{"id":3055,"date":"2009-03-20T04:04:06","date_gmt":"2009-03-20T04:04:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=3055"},"modified":"2009-03-20T04:07:56","modified_gmt":"2009-03-20T04:07:56","slug":"cia-clandestine-operatives-horizontal-thinkers-or-just-in-need-of-ritalin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=3055","title":{"rendered":"CIA Clandestine Operatives: Horizontal Thinkers or Just in Need of Ritalin?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jeff Stein<\/strong> of Spy Talk<\/strong> <\/a>had a fascinating interview with Dr. David Charney<\/strong><\/a>, a CIA psychiatrist specializing in treating professional spooks. The whole article is interesting but the following caught my eye:<\/p>\n

….But for\u00a0<\/strong>case officers<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0at the tip of the CIA’s spear, he said, the problem tends to be A.D.D.,\u00a0<\/strong>Adult Attention Deficit Disorder<\/strong><\/a>.\u00a0
\n“They seem to be highly functional A.D.D.’s,” Charney said. “You might think a person with ADD can’t tie their shoelaces, but quite the opposite.” To them, “boredom equals death,”\u00a0<\/strong>Charney<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0says, not really joking.\u00a0 <\/strong><\/p>\n

“They’re energetic, restless, people who have to physically keep moving. Lock them to a desk, and they can’t deal with it. They can’t stand to be bored…”\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

But\u00a0<\/strong>A.D.D.<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0can be an asset, too.\u00a0 “They have the ability to absorb things from 360 degrees,”\u00a0<\/strong>Charney<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0marvels.\u00a0 <\/strong><\/p>\n

“Contrast that with people who are linear, like your book-keeper or accountant, who chug along in a channel and get things done by going from one thing to another. But A.D.D. minds tend to be very synthetic. They reach out and pull things out of the air, or through other persons who are not linked in any way. They see patterns that other people don’t see. They can gather together unusual elements and bring them together into a whole that is a brilliant synthesis of things that would be lost on other people.\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

“They have a sensitivity to ambient thoughts going on that a good case officer needs to pick up, little nuances, little hues, little things said that let you know if the agent you’ve recruited is telling the truth, or which is partly the truth … which buttons to push to manage the person, how to absorb material and put it into a whole. And the good ones have that ability.”<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

This is classic horizontal thinking\u00a0<\/a>with an emphasis on connections, patterns and synthesis driven by an internal “restlessness” – the kind of\u00a0persona seen in such disparate occupations as fighter pilots, inventors,\u00a0physicists and\u00a0artists. There has long been a comparative and to an extent correlative association of ADHD or “hyperactivity” with creativity,\u00a0high levels of intelligence and depression<\/a>\u00a0though of course not everyone with ADHD is creative, intellectually gifted, depressed or working for an intelligence agency. The correlation though has also been noted in MRI brain scan studies of children <\/a>so it would appear to have a physiological basis\u00a0that\u00a0might explain why the CIA needs to have its own psychiatrists for reasons beyond the stress generated by a career in intelligence work – self-selection bias in people who apply to become employees.<\/p>\n

(Hat tip to….one of my twitteramigos….I can’t find the tweet, damn it!)\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jeff Stein of Spy Talk had a fascinating interview with Dr. David Charney, a CIA psychiatrist specializing in treating professional spooks. The whole article is interesting but the following caught my eye: ….But for\u00a0case officers\u00a0at the tip of the CIA’s spear, he said, the problem tends to be A.D.D.,\u00a0Adult Attention Deficit Disorder.\u00a0 “They seem to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[119,487,92,24,21,25,239,78,47,462,436,32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3055","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-attention","category-brain","category-cia","category-cognition","category-creativity","category-horizontal-thinking","category-ic","category-ideas","category-intelligence","category-metacognition","category-psychology","category-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3055","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3055"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3055\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3055"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3055"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3055"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}