The Apath

The Empathy Trap:
Understanding
Antisocial Personalities

by Dr Jane McGregor
and Tim McGregor

Excerpt: Apaths are an integral part of the sociopath’s arsenal and contribute to sociopathic abuse. Sociopaths have an uncanny knack of knowing who will assist them in bringing down the person they are targeting. It is not necessarily easy to identify an apath; in other circumstances, an apath can show ample empathy and concern for others—just not in this case. The one attribute an apath must have is a link to the target.

How apaths, who might otherwise be fair-minded people, become involved in such destructive business is not hard to understand, but it can be hard to accept. The main qualifying attribute is poor judgment resulting from lack of insight. They might be jealous of or angry at the target, and thus have something to gain from the evolving situation.

At other times, the apath might not want to see the ‘bad’ in someone, particularly if the sociopath is useful. Or they might choose not to see because they have enough on their plate and do not possess the wherewithal or moral courage to help the targeted person at that time. Usually, be it active or passive involvement, the apath’s conscience appears to fall asleep.

Read more…

See also:
Flying Monkeys
Sociopaths Recruit Minions
Once a flying monkey, always a flying monkey…
‘Common Knowledge’:
The Sociopath’s Method of Recruiting and Arming Minions.

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The Imperative of Understanding Psychopathy

From the article by Bernhard Guenther: Marianne Williamson and the Elephant in the Living Room “Nothing will change fundamentally until we educate ourselves about psychopathy and political ponerology and how it affects all of us. The virus of psychopathy will infect any new system, community or change in power until it is brought to awareness and looked at for what it is. Then the solutions will present themselves based on the knowledge and understanding we have gained. Educating ourselves and others about it is the best we can do for ourselves and future generations. It is vital knowledge in this day and age.”

Read more of this outstanding article!

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Does Maslow’s hierarchy apply to psychopaths?

By Athena Walker: Psychopathy is present from the first breath one takes, to the last.

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It doesn’t. That applies to the needs of neurotypicals. The bottom of it applies to survival; of course everyone has that. The rest to us is nonsense and unnecessary. …

Read more of the article Does Maslow’s hierarchy apply to psychopaths?

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Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is a theory in psychology proposed by Abraham Maslow in his 1943 paper A Theory of Human Motivation in Psychological Review. Maslow subsequently extended the idea to include his observations of humans’ innate curiosity.

Maslow’s hierarchy of needs—Wikipedia

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The Authoritarian Personality

Authoritarian, sociopathic, and narcissistic personality traits have many similarities.

Research shows that authoritarians are far more likely to exhibit sloppy reasoning, highly compartmentalized beliefs, double standards, hypocrisy, self-blindness, a profound ethnocentrism, and—to top it all off—a ferocious dogmatism that makes it unlikely anyone could ever change their minds with evidence or logic.

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Predators among us.

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Can psychopaths tell who’s another psychopath?

Answer by Jay Jones:

Yes. I am a high scoring psychopath, I can recognise others, as well as sociopaths (secondary psychopaths), many other disorders and brain/personality variations. Besides being able to recognise others of a very similar ilk, we are very tuned to working others out. I can spot police, many school teachers, depression, ADHD, mental illnesses, personality flaws, people’s conscious fears, strengths and weaknesses, all sorts of things the average person doesn’t pick up on.

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The Core Problem

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European Reaction to Trump

Psychopaths — Vengeful Beyond Measure

The cop wanted her car keys. Kelli Peters handed them over. She told herself she had nothing to fear, that all he’d find inside her PT Cruiser was beach sand, dog hair, maybe one of her daughter’s toys.

Now she watched as her ruin seemed to unfold before her…   Continue reading…

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Smart Scheming

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See also:

False Accusations
Kill the Messenger
DARVO—Role Reversal
ASPD Characteristics and Traits
Never Underestimate the Power of Manipulation

 

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Twisting of Meanings and Verbal Traps

“Twisting of meanings is a clue to psychopathy. They’re masters of doublespeak*, creating verbal traps and impossible situations that leave non-psychopaths bewildered.”   Harrison Koehli Red Pill Press, Publisher of Political Ponerology   *Doublespeak = Evasive, ambiguous language that is intended to deceive or confuse.

