The principal focus of my work over the past 25 years has been understanding and treating character disturbance. And even though my first book, In Sheep’s Clothing, focused primarily on helping people recognize how they get manipulated by persons I describe as covertly-aggressive, I was careful from the outset to make the point that there is a continuum of what I term “character disturbance,” and various problematic personality types, including psychopaths (alt: sociopaths), lie at different points along this continuum.
In recent years, more books have been written and more articles published on psychopathy and sociopathy than at any time in history. I myself have posted several articles on the topic (See: Psychopathy and Sociopathy, “Dexter,” and the Truth about Psychopaths, What is a Psychopath?, and What Psychopaths Can Do that Everyone Else Can’t). Even a documentary film on the subject is in the works (if adequate funding for the project is secured). Exposure to the issue has been great from the standpoint of increasing public awareness. But there also seems to have been an accompanying tendency on the part of some to over-perceive the prevalence of these syndromes, resulting in a bit of hysteria about the issue.
History has shown that as clinicians and laypersons become more aware of various psychiatric disturbances, those disturbances at first get detected much better, but later often overly diagnosed. Such was the case in the 70s, when awareness about anxiety-based problems was peaking. From the things you read at the time, it seemed almost everyone had some kind of anxiety disorder. And drugs to treat it (many of which were marginally effective and prone to abuse – yet promoted heavily by pharmaceutical companies) were often overly prescribed, sometimes even in lieu of more efficacious or longer-lasting therapy. Some of you might remember how this phenomenon was parodied in the film Starting Over. The lead character, whose life was turned upside-down when his wife unexpectedly split from him, suffered a “panic attack” in a shopping mall. And when a friend who happened to be a psychiatrist asked the crowd of onlookers if anyone just happened to have a Valium handy, an almost deafening sound accompanied the mass of hands that delved into purses and pockets to provide one of the little pink pills. Over the years, similar phenomena have occurred with other illnesses as they came to greater professional and public attention (e.g., Depression, Bipolar Disorder, Borderline Personality Disorder).
I get hundreds of emails and inquiries every year from folks wanting to know more about the disturbed characters plaguing their lives. And lately there’s been a plethora of such inquiries from folks who have read one or two of the many popular books on the topic of psychopathy, and then became convinced that their ex-husband, wife, or partner must be a psychopath. But when they took a more careful look at the facts, it became apparent that although the person with whom they once had a relationship definitely had some character issues, there was no real basis to label them psychopathic.
Psychopathy is a very serious syndrome, lying at the far end of the continuum of character disturbance. It’s characterized by a complete lack of conscience, rooted in the most malignant form of narcissism and an innate incapacity to have empathy for others. Psychopaths are the predators among us who use and abuse others with absolutely no remorse. Fortunately they are relatively rare. Only a portion of the worst criminals are psychopaths. And that’s not to say only criminals can be psychopaths. Many of these individuals fly under the radar and some lead such apparently normal lives that they could even be, as the title of one more popular books on the topic suggests, the “Sociopath Next Door.” And even though psychopaths are extremely adept manipulators, not everyone who exhibits manipulative behavior is a psychopath.
I fear that once we’ve overcome the current frenzy over psychopathy, we’ll become too inattentive to the more widespread problem we face. I don’t want public awareness to diminish about the defining phenomenon of our age. And, as my book Character Disturbance points out, it’s crucial to remember that along that continuum of disturbed and disordered characters, there are many conscience-deficient, abusive, exploitation-oriented, self-absorbed, and manipulative individuals who are not severely disturbed enough to be rightly labeled psychopathic, but who are nonetheless so seriously character-impaired that they wreak havoc in the lives of those unfortunate enough to be involved with them in some way.
It’s important not only to see the problems of sociopathy and psychopathy in their proper context, but also to recognize the larger and more worrisome picture. Although Psychopathy or Sociopathy has of late become the “syndrome du jour,” I will continue to dedicate myself to increasing public awareness about the vast spectrum of character disturbance and the impact of this “phenomenon of our age” on all aspects of our lives.
