The list below contains descriptions of some of the more common traits of people who suffer from personality disorders, as observed by family members and partners. Examples are given of each trait, with descriptions of what it feels like to be caught in the crossfire. Read more…
See also:
By Dr George Simon
You might want them to see the self-defeating and other-harming consequences of their behavior, but the fact is many disturbed characters already see, they just disagree.
Because I’ve made a career of understanding and dealing with responsibility-challenged people and have written about them extensively, I get an enormous amount of mail and email from folks weary from their ordeals with the disturbed characters in their lives. And it never ceases to amaze me how often I hear these folks lament that they wish the problem character they’ve been dealing with could “see what they’re doing,” or understand how self-destructive their behavior is. The assumption is, of course, that the disturbed character lacks insight into both the nature of their behavior and the other-harming and self-defeating consequences of it.
Sociopath a.k.a. Psychopath
The Smear Campaign Wrapped in Fake Concern. This is how a narcissist gossips without appearing to be slandering anyone …
Posts about the psychopath’s smear campaign written by psychopathyawareness … I recall moments during my childhood when I’d go to bed and my toys would create …
This woman was subjected to a smear campaign from her husband, the sociopath. Abusers often use this tactic to cover up their own behavior and convince others that …
If you’re new to the site, check out our article 30 Red Flags of a Manipulative Partner to learn the warning signs of charming “soul mates”, emotional abusers, pathological liars, and manufactured love triangles.
The number one giveaway for recognising a potential psychopath is an organised, on-going, vicious, histrionically-engineered and surprisingly personal smear campaign.
IT IS NOT CRITICISM. IT IS NEVER BACKED UP
WITH EVIDENCE OF SUBSTANCE. ONLY HYSTERIA.
The male and female psychopath are obsessed with character assassination and vindictive, almost psychotic vengeance based on fictional events surrounding an individual whom they perceive as an ‘enemy’ …
Most of the time, we don’t even know a smear campaign is going on until it’s far too late. When psychopaths are staging your replacement and downfall …
Educating to help people stay safe & recover from sociopaths & psychopaths … then will begin my campaign of smear …
One of the dead giveaways of psychopathic behavior is that of the vicious, psychotic character assassination campaigns that are wielded against anyone who stands in …
How do they get away with it?
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Read more of this outstanding article!
by Katarina Skelin April 9, 2020 in Social Psychology
The dark triad is a combination of three negative personality traits: narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism. It is more common for this set of traits to be found among men, and it can be spotted through characteristics like selfishness, impulsivity, and opportunism. Those who gain success at the workplace without regard to getting along with others are likely to score high on measures of the dark triad.
How does one develop these traits? Continue reading…
Psychopath?
All too easily, we mistakenly assume that everyone else is honest, intelligent, and trying to do the right thing, just like us. In reality, some people are outright evil.
Similarly, a psychopath thinks that everyone else is evil like himself. When a psychopath sees an honest and intelligent person asking questions or giving logical explanations, he believes that it is an evil manipulation trick.
The Age of the Psychopath
(secondarywounding.wordpress.com)
| The Dark Triad
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Dark triad – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The mocking and controlling behavior of the psychopathic mind is motivated by a sense of entitlement and a claim for submission. It’s a power trip. The submission brings them feelings of excitement and superiority. They enjoy what they consider to be a game of destroying people. It’s amusing to them.
Don’t miss this excellent article:
Evil people are often busy building for themselves various fronts for disguise to further their ambitions. “They are likely to exert themselves more than most in their enduring effort to obtain and maintain an image of high respectability.” Evil does not reveal itself as the bad. Evil will very rarely expose itself to public light. It must hide. And it almost always hides under the pretext of something virtuous.
In fact, rather than hiding in the shadows dressed in black, it disguises itself in uniforms of holy men or suits and charitable organizations, which allow it to deceive us into thinking it’s our savior. This enables it to cause far greater damage. Continue reading…
See also: Narcissistic Personality Disorder
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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. |
By Athena Walker: Psychopathy is present from the first breath one takes, to the last.
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?
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
Authoritarian, sociopathic, and narcissistic personality traits have many similarities.
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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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 “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. |
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?
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?
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?
at No Psychos, No Druggies, No Stooges
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Individuals with psychopathic traits are often attracted to affinity groups—religious, atheist, political, or social groups of people who share common values, beliefs, or interests. The collective trust that members of these groups have in one another and their common belief system provides a perfect cover for the psychopathic person. A psychopathic individual can be highly skilled at accurately mimicking the group’s beliefs or values while in the presence of its members. As a result, trust is easily gained and his or her true motives or covert activities are less likely to be discovered or recognized as malicious.
An affinity group that has been victimized may have members who are unable to face the truth about a covert bully. Often, they will rationalize his or her behaviors and continue to believe that the person is basically good at heart.
Unfortunately, it is common for the group to side with the psychopathic person if he or she has targeted an individual member to exploit, abuse, or ostracize. With a well established virtuous public persona and respect from the group, skillful manipulation and deceit, and a careful choice of target, the aggressor will turn the tables and have others believe the victim is the guilty party.
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A NON-PROFIT ORGANIZATION PROVIDING INFORMATION
AND SUPPORT FOR VICTIMS OF PSYCHOPATHY
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.”
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.
Read Dr Simon’s article:
Understanding the Predatory Aggressive Personality.
“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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Click to read a psychopath’s entertaining take on the description of his pathology. |
This is one of the key concerns of the book
Psychopathic Cultures and Toxic Empires
by Will Black.
