Sennett suggests that authority is often applied in an indifferent manner: “as your boss, I don’t really care what you do, but I am required to offer you some guidance and must set some goals against which your performance will be judged – though I don’t really take any of this seriously. You can do pretty much what you have always done.” Under these conditions, alienation is manifest in the lack of any concern by people who ultimately have considerable power over our own life. It is not only our personal lack of purpose that pervades our sense of self. There is also a lack of purpose on the part of those who potentially hold some control over our actions: there is neither an internal nor an external locus of control.
Is this not a source of disturbing stress and paradox in our life—what Gregory Bateson (1987), would describe as a schizophrenogenic setting? At the very least, this indifferent authority forces us to look inside our self for some sense of guidance and even identity: what happens if we find that there is nothing there when we look inside our self. Is this the ultimate source of alienation: we are alienated from our self? As the social critic, Christopher Lasch (1984), would suggest, our sense of self is minimized and easily dismissed. The scene is set for “madness” and what another social critic, Michael Foucault (1988) would call an “internalization of the chains.” I now turn to the perspective that Foucault contributes to this analysis of an assumptive world of psychopathy that is based on social deviance.
Psychopathy and Social Control
At a foundational level, the social deviance assumption is about control and the identification, isolation and treatment of psychopathy as a vehicle for establishing a certain form of social order and authority. Often articulated alongside the other social deviance perspectives, the premise of social control represents not just the obvious use of force (police powers) and authority (judicial system) to determine and reinforce “proper” and “legal” behavior, it also represents the movement of an external locus of control to an internal locus.
The Panopticon
Perhaps the first representation of this internalization of control came from the noted social philosopher and reformer, Jerome Bentham. In his advocacy of more “humane” treatment of those who are imprisoner, work in a factory, or are students in an educational system, Bentham portrayed a hypothetical building (that he called a Panopticon) which would be a circular building with an open area in the middle. A high tower would be placed in the middle of this open area. From the top of this tower, one could look directly into every room of the circular building (which would have large windows looking out on the open space).
