Psychology Articles
Narcissistic Personality Disorder Clinical Features
(category: Psychology, Word count: 593)
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Clinical Features of the Narcissistic Personality Disorder
Opinions vary as to whether the narcissistic traits evident in in infancy, childhood, and early adolescence are pathological. Anecdotal evidence suggests that childhood abuse and trauma inflicted by parents, authority figures, or even peers provoke "secondary narcissism" and, when unresolved, may lead to the full-fledged Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) later in life.
This makes eminent sense as narcissism is a defense mechanism whose role is to deflect hurt and trauma from the victim's "True Self" into a "False Self" which is omnipotent, invulnerable, and omniscient. This False Self is then used by the narcissist to garner narcissistic supply from his human environment. Narcissistic supply is any form of attention, both positive and negative and it is instrumental in the regulation of the narcissist's labile sense of self-worth.
Perhaps the most immediately evident trait of patients with Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) is their vulnerability to criticism and disagreement. Subject to negative input, real or imagined, even to a mild rebuke, a constructive suggestion, or an offer to help, they feel injured, humiliated and empty and they react with disdain (devaluation), rage, and defiance.
From my book "Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited":
"To avoid such intolerable pain, some patients with Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) socially withdraw and feign false modesty and humility to mask their underlying grandiosity. Dysthymic and depressive disorders are common reactions to isolation and feelings of shame and inadequacy."
Due to their lack of empathy, disregard for others, exploitativeness, sense of entitlement, and constant need for attention (narcissistic supply), narcissists are rarely able to maintain functional and healthy interpersonal relationships.
Many narcissists are over-achievers and ambitious. Some of them are even talented and skilled. But they are incapable of team work because they cannot tolerate setbacks. They are easily frustrated and demoralized and are unable to cope with disagreement and criticism. Though some narcissists have meteoric and inspiring careers, in the long-run, all of them find it difficult to maintain long-term professional achievements and the respect and appreciation of their peers. The narcissist's fantastic grandiosity, frequently coupled with a hypomanic mood, is typically incommensurate with his or her real accomplishments (the "grandiosity gap").
There are many types of narcissists: the paranoid, the depressive, the phallic, and so on.
An important distinction is between cerebral and somatic narcissists. The cerebrals derive their Narcissistic Supply from their intelligence or academic achievements and the somatics derive their Narcissistic Supply from their physique, exercise, physical or sexual prowess and romantic or physical "conquests".
Another crucial division within the ranks of patients with Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) is between the classic variety (those who meet five of the nine diagnostic criteria included in the DSM), and the compensatory kind (their narcissism compensates for deep-set feelings of inferiority and lack of self-worth).
Some narcissists are covert, or inverted narcissists. As codependents, they derive their narcissistic supply from their relationships with classic narcissists.
Treatment and Prognosis
Talk therapy (mainly psychodynamic psychotherapy or cognitive-behavioural treatment modalities) is the common treatment for patients with Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD). The therapy goals cluster around the need to modify the narcissist's antisocial, interpersonally exploitative, and dysfunctional behaviors. Such re-socialization (behavior modification) is often successful. Medication is prescribed to control and ameliorate attendant conditions such as mood disorders or obsessive-compulsive disorders.
The prognosis for an adult suffering from the Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) is poor, though his adaptation to life and to others can improve with treatment.
In Defense Of Psychoanalysis
(category: Psychology, Word count: 1206)
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No social theory has been more influential and, later, more reviled than psychoanalysis. It burst upon the scene of modern thought, a fresh breath of revolutionary and daring imagination, a Herculean feat of model-construction, and a challenge to established morals and manners. It is now widely considered nothing better than a confabulation, a baseless narrative, a snapshot of Freud's tormented psyche and thwarted 19th century Mitteleuropa middle class prejudices.
Most of the criticism is hurled by mental health professionals and practitioners with large axes to grind. Few, if any, theories in psychology are supported by modern brain research. All therapies and treatment modalities - including medicating one's patients - are still forms of art and magic rather than scientific practices. The very existence of mental illness is in doubt - let alone what constitutes "healing". Psychoanalysis is in bad company all around.
Some criticism is offered by practicing scientists - mainly experimentalists - in the life and exact (physical) sciences. Such diatribes frequently offer a sad glimpse into the critics' own ignorance. They have little idea what makes a theory scientific and they confuse materialism with reductionism or instrumentalism and correlation with causation.
Few physicists, neuroscientists, biologists, and chemists seem to have plowed through the rich literature on the psychophysical problem. As a result of this obliviousness, they tend to proffer primitive arguments long rendered obsolete by centuries of philosophical debates.
Science frequently deals matter-of-factly with theoretical entities and concepts - quarks and black holes spring to mind - that have never been observed, measured, or quantified. These should not be confused with concrete entities. They have different roles in the theory. Yet, when they mock Freud's trilateral model of the psyche (the id, ego, and superego), his critics do just that - they relate to his theoretical constructs as though they were real, measurable, "things".