There are many people whose behavior and perceptions of others places them squarely in the category of antisocial personality disorder but they go their entire life without being assessed in psychiatric units or put in prison. We may live close to them, work with them or see them in the media. Many of us will have a strong sense that their character is flawed, their actions are damaging or their attitude to other people makes them dangerous. However, for a variety of reasons, we may suppress our intuitions. One reason for doing so is, if we were to dwell on these perceptions, it could shatter our sense of security and comfort.
When we live in societies where ruthlessness in business and politics is rewarded and prized, the problem of identifying and curtailing genuine psychopaths becomes more challenging. As our search for the psychopath strays from prisons and psychiatric units to banks, trading floors, media companies and political parties, we become aware that society’s ability to challenge and control them has been limited.
In fact, we may tolerate psychopathic qualities in politicians, television and film stars, sportsmen, and captains of industry more readily than we do in our neighbors. Read more…
Rosa says: Isn’t it amazing how sociopaths can run around smearing people, telling insidious lies with impunity…THEN…when WE try to warn others (with the TRUTH) about possible danger of the socio, it’s “Kill the Messenger” time…and we are the “Messenger”. What’s up with that?
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Dear Rosa,
What you are describing is the standard abuser protocol called DARVO, an acronym for Deny, Attack, Reverse roles of Victim and Offender. Your question and your righteous outrage are about psycho/sociopaths’ ability to harm others easily and repeatedly—with impunity—sometimes with devastating consequences for their victim. As if that wasn’t bad enough, the victim’s friends and family may withhold support or reject him/her at the worst of times because the abuser had the evil foresight to secure their sympathy and support, and at the same time, destroy the victim’s reputation and credibility.
The reason why pathological aggressors are so successful with this cunning scheme is quite simple: they are exceptionally skilled actors with a lifetime of practice in lying, manipulating, persuading, and deceiving. The psycho/sociopath will callously aim to crush his victim, unperturbed by any ethical concerns. The victim’s moral standards will limit his options, and lacking the persuasive powers of a psychopath, he may fail to convince others of the truth of the matter.
James explains:
“People are resources to be used like any other. But they’re not all the same, they are individuals. I don’t need to label them in order to interact with them. All the same, for the people I come into contact with, I categorise them into four different groups based on their value to me…”
Read the article:
How a psychopath views you
No Psychos, No Druggies, No Stooges
See also: You are a tool.
Published on Apr 28, 2014
Sandra L. Brown, M.A., is the founder of The Institute for Relational Harm Reduction & Public Pathology Education. She is a former psychotherapist, community educator on pathological love relationships, clinical lecturer and trainer, TV and radio guest, and an author. Her books include the highly popular How to Spot a Dangerous Man Before You Get Involved, the award winning Women Who Love Psychopaths: Inside the Relationships of Inevitable Harm With Psychopaths, Sociopaths & Narcissists, as well as the clinically relevant Counseling Victims of Violence: A Handbook for Helping Professionals.
Sandra is recognized for her pioneering work in women’s issues related to relational harm from dangerous and pathological partners. She specializes in the development of Pathological Love Relationship training for other professionals and the development of survivor-based support services.
Professor Robert Hare, the world’s foremost expert in the field, estimates that there are at least two million psychopaths in North America.
“Psychopaths are social predators who charm, manipulate, and ruthlessly plow their way through life, leaving a broad trail of broken hearts, shattered expectations, and empty wallets. Completely lacking in conscience and in feelings for others, they selfishly take what they want and do as they please, violating social norms and expectations without the slightest sense of guilt or regret.”
See also: Almost A Psychopath
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Would you recognize a psychopath…
…or a sensible knave if you saw one?
David Hume
The Scottish philosopher David Hume, three centuries ago, identified a character type that would pose a mortal danger to his otherwise optimistic view of human nature. (Yours, too?) This character he called a sensible knave. Hume sketches him thus:
“That honesty is the best policy, may be a good general rule; but is liable to many exceptions: And he, it may, perhaps, be thought, conducts himself with most wisdom, who observes the general rule, and takes advantage of all the exceptions.”
In this brief, accessible essay, contemporary philosopher Bianco Luno reminds us that Hume’s knave, aka psychopath, still haunts our world. The handcrafted mini book is 21 pages and approximately 3.1 x 3.6 inches.
The Sensible Knave
Published by Chreia Press
Psychopath?
All too easily, we assume that everyone else is honest, intelligent, and trying to do the right thing, just like us. Similarly, a psychopath thinks that everyone else is evil like himself. When a psychopath sees an honest and intelligent person asking questions or giving reasonable explanations, he believes it is an evil manipulation trick.
The Age of the Psychopath
(secondarywounding.wordpress.com)
Dr. George Simon, author of In Sheep’s Clothing—Understanding and Dealing with Manipulative People
“A manipulative person … is a covertly aggressive personality.”
“You ask a manipulator a direct question, you rarely get a direct answer.”
See more on Dr. George Simon and related blog posts:
This video tells the story of a high-profile sociopath in a respectable position of influence and is based on actual events.
They usually get away with it. This one did, too, until something remarkable happened…
In the early 1800s, doctors became aware that some patients who appeared outwardly normal were lacking what we would call a conscience. They were described as morally depraved or morally insane. The term psychopath was first used around 1900, then changed to sociopath in the 1930s to emphasize the damage afflicted individuals do to society. Today, researchers have returned to using the term psychopath.
When Freud obtained his medical degree in 1881, the term psychopath had not yet been introduced.
…it is by no means the rule that virtue is rewarded and wickedness punished, but it happens often enough that the violent, the crafty, and the unprincipled seize the desirable goods of the earth for themselves while the pious go empty away. Dark, unfeeling, and unloving powers determine human destiny; the system of rewards and punishments, which, according to religion, governs the world, seems to have no existence.
Sigmund Freud
New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-analysis, Lecture 35, A Philosophy of Life.
Psychopath Resistance 
