Psychological Matters

This is the final article in the series looking at Antisocial Personality Disorder. I plan to start a new series discussing various aspects of Depression in January 2013. Hope everyone has a wonderful, happy holiday season! Resource List Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths go to Work by Paul Babiak, PhD & Robert D. Hare, PhD (2006) HarperCollins Publishers Not all individuals with Antisocial Personality Disorder (APD) are in prison, many are among us. They work and play alongside us. Babiak and Hare reveal the common ploys of psychopaths, especially in the corporate world. The authors provide detailed suggestions about how to screen for psychopaths in the interview process as well as how to protect the work environment from those whose main goals are to manipulate and exploit the workplace. This is an outstanding book for those in the business world who would like to become more aware of the subtle warning signs of psychopaths.   The Sociopa...

Photo courtesy of   ©iStockphoto.com/ hammondovi Sociopaths are hazardous to everyone. This is a hard truth to accept, thus we downplay their ruthlessness and extreme self-interested behavior. We prefer to see sociopaths as misjudged or free-spirited. Let's use the character Neal Caffrey in White Collar as an example. We tend to ignore Neal’s deceptions, con jobs, and thefts, but rather focus on his good looks, sad past, quirky friends, and charming personality. He is simply misunderstood, instead of dangerous. His likeability reduces our internal sense of threat. This type of misdirection is commonly employed by sociopaths. What are the indicators that we are dealing with someone dangerous? The best resources for this information are found in Martha Stout’s The Sociopath Next Door and Babiak and Hare’s Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths go to Work . I have pulled out several tips from these outstanding books for the benefit of this article. According to Martha St...

At least one time in our lives each of us will make the mistake of trusting someone who doesn’t deserve it.  Especially when we consider the statistics that one out of every twenty-five people in the world are individuals with APD (sociopaths). In the best-case scenario, this betrayal only inconvenienced us, but more often we will have been conned, cheated, or abused. How do we recognize and avoid relationships with sociopaths? To protect ourselves, it is important to understand sociopaths’ motivation for developing relationships. Their reasons are not the same as ours! Lacking a conscience, they are unable to form emotional attachments and are disinterested in developing a bond with others.  Instead, they are thrill seekers, and use relationships to achieve this goal. In pursuit of their next big emotional charge, sociopaths tend to cast others into three main roles: “pawns, patrons, or police.” “Pawns” are individuals with little or no social or political ...

At the beginning of my professional career I came across a fascinating book called, The Stranger Beside Me (1989), by Ann Rule. It was a biographical work about Ted Bundy and his killing spree across the United States during the 1970’s. Ms. Rule personally knew Bundy. She briefly worked alongside him at a Hotline Crisis Center. He was a brilliant, attractive man who majored in psychology and went on to obtain a law degree. He would often feign physical injury, such as a injured arm, to lure women to a private location where he could physically overpower them. Before Bundy’s execution in 1989, he confessed to thirty homicides. Published estimates of the actual number of murders committed by Bundy, however, ran as high as 100 women. Ted Bundy is just one infamous serial killer. There have been many others who have grabbed the public’s attention as far back as Jack the Ripper. More recent examples include Kenneth Bianchi, John Wayne Gacy, and Jeffrey Dalmer.  How are such m...

You were out late the night before, do you bother arriving on time to work the next day? Your female co-worker leaves her purse unattended on her desk; do you help yourself to a few dollars? People diagnosed with Antisocial Personality Disorder have problems with these types of scenarios, often choosing the self-serving option. They could be described as “conscience-less.” To understand the problem of the Antisocial Personality Disorder (APD), it is necessary to examine the role our conscience plays in interpersonal relationships. What exactly is a conscience? Free Dictionary defines it as “ the awareness of a moral or ethical aspect to one's conduct together with the urge to prefer right over wrong .” Various disciplines have their own answers about how the conscience is formed. Freud believed we have psychologically internalized the parental figures of our childhood to develop a “superego.” Christians say it is God’s voice or an internalized moral code that directs u...

I watched an interesting BBC (2001) movie, The Hole,  over the summer. The story begins with the main character Liz Dunn’s proposed version of the tragic deaths of her friends. We meet Liz giving her statement to the police and learn her perspective of what happened. It all started when four college students decided to spend a weekend in an underground military bunker instead of going on a school field trip. Liz had a crush on a fellow classmate and used this opportunity to get to know him better. As the story unfolds, however, it becomes apparent that Liz is lying and deliberately misleading, whereas the truth is much different. The movie then retells the weekend events. Liz is revealed as a self-serving mastermind of the horrific events that led to the deaths of her friends. She callously ignores her best friend’s plea for help in order to spend more time with her love interest, kills another friend to keep him from revealing the truth about the weekend, and then threat...