The medicalization of mental health hasn't helped either.
Certain mental health afflictions are either correlated with a statistically abnormal biochemical activity in the brain - or are ameliorated with medication. Yet the two facts are not ineludibly facets of the same underlying phenomenon. In other words, that a given medicine reduces or abolishes certain symptoms does not necessarily mean they were caused by the processes or substances affected by the drug administered. Causation is only one of many possible connections and chains of events.
To designate a pattern of behavior as a mental health disorder is a value judgment, or at best a statistical observation. Such designation is effected regardless of the facts of brain science. Moreover, correlation is not causation. Deviant brain or body biochemistry (once called "polluted animal spirits") do exist - but are they truly the roots of mental perversion? Nor is it clear which triggers what: do the aberrant neurochemistry or biochemistry cause mental illness - or the other way around?
That psychoactive medication alters behavior and mood is indisputable. So do illicit and legal drugs, certain foods, and all interpersonal interactions. That the changes brought about by prescription are desirable - is debatable and involves tautological thinking. If a certain pattern of behavior is described as (socially) "dysfunctional" or (psychologically) "sick" - clearly, every change would be welcomed as "healing" and every agent of transformation would be called a "cure".
The same applies to the alleged heredity of mental illness. Single genes or gene complexes are frequently "associated" with mental health diagnoses, personality traits, or behavior patterns. But too little is known to establish irrefutable sequences of causes-and-effects. Even less is proven about the interaction of nature and nurture, genotype and phenotype, the plasticity of the brain and the psychological impact of trauma, abuse, upbringing, role models, peers, and other environmental elements.
Nor is the distinction between psychotropic substances and talk therapy that clear-cut. Words and the interaction with the therapist also affect the brain, its processes and chemistry - albeit more slowly and, perhaps, more profoundly and irreversibly. Medicines - as David Kaiser reminds us in "Against Biologic Psychiatry" (Psychiatric Times, Volume XIII, Issue 12, December 1996) - treat symptoms, not the underlying processes that yield them.
So, what is mental illness, the subject matter of Psychoanalysis?
Someone is considered mentally "ill" if:
His conduct rigidly and consistently deviates from the typical, average behavior of all other people in his culture and society that fit his profile (whether this conventional behavior is moral or rational is immaterial), or
His judgment and grasp of objective, physical reality is impaired, and
His conduct is not a matter of choice but is innate and irresistible, and
His behavior causes him or others discomfort, and is
Dysfunctional, self-defeating, and self-destructive even by his own yardsticks.
Descriptive criteria aside, what is the essence of mental disorders? Are they merely physiological disorders of the brain, or, more precisely of its chemistry? If so, can they be cured by restoring the balance of substances and secretions in that mysterious organ? And, once equilibrium is reinstated - is the illness "gone" or is it still lurking there, "under wraps", waiting to erupt? Are psychiatric problems inherited, rooted in faulty genes (though amplified by environmental factors) - or brought on by abusive or wrong nurturance?
These questions are the domain of the "medical" school of mental health.
Others cling to the spiritual view of the human psyche. They believe that mental ailments amount to the metaphysical discomposure of an unknown medium - the soul. Theirs is a holistic approach, taking in the patient in his or her entirety, as well as his milieu.
The members of the functional school regard mental health disorders as perturbations in the proper, statistically "normal", behaviors and manifestations of "healthy" individuals, or as dysfunctions. The "sick" individual - ill at ease with himself (ego-dystonic) or making others unhappy (deviant) - is "mended" when rendered functional again by the prevailing standards of his social and cultural frame of reference.
In a way, the three schools are akin to the trio of blind men who render disparate descriptions of the very same elephant. Still, they share not only their subject matter - but, to a counter intuitively large degree, a faulty methodology.
As the renowned anti-psychiatrist, Thomas Szasz, of the State University of New York, notes in his article "The Lying Truths of Psychiatry", mental health scholars, regardless of academic predilection, infer the etiology of mental disorders from the success or failure of treatment modalities.
This form of "reverse engineering" of scientific models is not unknown in other fields of science, nor is it unacceptable if the experiments meet the criteria of the scientific method. The theory must be all-inclusive (anamnetic), consistent, falsifiable, logically compatible, monovalent, and parsimonious. Psychological "theories" - even the "medical" ones (the role of serotonin and dopamine in mood disorders, for instance) - are usually none of these things.
The outcome is a bewildering array of ever-shifting mental health "diagnoses" expressly centred around Western civilization and its standards (example: the ethical objection to suicide). Neurosis, a historically fundamental "condition" vanished after 1980. Homosexuality, according to the American Psychiatric Association, was a pathology prior to 1973. Seven years later, narcissism was declared a "personality disorder", almost seven decades after it was first described by Freud.
