Character Disturbance—The Phenomenon of Our Age, the new book by George K. Simon, Ph.D., does two things really well: It paints a no-nonsense picture of how people with personality disorders, including sociopaths, behave. And it explains why traditional psychotherapy, in attempting to understand these individuals, gets it so wrong.
The basic problem, Simon explains, is that classic concepts in psychotherapy, like those advanced by Sigmund Freud, propose that people develop defensive strategies against a cruel, heartless world in order to protect their deep, authentic selves. This results in “neurosis,” defined in Wikipedia as “a variety of mental disorders in which emotional distress or unconscious conflict is expressed through various physical, physiological and mental disturbances, which may include physical symptoms.”
Many, many therapists follow the classic psychotherapeutic paradigm, which Simon neatly summarized. He wrote:
Let’s boil down traditional schools’ underlying assumptions about how people become disturbed, and how you help them heal: People are inherently good and geared towards health. They become unhealthy because bad or “traumatic” things happen to them. They develop fears and insecurities in response to their traumas. They learn to protect themselves, cope with stress or “defend” themselves against emotional pain in less than optimal ways. With unconditional positive regard, empathy and support they can heal their wounds, lower their defenses, overcome their fears, and become naturally inclined once again to lead healthy, loving, compassionate lives.
These ideas have been around for so long that they are ingrained in our culture and accepted as “truth.” It’s gotten to the point that everyone believes the concepts apply to all people. And that’s how we get into trouble.
Sociopaths don’t act the way they do to compensate for some deep internal pain. They are deceitful, manipulative and aggressive because that’s who they are.
Character disturbance
Simon describes disordered individuals, including those with sociopathy, psychopathy and antipersonality disorder, as having a “character disturbance.” He defines them as:
individuals whose problems are related to their dysfunctional attitudes and thinking patterns, their shallow, self-centered relationships, their moral immaturity and social irresponsibility, and their habitual dysfunctional behavior patterns.
Simon spends much of the book laying out exactly how character-disturbed individuals think, behave and view the world. Their characteristics include disregard for the truth, impaired capacity for empathy and contrition, deficient impulse control, impaired conscience, and more. The traits are all familiar to Lovefraud readers who have lived in close proximity to them.
A really important insight is this: Simon says that “the primary interpersonal agenda for aggressive and other character-disordered personalities is position, position, position.” In other words, these individuals always want to be dominant—an idea that’s hard for the rest of us to accept. Simon writes:
It’s incomprehensible for most of us to conceive that in every situation, every encounter, every engagement, the aggressive personality is predisposed to jockey with us for the superior position, even in situations with no recognizable need to do so. The failure to understand and accept this, however, is how aggressive personalities so often succeed in their quest to gain advantage over others.
Why we don’t get it
Those of us who are fairly normal, although perhaps at times unsure of ourselves, and those of us who are neurotic, are at a severe disadvantage when dealing with character-disturbed individuals. Why? Because we don’t understand the extent to which they are different from us.
Simon made several points that I thought clearly described how our lack of awareness gets us into trouble:
- He explains that we are concerned about how our character-disordered partners are feeling, and why they seem angry all the time, without realizing that anger is not a true emotion, but a tactic to manipulate and control us.
- He explains that the true reason predators are successful manipulators is not so much that they are good at it, although they are, but that the rest of us are reluctant to judge others harshly.
- He explains that people who intuitively sense aggression, but can’t objectively verify it, are prone to being manipulated and controlled.
The problem is, we don’t know how the character-disturbed people think and act, but they know how we think and act. Simon writes:
They know the attitudes neurotics hold, and the naiveties that make them vulnerable to tactics of manipulation and impression management. They often know the neurotics in their lives better than those neurotics know themselves.
This book can help you level the playing field. It can help you understand the tactics and games that sociopaths and other people with character disturbances use to manipulate you. It also explains why adherents to traditional psychotherapy concepts don’t understand sociopaths, and why their attempts at treatment are useless.
Character Disturbance—The Phenomenon of Our Age is available on Amazon.com.
Have you ever wondered why that happens? It’s an intriguing phenomenon.
I really haven’t researched WHY it happens but my guess is that the subtle scents that the body gives off influence the hormones.
Being naturally curious, I made the mistake of asking anyway. “Asking” the dictionaries, I mean. You’re in good company as usual, Oxy. It turns out the dictionaries don’t know either! 🙂
They do say “freemartin” is a very old term, dating back at least to 1681, but nobody knows where it came from. The best I could find was in a 1957 paper by Moore, Graham, and Barr, titled The sex chromatin of the bovine freemartin, which had this to say:
Just the same, it’s all guesswork on somebody’s part!
Redwald,
the studies done on synchronizing women’s cycles were not really conclusive, yet we all know it’s true because we’ve experienced it.
I was on a committee with the evil spath neighbor woman. She is hideous. She looks like a man and the entire neighborhood knows that she dominates her husband.
I sat next to her at one meeting and could smell that she was on her period. (sorry if I’m too graphic.) The meeting was 2 or 3 hours long. I knew it would screw up my period. Sure enough my own period started within the week and it wasn’t due for about 3 weeks.
I think the inconclusive studies might be because they aren’t taking into account the strength of the pheromones and the proximity of the participants during the actual period.
The reason for the syncing could be anything. But it’s interesting that women do tend to be cooperative more than competitive, so that it might be an empathetic response. As opposed to the testosterone of the bull male elephant which suppresses the testosterone of the younger male elephants.
