Latest / It’s All Your Fault: High Conflict People / Beyond the Mask: Understanding Psychopathy in Modern Society (Part 1)
Transcript
- Speaker 1 (00:05): Welcome to, it's All Your Fault On True Story fm, the one and only podcast dedicated to helping you identify and deal with the most challenging human interactions, those involving high conflict situations and the people and personalities involved in them. I'm Megan Hunter and I'm here with my co-host, bill Eddie. Speaker 2 (00:25): Hi everybody. Speaker 1 (00:26): We are the co-founders of the High Conflict Institute in Scottsdale, Arizona, where we focus on training, consulting, coaching classes, and educational programs and methods. All to do with high conflict today. And in the next episode we're going to be talking about psychopathy. What is it? What is the cost of society to the justice system, to the courts, to the prisons, to all of us. Alright, but before we start, send your questions to podcast@highconflictinstitute.com or submit them on our website@highconflictinstitute.com slash podcast where you'll also find all the show notes and links, including a link to an article that is really the foundation of today's episode about psychopathy. Speaker 1 (01:22): We came across this podcast and I want to say thank you to ll for sending it to us. It's by uc, Berkeley Psychology Professor Keenan Joiner. Joiner runs the clinical research on externalizing and addiction mechanisms laboratory, I hate to have to say that fast. Very many times where he and his team study risk for addiction and why problematic drug use co-occur with mental disorders. One of the disorders they study is psychopathy. So a study published in the journal Psychological Assessment in June, 2024 estimated that each year the cost of psychopathy to the US criminal justice system is around 460 billion. Billion with a lot of money. So it got me thinking about psychopathy and what we really know about a term that's bandied about so loosely, whether on social media or just in everyday conversation. He's such a psychopath or she's a psychopath or sociopath, but do we really know much about what these are in general society? Speaker 1 (02:37): And if we're spending 460 billion a year in the US and I mean expand that into other countries, and it's a huge number on prosecution and housing folks like this, there must be a heck of a lot of 'em out there, right? So today we'll talk about and next episode about psychopathy and high conflict personalities and is there a relationship there? So I'm sure you Bill will have plenty to say about that. Just yesterday I was given a training in a school district in California, and several questions were asked by the audience members about antisocial personality disorder. First of all, there's such a misnomer by the name antisocial because they just think it sounds like the person that's standing in the back of the room at a party. That's not what it is at all. And then there were some follow up questions, even though I didn't bring up antisocial personality disorder in the training someone else did. Speaker 1 (03:41): And then it went into what is sociopathy? What is psychopathy? It's a fascinating area for people to think about and talk about because it is this concept that we think about. There are people who walk amongst us who we're married to, who are in our families, in our workplace, in our sports groups and places of worship everywhere who have this incredibly challenging and some would say dark side of their personality. And I kind of like to joke that Netflix limited series wouldn't exist without psychopathy, but here's an issue that's come up since reading the article. My explanation for antisocial personality disorder, sociopathy and psychopathy. In my mind, I've kind of got it categorized as this cascading thing where they're kind of on the same continuum, but one is, or maybe not even a continuum, but under the same umbrella, but one's kind of worse than the other. Is that factual? I guess we'll find that out in our conversation today and kind of what we found in the article. So Bill, let's start with talking about antisocial personality disorder. In the DSM, the Diagnostic and Statistical manual psychopathy is a subset of antisocial personality disorder. A person with psychopathy would be diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder with psychopathic features. So let's start with A SPD. What is the criteria for just that diagnosis? Not even thinking about psychopathy yet? Speaker 2 (05:19): The way that diagnostic manual mental disorders works with personality disorders is first, there's a threshold, two threshold questions. Does the person have internal distress and or social impairment given what we'll get into with psychopathy people psychopaths is they often don't have distress, but their social impairment is very, very big. They're a significant part of the criminal population. And a lot of the studies, most of the studies that I'm aware of on psychopathy, they do with prisoners and find out what features they