Serial Killers
(category: Psychology, Word count: 1906)
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Countess Erszebet Bathory was a breathtakingly beautiful, unusually well-educated woman, married to a descendant of Vlad Dracula of Bram Stoker fame. In 1611, she was tried - though, being a noblewoman, not convicted - in Hungary for slaughtering 612 young girls. The true figure may have been 40-100, though the Countess recorded in her diary more than 610 girls and 50 bodies were found in her estate when it was raided.
The Countess was notorious as an inhuman sadist long before her hygienic fixation. She once ordered the mouth of a talkative servant sewn. It is rumoured that in her childhood she witnessed a gypsy being sewn into a horse's stomach and left to die.
The girls were not killed outright. They were kept in a dungeon and repeatedly pierced, prodded, pricked, and cut. The Countess may have bitten chunks of flesh off their bodies while alive. She is said to have bathed and showered in their blood in the mistaken belief that she could thus slow down the aging process.
Her servants were executed, their bodies burnt and their ashes scattered. Being royalty, she was merely confined to her bedroom until she died in 1614. For a hundred years after her death, by royal decree, mentioning her name in Hungary was a crime.
Cases like Barothy's give the lie to the assumption that serial killers are a modern - or even post-modern - phenomenon, a cultural-societal construct, a by-product of urban alienation, Althusserian interpellation, and media glamorization. Serial killers are, indeed, largely made, not born. But they are spawned by every culture and society, molded by the idiosyncrasies of every period as well as by their personal circumstances and genetic makeup.
Still, every crop of serial killers mirrors and reifies the pathologies of the milieu, the depravity of the Zeitgeist, and the malignancies of the Leitkultur. The choice of weapons, the identity and range of the victims, the methodology of murder, the disposal of the bodies, the geography, the sexual perversions and paraphilias - are all informed and inspired by the slayer's environment, upbringing, community, socialization, education, peer group, sexual orientation, religious convictions, and personal narrative. Movies like "Born Killers", "Man Bites Dog", "Copycat", and the Hannibal Lecter series captured this truth.
Serial killers are the quiddity and quintessence of malignant narcissism.
Yet, to some degree, we all are narcissists. Primary narcissism is a universal and inescapable developmental phase. Narcissistic traits are common and often culturally condoned. To this extent, serial killers are merely our reflection through a glass darkly.
In their book "Personality Disorders in Modern Life", Theodore Millon and Roger Davis attribute pathological narcissism to "a society that stresses individualism and self-gratification at the expense of community ... In an individualistic culture, the narcissist is 'God's gift to the world'. In a collectivist society, the narcissist is 'God's gift to the collective'".
Lasch described the narcissistic landscape thus (in "The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an age of Diminishing Expectations", 1979):
"The new narcissist is haunted not by guilt but by anxiety. He seeks not to inflict his own certainties on others but to find a meaning in life. Liberated from the superstitions of the past, he doubts even the reality of his own existence ... His sexual attitudes are permissive rather than puritanical, even though his emancipation from ancient taboos brings him no sexual peace.
Fiercely competitive in his demand for approval and acclaim, he distrusts competition because he associates it unconsciously with an unbridled urge to destroy ... He (harbours) deeply antisocial impulses. He praises respect for rules and regulations in the secret belief that they do not apply to himself. Acquisitive in the sense that his cravings have no limits, he ... demands immediate gratification and lives in a state of restless, perpetually unsatisfied desire."
The narcissist's pronounced lack of empathy, off-handed exploitativeness, grandiose fantasies and uncompromising sense of entitlement make him treat all people as though they were objects (he "objectifies" people). The narcissist regards others as either useful conduits for and sources of narcissistic supply (attention, adulation, etc.) - or as extensions of himself.
Similarly, serial killers often mutilate their victims and abscond with trophies - usually, body parts. Some of them have been known to eat the organs they have ripped - an act of merging with the dead and assimilating them through digestion. They treat their victims as some children do their rag dolls.
Killing the victim - often capturing him or her on film before the murder - is a form of exerting unmitigated, absolute, and irreversible control over it. The serial killer aspires to "freeze time" in the still perfection that he has choreographed. The victim is motionless and defenseless. The killer attains long sought "object permanence". The victim is unlikely to run on the serial assassin, or vanish as earlier objects in the killer's life (e.g., his parents) have done.
In malignant narcissism, the true self of the narcissist is replaced by a false construct, imbued with omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence. The narcissist's thinking is magical and infantile. He feels immune to the consequences of his own actions. Yet, this very source of apparently superhuman fortitude is also the narcissist's Achilles heel.
The narcissist's personality is chaotic. His defense mechanisms are primitive. The whole edifice is precariously balanced on pillars of denial, splitting, projection, rationalization, and projective identification. Narcissistic injuries - life crises, such as abandonment, divorce, financial difficulties, incarceration, public opprobrium - can bring the whole thing tumbling down. The narcissist cannot afford to be rejected, spurned, insulted, hurt, resisted, criticized, or disagreed with.
