Psychopaths, Narcissists, Machiavellians, Toxic Leaders, Coercive Controllers: Subsets of One Overarching ‘Dark’ Personality Type?

Abstract People who actively violate social norms and harm and disadvantage others by conscious choice have been the focus of research for centuries.

Psychopathy, Machiavellianism, and narcissism, collectively the dark triad or dark personality (DP), are conceptualisations intended to give meaning to the characteristics common to socially aversive personalities. Behavioural researchers in fields such as toxic leadership, coercive control in domestic violence, cults, and child sex abuse in religion also explore the characteristics of those who are socially aversive.

There is, however, substantial dissention regarding shared attributes of those who are socially aversive, resulting in considerable ongoing friction and fragmentation in the field. This is neither in the interests of humankind, as identification of human predators is key to survival, nor in the interests of researchers who are committing time and resources to vastly conflicting ideas.

A model is presented in this thesis which appears to represent the nature of socially aversive personalities, people of DP, more comprehensively than any existing model or collection of behaviours.

This three-dimensional model, the Persistent Predatory Personality (PPP) model, includes attributes, an arsenal of weaponry (tactics), and differentiating features (capabilities and values), which emerged from the data.

The thesis aims to identify common threads of research, resolve longstanding issues of dispute, and further clarify shared attributes of people of DP. New and unique approaches to research in the area and highly knowledgeable research populations not previously canvassed for data were engaged to achieve this aim. The data, which are extensive and highly nuanced, clarify longstanding points of contention in the DP literature.

An important and unique finding from the data is that people of DP who are higher functioning and engage in more covert forms of harm are equally as dangerous and sadistic, and share the same attributes, as those who commit overt acts of harm such as murder.


LINK

 

oof, she got 'beat-up" on X

Hey everyone. I am reaching out for support.

I have been chatting on here, respectfully and happily.

Yesterday I tweeted that there are many narcissists/psychopaths/predators in the psychiatric and psychology community based on my PhD research.

The responses from mental health professionals have been nothing short of abusive. I feel judged, character-assassinated, misunderstood, humiliated, disrespected. I feel physically sick.

I am stunned at the maliciousness and demeaning nature of the group bullying from mental health professionals. I am really, really distressed.

Have a look at all the retweet comments on the post below. For any psychiatrists and psychologists who might like to actually read my work before further attacking me, here is a link…

https://twitter.com/user/status/1807435430947897823

 

1.1M views

 

Original post on X

https://twitter.com/user/status/1806918118805242209

 

Yeah they won’t like that last para. For multiple reasons

 

She plans to write a book.

 

The universe is rhyming again (Predisposing Precipitating Perpetuating).

 

This looks interesting and worth the very long read. I hope it leads to more qualitative research and understanding. My interest in this topic was piqued by Jon Ronson's very readable The Psychopath Test.

From Wikipedia: The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry is a 2011 book written by British author Jon Ronson in which he explores the concept of psychopathy, along with the broader mental health "industry" including mental health professionals and the mass media.

 

I haven't seen the thread, but from the sound of it, as Sean says, they've kind of proved her thesis.

 

https://twitter.com/user/status/1807783310250406339



A huge and heartfelt thank you for the amazing support I have received from the X community following my ‘run-in’ with the mental health fraternity. I am truly grateful.

I wanted to make a few comments as a result of all the posting around this issue.

There are some excellent psychiatrists and psychologists out there. We are creating a database of those who genuinely understand the characteristics and tactics of 'dark personality' (including narcissists, psychopaths, coercive controllers) and who are trauma-trained.

Even as someone who has had years of professional experience with dark personality, I am still challenged by their attacks. I practise what I preach however and one of the many strategies I recommend is reaching out for support.

I am NOT a psychiatrist or a psychologist.

My experience has included 30 years working internationally in the area of organisational culture change with executive groups and people across organisations. This has required considerable insight into human motivation and behaviour in a variety of contexts and situations. I have also worked in the areas of public health and women and leadership. I have worked voluntarily as an advocate in the family court for around 15 years and in poverty alleviation (micro-financing) in third world counties.

For my PhD, I spent 5 years, full-time, trying to identify the shared attributes of people who actively violate social norms and harm and disadvantage others by conscious choice, dark personalities.

I collected and read most available research on psychopathy, narcissism, Machiavellianism, dark triad, cults, coercive control in domestic violence, child sex abuse in religion, black swan events in medicine, corporate leadership toxicity and so on.

I travelled around the world meeting with some of the top people in research in some of these areas.

I found; all these fields tended to work in siloes, researchers often used self-assessments to get data from people who lie even when they do not need to, data was generally gathered from prison populations and college populations, academics were incentivised for new ideas rather than consolidating existing data etc. There were hundreds of different and conflicting ideas about the traits of dark personality, which sometimes led to public argument and even legal action amongst researchers.