have. And there are certainly a larger percent of the prison population than the general percent of the population. But antisocial personality disorder has seven criteria possibly, and they only need to have three of these seven in order to meet the diagnosis if they also have social impairment and or internal distress. So figure they have social impairment. I'll quickly mention what these are and people keep in mind, we're not teaching you to diagnose personality disorders, but we believe giving background information is helpful to people, especially in everyday conflicts. Speaker 2 (06:48): So some key factors here is a pattern of disregard for in violation of the rights of others occurring since age 15. So one of the criteria for this is that they had some kind of antisocial behavior or what's called conduct disorder, petty theft, torturing and killing small animals and pets, starting fires, that kind of thing by age 15. And so for someone, a mental health professional like myself, I need to know about what was happening by age 15. And I actually, when I was a therapist, I had some young boys who were right around 15 and they had this history and everybody knew it. They were getting treatment and they were actually mostly in foster homes. Speaker 1 (07:45): Were they in the juvenile probation or juvenile justice system? Speaker 2 (07:49): So they're already involved with the law. But anyway, so it kind of goes back. But a few key things, I'm not going to go through everything that they tend to disregard the law, social rules and laws. So violating the laws kind of matter of fact, it's not their goal in life, but if they can get their goals, they'll violate the law. That's fine. It's on the way to getting what they want, that they don't stop themselves deceitfulness. And to me, this is the biggest one to know for the average person because if you say, I don't know what it is with my boyfriend, but he lies a lot or I don't know what it is with my girlfriend, but she just totally makes up stories of no basis in reality. Well, you may be looking at someone with antisocial personality disorder because of all 10 personality disorders. This is the one that's really noticeable by a lot of lying. Speaker 1 (08:53): But I have a question about that bill, because I've come across some of this and that line, even when they know they can get caught, the line just rolls so easily out of them. But then I go back, okay, there was nothing before age 15, no fire setting, no animal mistreatment. So then is this an absolute, they cannot have even traits of antisocial personality. Are they more along borderline traits? It's kind of interesting and confusing. Speaker 2 (09:27): Yeah, well basically this age 15 factor is, well, let me just tell you that there's four categories of factors and that's one of them. And the person has to have three out of four. So it's possible that they don't have that. But so many that I'm aware of have that. It's shocking almost. You go, oh, and by the way, how was things going when he was 15? Oh, well, he held a knife to his mother and he started fires. Yeah, he's kind of been doing this stuff since he was 15. Okay, well that gives that away, but it's not an absolute. Speaker 1 (10:08): Yeah, that's the thing because like okay, it absolutely have to be a fire starter before age 15. It just seems a little, there would be a lot more fires. I've seen some behavior that doesn't seem to quite fit in some of the other maybe personality types. And I look at this and there's the disregard for the social norms of society, the laws and rules and all that, and then the lying and confusing and conning and all. But there was no fires and there was no diagnosis of a conduct disorder before age 15. So is there some in-between category? Speaker 2 (10:44): Well, all of this is on a continuum and I think that's important to know. So antisocial personality disorder is three out of seven of the criteria and then three out of four of these general categories, categories Speaker 1 (11:01): Like the Speaker 2 (11:01): 15. Yeah. So it's common. You may find if you dig deeper that they were deceiving people or they got in trouble because they were conning people by that age, even if they didn't start fires and stuff like that. Speaker 1 (11:21): I think that's really important is not that we want anybody to be diagnosed in your labeling, but it's interesting because we know how to adapt and respond differently if we're with someone like this, if we have some indication and if we've completely blocked out that, oh, it could be this because they've never started a fire, then we might be missing something and we might get taken advantage of. Speaker 2 (11:45): Yeah, I think the key things are that there's ignoring and not caring about rules and laws and a lot of deception and how much there is, how serious it is, all of that stuff. I mean you have a whole range here from murderers to successful business people with these traits Speaker 1 (12:11): And they can all end up on a Netflix limited series. Speaker 2 (12:14): Well, you make a really big point there, and that is a lot of what we love to watch is people with personality disorders. Speaker 1 (12:23): Absolutely. Speaker 2 (12:23): It's out of the mainstream and it doesn't make sense to the average person that someone would do something that so obviously would blow up in their face. But the reality is maybe 90% of the time it blows up in their face, but 10% of the time they get away with it and they make a lot of money or they get a lot of attention, Speaker 1 (12:48): Award acclaim. Speaker 2 (12:50): So they keep trying. They're very persistent. And that's another characteristic is that they're more aggressive than the other personalities. So aggressiveness, reckless disregard for self and others, consistent irresponsibility. And you know what I'm doing, high conflict divorce consultations. I'll often say, well, does he pay the child support on time? Oh no, he is never. He is late or he is this or he works for himself so I can't get a wage garnishment order. There's all these things I say, okay, there's some signs here we don't know, but there's some signs here. One thing I wanted to say about age though and why I think it's important that people understand this personality is by age 10, some research says 50% of people who will go on to have antisocial personality disorder already engaged in antisocial behaviors. So this is 10 years old, Speaker 1 (13:52): Age 10, Speaker 2 (13:54): And by 12 years old, around 90% are already showing antisocial behaviors. And why I think that's important is when they're adolescents, you have a chance to change them, to get them some therapy, to get them to stop antisocial behavior and become more social beings and possibly successful as adults. Once you're looking at someone who's 20 years old, it's very unlikely they're going to change as an adult. So that's why we have to think about this adolescent really back to 10 years old. So someone says, well, my husband lies and steals a lot and my daughter's starting to lie like him and she's 11. Should I be concerned? And I'd say, yeah, you want to get her evaluated because if she's picking up some of these traits either has some genetic tendencies or is learning from him, now's the time to get her back on track Speaker 1 (14:59): And it can happen Speaker 2 (15:01): And it can for children 10 18, you can make a difference after that. Very, very difficult. Speaker 1 (15:09): I recall a study about juvenile offenders who had committed murder and they're in the juvenile justice system and while incarcerated were given treatment for antisocial personality, I guess I'd have to look back at the study and for whatever they were experiencing, they were getting treatment and it was obvious it was antisocial personality traits. At least after they got out of the prison system, their recidivism rate for murder went way down for those who had the treatment. So it showed there was an ability to change in that age range. Speaker 2 (15:53): And I've read of a young adult program, a prison somewhere that's designed for 18 to 22-year-old people with psychopathy, sociopathy, antisocial personalities. That was very structured like a star chart system. If you're good, then you get a star. If you're very good, you get two stars and if you mess up, you lose some stars. And very strict careful program with empathy and support for them, that young adult range was able to make a difference. Now, I can't tell you where that study came from and where that prison was, but the point is before the adolescent brain isn't fully developed until 25, so maybe you can get, it's hard, but maybe 18 to 22 you can still have an impact. Society has not really put a lot of energy into this. I mean we lock people up, but then they get out and they're no different. And this Speaker 1 (16:59): Person, or maybe worse Speaker 2 (17:01): And maybe worse, they learn some bad behavior from other people, but it's like they can do more conning. But anyway, so it's not all criminals. Maybe half of people with antisocial personality disorder have never been involved with the criminal justice system. But a lot of them interestingly go into business, especially working for themselves where they can people, they can fiddle with their taxes, they can sell bogus things, Speaker 1 (17:33): Fraud, you name it. There's like a scheme. There's just always going to be a scheme. Right? Speaker 2 (17:39): Yeah. And I mean a lot of researchers, mental health professionals said one of the people with the Enron scandal, they thought had antisocial personality and he ended up in prison for a while. Prior to that, he never was violent or anything, but he had a criminal mind and got pretty far with it. And Ron was a really big business for eight or 10 years before it all collapsed. It was based on a lie. Speaker 1 (18:10): Yeah. And I want to pause here for just a moment before we keep moving on and talk about two books that you've written. One is called The Five Types of People Who Can Ruin Your Life, and the other is called It's All Your