Likewise, the serial killer is trying desperately to avoid a painful relationship with his object of desire. He is terrified of being abandoned or humiliated, exposed for what he is and then discarded. Many killers often have sex - the ultimate form of intimacy - with the corpses of their victims. Objectification and mutilation allow for unchallenged possession.
Devoid of the ability to empathize, permeated by haughty feelings of superiority and uniqueness, the narcissist cannot put himself in someone else's shoes, or even imagine what it means. The very experience of being human is alien to the narcissist whose invented False Self is always to the fore, cutting him off from the rich panoply of human emotions.
Thus, the narcissist believes that all people are narcissists. Many serial killers believe that killing is the way of the world. Everyone would kill if they could or were given the chance to do so. Such killers are convinced that they are more honest and open about their desires and, thus, morally superior. They hold others in contempt for being conforming hypocrites, cowed into submission by an overweening establishment or society.
The narcissist seeks to adapt society in general - and meaningful others in particular - to his needs. He regards himself as the epitome of perfection, a yardstick against which he measures everyone, a benchmark of excellence to be emulated. He acts the guru, the sage, the "psychotherapist", the "expert", the objective observer of human affairs. He diagnoses the "faults" and "pathologies" of people around him and "helps" them "improve", "change", "evolve", and "succeed" - i.e., conform to the narcissist's vision and wishes.
Serial killers also "improve" their victims - slain, intimate objects - by "purifying" them, removing "imperfections", depersonalizing and dehumanizing them. This type of killer saves its victims from degeneration and degradation, from evil and from sin, in short: from a fate worse than death.
The killer's megalomania manifests at this stage. He claims to possess, or have access to, higher knowledge and morality. The killer is a special being and the victim is "chosen" and should be grateful for it. The killer often finds the victim's ingratitude irritating, though sadly predictable.
In his seminal work, "Aberrations of Sexual Life" (originally: "Psychopathia Sexualis"), quoted in the book "Jack the Ripper" by Donald Rumbelow, Kraft-Ebbing offers this observation:
"The perverse urge in murders for pleasure does not solely aim at causing the victim pain and - most acute injury of all - death, but that the real meaning of the action consists in, to a certain extent, imitating, though perverted into a monstrous and ghastly form, the act of defloration. It is for this reason that an essential component ... is the employment of a sharp cutting weapon; the victim has to be pierced, slit, even chopped up ... The chief wounds are inflicted in the stomach region and, in many cases, the fatal cuts run from the vagina into the abdomen. In boys an artificial vagina is even made ... One can connect a fetishistic element too with this process of hacking ... inasmuch as parts of the body are removed and ... made into a collection."
Yet, the sexuality of the serial, psychopathic, killer is self-directed. His victims are props, extensions, aides, objects, and symbols. He interacts with them ritually and, either before or after the act, transforms his diseased inner dialog into a self-consistent extraneous catechism. The narcissist is equally auto-erotic. In the sexual act, he merely masturbates with other - living - people's bodies.
The narcissist's life is a giant repetition complex. In a doomed attempt to resolve early conflicts with significant others, the narcissist resorts to a restricted repertoire of coping strategies, defense mechanisms, and behaviors. He seeks to recreate his past in each and every new relationship and interaction. Inevitably, the narcissist is invariably confronted with the same outcomes. This recurrence only reinforces the narcissist's rigid reactive patterns and deep-set beliefs. It is a vicious, intractable, cycle.
Correspondingly, in some cases of serial killers, the murder ritual seemed to have recreated earlier conflicts with meaningful objects, such as parents, authority figures, or peers. The outcome of the replay is different to the original, though. This time, the killer dominates the situation.
The killings allow him to inflict abuse and trauma on others rather than be abused and traumatized. He outwits and taunts figures of authority - the police, for instance. As far as the killer is concerned, he is merely "getting back" at society for what it did to him. It is a form of poetic justice, a balancing of the books, and, therefore, a "good" thing. The murder is cathartic and allows the killer to release hitherto repressed and pathologically transformed aggression - in the form of hate, rage, and envy.
But repeated acts of escalating gore fail to alleviate the killer's overwhelming anxiety and depression. He seeks to vindicate his negative introjects and sadistic superego by being caught and punished. The serial killer tightens the proverbial noose around his neck by interacting with law enforcement agencies and the media and thus providing them with clues as to his identity and whereabouts. When apprehended, most serial assassins experience a great sense of relief.
Serial killers are not the only objectifiers - people who treat others as objects. To some extent, leaders of all sorts - political, military, or corporate - do the same. In a range of demanding professions - surgeons, medical doctors, judges, law enforcement agents - objectification efficiently fends off attendant horror and anxiety.
Yet, serial killers are different. They represent a dual failure - of their own development as full-fledged, productive individuals - and of the culture and society they grow in. In a pathologically narcissistic civilization - social anomies proliferate. Such societies breed malignant objectifiers - people devoid of empathy - also known as "narcissists".
