This article (originally posted here: https://crust.piefed.social/c/long_reads_rss@crust.piefed.social/p/128158/mefi-how-to-spot-a-psychopath) is intereting because the research behind it is interesting, and as most of you assumed on sight it goes where you think it does, but it actually goes further.
I had not heard of or considered this before but it references:
The idea of a “pathocracy”, a democracy of normal people taken over by psychopaths, was conceived by an obscure Polish psychologist, Andrew Lobaczewski, who had lived under both the Nazis and then Soviet-era communists. His ideas never landed, because “the psychology publishers thought it was too political, and the political publishers thought it was too psychological,” according to editor and blogger Harrison Koehli. It’s unfashionable to the point of being taboo in psychiatry and psychology now to ascribe personality disorders to public figures. “One of the perils of bringing psychology into politics is that it’s very easy for anyone with any given political perspective to look at their political enemies or rivals and say: ‘OK, well, they’re all psychopaths,’” says Koehli. There’s also the Goldwater Rule, which established as a psychiatric principle that professionals are not allowed to diagnose public figures they haven’t had clinical contact with or met (this was after 1,189 psychiatrists declared Barry Goldwater unfit to be president in the 1964 election). Viding, however, finds the fixation with diagnosis perhaps irrelevant in this context. “I always find the obsession with diagnosing these people interesting. You don’t need to diagnose them, there are a set of personality traits, and you can recognise individuals with those traits. If someone’s in political power, you can see those exemplified in behaviour, and most people are perfectly capable of making an assessment of what that signifies.”
It’s like a light going on over “why does it feel like we’re living in crazytown?” It’s not just the one guy.
The article is worth a read.
Mitchell embarked on a PhD, published in 2024, in which she interviewed people who had met persistent predatory personalities professionally – some clinical, but others not, from fields as wide as HR, social work, family courts, the FBI and other law enforcement agencies, church leaders, and academics from different fields.
When I read the article I noticed that they never linked the PhD thesis they quoted from, so I went to find it. Dr. Mitchell has a site, kalmor.com.au, and it has the link to the PhD, as well as to her book and another interesting research paper about coercive control.
There are other things out there worth reading that came up in a search, it’s just a shame the article didn’t link them.
People can’t fathom that the Dark Personality is dark, they can’t believe that anyone would want to be deliberately harmful, they can’t process that harm was caused at all. It was bracing to hear Mitchell describe workplace suicides as an issue that partly spurred her research, since it is completely forbidden, in the mental health world, to ascribe a person’s suicide to anyone else’s behaviour. Yet a landmark ruling in France did exactly that in 2019, and found “torment” in the workplace, linked to a number of executives, had created the culture at France Télécom in which 19 employees took their own lives, 12 attempted suicide, and eight suffered from serious depression, between 2006 and 2009. Jane Monckton-Smith, professor of public protection at the University of Gloucestershire, has said in the past that, if we included provoked suicides, domestic homicide statistics could be multiplied “five, six or seven times”.
I was married to a psychopath that attempted to drive me to suicide. Two other people in her orbit have committed suicide, and I suspect that similar tactics were used on them. I can’t read about a suicide without thinking about the probability that someone may have successfully orchestrated a campaign to drive them to suicide.
I had this happen to me. My partner actually tried to get me to stay once by driving the car off an embankment as I was considering leaving. I stayed to be the focus of the abuse and protect the kids. I got out later, right before I was dead from it.
We had shared custody and I had my kids fully half the time. I spent the next decade trying to show my kids how to love themselves and love life and find fulfillment. I tried to grow joy in them every second I drew breath. I cooked the food my elders taught me to cook, I grew gardens around them, we played with friends in the sun and the water in the day, and laughed playing games with them into the deliriously sleepy nights. We cultivated joy every day.
My oldest turned 18 and refused to visit ever again, opting instead to live in a crumbling house in a refinery town, with 26 cats, roaches, rooms given to hoarding, no dancing, and no hope. After that, my 16 year old ate a gun.
I finally left.
None of this makes any sense. But I remember the world not making sense when that beast was over my life, everything just hurt. So I can remember that’s how it works.
I thought I picked the best path, but I should have taken the kids when they were toddlers, and just run from the law for two decades.
It’s a lot more common than people think, and so far outside the average person’s experience that they can’t believe it’s true. It’s very isolating. I’m lucky to be alive, and it cuts me to the core that my children are still trapped by her control. There is zero help from the legal system and no justice for the victims. I’ve made great progress after getting out, but the wounds are still there. I’m sorry that you had to go through it.
I think what’s sad is that if they are women, they are not likely to be called out for it, either. I think it’s much easier for them to fly under the radar, where males behaving this way are probably not going to get this pass (nor should they!).
It seems most of the therapy/self-help system is set up to reinforce their behavior, because the finger never ends up pointing at them, unless they do something so egregious that the law gets involved, and by that point, it’s something very harmful to others, often children.
It is very isolating, and when people see the result of all that I know and all that I have seen, I am labeled the “intolerant” or “crazy” one, because I can see when others skirt this line and will not tolerate being near it. As you said, it is far more common than people think.
There are groups of us who see, but little we can do. I am at least not completely alone, and neither are you. I see you, and your pain lives in me too.
