After reading about the book, The Psychopath Test, Kayt Sukel, a Psychology Today blogger, wondered if psychopaths were, in fact, everywhere. So she asked Joshua Buckholtz, a neuroscientist. He said that psychopathy needed to have meaningful diagnostic boundaries. Buckholtz told her “a true psychopath is going to show high aggression, low empathy and high narcissism in all contexts.”
I wondered about that description. Here at Lovefraud, we know that psychopaths are capable of faking love and concern, quite convincingly, when it suits their purpose. How does the expert account for that?
Read Psychopaths everywhere? on PsychologyToday.com.
Link supplied by a Lovefraud reader.
darwin’smom,
I think as a teacher you have a good way of handling it. No threats, just the facts. “You WILL NOT______ again.”
If the person is your boss though you may not be able to accomplish it. Or like 20 years said about her kids watching their dad be rude to service people.
In the past when I had younger kids over to the house and their parents wouldn’t make them behave and they were doing something dangerous I would actually get up and tell the kid, “SIT DOWN NOW!” and give them the LOOK and it usually worked. I would make sure that parent did not come to visit me and bring junior again!
If their parents were not present and they came back with a “I do this at my house” I would say ‘that may be true but this is MY house and my rules are different” Even if the kid is yours and their co-parent lets them do things you think are not good.
My house, MY rules.
oh, and further to that (sorry for doing this in multiple posts):
the thing is, from the very get-go, you need to RECOGNIZE that the spath is SIZING YOU UP. I think most people do not recognize that first very critical phase. They do their testing. They peg you as a victim, or as a threat, or as a fence-sitter toady… so you need to not appear as a victim to them.
I have found it is possible to maintain my nice-ness and yet not put on my “victim!!!! easy mark!!!!!” vibe.
But it really, really helps if you can spot the “red flag” behavior of their sizing you up (this is part of the love-bomb but not all of it — it is how you respond to their initial digs at you, or initial flattery, or initial presentation of themselves as pitiful). They want to see what emotion they can invoke in you.
The most self protective emotion I have found to work is “I will not be fooled by you.” So it is a bit guarded. Don’t wear your heart on your sleeve.
Guess this went off on a tangent.
But yeah, I agree that maintaining our integrity and doing what is right, is important. If it is safe to do so. And if not safe, then pretending is helpful and NOT wrong. It is better to have our integrity come from from a place of awareness and compassion and honesty, but that is usually a work in progress. Most people do not have such a solid base of strength… we have to develop it over time.
It doesn’t matter whether people see themselves as superior to you or not. Just assuming authority usually has a startle effect, and that’s enough for someone to stop such behaviour. I wouldn’t have an issue using it to any adult (client, colleague, parent, etc) who is acting out. In fact there have been instances (like a panic situation) where I’ve done it in the past naturally without thinking. Yup, a part of me thought, “What must they think of me!” But in actuality they never thought ill of me.
I’m not saying it’s how you can stop a spath from being a spath and have a functional relationship with them. Nor is it always the best option if you have to maintain a subordinate relationship with anyone. But you can make anyone, even a spath, startle them out of their drama making in a particular situation. It’s based on Leery’s behaviour laws. Upper behaviour will automatcally and instinctively evoke under behaviour. This under instinctive response may be felt only for a few seconds in response to pure authority, but for a startle tactic that’s often enough.
you are right, darwinsmom. I have seen that startle thing, too.
darwinsmom:
I so agree with you. I have seen it work on people. From what I have seen, most people respect when they are put in their place. Not sure if it works with spaths though…probably not, but a normal person usually respects someone who corrects them.
Interesting. I didn’t know that about about upper and lower behavior laws. Never heard of that before.
Who is Leery and what are these behavior laws?
G1S
Timothy Leary (sorry misspelled it before). He is mostly known for his drug experiments. But he made a very valuable behaviour interrelation theory.
There are 2 axes: the vertical one stands for UPPER and DOWN beahviour; the horizontal one stands for WE (to the right) and AGAINST (left) behaviour.
Put together you get 4 quarters of a circle:
1) UPPER-WE behaviour (leader and helper)
2) DOWN-WE behaviour (in need of help and follower)
3) DOWN-AGAINST behaviour (retracted and venomous… both passive aggressive… the first is silent, says everything’s ok, but then at the end gives you a scathing review and you don’t know what hit you; the second is the one who gives you under the breath barbwired comments)
4) UPPER-AGAINST (agressor and rival)
The laws are that
1 – upper behaviour from one individiual will provoke down behaviour from another; and vice versa… someone who behaves in a subordinate manner will provoke the other into upper behaviour
2 – we behaviour provokes we behaviour; against behaviour provoked against.