• Word Salad and Narc Speak (PsychopathResistance.com)
• Sociopaths twist words, manipulate, and deflect… (PsychopathResistance.com)
• 13 Examples of Narc Speak (thriveafterabuse.com)
• Guard Yourself Against Verbal Violence in Nursing (inanurseblog.wordpress.com)
• Sebastian Kügler: Standing up against verbal abuse (vizZzion.org)
• Stop it, You’re Hurting Me (h8my20s.wordpress.com)

Why are some people abusive?

See also:
Psychopaths: Nature or Nurture?
Don’t Reward Bad Behavior
Exposing An Abuser

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DARVO—Role Reversal

 

A strategy common to all abusers is called DARVO.

Deny the abuse, Attack the victim, and Reverse the roles of Victim and Offender.

This is roughly how it can be done (ad absurdum for emphasis):

	• You are stupid. •
	• Are you accusing me of being stupid!? •
	• You are accusing me of making accusations! •
	• …but what you said was rude and untrue. •
	• More accusations! And you are calling me a rude liar! You are hostile and name calling. Leave me alone. •
	• Why did you call me ‘stupid’? •
	• You are harassing me. •
	• I want an explanation. Was it something I said that sounded stupid? •
	• I told you to leave me alone! Stop harassing me! Look, everyone, I am being victimized by that evil person for no reason! •

At this point, the aggressor, the one who instigated the conflict and made all of the assaults, may threaten his victim into submission or use the ‘silent treatment’ (also called ‘stonewalling’) until the victim gives up trying to hold the abuser accountable. He will characterize his victim as the offender and himself as the victim as he complains about the “harassment” he is being subjected to—without telling the whole story, of course. He may tell other people that the victim is menacing, irrational, or mentally unstable to start rumors that support his egocentric version of the situation, strengthen his credibility, and damage his victim’s reputation. He may use deceptive tactics, such as pretending to be hurt or worried and fabricate disinformation to manipulate other people to side with him, isolate his victim, and maximize the harm. If successful, the abuser gains sympathy and support while his victim is disgraced and may face social rejection. The abuser escapes accountability and, lacking empathy and remorse, is gratified by “winning” his power trip while his victim gets blamed and shamed and may suffer immensely from long lasting irreversible damage to his reputation, self esteem, and relations.

Do you recognize this scenario?
Please leave a comment and share your story!

Related articles

•

• Denial and DARVO (SalemWitchHunt.wordpress.com)
• DARVO (changingminds.org)
• Narcissistic Personality Disorder (PsychopathResistance.com)
• Narcissists Provoke People,
  Then Blame Them
  (SalemWitchHunt.wordpress.com)
• Baiting & Bashing (PsychopathResistance.com)
• Stonewalling or The Silent Treatment (SalemWitchHunt.wordpress.com)
• The 5 Senses of Abuse (larkkirkwood.wordpress.com)
• Being Manipulated By A Pro … The Narcissist (nakiafleming.wordpress.com)

Cold and Callous

Steve Becker, LCSW: “You don’t have to be a sociopath to stonewall. Plenty of non-sociopaths stonewall. But many sociopaths are stonewallers, and the act of stonewalling itself contains the cold, callous attitude of the sociopath.”

Read more about stonewalling or the silent treatment.

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• • •

The Authoritarian Personality

Research shows that authoritarians are far more likely to exhibit sloppy reasoning, highly compartmentalized beliefs, double standards, hypocrisy, self-blindness, a profound ethnocentrism, and—to top it all off—a ferocious dogmatism that makes it unlikely anyone could ever change their minds with evidence or logic. Authoritarian, sociopathic, and narcissistic personality traits have many similarities.

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Why Are Toxic People Cruel?

A Game of Destroying People
The Sociopath’s Game
Playing Games to Hurt and Incriminate
Why Would Anyone Want to Control You?

