To me, this sounds like a description of the way good ol' LRH operated. Information thanks to the evil British psychs. http://www.theherald.co.uk/news/archive/30-3-19101-23-52-13.html > How the school bully can control pupils
> ALAN MacDERMID
>
> PLAYGROUND bullies may be artful manipulators of other children's
> emotions rather than mindless oafs, and their tactics can cause more
> distress than physical bullying.
>
> Their insight into other people's thought processes could prove
> useful when they grow up, as managers for instance, according to a
> psychologist, although there was also evidence that a lot of bullying
> went on in the workplace.
>
> Dr Jon Sutton, editor of the British Psychological Society's journal,
> said schools had to make it uncool to bully.
>
> He had studied 200 children and found that the stereotype of bullies
> often did not apply> i.e. the bully does not understand people, and
> bully because of their inadequacies.
>
> "The children who said they bullied because they enjoyed it seem to
> be involved with this understanding of the emotions," he said.
>
> "They know how they would feel if they were bullied, because they
> understand mental states and seem to understand emotions very well -
> they just don't care about them."
>
> They seemed to think> "This is easy, it works, it makes me feel
> good," and they used it.
[..snip out..] I recall one description of a sociopath as someone who knows how other people feel when they're hurt but don't care. Supposedly they are people who can mentally put themselves on others' shoes but lack an innate emotional response to it. Sounds just like ElRon to me. I've known real bullies and can confirm that the descriptions in the article scan with reality. I can think of at least one who was a real moron and used physical threats to get his way and wasn't a very good bully. He would have made a good thug, though. The others were much more successful using more emotional manipulation than violence. The same holds true for the helpers and defenders mentioned in the rest of the article. Bullies who are truly good at it seem to recruit a circle of helpers to do their dirty work for them. OSA, anyone? [..snip in..] > The groups he studied included bullies themselves, "assistants" who
> helped out, perhaps by holding a victim while he was assaulted,
> "reinforcers" who hung around the bully and helped to bolster his
> reputation.
>
> There were also "defenders", children who would go to the aid of
> victims, but they needed some courage.
>
> Dr Sutton said as well as schools making it "uncool", they should
> mobilise peer pressure so that pupils could control it themselves.
>
> Other researchers said children who were picked on at school saw
> psychological torture as the worst form of bullying.
>
> Although those who had never suffered bullying themselves feared
> physical attack the most, according to one study, actual bully
> victims saw rumour-mongering and being shunned as more serious.
>
> Dr Mike Eslea, from the University of Central Lancashire, questioned
> 98 boys and 90 girls, aged 11 to 15, and also more than 100
> university students.
>
> As well as the obvious physical hurt, other distressing forms of
> bullying were theft, rumours, exclusion, threats, and name calling.
>
> The study also found that response strategies varied with the type of
> bullying. Verbal retaliation was most often used for name calling,
> and physical retaliation for physical bullying. But those who had not
> been bullied saw such retaliation as much more effective than actual
> victims.
>
> The study said the results had important implications for
> anti-bullying interventions.

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