The Construct Of Normal Personality
(category: Psychology, Word count: 291)
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Personality disorders are dysfunctions of our whole identity, tears in the fabric of who we are. They are all-pervasive because our personality is ubiquitous and permeates each and every one of our mental cells. I just published the first article in this topic titled "What is Personality?". Read it to understand the subtle differences between "personality", "character", and "temperament".
In the background lurks the question: what constitutes normal behavior? Who is normal?
There is the statistical response: the average and the common are normal. But it is unsatisfactory and incomplete. Conforming to social edicts and mores does not guarantee normalcy. Think about anomic societies and periods of history such as Hitler's Germany or Stalin's Russia. Model citizens in these hellish environments were the criminal and the sadist.
Rather than look to the outside for a clear definition, many mental health professionals ask: is the patient functioning and happy (ego-syntonic)? If he or she is both then all is well and normal. Abnormal traits, behaviors, and personalities are, therefore defined as those traits, behaviors, and personalities that are dysfunctional and cause subjective distress.
But, of course, this falls flat on its face at the slightest scrutiny. Many evidently mentally ill people are rather happy and reasonably functional.
Some scholars reject the concept of "normalcy" altogether. The anti-psychiatry movement object to the medicalization and pathologization of whole swathes of human conduct. Others prefer to study the disorders themselves rather to "go metaphysical" by trying to distinguish them from an imaginary and ideal state of being "mentally healthy".
I subscribe to the later approach. I much prefer to delve into the phenomenology of mental health disorders: their traits, characteristics, and impact on others.
Are You Under Mind Control Why Not
(category: Psychology, Word count: 610)
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How do you determine if you're under mind control?
It's an interesting question that you can pass around at a party or among friends.
The fact is that you just don't know. In fact everything you are doing could be a response that fits perfectly into another persons plans.
If you take that as a possibility you could simply just give up and yield to the fact that NOTHING is truly within your control but there is a healthier option.
It's quite simple, just ask yourself "Am I acting or am I reacting?"
If you are reacting then you are respond to something outside of your control and trying to gain some control back, a potential sign of some form of mind control.
No one likes to feel powerless and out of control.
The solution? To do something intentional and positive that is NOT a response to the external environment.
I want to emphasize the word "positive" here because an intentional negative/destructive act has to act on or destroy something pre-existing. It would be then something to which you are reacting.
This is much harder that it might seem because it requires four qualities that most "sheeple" find hard to implement. They are:
1) Thought.
People don't like to think, in general. That is why we have an unconscious (reactive) mind so it will do most of our actions for us. Most of us rely on it entirely too much or in the wrong way and allow it to dictate our every move by letting our emotions guide us. Advertisers, politicians, spouses and other manipulators know this and often seek to control you by fear, anger, threats and frustration. Thought requires that you determine what would be your best emotional response.
2 ) Creativity.
Creativity can be difficult because it requires taking action that is not linked to some external stimulus. This, of course requires thought, but one can train themselves and their unconscious mind to be very creative. Think of what Salvador Dali was able to do. Nothing he did in the field of art could easily be compared to anything prior to him. The same was true with his life.
3) Action.
Action takes effort. People (sheeple?) tend to not want to act instead they react and conserve their energy. What they don't understand is that by taking creative action in the manner described creates energy. Going back to Salvidor Dali as an example, his life was FULL of energy that he created. When his peers in the high brow field of art tried to control him he would turn his response into a new form of performance art. In so doing he would baffle the people trying to influence him and entertain everyone else.
4) Courage.
Why courage? Because when people recognize that they cannot control you through fear and anger they will severely escalate their attempts through threats and maybe even violence.
To free yourself from any form of mind control is no easy task. But nothing so rewarding is easy.
When I wrote the book "Perfected Mind Control - The Unauthorized Black Book of Hypnotic Mind Control" I wanted to appeal to peoples most base desires for control and then turn the whole process into one of creating greater freedom, flexibility and joy. Throughout the book I encourage the reader to do the hypnotic processes on themselves first in order to truly understand the power.
When any smart person would find out is that there is nothing evil and controlling about "Perfected Mind Control - The Unauthorized Black Book of Hypnotic Mind Control" instead it's about personal liberation.
Narcissist Vs Psychopath
(category: Psychology, Word count: 405)
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We all heard the terms "psychopath" or "sociopath". These are the old names for a patient with the Antisocial Personality Disorder (AsPD). It is hard to distinguish narcissists from psychopaths. The latter may simply be a less inhibited and less grandiose form of the former. Indeed, the DSM V Committee is considering to abolish this distinction altogether.
Still, there are some important nuances setting the two disorders apart:
As opposed to most narcissists, psychopaths are either unable or unwilling to control their impulses or to delay gratification. They use their rage to control people and manipulate them into submission.
Psychopaths, like narcissists, lack empathy but many of them are also sadistic: they take pleasure in inflicting pain on their victims or in deceiving them. They even find it funny!