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Impression Management Tactics

See also:

Manipulation Tactics

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The Psychopathic Child

From No Psychos, No Druggies, No Stooges:

Can You Call a 9-Year-Old a Psychopath?

Michael’s problems started, according to his mother, around age 3, shortly after his brother Allan was born. At the time, she said, Michael was mostly just acting “like a brat,” but his behavior soon escalated to throwing tantrums during which he would scream and shriek inconsolably. These weren’t ordinary toddler’s fits. “It wasn’t, ‘I’m tired’ or ‘I’m frustrated’ — the normal things kids do,” Anne remembered. “His behavior was really out there. And it would happen for hours and hours each day, no matter what we did.” For several years, Michael screamed every time his parents told him to put on his shoes or perform other ordinary tasks, like retrieving one of his toys from the living room. “Going somewhere, staying somewhere — anything would set him off,” Miguel said. These furies lasted well beyond toddlerhood. At 8, Michael would still fly into a rage when Anne or Miguel tried to get him ready for school, punching the wall and kicking holes in the door. Left unwatched, he would cut up his trousers with scissors or methodically pull his hair out. He would also vent his anger by slamming the toilet seat down again and again until it broke.

When Anne and Miguel first took Michael to see a therapist, he was given a diagnosis of “firstborn syndrome”: acting out because he resented his new sibling. While both parents acknowledged that Michael was deeply hostile to the new baby, sibling rivalry didn’t seem sufficient to explain his consistently extreme behavior.

By the time he turned 5, Michael had developed an uncanny ability to switch from full-blown anger to moments of pure rationality or calculated charm — a facility that Anne describes as deeply unsettling. “You never know when you’re going to see a proper emotion,” she said. She recalled one argument, over a homework assignment, when Michael shrieked and wept as she tried to reason with him. “I said: ‘Michael, remember the brainstorming we did yesterday? All you have to do is take your thoughts from that and turn them into sentences, and you’re done!’ He’s still screaming bloody murder, so I say, ‘Michael, I thought we brainstormed so we could avoid all this drama today.’ He stopped dead, in the middle of the screaming, turned to me and said in this flat, adult voice, ‘Well, you didn’t think that through very clearly then, did you?’ ”

Continue reading: Can You Call a 9-Year-Old a Psychopath?
No Psychos, No Druggies, No Stooges.

See also: How can I reach a child who’s a Sociopath?

How evil are you?

Artwork: Adam Proctor

From BBC Future, 3 December 2015
By David Robson

Do you have a ruthless streak? Psychologists believe the “dark triad” of personality—Machiavellianism, narcissism and psychopathy—might help you succeed in life. To measure your own dark side, click on the link below and choose how much you agree or disagree with 9 simple statements—and we’ll tell you how dastardly you actually are.

The questions for this quiz were inspired by questionnaires developed by Delroy Paulhus and Daniel Jones (Assessment, vol 21, p 28). Our quiz was designed solely for entertainment, and the results should not be considered a scientific measure of your personality. If you would like to learn more about Paulhus’s personality research and his serious explorations of the dark triad, read the BBC profile “The man who studies everyday evil”.

BBC – Future – How dark is your personality?

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The Dark Triad

 

The Dark Triad The dark triad is a group of three personality traits: Narcissism, Machiavellianism, and Psychopathy. Use of the term “dark” implies that these traits have malevolent qualities: Narcissism is characterized by grandiosity, pride, egotism, and a lack of empathy. Machiavellianism is characterized by manipulation and exploitation of others, a cynical disregard for morality, and a focus on self-interest and deception. Psychopathy is characterized by enduring antisocial behavior, impulsivity, selfishness, callousness, and remorselessness. All three traits have been associated with a callous-manipulative interpersonal style. A factor analysis carried out at the Glasgow Caledonian University found that among the big five personality traits, low agreeableness is the strongest correlate of the dark triad.

Dark triad – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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Types of Flying Monkeys

See also:

• Flying Monkeys
• Once a flying monkey, always a flying monkey…
• Sociopaths Recruit Minions
• Don’t be a minion

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Good Deeds by Bad People?