Fault, 12 Tips for Managing Those Who Blame Others For Everything. So in both of those books you write about antisocial personality disorder. Yes, Speaker 2 (18:33): Yes. Yep. Speaker 1 (18:34): So we'll put those links in the show notes so you can get those. And they're available anywhere books are sold, both in print or digital. Now let's move kind of just psychopathy and sociopathy bill. What I understand is they're under this umbrella of antisocial personality disorder. So if you're going to get a psychopathy diagnosis, you first have to have the antisocial personality disorder diagnosis. So is it kind of a continuum? Antisocial leads to sociopathy, leads to psychopathy? In my mind it's like sociopathy are those people we're running into in everyday life and they're doing the things you're talking about maybe being fraudulent and scheming and that kind thing. And then psychopathy is things that almost no one else on the planet would ever do. It just seems like that one extra big bad step. So is that anywhere close to reality? Speaker 2 (19:33): I think somewhat numbers repeatedly. People talk about antisocial personalities, about 4% of the adult population, it's about one in 25 people. So if you know 25 people or more, maybe one of them. But that psychopaths, psychopathy is present in about 1% of adults. So they're about a quarter of the antisocial population, kind of like antisocial on steroids. And so psychopathy, there's three particular characteristics like that article that you're mentioning talked about. One is a lack of inhibitions that they don't stop themselves, that they'll go farther, they'll violate a whole lot of stuff that other people go, whoa, I better not go there. Well, they'll go there. Speaker 1 (20:27): So they're overly impulsive and a lot of the other disorders can also have a degree of impulsivity in them as well. So what differentiates this type of disinhibition and impulsivity? Speaker 2 (20:41): Well, a lot of serious risk taking. So they may attempt like a major bank robbery or a diamond heist, and of course talk about movies. There's great movies about diamond heists and all this stuff. Big, big risk taking. They'll do risks where they risk their lives in order to get something they really want. So if you think of it that the disinhibition is risk taking, these are your highest risk takers. Speaker 1 (21:17): So let's put that, and I know we'll talk about the two others, which are callousness and boldness, but let's think about disinhibition when it comes to relationships. Let's say in your family or even in a divorce, like in the parenting orders, if you have someone who's a serious risk taker, are they going to take risks with your children? Speaker 2 (21:37): Possibly. They may involve them in a scheme they may drive without seat belts. They may drive drunk with the children in the backseat or the front seat and interesting antisocial have a lot of driving issues like drunk driving, unpaid parking tickets, speeding. But cases I've had, it is interesting. I'll give a quick example. I represented a mom and the dad was in treatment 10 years earlier for alcoholism in the middle of their custody dispute, their meeting together with a family court counselor mediator. And she says, are you still drinking? And he says, no, I haven't been drinking for 10 years. I went through that program, I've been cleaning and sober for 10 years. And the counselor's like, oh, well that sounds good. Good for you. Well, afterwards, I'm in San Diego. So we looked up in San Diego County court records and found him. He had been arrested for drunk driving like a week before, and he had a hearing coming up in a couple weeks for drunk driving. Speaker 1 (22:53): No surprise there. Speaker 2 (22:55): And so when you talk about risk, he took a risk that was really easy to find out, but that's what they'll do. And sometimes they get away with it, Speaker 1 (23:04): It just doesn't connect. The dots don't connect for them. 90% of other people, the dots would connect, if I do this thing, it will make me look bad in court. If I do this thing, I will get arrested possibly. Right? The risk, it just doesn't connect Speaker 2 (23:20): Worse than that. I think that there's an excitement with the risk. It isn't just doesn't connect. It's like I live for this risk taking Speaker 2 (23:29): Probably a good example, there's a movie, oh, I can't think of the name of it, but the guy was a con artist. He said he was a doctor, he said he was an airline pilot, all of this. But it's about a taking guy who conned everybody, including doctors and airlines. And it's based on a true story. He took those risks and I would say he probably had these traits because you're going to get found out. And he actually went to prison for that. But I think they gave him some kind of break on the length of the sentence if he would teach everybody else what people like him do and what they think. And so he now helps with security. He is with the good guys now. Speaker 1 (24:17): Oh yes, yes. I know. Remember you're talking about, but