When I finally left my spath, I was a real mess. I could do “normal” stuff, but only in spurts, and then I’d have to rest. I was able to move 2000 miles away but once here, I had to hire someone to move my stuff into the new place and it remained unpacked, I only found the minimal stuff to survive. I hid, I rarely shopped for groceries, only after dark. Never went anywhere. Slept, ate, watched a little tv, mostly slept… for months. And STILL was not recovering but I decided I didn’t want to live that way anymore.
STILL was not able to function normally. So I decided to work on my brain. Understand my brain. FIX my brain. I got books from the library. Some of those brain books were about HIS brain, the sociopathic brain.
Scientfic study after study show that the sociopathic/psychopathic brain is DIFFERENT. It is NOT repressed emotions. The studies show the neurons are NOT firing in those areas at all. The Neurons Do NOT connect. Those tests and books are now on the internet and there are MORE neuro studies and ALL of them validate past conclusions. PET scans show the bio/physio chemical take ups… NO repression. Instead, their brain chemistry is different. EEG shows, NO activity at all in that area of the brain, and that their brain shows equal emotion to horror pictures and violence equal to a pic of a man canoeing on the lake. The following is a small exert of ONE ongoing study:
The corpus callosum is a bundle of nerve fibers that connects the two hemispheres of the brain, enabling them to work together to process information and regulate autonomic function. Raine explored its role in psychopathy for the first time.
There’s faulty wiring going on in psychopaths. They’re wired differently than other people,” Raine said. “In a way, it’s literally true in this case.”
He found that the psychopaths’ corpus callosums were an average of 23 percent larger and 7 percent longer than the control groups’
The rate that the psychopaths transmitted information from one hemisphere to the other through the corpus callosum also was abnormally high, Raine said.
With an increased corpus callosum came less remorse, fewer emotions and less social connectedness – the classic hallmarks of a psychopath, he said.
“These people don’t react. They don’t care,” Raine said. “Why that occurs, we don’t fully know, but we are beginning to get important clues from neuro-imaging research.”
The hippocampus and corpus callosum studies were published in the journals Biological Psychiatry (January 2004) and Archives of General Psychiatry (November 2003), respectively.
There are so many neuro studies and they all validate each other; psychopaths brains are different. It is NOT repressed emotion. It is a brain that does not process certain emotions at ALL. It is a brain that THINKS differently – it PROCESSES INFORMATION DIFFERENTLY. It’s easy to read about all these studies. It’s in laymans language and in Medical Science Journals.
But remember what matters is not how he thinks but how we take care of ourselves. Recognize when we are not respected, and know that ONE time is a dealbreaker. Might hurt, but as we all know, won’t hurt near as bad as a relationship with the buggers. As Oxy says, whether he’s spath or just toxic, we need to get free and live a real life. Please don’t just pursue opinion, Please know there is science research to give FACTS. I like facts. And these FACTS make sense.
ps I was able to fix/change my brain. Scientists have tested and concluded spath brain is NOT FIXABLE/NOT CHANGABLE. P/S truly are HARD WIRED. It’s the way they are, not the way they “decided” to be.
Hi Oxy,
I am the parent of a young adult on the autism spectrum (PDD-nos), I am disturbed by your equating PDD’s with NPD. While people on the autism spectrum often lack empathy it is because they also lack the ability to recognize facial social cues and tend to be rigid and highly reactive to sensory issues in their environments.
While people with PDD’s (not PPD) often lack empathy they are often very caring people who when the fact they did something that hurt someone else (usually from lack of empathy) is made clear to them , often feel very sorry and sometimes distraught by the fact that they caused pain to someone and did the wrong thing.
The lack of empathy in people with personality disorders is somewhat different as it doesn’t come from not being able to read people- in fact it is just the opposite- they are often masters at reading social cues and at mimicking “the good guy”- they then use this to manipulate and use others for gain. This is not true of people with PDD’s, who generally find it diffcult or impossible to manipulate or lie- they lack the skills to do so.
Jim is outta my life. He is now somewhat in my neighborlady’s life. She told me he called her recently asking to use her garage to repair his truck. She said no, and told him he has yet to finish the electrical work.
Jim said he bought her groceries. She reminded him that was a year ago and she paid for groceries. He tried again by reminding her that he bought her tomatoes and mushrooms. She again reminded him it was a year ago and she paid for it.
It appears that Jim’s mind is focused on getting what he can outta you. His mind is not set on making things right with you. Instead his mind goes into manipulation mode.
It is no longer my problem. The only thing that bothers me is that neighbor lady believes everything Jim said about me.
I think I know how to handle this. I will buy a dozen of those cheap Stud finders. Cause neighbor lady is putting out the word she’s on the hunt. I will hand out these Stud finders and tell everyone to let her know when they find a stud.
philomela,
I cannot speak for Oxy, but I think NPD was used as an abbrevation for Narcistic Personality Disorder. I realize this is confusing since NPD is an official abbrevation for another non personality disorder where people cannot read body language.
Yes NPD is the abreviation for Narcsisitic Personality disorder.
I was referring to her use of PPD, I think what she meant was PDD (which is Pervasive Developmental Disorder) which falls on the autism spectrum. I do not think that people with NPD have the same brain disorder (or any version of it) as people with PDD. Certainly their are people with PDD who can also have NPD.
Dr Simon’s book “In Sheeps Clothing” provided me with the knowledge to spot exactly how my spath was operating as well as the tools to deal with him. I will never forget how the spath finally noticed how i drew myself up tall as I spotted his tricks and declined to accept his manipulation, eventually he learnt to give up as I took that breath! Phenomenal! I hope the new book is just as useful to us all.