Do psychopaths ever experience empathy or compassion? Are they ever inclined to help someone in need—without an ulterior motive? Are there psychopaths who do more good in the world than your average apath or bleeding heart empath?

Read the article by James, psychopath:
Doing something nice for no reason

at No Psychos, No Druggies, No Stooges

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Anti-Social Personality Disorder

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The Corporate Psychopath: Workplace Bullying

“Often these monstrous individuals are initially charming, displaying false empathy to the point that even when their victims instinct senses danger they ignore this feeling as irrational. These people have a natural talent for manipulation and are self-absorbed individuals with no conscience or feeling for others and for whom rules have no meaning. These depraved manipulators can appear unstoppable. Their non physical violence against innocent victims appears to be planned, purposeful and emotionless. Any attempt at reason will fail as these people appear to operate outside the code that governs normal, rational behaviour towards others.”

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Read the article: The Corporate Psychopath: Workplace bullying | What’s it all about anyway?

See also:

• Fighting the Workplace Bully
• Why Workplace Bullies Thrive: The Bystander Effect
  
• Denying, Discounting, and Dismissing Abuse
• When the Boss is a Psychopath
• $460 Billion Per Year—The Cost of Psychopathy

Word Salad and Narc Speak

Posted on April 8, 2015 by Dana in Explaining Narcissists

Word Salad, also often referred to as Narc Speak, is a nonsensical mix of words, phrases, or conversations and is traditionally (and clinically) associated with a person who has Schizophrenia, Dementia, Logorrhea (a communication disorder of the brain), Schizophasia, Receptive Aphasia, or brain injuries.

In the context of Narc Speak, the word salad is a combination of intentional manipulative conversational techniques that are designed to frustrate, confuse, and erode the sanity of the victim by getting them to question their perceptions of events, as well as their own judgment in general. Narc Speak most commonly happens when the victim confronts the Narcissist with their behavior, although if the Narcissist is using these techniques to gaslight*, word salad can happen at any time.

The ten most common techniques of word salad in the context of Narc Speak are:

1. Denying their own bad behavior, and instead, focusing on the victim’s.
2. Continue reading: Word Salad and Narc Speak

*Gaslighting is a form of mental abuse in which information is twisted, spun, or selectively omitted to favor the abuser, or false information is presented with the intent of making victims doubt their own memory, perception, and sanity.

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Psychopath Free—Now Available!

Psychopath Free
(Expanded Edition)
Recovering from Emotionally Abusive Relationships With Narcissists, Sociopaths, and Other Toxic People
by Jackson MacKenzie

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2 Reviews

Paperback $9.75, NOOK Book $9.99

View All Available Formats & Editions

Have you ever been in a relationship with a psychopath? Chances are, even if you did, you would never know it.

Psychopaths are cunning charmers and master manipulators, to the point where you start to accept the most extreme behaviors as normal…

Even if it hurts you.

More info:

Psychopath Free (Expanded Edition): Recovering from Emotionally Abusive Relationships With Narcissists, Sociopaths, and Other Toxic People by Jackson MacKenzie | 9780425279991 | Paperback | Barnes & Noble

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You could be a psychopath if you don’t yawn.

By ANTHONY JOSEPH for MAILONLINE
PUBLISHED: 11:55 EST, 15 August 2015 | UPDATED: 13:38 EST, 15 August 2015

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Want to see if someone is a psychopath or not? Try yawning at them. If they yawn back, you’re okay and proceed to befriending them if you wish. If they don’t, perhaps steer clear—they could be distinctly anti-social.

Scientists reveal that people with low empathy levels don’t copy the gestures of others. 

• Scientists have found that the more psychopathic characteristics people have, the less they are affected by ‘contagious yawning’
• Researchers from Baylor University tested 135 students for anti-social traits
• Those who scored highly on ‘cold-heartedness’ were less likely to yawn when shown video clips of facial expressions

Most people will yawn if someone around them yawns. Normal mammals are said to be unable to resist ‘contagious yawning.’