I can't remember the name either. Interesting. Speaker 2 (24:24): Leo DiCaprio. Speaker 1 (24:26): Oh, there you go. Speaker 2 (24:27): That's it, Leo. Yeah, look him up. Look for one about a con artist. He was great. Speaker 1 (24:32): I'll look it up and put the link in the show notes information about it. Okay, so impulsivity, disinhibition, right? Serious risk taking. And then the next one is callousness described as meanness and a lack of empathy. So I think this is where it can be confusing is, I guess the question is for you, can there be empathy from someone who is a psychopath? What is the definition of empathy? Seeing something from someone else's point of view and maybe adapting your behavior because of that. So could a psychopath do that or are they so callous that they won't and can't? Speaker 2 (25:15): Yeah. Well, let me say a little bit about empathy. This is a tricky thing. So empathy is being able to see things from someone else's point of view. And we usually think of it as therefore caring about them. Someone's sad. We have empathy for them. We may even feel sad for them. Someone's happy. We feel happy for them. The sneaky thing here with anti socials in general, they lack remorse, is that they can see things from your point of view and they use that against you. They find your weak spots and manipulate that. So in a sense, it's like an instrumental empathy. It's like I'm using my ability to see the world from your point of view to hurt you or control you or steal from you. So it's an odd aspect of empathy. And it's not the normal empathy. They don't have the normal empathy. Speaker 1 (26:17): Yeah. So lemme see if I got this right, if this would be a good example. Someone does something very risky that upsets someone else that they're close to. And so then they say, oh, okay, well I won't do that anymore. That first argue a little bit and then say, okay, I won't do that anymore. And then in front of other people say, well, I am not doing that anymore because this other person didn't want me to do it. And it's almost like digging a, poking a finger at them. So it's not real empathy and I think it doesn't feel genuine, genuine empathy. It does feel like instrumental empathy. Would that be close? Speaker 2 (26:56): I think that would be accurate. Speaker 1 (26:58): Interesting. Speaker 2 (26:59): Interesting is people like this when they get caught by the police, they're very sorry. Oh my goodness, I'm so sorry. Speaker 1 (27:06): I didn't mean Speaker 2 (27:08): To And charming. Yeah, I've seen people interviewed on TV like this and they said, oh, I felt so bad for the families that I harmed. Well, you still went ahead and harmed them and you harmed more than one family. And they have a state and they know the words to sound like remorse, but that's one of the seven characteristics is lack of remorse. And so that's part of the con is they can make you think they have remorse and real you back in. So this tends to be a more male disorder. And often maybe they're involved with a woman and they reel her back in by begging and pleading and saying, I'm so sorry, I have such remorse for what I've done. Well, if this is who they are, they're not having remorse. They're running a Speaker 1 (27:57): Con. They know the words. Right? They Speaker 2 (28:00): Know the words, but Speaker 1 (28:01): Not the feeling. Yeah, not the feeling. So it's not like they're just being bad people. They don't even know what remorse is. They just know that it's a word and it's how they're supposed to be. So it probably feels like a truth to them. This is what remorse feels like. Speaker 2 (28:17): Yeah, Speaker 1 (28:18): Remorse means I get someone back or can reverse my wrongs. I don't know. Speaker 2 (28:23): Well, that's very much what this personality is about is I want what I want and they'll do anything to get it. And so in many ways, they're like three year olds, three year olds. They want what they want and they'll knock over their sister, they'll knock the milk off the table in order to get that toy they want on the other side of the room. And it's like a very narrow mind. I don't care about anything else except that shiny object. Speaker 1 (28:49): Yeah. Interesting. So the third one after disinhibition, callousness is boldness. And that's something really kind of highlighted in this article is this lack of fear. So let's talk about that. Speaker 2 (29:06): And I think it goes with the risk taking of the disinhibition. It's like rather than having breaks, they have an accelerator and so they'll go for it. Now here's a point where I want to put in a plug for not evil people. This seems to be a personality that's actually been functional in history. There may be times, especially in a war zone or something, and you have someone who's willing to be a spy on the other side and tell you their military plans so you can protect, and they're good at being a spy because they can everybody, they're very bold, they're confident, they don't have the inhibitions that would hold 90% of people back, 95% or 