This was not ideal as recognition of human predators is key to survival.

Using innovative research techniques with highly knowledgeable populations not previously canvassed for data, I sought to understand exactly what the shared attributes of 'dark personality' are.

My research is the first in the world to gather data from practitioners working with dark personalities and their targets outside the prison system. Each had worked continuously for an average of 22 years with them. It also included those working in a forensic context. Participant examples include the leader of child sex abuse claims in a large Catholic diocese, the FBI profiler who had caught the highest number of serial killers, a law enforcement officer working with victims of a cult and working across 3 continents trying (unsuccessfully) to have the cult leader convicted, clinical psychologists working with families where coercive control domestic violence was being perpetrated by lawyers, doctors, CEO's, military, and others who were never jailed. There were also internationally acclaimed academics in the research.

The data represents over 1000 years of cumulative experience with dark personalities and their targets.

The research indicates:
1. Higher functioning people of dark personality are just as committed to destruction of their targets as those jailed for murder. They just use less transparent forms of harm.
2.Narcissism, psychopathy, Machiavellianism, are all just subsets of one high level dark personality type that had not yet been distinguished.
3. NPD as per the DSM is also just a subset of this higher level personality type.
4. Bob Hare’s PCL-R, intended to assess for psychopathy, does not include the attribute of control which was the highest ranked attribute in this data.
5. Sadism is an attribute common to all those of dark personality, including the enjoyment of demeaning, humiliating, disadvantaging and harming others. It is also not contained in the PCL-R.
5. Much more which I do not intend to include here.

The high level dark personality type that emerged from the data contains 20 shared attributes and 25 commonly used tactics to win, avoid exposure and get what they want. I call it the Persistent Predatory Personality model.

It is impossible to get statistics on aversive personalities because none of the current models appear to be accurate, comprehensive or nuanced enough to be representative.

My research indicates Persistent Predatory Personality, including narcissism, NPD and psychopathy, constitutes around 10% of the population. In professions which offer: a high level of control, the ability to lead a double life, the potential to explore sadism in the broadest sense of the word, a good ‘front’ and in some cases high income, it is higher, probably closer to 15%.

I asked research participants to provide examples of behaviours exhibited by 2 people of dark personality they had worked with and what profession that person worked in. A list of the professions represented with numerical values is in the thesis. While the data is not statistically significant it is of value. Medicine, including psychiatry, was the third highest professional category represented.

Through my professional and advocacy work, I know of 9 people with psychology or psychiatry qualifications who meet the criteria for Persistent Predatory Personality, currently working in a range of psych-based roles. One is currently suspended although not deregistered. One is a professor. One is on a professional body. Evidence can be provided which shows they meet the criteria. Of course there are always those that have been charged. Australian head of the psychology professional body from 2009-2011 was jailed for predatory behaviour (child sex abuse) even as he was addressing issues of child sex abuse in the family court. A letter of sympathy to him and his family went out to all members of the psychology professional body.

This gives a small insight into my PhD work.

Once again, thank you to all that have been so kind to me in the past 24 hours.

 

In a very similar way as our BPS overlords are "champions" of free speech and open-minded debate, but systematically shut down, block and attack anyone who criticizes them, even more so when it's their victims. They prove themselves wrong every single day, show their lack of integrity, and they are encouraged at it.

There is something about the nature of power, especially privately wielded, in how it influences what people can do. Health care is basically primed for this kind of problem, the very nature of confidentiality in a 1:1 relationship with complete power imbalance makes it probably the easiest to get away with it.

Even more so when you realize how shockingly different what goes on in a medical file is from what actually happened at times, only one person writes down what happened the way they want it to be recorded. You find the same in all contexts featuring power imbalance, but there is a deeper problem with how medicine is treated as being above oversight, when in fact it needs it more than any other context, because the victims are usually vulnerable people in their most vulnerable moments.

It's similar to old ideas about clergy being morally superior. Wow was that silly, but it mostly reflected a huge power imbalance when religion and politics were two sides of the same coin. Somehow medicine continues to receive the benefit of doubt, even as they set out to invent whole systems built around exploiting it. Something human societies badly need to grow out of.

Like most things in biology, this makes sense in the context of evolution. Being a predator is a successful strategy in nature, that's why it's so common. So are cheating and conquest, especially when there isn't a higher authority that can punish predatory behavior. Humans may have developed technology and science, but we are still the same biology we evolved out of, so those traits are still among us. It's naive to think otherwise.

 

Not a fan of "dark" being used to denote "bad".

If her work stands up to scrutiny then she ought to be able to find a scientifically descriptive term for this personality type, rather than relying on an emotive symbolic one.

 

In color psychology, black means power and control, hanging on to information and things rather than giving out to others. Black is intimidating, unfriendly and unapproachable because of the power it exudes. It can prevent two-way communication because of its intimidation.