“Practical applications of personality psychology always risk providing a technology that deliberately or unwittingly functions mainly to serve the interests of the powerful because the social problems that psychologists aim to solve are framed by elites on whom they depend for employment and research funding.” – Ronald Blackburn, clinical psychologist, University of Liverpool, UK (5)

THE CONCEPT of psychopathy is often traced to a 1941 book by Hervey Cleckley, Mask of Sanity, but actually the idea can be found at least as far back as the early 19th century when Philippe Pinel used the term, “manie sans delire” to describe cases where violent outbursts appeared unmotivated by an underlying psychiatric disturbance. Similar cases were described by Benjamin Rush and Scottish physician James Pritchard, who coined the term “moral insanity”. German psychiatrists in the 1890s came up with the label “psychopaths” to refer to individuals whose antisocial behavior seemed to be constitutional or inbred. (1)  Sometimes a distinction is made between “psychopath” and “sociopath”. For example, psychologist J.M. Grohol states that whereas psychopaths have a stronger genetic component, tend to be more manipulative, shallow, deviously charming, minimizing criminality, and keeping up the appearance of normality, sociopaths are less controlled emotionally, more erratic, reckless, obvious. On the other hand, Martha Stout, in her book The Sociopath Next Door, tends to blur this distinction. Neumann and Hare (2014) posit a four-factor model (interpersonal, affective, lifestyle, and antisocial) with subfactors. From assessments, they include under Interpersonal, manipulation (e.g., “I get what I want by telling people what they want to hear.”) and under Affective, exploitation (“I dump friends I don’t need”). The DSM-V did not change the main characteristics of the Antisocial Personality Disorder from the previous edition, basic diagnostic features being: “disregard for and violation of others’ rights since age 15, as indicated by one of 7 categories: failure to obey laws and norms by engaging in criminal [behavior]; lying, deception, and manipulati0n for profit or self-amusement; impulsive behavior; irritability and aggression; blatant disregard for safety; a pattern of irresponsibility; lack of remorse for actions.” (2)  However, some researchers feel that the current model places too much emphasis on observable behaviors and too little on underlying personality structure.

According to a recent review by Glenn et al (2013), “the diagnosis of AsPD is quite controversial because it is maintained by many clinicians and researchers that the category is too heterogeneous, over-inclusive and overlaps too much with other disorders.” (3)  Some experts have questioned whether antisociality is actually part of the psychopathy concept, but R.D. Hare’s group, who developed a widely used checklist instrument, demonstrated that antisociality is actually part of the concept. Nonetheless, it is important to emphasize that criminality is not an essential part of psychopathy, since this is a persistent misunderstanding. (As for treatment – in general, “therapeutic pessimism” prevails.)

One of the leading authorities on personality disorders was Theodore Millon. His colorful depictions sometimes border on the poetic. For example, part of his description of the AsPD are the components, “Intrapsychic Content: Debased; Intrapsychic Architecture: Unruly…impetuous, irrepressible, cognitively deviant, having refractory energies….” (4)  He has also described subtypes: “Nomadic; Malevolent; Covetous; Risk-taking; Reputation-defending (including narcissistic features); Unprincipled; Tyrannical.” Expanding on the Nomadic variety (which includes schizoid and avoidant features), he writes: “Feels jinxed, ill-fated, and cast aside; peripheral; drifters; gypsy-like roamers, vagabonds, tramps, wanderers, impulsively not benign.” As he does with some other PDs, Millon tends to pathologize nonconformity/eccentricity, which is ironic with the antisocial PD since so many psychopaths take pains to pass themselves off as “normal” in order to gain the confidence of “chumps,” who, they believe, constitute the majority of the citizenry. However, his phenomenological and intrapsychic conceptualizations may be useful in moving away a bit from a limited, unidimensional behavioral approach to these syndromes.

“Politicians are more likely than people in the general population to be sociopathic,” writes Dr. Stout. “That a small minority of human beings literally have no conscience explains…shamelessly deceitful political behavior.” Babiak and colleagues (2010) were able to investigate psychopathy in the corporate world as part of a group of management development programs. Psychiatric assessments were integrated into the project and the data processed using confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling. The prevalence of psychopathic traits was shown to be higher than that found in community samples, and traits were negatively associated with in-house ratings of management skills and overall accomplishment. “It is likely,” the authors conclude, ” that sour cream will continue to rise to the top.” (6)

Perhaps many politicians (and CEOs as well, of course) are not full-blown psychopaths, but using the spectrum/dimensional, as opposed to the categorical model of mental health, we can say their “index” is relatively high in that while they may not be totally bereft of moral emotion, it is something they can usually turn off should it prove to be politically or commercially inconvenient. On the whole, it is difficult to ascertain which group is the more pathological: the capitalists, or the marionettes they have purchased in the political class. People say, “Well, we’ll just vote all the skunks out of office, clean house!” only to have clones arrive as replacements. This strongly suggests that the system itself is a disorder.

~ Wm. Doe, December 2015

SELECTED REFERENCES: (1) D.W. Black (2013). Bad Boys, Bad Men. New York, Oxford Univ. Press.  (2) C.S. Neumann & R.D. Hare (2014). Antisociality and the construct of psychopathy. J. of Personality, 83, 6. (3) A.L. Glenn et al (2013). Antisocial personality disorder: A current review. Curr Psychiatry Rep, 15. (4) http://www.millonpersonality.com/theory/diagnostic-taxonomy/antisocial.htm (5) R. Blackburn (2007).Personality disorder and antisocial deviance. J. Pers Disord, 21, 2. (6) P.Babiak et al (2010). Corporate psychopathy. Beh Sci & the Law, 28.