People have a tendency to be in one of those quarters, but usually a whole situation nivolves several shifts along the axises. And certainly a good leader knows how to tiptoe around. The theory is helfpul if you wish people to start behaving in a different way.
Say, I’m on a trip or have a class full of people who are cooperative, but I start to feel like mama duck with her chcklets following around… pretty boring. So, I’d want to liven up things and have them take more initiative (considered UPPER behaviour) for example. I’ll get nowhere if I stay in the most upper position, because it will only keep them in line and in non-initiative behaviour.. Instead I might move to the down-we position, by telling them I need their help in suggestions for a restaurant, or something like that.
Other example. I have an extreme silent follower. But I’m not sure whether he’s truly content, or whether he retreated and thinking ill of everything. Asking him time and time again how he’s enjoying himself doesn’t give a convincing response. So, I need that person to speak up voluntarily. I will have to show extreme down behaviour myself to give that person enough courage to speak up. I’ll do this by mirrorring their behaviour in their company: I’ll walk alongside with them for an hour if need be, and not make much conversation… just be physical company. Usually, people then start talking out of their own accord. I found out one time this way that a guy had a tootache and was fearful of going to a dentis in Guatemala.
Basically, if you want to tackle real problematic against behaviour, like an aggressor (against-upper), you show mirror behaviour (helping we behaviour). Someone who’s not pathologically fixed into their position will come closer and closer, and you might pull them across the axis to the we-side.
I deal with a rival, who ALWAYS tends to give some alternative plan (upper-against), by first asking for help on the first possible occasion (we-down behaviour), and then quickly take command again. Example, one time I couldn’t go on a hike for organisational reasons (and the group had wanted to do the hike the way she had alternatively proposed), so I told her I trusted her to make the plan work, gave her my first-aid kit and map. When they returned, she handed me everything back and told me she trusted me. Turned out that she didn’t want to feel responsible for the safety of the whole group more than that afternoon.
This all works with NORMAL people, because they are flexible and can move about on the circle. But you have people who are pathologically fixed to a position. A pathological leader is a dictator, a pathological helper is meddlesome always sticking their nose in, a pathological person who needs help is needy, a pathological retracted person (very passive aggressive) can be suicidal; the pathological nasty commentator is the narcissist; and the pathological rival is the egotist.
Once a person is pathological, you can still make them move from their situation in a certain situation, but they’ll jump back to their pathological role before long. Pathological against behaviour is unalterable, but you can choose to intimidate it into down behaviour (nasty barbs and behind your back behaviour) for a certain while. It’s usually a last option. And you can certainly use commanding intimidation behaviour in critical situations to startle people out of unwanted or hazardous behaviour.
Spaths are always AGAINST everyone and extremely selfish (whether it’s masked by false WE behaviour and help-me pity play), but they DO move along UPPER and DOWN behaviour, both instinctively as well as consciously. They are both flexible and inflexible… they can mask we behaviour, with the pity play (down-we), by pretending to support us or help us (upper-we), but time and time again it turns out that they don’t care at all, and are just in it for themselves, even at the times they seemed to be helpful. So, they can definitely move all over the circle, but deep down they’re always against.
Derivates from Leary’s work are the animal-role circle used in elementary schools and kindergartens, with for example the turtle being the retracted individual, and a lion being in the leader position and such.
Louise,
The startle tactic works on spaths. At least it worked on my ex-spath. I was once so mad at him, and he tried to bully me and came towards me, shouting all sorts of stuff. I put my hands on his chest and gently pushed (not shoved) him backwards as I stepped forward while remaining commandin. He was showing aggression and upper behaviour, but I showed more authortive behaviour and this certainly startled him enough to stop shouting. I still remember the startled look on his face when I did that.
I do have the advantage of being tall (1 foot 11), and I was taller than him. It’s easier to be commanding in a standing position when I need to be. To shake off the feeling of being literally smaller than me, he needed to step backwards, away from me.
Darwin’smom, have you ever read any of Dr. Eric Berne’s work (“Games People Play” was one of his books) Phrased differently that Timothy’s work, but along the same lines, in “transactional analysis” to see where someone is coming from, though Berne calls them “games” and “manipulations.”
There are also some good writings along the lines of “change theory” in how to get people to accept change in a group setting.
I have used some of Berne’s tactics in managing personnel and customers/clients and they tend to work well in getting cooperation from people who are not disordered. Unfortunately, with the disordered people they don’t always work. I dont’ know of much that does work with disordered people because their motives are always bad.
darwinsmom:
Thank you so much for the Leary stuff. I am going to study this.