Thank you deeply for sharing your story. I am sorry you had to go through all you endured as well. Our wounds will never heal, but it is relieving to exercise the scar with another survivor.
others will become inured to the new normal – that we just all lie now
It’s so exhausting…
From this research, which took her five years, Mitchell built a template of 20 attributes, divided into four clusters, and 25 tactics that would identify a high-functioning persistent predatory personality type. Cluster one includes a need for control; a grandiose sense of self; pathological inner response to challenge; vengefulness; refusal to compromise. Cluster two includes being predatory or exploitative; sadistic and cruel; having a low regard for laws, agreements, social and moral codes; no boundaries in sexual relationships; unreasonable expectations of others. Cluster three relates to the truth: Dark Personalities cultivate a façade of normality; they are chameleon-like; dishonest; devious and manipulative; and unwilling to accept responsibility for the negative impacts they cause. Finally, cluster four is around the Dark Personality’s own interior life: their emotions are acted and they do not experience affinity or the joy that comes with it; they are callous and devoid of empathy; unremorseful; self-interested; and brazen.
gee…WHO does that sounds like LOL
Its uncanny.
check this one out:
His primary rules were: never allow the public to cool off; never admit a fault or wrong; never concede that there may be some good in your enemy; never leave room for alternatives; never accept blame; concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong; people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it.
then look at where it came from: https://phdn.org/archives/www.ess.uwe.ac.uk/documents/osssection3pt1.htm
He had some good ideas!
The conclusion talks about needing to inoculate people against being victimized. Seems like a pipe dream if we indeed have a pathocracy. Psychopathy is estimated at 1% in the general population, but in CEOs, it’s estimated at values up to 20%. It seems psychopaths seek high hierarchy.
They don’t necessarily seek it, Capitalism rewards ruthless behavior.
CEOs cannot generally become CEOs without having to leave their empathy at the door. Guess who can’t feel empathy to begin with? Eureka.
If capitalism rewards ruthless behavior, why do we teach our kids in schools to be nice to each other?
Because it makes it easier to control them. Pro-social behavior should be valued and prioritzed but there is also a risk people become too people-pleasing and are not taught to protect themselves and importantly not how to be an “asshole” when necessary.
All three are necessary but the last is its own form of dark magic.
I mean… It would be in the interest of those with power, who are more likely to be psychopaths, to encourage empathy development in the broader public.
So we can blame “bad behavior” on children instead of their shitty parents or the shitty systems that make life unbearable.
How many schools teach kindness? Mostly, the schools I went to taught that “if you defend yourself, you will be punished.” “If you do everything right but someone else won’t be quiet, the whole class will be punished.”
I went to public schools in the bible belt. It was nightmarish. School shootings are tragic, but unsurprising given how children are treated.
How many schools teach kindness?
It was called “citizenship”, we received it as a separate grade in public grade school, but that was in California.
Guy who went through the all grades in California, never heard of that. Maybe its cause I’m in the Inland Empire or maybe it predated or postdated me but yeah.
What makes you think the elites’ schools do the same?
According to search, private grade schools also teach citizenship, and that it includes honesty, kindness, sharing, and following rules.
The sociopaths need people to follow rules so they can be controlled.
Oh, honey…
That’s not an answer. Humanonearth’s hypothesis was that we have a capitalist system that is predatory, so then I wondered (and let me rephrase slightly), why don’t we teach our kids in schools to lie and deceive, basically to be psychopaths, if that’s what brings in the big bucks in the corporate world?
Your response made me think of the following line in the article which I’ve formatted as bold:
In the non-criminal, non-violent space of endless persecution – as might happen in a workplace – there are layers of disbelief. People can’t fathom that the Dark Personality is dark, they can’t believe that anyone would want to be deliberately harmful, they can’t process that harm was caused at all. It was bracing to hear Mitchell describe workplace suicides as an issue that partly spurred her research, since it is completely forbidden, in the mental health world, to ascribe a person’s suicide to anyone else’s behaviour. Yet a landmark ruling in France did exactly that in 2019, and found “torment” in the workplace, linked to a number of executives, had created the culture at France Télécom in which 19 employees took their own lives, 12 attempted suicide, and eight suffered from serious depression, between 2006 and 2009. Jane Monckton-Smith, professor of public protection at the University of Gloucestershire, has said in the past that, if we included provoked suicides, domestic homicide statistics could be multiplied “five, six or seven times”.
I assume we don’t teach kids to be like psychopaths because the system only can take so many. Unlike the image portrayed by propaganda, even American life doesn’t mainly consist of competition but of cooperation. There is competition to fill roles in companies, sure. But once in a role one is supposed to cooperate with coworkers to achieve something larger than one could alone.
If everybody saw life through the lens of a psychopath I guess we’d end up in a Mad Max scenario. Modern cooperative society with a system of division of labour simply wouldn’t work anymore.
On the other hand I’m morbidly curious how a society entirely without psychopaths would look like. Would it be better or worse? (And for wich definitions of “better” and “worse”). I can only assume we’d have much less wars, for one.
It wasn’t an answer! I think this is the most text I’ve ever gotten back for a two word response, I’m proud of you and your ability to ascribe deep and significant meaning to it.
Being that the capitalist class views everyone else as expendable ants, and values property and wealth over human life and dignity, 20% doesn’t surprise me in the least. If we include narcissists in the mix, the figure probably goes substantially higher.
These fucking people had their own island where they kidnapped and imprisoned young girls to be raped for entertainment.
Huh? Domestic cats are little psychopaths too. Adorable and hilarious little psychopaths. They’re too small to eat you, but don’t believe for a moment that they wouldn’t if they were bigger.
Oh, they’ll eat you, but they usually wait until you die first.
Digits and nose first!
Pathocracy
Chillingly accurate
Right?
Huh… Mitchell must’ve met my ex wife
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