Charming, intelligent swindlers

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Sunday, March 9. 2014

Charming, intelligent swindlers

Dalrymple begins:

In my career as a doctor in prison, I met a few swindlers in my time and on the whole I liked them. They had charm and intelligence, which perhaps is unsurprising. It isn’t easy to imagine a charmless swindler, after all; it is almost a sine qua non of the trade. Whether their charm preceded their swindling or they developed it in order to practice their swindling is hard to say, though the former is more likely. Be that as it may, their charm was their stock-in-trade and human gullibility the market in which they sold their wares.

Posted by Dr. Joy Bliss in Psychology, and Dr. Bliss at 11:51 | Comments (3) | Trackbacks (0)

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Dalrymple was in prison? Not a doctor at prisons? What was in he in for? And he made a career of it? Would his experience had been different if he'd hadn't been a doctor in prison but rather just any other prisoner?

#1 JKB on 2014-03-09 12:04 (Reply)

His phrasing is not incorrect. There is nothing ambiguous about what he is saying, which is one major test. It can be made to sound ambiguous if one applies an artificial rule of language, but that's not the same thing.

As for his comment, I work in emergency mental health and I concur. Lying is a high-level skill and takes organization and social ability. When my patients can "tell me what I want to hear," as the complaint often is, they are getting near ready to go.

#2 Assistant Village Idiot (Link) on 2014-03-09 19:57 (Reply)

Dalrymple in prison, a doctor, or a prisoner? Pish Posh. Don't you see? That stuff is irrelevant. Dalrymple could have been writing about the Congress, the Supreme Court and the President. Slick swindlers each and every one. I prefer to think Dalrymple was perhaps writing with our political elite in mind. The applicability is hard to miss and it's accuracy hard to ignore. Except for one little thing. Our political elite get away with it. As Corzine's freedom attests.

#3 KommiKillr on 2014-03-10 18:55 (Reply)

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Sunday, March 9. 2014

Charming, intelligent swindlers