Book Section: Essay and Review: Handbook of PsychopathyHandbook of Psychopathy, edited by PatrickChristopher J. (New York, NY: The Guilford Press, 2006), 651 pp., $75.00 (original) (raw)
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The psychopath in the corner office: A multigenre
Gender, Work and Organization, 2020
Workplace bullies can be found in all organizations. Using a Narrative Inquiry and Arts-Based Research methodological framework, this article shares the findings of a multiyear study in which 185 womens, in 27 states, and 15 countries share their stories of workplace abuse. Narrative Inquiry reflects the multilayered complexity of people's lived lives by inviting research texts that utilize diverse genres and mediums to tell the story of the findings. Art-Based Research invites the researcher to mine for meaning on a level not fully accessible through traditional narratives and then share out insights in genres that generate deep cognitive dissonance while evoking empathy and urging response. The stories, poems, book review, observational field notes, dialogues, lists, charts, and visual genres were crafted by the researcher as representations of the saturated themes that emerged from the data and are supported by other empirical research. This is a multigenre that tells the stories of successful psychopaths and the resilient women who survived them. K E Y W O R D S art-based research, feminist research, gender, narrative inquiry, psychopathy, workplace bullying Psychopath An individual, often grandiose and charming, who manipulates, sabotages, and harms others for personal gain or entertainment while experiencing no guilt or remorse for her actions. She lies, even when unnecessary, and is incapable of sustaining healthy collaborations or relationships. Unbound by ethical standards and societal norms, her behavior is often impulsive and reckless. (Fix & Fix, 2015; Gao & Raine, 2010).
Case 25 Cynthia's Tale 2
Cynthia noted a number of things about the reception area of the hospital. For this paper I have been souring through a diary in which she wrote down some of her experiences, although this was written when she was thirty. The residents seemed mainly to have social rather than mental problems, young rebellious teenagers,1 men and women running away from bad jobs or marriages, and one old man discovered by the police fast asleep in a cemetery drunk from the previous evening of over-imbibing in pubs. At that time, up to the present, police were often the first to diagnose mental illness-an odd occurrence. Certainly, during this period, the British police retained the faults of their class: racism, sexism, predatory behaviour. Interestingly, the British Medical Association has recently been charged with similar faults and of being a Boy's Club (one of my old accusations, alongside the deeply embedded arrogance of such types)2, which argue against psychological understanding of others.
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The case of J: Working as a psychoanalyst during the Pandemic
The International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 2020
Upon reading the introductory remarks by J's analyst, I was immediately struck by how she foregrounded her patient's experience of emotional confusion when he had felt his first analyst come too close to him, crossing a boundary. J's anxiety feelings became so intense that he felt suicidal, and had to find another analyst, apparently at the behest of his first analyst. This experience threatened to repeat itself, with the second analysis only lasting nine months, J this time managing to extricate himself from an over-close analytic relationship. But soon afterwards he sought analysis again. The present, third analyst would be bound to wonder whether she would suffer the same fate as her predecessors. It looks as though the patient is heavily involved in the claustro-agoraphobic dilemma described by Henri Rey (1994), or by Mervyn Glasser in his theory of the core complex (1979). How might the patient put pressuresubtly, or not so subtlyon the analyst, particularly a female analyst, to come close, too close, and then push her away? How might this shifting force-field manifest itself in the particular and peculiar circumstances of the covid-19 lockdown, and the move from person-to-person analysis to virtual contact? Then we read that J is academically successful, competitive, a self-named "trust fund kid", envious of others, and, though evidently successful, finding himself finally inferior. He feels that wealth could buoy up his sense of inadequacy, and also reckons that "having money will keep those on whom he depends from leaving him". I admire how the analyst imparts crucial information in a few deft brushstrokes of characterisation. We glean that the patient's self-esteem is low, and that his manoeuvres to rectify this situation backfire. He is apparently conscious of his envy of others, and of how he tries to defend himself by making others envious of him. He evidently feels that he is not lovable, that those he needs, presumably including his analyst, are only motivated to stay with him for his money. It's implied not only that his defences fail to solve his problem of low self-esteem, they also cause it. He is engaged in a malign cycle, feeling and causing envy, highly likely to sabotage any efforts towards any more creative endeavour. There is no sense of J actually having his own personality, in any kind of positive way. He is either alarmed to the point of suicide about being too close to someone, in which case he will fire that someone (=2 analysts so far), or he is the one to get fired from his jobhis boss recognised that his heart was not in itin which his main aim was apparently to please people. Apparently he does not recognise that interest in the content of the work itself would be critical. Then, in the distressing report of his younger sister's molestation, J again only emerges negatively, the unaware and non-protective older brother, looking elsewhere (TV). In
“You’re not a Freudian, Are You?” Secret Identities in the Lives of Working Clinicians
The American Journal of Psychoanalysis, 2005
The woman and I are meeting for the first time to discuss whether or not she might like to pursue psychotherapy with me. She is a woman in her forties, with three teenage children and two insane men, her ex-husband and her live-in boyfriend. As the men have become more and more insane, and her concerns about her children have grown accordingly, she has begun to wonder if she, too, is insane. She is having episodes of blind rage in which she smashes things in the house. She thinks she might want to take poison. She is afraid she might need to kill her boyfriend to prevent being killed by him. ''Holy cow,'' I say to myself. ''Do I need this?'' She has been referred, as so many of my patients are, by a friend, or a friend of a friend's friend. So she knows very little about me, about how I work, except that I am rumored to be a good therapist. Toward the end of this first hour, then, I give her the opportunity to get to know me a little better before we begin. ''In order to help you decide whether you want to work with me,'' I say mildly, ''is there anything you need to know about me?'' She fixes me with a glassy stare and says, ''What kind of therapist are you?'' ''Well. I'm not sure what you want to know, but in terms of clinical practice, I describe myself as a psychoanalytic psychotherapist.'' She leans forward. ''Psychoanalytic? You're not a Freudian, are you?'' MEETING OUR SECRET IDENTITIES Before I tell you what I said, I will describe the chasm of anxiety that opens up at my feet when I hear these words. As Dr. Lionells' paper describes, contemporary patients who are referred for psychoanalysis
Psychopathy, Sexuality, and the Rise of Medico-Legal
2013
There is likewise a form of mental derangement in which the intellectual faculties appear to have sustained little or no injury, while the disorder is manifested principally or alone, in the state of feelings, temper, or habits. In cases of this nature, the moral and active principles of the mind are strangely perverted or depraved; the power of self-government is lost or greatly impaired; and the individual is found to be incapable, not of talking or reasoning on any subject proposed to him ... but of conducting himself with decency and propriety in the business of his life.-J.C. Prichard' It is necessary here to impress the fact that the true sexual pervert is not a master of his will ....-Alfred W. Herzog 2 I. GOVERNING THE UNGOVERNABLE While law and the behavioral sciences operate on generally disparate, and often incommensurable, assumptions about human character, they have found occasions for collaboration nonetheless. One such occasion arose in the middle decades of the twentieth century around the problem of * Associate Professor, University of Connecticut School of Law. I am grateful to the many friends and colleagues who contributed valuable insights as this project evolved, including