Psychopaths are far less able to form interpersonal relationships, even the twisted and tragic relationships that are the staple of the narcissist.
Both the psychopath and the narcissist disregard society, its conventions, social cues and social treaties. But the psychopath carries this disdain to the extreme and is likely to be a scheming, calculated, ruthless, and callous career criminal. Psychopaths are deliberately and gleefully evil while narcissists are absent-mindedly and incidentally evil.
From my book "Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited":
"As opposed to what Scott Peck says, narcissists are not evil - they lack the intention to cause harm (mens rea). As Millon notes, certain narcissists 'incorporate moral values into their exaggerated sense of superiority. Here, moral laxity is seen (by the narcissist) as evidence of inferiority, and it is those who are unable to remain morally pure who are looked upon with contempt.' (Millon, Th., Davis, R. - Personality Disorders in Modern Life - John Wiley and Sons, 2000). Narcissists are simply indifferent, callous and careless in their conduct and in their treatment of others. Their abusive conduct is off-handed and absent-minded, not calculated and premeditated like the psychopath's."
Psychopaths really do not need other people while narcissists are addicted to narcissistic supply (the admiration, attention, and envy of others).
Millon and Davis (supra) add (p. 299-300):
"When the egocentricity, lack of empathy, and sense of superiority of the narcissist cross-fertilize with the impulsivity, deceitfulness, and criminal tendencies of the antisocial, the result is a psychopath, an individual who seeks the gratification of selfish impulses through any means without empathy or remorse."
Critique And Defense Of Psychoanalysis
(category: Psychology, Word count: 1406)
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"I am actually not a man of science at all. . . . I am nothing but a conquistador by temperament, an adventurer."
(Sigmund Freud, letter to Fleiss, 1900)
"If you bring forth that which is in you, that which you bring forth will be your salvation".
(The Gospel of Thomas)
"No, our science is no illusion. But an illusion it would be to suppose that what science cannot give us we cannot get elsewhere."
(Sigmund Freud, "The Future of an Illusion")
Harold Bloom called Freud "The central imagination of our age". That psychoanalysis is not a scientific theory in the strict, rigorous sense of the word has long been established. Yet, most criticisms of Freud's work (by the likes of Karl Popper, Adolf Grunbaum, Havelock Ellis, Malcolm Macmillan, and Frederick Crews) pertain to his - long-debunked - scientific pretensions.
Today it is widely accepted that psychoanalysis - though some of its tenets are testable and, indeed, have been experimentally tested and invariably found to be false or uncorroborated - is a system of ideas. It is a cultural construct, and a (suggested) deconstruction of the human mind. Despite aspirations to the contrary, psychoanalysis is not - and never has been - a value-neutral physics or dynamics of the psyche.
Freud also stands accused of generalizing his own perversions and of reinterpreting his patients' accounts of their memories to fit his preconceived notions of the unconscious . The practice of psychoanalysis as a therapy has been castigated as a crude form of brainwashing within cult-like settings.
Feminists criticize Freud for casting women in the role of "defective" (naturally castrated and inferior) men. Scholars of culture expose the Victorian and middle-class roots of his theories about suppressed sexuality. Historians deride and decry his stifling authoritarianism and frequent and expedient conceptual reversals.
Freud himself would have attributed many of these diatribes to the defense mechanisms of his critics. Projection, resistance, and displacement do seem to be playing a prominent role. Psychologists are taunted by the lack of rigor of their profession, by its literary and artistic qualities, by the dearth of empirical support for its assertions and fundaments, by the ambiguity of its terminology and ontology, by the derision of "proper" scientists in the "hard" disciplines, and by the limitations imposed by their experimental subjects (humans). These are precisely the shortcomings that they attribute to psychoanalysis.
Indeed, psychological narratives - psychoanalysis first and foremost - are not "scientific theories" by any stretch of this much-bandied label. They are also unlikely to ever become ones. Instead - like myths, religions, and ideologies - they are organizing principles.
Psychological "theories" do not explain the world. At best, they describe reality and give it "true", emotionally-resonant, heuristic and hermeneutic meaning. They are less concerned with predictive feats than with "healing" - the restoration of harmony among people and inside them.
Therapies - the practical applications of psychological "theories" - are more concerned with function, order, form, and ritual than with essence and replicable performance. The interaction between patient and therapist is a microcosm of society, an encapsulation and reification of all other forms of social intercourse. Granted, it is more structured and relies on a body of knowledge gleaned from millions of similar encounters. Still, the therapeutic process is nothing more than an insightful and informed dialog whose usefulness is well-attested to.
Both psychological and scientific theories are creatures of their times, children of the civilizations and societies in which they were conceived, context-dependent and culture-bound. As such, their validity and longevity are always suspect. Both hard-edged scientists and thinkers in the "softer" disciplines are influenced by contemporary values, mores, events, and interpellations.
