PSYCHOPATH - GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

The psychopath is classified as a low-functioning borderline personality for several reasons:

- Lack of conscience and the ability to feel guilt.

- Lack of a formed and distinct identity. Most likely, it is this feature that allows the psychopath to disguise so well. We are talking about the lack of sufficient internal integration (internal work that groups together different "parts" of the personality, giving an overall picture of who we are).

- The lack of stability of values is one of the reasons for the deceit of a psychopath. A psychopath's values and worldview change very easily and quickly. Firstly, this is a well-known technique: if reality threatens self-esteem, reality is revised, and secondly, in the absence of a distinct identity, there is no center that determines the values and worldview of a psychopath. Metaphorically speaking, the psychopath is the fire, air and water of the imagination floating on the surface of a sea of constant transformation. Fire is a cruel and hot-tempered character, aggression and violence. Air is the verbal energy and the power of creating verbal images (psychopaths are often quite eloquent, but often digging beyond the catchphrase, we will find their insignificance). Water - tides of emotions and a rapid change of everything. The psychopath's faces change constantly and chaotically, because there is no earth in them that can give it stability and will be limited to one face.

- Poor quality of psychopath's object relations. The other person for the psychopath is not a whole, but a partial object. The other is important only because he can be manipulated, something from him to "fuck", the other is a nest for projections; he is not perceived as a whole person and is not respected.

- Lack of ability to love and bond.

- Signs of ego weakness, such as impulsiveness, an inability to anticipate the consequences of their actions, and often an inability to long-term planning (with sophisticated planning for shenanigans or intrigues taken many steps ahead).

The psychopath may intrigue and resort to manipulation even when there is no apparent practical benefit, however, these acts are necessary for psychopathic functioning. Therefore, being next to a psychopath, no one is safe, a psychopath can begin to intrigue out of the blue, while experiencing triumph. Psychopaths do not always come out dry, if the psychopath starts a game with a strong, healthy personality, which at the same time has sufficient not only personal, but also status power, the psychopath gets what he deserves. After a certain time, the psychopath will again take up his own, and again can get into a situation when he is "allowed". This is due to a well-known characteristic of the psychopath - the inability to learn from experience. The psychopath will not stop acting this way, because it is this behavior that supports his self-esteem. Without such nourishment, he can fall into states that are psychopathic semblance of depression (zero state). The lack of a formed and distinct identity leads the psychopath to a state of boredom; the way out that allows you to get rid of this feeling is to develop manipulative activity. One of the favorite games of a psychopath is to bait a victim to death, and then save. So, a psychopathic leader can provoke in a subordinate the strongest anxiety because of a minor mistake made by that, come up with the unthinkable consequences of a "mistake", bring the poor fellow to hysteria, and then "decide everything" and imagine himself in the image of Batman.

In short, the psychopath intrigues, manipulates, invents not for the sake of "sustenance" (although for this reason too), but basically he does it "out of love for the process", over and over again seeking the experience of pleasure and triumph.

It is believed that in the early life history of the psychopath, there was no satisfactory experience of introjecting a good object. Instead of a good object, there is a hostile, aggressive introject, from which the psychopath obsessively gets rid of, projecting it onto other people. Therefore, the psychopath always needs an enemy with whom he will fight. The "enemies" of the psychopath change from time to time, but the cycles of creating enemies and fighting them never.

Why is it difficult for some people to recognize psychopaths, to realize with whom they are dealing? Because in dealing with a psychopath, they include the strongest psychological defenses. One of them is denial, which in this case can be called "blindness to danger." Denial manifests itself in underestimating the seriousness of the situation of interaction with a psychopath, refusing to apply sanctions to a psychopath, and even trusting facts that indicate the psychopath's shameless and cruel actions.

The next defense is "attribution of psychological health"; in essence, it is a projection, ascribing to the psychopath his own level of mental maturity and "normality." Frequent statements of people resorting to such protection: "Yes, it can't be, but he's not quite sick!"

In those cases when the victim of a psychopath, identifying with him, acts "in one" with him, begins to behave immorally (most often without criticism of his behavior), the mechanism of "malignant identification" operates. A psychopath is always surrounded by a retinue of those identified with the aggressor, these are people who also have problems with their own identity, and identification with a psychopath makes it easier for them to suffer from the lack of their own "mooring."

These defense mechanisms are counterphobic attempts to avoid the emerging anxiety that accompanies the interaction with the psychopath. If there is a psychopath nearby, then we turn into puppets. The responsibility of the puppets can be much more significant than the responsibility of the psychopath, who has no conscience. And inaction leads to much more serious consequences than the actions of a psychopath. Ultimately, the psychopath's puppets, not opposed to his outrageous actions, indulge in immorality and themselves lose conscience. Ultimately, the entire structure in which the psychopath rules turns into a shameless mass.