All posts filed under: Antisocial Personality Disorder

personality disorders

Why are personality disorders difficult to distinguish from healthy personalities?

Published by Michael Kinsey, Ph.D.

Everyone has a personality, comprised of strengths and weaknesses Get to know anyone well enough and you will begin to see that s/he struggles dealing with certain aspects of life, work, and relationships.  These weaknesses in someone’s personality can even be so vulnerable that people can have acute episodes of anxiety, depression, and other psychiatric disorders. In other words, no one is perfect, nor does a healthy level of functioning depend on someone moving closer and closer to perfection over time.  This basic truth makes it tricky to differentiate someone with a disordered personality from a flawed, but mostly normal personality organization. In order to determine if weaknesses in a person’s character meet criteria for a personality disorder, one of two things need to be present: 1. You have a great deal of reliable data about a person’s life across time and context, or 2. You need a great deal of experience and expertise recognizing signs and symptoms of personality pathology. Distress and impairment are often context-dependent Narcissists can be extremely high achievers. Obsessive-compulsive Personality …

Tweet
Share
Pin
Share
Self-deception and charm

Charmed by deception: Why we love to believe the lies others tell themselves

Published by Michael Kinsey, Ph.D.

Why are people who lie to themselves so charismatic? Everyone lies to themselves.  Self-deception (a.k.a., denial) is a necessary defense mechanism. However, some people overuse denial and/or deploy it as a defense in a rigid, maladaptive way. So what does charisma have to do with self-deception?  To answer this, I’ll rephrase the questions ever so slightly: What is it about people who believe their own lies that makes them so charismatic?  The answer to this question is quite simple.  If someone believes their own lies, then most other people will believe them, too. Humans are amazingly sophisticated when it comes to interpreting social behavior.  We’ll naturally spot any incongruity between what a person says and how they behave.  When someone lacks conviction in something, most people can detect the discrepancy between the words and the delivery. Narcissists are masters at this.  They can often speak their grandiose notions of themselves into existence.  How can they do this? Remember The Little Engine that Could? Simply believing you can actually can sometimes actually make it happen. But …

Tweet
Share
Pin
Share
antisocial personality disorder

Are psychopaths aware of their condition? Do they care?

Published by Michael Kinsey, Ph.D.

Why are we so interested in psychpaths? Cold-blooded psychopaths and criminals are fascinating (and terrifying!) creatures. They fascinate us so much because they seem to express normal animalistic feelings, like rage, without much fear of social consequences, shame, or rejection.So what is the subjective world of the psychopath really like? Admittedly, it seems quite foreign to me, but let me take a stab (figuratively speaking–no one was harmed in the writing of this post) at an explanation. Psychopathy and antisocial Personality disorders are personality pathology Psychopathy and antisocial traits are fundamentally deficiencies in personality (i.e., they are personality disorders). A defining feature of personality disorders are that the “symptoms” are baked into someone’s day-to-day experience, and are therefore invisible–like water to a fish. The psychology jargon for this is that the traits are “egosyntonic”. In treating personality disorders, the first step is to build a discrepancy between the patient’s sense of social reality and a more widely-held feeling of social experience. Personality disorders bloom in families that are both extreme, harsh, and/or abnormal in their …

Tweet
Share
Pin
Share