The difference between "proper" theories of dynamics and psychodynamic theories is that the former asymptotically aspire to an objective "truth" "out there" - while the latter emerge and emanate from a kernel of inner, introspective, truth that is immediately familiar and is the bedrock of their speculations. Scientific theories - as opposed to psychological "theories" - need, therefore, to be tested, falsified, and modified because their truth is not self-contained.
Still, psychoanalysis was, when elaborated, a Kuhnian paradigm shift. It broke with the past completely and dramatically. It generated an inordinate amount of new, unsolved, problems. It suggested new methodological procedures for gathering empirical evidence (research strategies). It was based on observations (however scant and biased). In other words, it was experimental in nature, not merely theoretical. It provided a framework of reference, a conceptual sphere within which new ideas developed.
That it failed to generate a wealth of testable hypotheses and to account for discoveries in neurology does not detract from its importance. Both relativity theories were and, today, string theories are, in exactly the same position in relation to their subject matter, physics.
In 1963, Karl Jaspers made an important distinction between the scientific activities of Erklaren and Verstehen. Erklaren is about finding pairs of causes and effects. Verstehen is about grasping connections between events, sometimes intuitively and non-causally. Psychoanalysis is about Verstehen, not about Erklaren. It is a hypothetico-deductive method for gleaning events in a person's life and generating insights regarding their connection to his current state of mind and functioning.
So, is psychoanalysis a science, pseudo-science, or sui generis?
Psychoanalysis is a field of study, not a theory. It is replete with neologisms and formalism but, like Quantum Mechanics, it has many incompatible interpretations. It is, therefore, equivocal and self-contained (recursive). Psychoanalysis dictates which of its hypotheses are testable and what constitutes its own falsification. In other words, it is a meta-theory: a theory about generating theories in psychology.
Moreover, psychoanalysis the theory is often confused with psychoanalysis the therapy. Conclusively proving that the therapy works does not establish the veridicality, the historicity, or even the usefulness of the conceptual edifice of the theory. Furthermore, therapeutic techniques evolve far more quickly and substantially than the theories that ostensibly yield them. They are self-modifying "moving targets" - not rigid and replicable procedures and rituals.
Another obstacle in trying to establish the scientific value of psychoanalysis is its ambiguity. It is unclear, for instance, what in psychoanalysis qualify as causes - and what as their effects.
Consider the critical construct of the unconscious. Is it the reason for - does it cause - our behavior, conscious thoughts, and emotions? Does it provide them with a "ratio" (explanation)? Or are they mere symptoms of inexorable underlying processes? Even these basic questions receive no "dynamic" or "physical" treatment in classic (Freudian) psychoanalytic theory. So much for its pretensions to be a scientific endeavor.
Psychoanalysis is circumstantial and supported by epistemic accounts, starting with the master himself. It appeals to one's common sense and previous experience. Its statements are of these forms: "given X, Y, and Z reported by the patient - doesn't it stand to (everyday) reason that A caused X?" or "We know that B causes M, that M is very similar to X, and that B is very similar to A. Isn't it reasonable to assume that A causes X?".
In therapy, the patient later confirms these insights by feeling that they are "right" and "correct", that they are epiphanous and revelatory, that they possess retrodictive and predictive powers, and by reporting his reactions to the therapist-interpreter. This acclamation seals the narrative's probative value as a basic (not to say primitive) form of explanation which provides a time frame, a coincident pattern, and sets of teleological aims, ideas and values.
Juan Rivera is right that Freud's claims about infantile life cannot be proven, not even with a Gedankenexperimental movie camera, as Robert Vaelder suggested. It is equally true that the theory's etiological claims are epidemiologically untestable, as Grunbaum repeatedly says. But these failures miss the point and aim of psychoanalysis: to provide an organizing and comprehensive, non-tendentious, and persuasive narrative of human psychological development.
Should such a narrative be testable and falsifiable or else discarded (as the Logical Positivists insist)?
Depends if we wish to treat it as science or as an art form. This is the circularity of the arguments against psychoanalysis. If Freud's work is considered to be the modern equivalent of myth, religion, or literature - it need not be tested to be considered "true" in the deepest sense of the word. After all, how much of the science of the 19th century has survived to this day anyhow?
Personality Testing Myth And Realities
(category: Psychology, Word count: 710)
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It is commonly believed myth that personality testing instruments can measure your personality and predict your future behaviors. The pre-employment testing mechanism has been following this creed without any solid evidence. The testing industry claims all out validity. The educational institutions and employer organizations use them for screening purposes. Their transparency and equity has even convinced the courts of law.
But it is still an unresolved riddle; what do they test?
Do they test personality? What is personality then? What is its nature? How does it come into existence? Is it outcome of evolution? Does matter has capability to generate a personality? Why animals don't have a personality? Does it remain the same during whole of your life? And many more questions.
It is like peeling off an onion. Every strip leads to many more. Finally you get a heap of onion strips. Where is the onion?
But personality is not an onion...