99% that these are your super risk taker. And when there's some really big cases in US history where moles like Russian Mole got into the FBI and the CIA, this has to be those folks because talk about risk-taking. I mean, you get killed being a spy. Speaker 1 (30:21): And that's like you said, the word super, that they have to be super callous, super impulsive and super bold and kind of that lack of empathy and lack of remorse with that as well. I mean, that's just such a crazy twisted. Speaker 2 (30:39): But if they're on your side in wartime and they'll do something that will protect you, there's a place for people like this. But the thing is, it's usually a narrow place and you can't necessarily trust them after their task is done. That's where you get double agents. Neither side should trust them. You don't know what they're doing for the other side. Speaker 1 (31:03): Interesting, interesting. Okay, so this article also talked about the diagnosis or assessment of psychopathy. And so they're talking about a shift from personality traits to personality dimensions. So instead of having or not having a trait, for example, like confidence, this dimensions way of doing it measures how much or how little of that thing one possesses. So in this example, how much confidence or lack of it they possess. And they can look at brain scans and how a person is acting during testing instead of relying on self-reported symptoms and on interviews and then on the psychopathy checklist. So what's your take on the switch from shift from traits to dimensions? Kind of interesting. Speaker 2 (32:00): Yeah. So this has been going on for 10, 12 years, is looking at all the personality disorders rather than traits or factors. Looking at them on this continuums, there's different dimensions to consider. I find for what we teach, which is just practical decision-making, divorce, et cetera, workplace problems. I find the traits are helpful that you go this, this, and this. You have these five traits out of nine or anti-social, you have three out of seven. You kind of can see, okay, they're inside or outside of the diagnosis. So if they have the diagnosis, they're very unlikely to change. That's the biggest message that I like to teach. But the reality is more the dimensions. So there's people that confidence. Confidence is we all want to be more confident. Speaker 2 (33:07): So confidence can really be a strength, but psychopaths have an overconfidence. And so it doesn't just hurt other people, it often hurts them. And they end up in prison for life and they go, how did this happen? So on the continuum, so part of what he says in the article is some people may have less than problematic characteristics on these continuums. So like a salesperson might have a lot of confidence, you have to have a lot of confidence to do that. And yet they're truthful and they're not telling lies, but they're ready to make phone calls and out there they enjoy the back and forth, the rep RT of sales. But if they're just a little bit worse and they add some of the lying to that could get into the psychopath category. But point he makes is don't assume that everybody has this diagnosis. Speaker 2 (34:08): I think the thing to do is do you see basic things like lying, aggressiveness, lack of remorse? You see a pattern of that, then you need to protect yourself because they don't care about you and you can make some other conclusions. They probably are going to do this or that that's going to hurt you and therefore you see a few warning signs, then you may need to keep more of a distance. Or if you're an employer, you may decide, I don't want to employ this person, or I'm going to employ this person with certain restrictions. They can't have access to secrets and stuff like that. Speaker 1 (34:49): Right? Don't give 'em the keys to the vault. Speaker 2 (34:51): Right? Speaker 1 (34:52): And maybe there's a gift side to all this, and I guess we'll talk about that in the next episode and we'll talk about whether someone can just a switch be flipped and you become a psychopath. We're going to talk about the multidimensional spectrum of this and lots of other things, genetics, causation, and the percentage of this in the population. A lot of other things. Thank you for listening today. We'll put the link to this podcast and the transcript to it for the psychopathy article in the show notes, and we'll pick this up again next week. Continuing to talk about psychopathy. In the meantime, send your questions to podcasts@highconflictinstitute.com or submit them to high conflict institute.com/podcast. Until next time, keep learning and practicing. Be kind to yourself and others while we all try to keep the conflict small and find the missing piece. It's All Your Fault is the production of True Story FM Engineering by Andy Nelson. Music by Wolf Samuels, John Coggins and Ziv Moran. Find the show notes and transcripts@truestory.fm for high conflict institute.com/podcast. If your podcast app allows ratings and reviews, please consider doing that for our show.