sense.
What to do?
Success in curbing this behavior can be had only if Ajay recognizes the harmfulness of his behavior. He should never be threatened or given attention for the manipulative behavior; this only adds to the excitement of the behavior. Very little can be achieved by pointing out the illogicity of his thoughts or by arguing with him. He cannot be won over by making things easy for him or even harder for him. He has been looking at the world in this manner for years; so, the root cause of his thinking has to be addressed. What can be pointed out is the attitude and the way that he justifies everything for this attitude. Punishing him is equally ineffective, as he will only feel more helpless.
Perhaps if he is explained that he can be in a favorable position, if the demands on him are lessened and the errors in his lifestyle are no longer brought to the surface, he may improve. If he realizes that he has already got what he wanted and that manipulation serves no purpose, if his growing age and loss of physical belligerence is addressed, it might serve as a starting point for him to let go of his selfish needs and settle down comfortably. If his need for personal superiority is channelized into serving the society and being able to work towards a societal superiority, it might curb the self-serving behavior. Another way is to stop letting the manipulation win. For this one needs to be able to better equipped to tackle such behavior. Again, it is the behavior, which needs to be discouraged, and not the person. Nevertheless, it is to be remembered that people like Ajay are interested only in themselves and their point of view. He has his own way of looking and listening and frequently pays no attention to things that do not agree with his own interpretation of life. One cannot convince him, therefore, unless all his attitudes are discovered and this can be a very difficult task. However, as a last resort, if one does not succeed in helping Ajay, it is not the end of the world. There is plenty to do. One can at least lighten the burden of those who are not strong enough to bear him. One can also avoid everything that can serve as a temptation to him and cut down on ostentation.