Allport has recorded hundreds of different definitions. Most of the psychologists equate it to your style, behaviors and reactions. They have devised instruments to measure these main areas. The collected data about your behaviors and temperaments help them to decide your career. You may organize your behaviors in future but you may never be able to go for a career of your passion.
Why?
Experts like to predict. They predict weather. They predict political situations. They predict economic conditions. They predict your future with signs, numbers, cards or palms. And they predict your future performance with the help of personality testing instruments.
What's Your Personality?
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It is well recognized fact that every human being has a personality. It is not merely your physical body. It is not merely your consciousness. It is not merely your ego. It is not merely your behaviors. It is not merely your physical expression. It is not merely your style. It is not merely your temperament.
But they all and many other characteristics are expressions of your personality.
I don't find it wise to define personality. Admittedly it is an abstract reality. You get it with your birth. You can either develop it or disintegrate. Your style, behaviors and reactions are expressions of your developed, undeveloped or under-developed personality.
How do you look? How do you react? How do you talk? How do you live? How do you think? They all are expressions of your personality. The psychometrics measures these expressions and not your personality.
The abstract nature of personality can neither be measured nor be analyzed with any scientific or non-scientific tool. It can only be visualized. It can be developed. It can be disintegrated. Your thinking and doing makes all out the difference. A developed personality gives better style, behaviors and reactions than an undeveloped one.
Why Psychometrics are Getting Popular?
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The very first reason is that every one wants to know who he is.
But bigger reason of their massive use is just a desire of the employers to avoid bad-hire. They get hundreds of applications for a single situation. They are the only available tools to avoid idiosyncrasies.
They don't have alternatives for psychometrics.
Tests are going to stay. Whether you are trying to be admitted for a specific discipline or looking for your dream job, you are going to encounter psychometrics at one stage or the others. You need to prepare before encountering them.
How to Prepare for Personality Testing Sessions?
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Keep in mind...
Personality is an amazing entity. You can think. You can visualize. You can discover. You can express. You can plan. You can create. You have unlimited hidden potentials. But your selected options on paper are going to decide your future.
You should practice offline and online personality tests before encountering a real session. Your practice shall not only make them familiar to you but also generate a list of your strengths and weaknesses. You can improve them with your conscious effort.
However, it is much more important to learn how different personality and aptitude tests measure expressions of your personality. What theories are working behind them? How do they relate different jobs with different types? This knowledge shall make it a lot easier to encounter psychometrics.
Diagnosing Personality Disorders
(category: Psychology, Word count: 463)
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Personality traits are enduring, usually rigid patterns of behavior, thinking (cognition), and emoting expressed in a variety of circumstances and situations and throughout one's life (typically from early adolescence onward). Some personality traits are harmful to both oneself and to others. These are the dysfunctional traits. Often they cause discomfort and the person bearing these traits is unhappy and self-critical. This is called ego-dystony. At other times, even the most pernicious personality traits are happily endorsed and even flaunted by the patient. This is called "ego-syntony".
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) describes 12 ideal "prototypes" of personality disorders. It provides lists of seven to nine personality traits per each disorder. These are called "diagnostic criteria". Whenever five of these criteria are met, a qualified mental health diagnostician can safely diagnose the existence of a personality disorder.
But important caveats apply.
No two people are alike. Even subjects suffering from the same personality disorder can be worlds apart as far as their backgrounds, actual conduct, inner world, character, social interactions, and temperament go.
Diagnosing the existence of a personality trait (applying the diagnostic criteria) is an art, not a science. Evaluating someone's conduct, appraising the patient's cognitive and emotional landscape, and attributing motivation to him or her, is a matter of judgment. There is no calibrated scientific instrument that can provide us with an objective reading of whether one lacks empathy, is unscrupulous, is sexualizing situations and people, or is clinging and needy.
Regrettably, the process is inevitably tainted by value judgments as well. Mental health practitioners are only human (well, OK, some of them are...:o)). They hail from specific social, economic, and cultural backgrounds. They do their best to neutralize their personal bias and prejudices but their efforts often fail. Many critics charge that certain personality disorders are "culture-bound". They reflect our contemporary sensitivities and values rather than invariable psychological entities and constructs.
Thus, someone with the Antisocial Personality Disorder is supposed to disrespect social rules and regard himself as a free agent. He lacks conscience and is often a criminal. This means that non-conformists, dissenters, and dissidents can be pathologized and labeled "antisocial". Indeed, authoritarian regimes often incarcerate their opponents in mental asylums based on such dubious "diagnoses". Moreover, crime is a career choice. Granted, it is a harmful and unpalatable one. But since when is one's choice of vocation a mental health problem?
If you believe in telepathy and UFOs and have bizarre rituals, mannerisms, and speech patterns, you may be diagnosed with the Schizotypal Personality Disorder. If you shun others and are a loner, you may be a Schizoid. And the list goes on.
To avoid these pitfalls, the DSM came up with a multi-axial model of personality evaluation.
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