US President Barack Obama yawns during the East Asia
Summit plenary session in Phnom Penh, Cambodia in 2012

The researchers from Baylor University in Texas published their findings in the journal Personality and Individual Differences.

Read more: Psychopaths don’t yawn study

See also:

• The Psychopath’s Sleep of Death
  
• Physorg: Psychopaths’ brains
• Lack of Empathy

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Don’t be duped.

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See also: Denying, Discounting, and Dismissing Abuse

Dr. Sam Vaknin explains: “Even the victim’s relatives, friends, and colleagues are amenable to the considerable charm, persuasiveness, and manipulativeness of the abuser and to his impressive thespian skills.”

“In contrast, the victims are often on the verge of a nervous breakdown: harassed, unkempt, irritable, impatient, abrasive, and hysterical.”

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Never Underestimate the Power of Manipulation

“I don’t understand why she would give it all up for a piece of sh*t killer. He must have played some serious mind games on her.”

~ A relative of Joyce Mitchell

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From psychopathsandlove.com:

When this story was unfolding in the news, I thought it would turn into a Major Teaching Moment about psychopaths and their powerful manipulative skills…

Continue reading: Manipulation: How Far Can It Go?

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Naive Prey Response Syndrome

“Everyone is told the fairytale that we are all brothers and sisters under the skin.  But what if that is not so?”

Read: Naive Prey Response Syndrome | The Path Whisperer

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The Predatory Aggressive Personality

 

By Dr George Simon, PhD

Predatory Aggressive Personalities (i.e., psychopaths or sociopaths) consider themselves superior to the rest of the human race. They view individuals with inhibitions rooted in emotional bonding to others as inferior creatures and, therefore, their rightful prey.

Aggressive Personalities include the Unbridled Aggressive, who is frequently in conflict with the law; the Channeled-Aggressive, who generally limits ruthlessness to non-criminal activity; the Covert-Aggressive, who cloaks their cruelty under a veneer of civility and manipulates others in the process; and the Sadistic Aggressive, whose principal aim is to demean and injure others.

But by far the most pathological aggressive personality is the one I prefer to label the Predatory Aggressive Personality. All of the aggressive personalities are among the most seriously disturbed in character of the various personality types, and the Predatory Aggressive Personality is the most seriously character disordered.

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Read Dr Simon’s article:
Understanding the Predatory Aggressive Personality.

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The Power of the Internet

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“The last big mistake that all psychopaths make today, is to underestimate the power of the internet.  Once everyone learns to recognize their behaviors and strategies, they can’t hide and there will be nowhere to run—except off an ice shelf in the arctic.”

via Psychopaths are Opportunists

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Free Candy

via ‘How to Spot a Pro-Social Psychopath’ – the psychopath’s response | No Psychos, No Druggies, No Stooges.

“If you ignore everything you were told when you were 4 and trust a complete stranger with your money, your belongings, or your life just because they have a nice smile and lots of candy in their van, you’re a sucker and you deserve everything that’s coming to you.” Click to read a psychopath’s entertaining take on the description of his pathology.

How to Spot a Sociopath: 11 Traits

Sociopaths are manipulative, and some are dangerous. If you know someone with several of the following attributes, your best bet is to stay away from them.

 1  Superficial Charm

 2  Narcissistic

 3  Pathological Lying

 4  Manipulative and Cunning

 5  Shallow Emotions

 6  Lack of Remorse, Shame, Or Guilt

 7  Incapable of Human Attachment

 8  Constant Need for Stimulation

 9  Lack of Empathy

10  Poor Behavioral Controls / Impulsive Nature

11  Promiscuous Sexual Behavior / Infidelity

If you have a sociopath in your life, especially in a romantic relationship, you are going to suffer. Avoid these people. Don’t be fooled by their charms—it is just an act to get what they want. Sociopaths are extremely cold-hearted. The only person they care about is themselves. They see all other people only in terms of usefulness and as potential targets.

via How to Spot a Sociopath: 11 Signs & Traits of A Sociopath.

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Uncanny Sociopathic Abilities