The Narcissism of Violence: Society's New Norm of Entitlement

"What is Violence but a Narcissistic expression of one's own sense of entitlement?

Merrian Webster defines Violence as "a great destructive force or energy" and in doing so it surpasses the physical force to harm somebody.  Violence at its core is an intense rage directed at another person or object so as to pass that internal anger onto the person because someone believes they deserve it or simply no longer want it inside of themselves.  

What could possibly be more narcissistic?

All items within personal blog The Narcissism of Violence by Cheryl Prevor Psy.D. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.Based on a work at http://thenarcissismofviolence.blogspot.com.

THE DANGER OF ONLINE NARCISSISTS

Cheryl Prevor, Psy.D.March 2, 2014 at 5:10 PM

I want to say that my tolerance for empathy is waning quickly. Since the initial blog Ms. Webber created about me occurred prior to this entries posting, Ms. Webber appears to have been in what I would call a manic state of obsession, posting daily, sometimes several times a day about me. It is challenging to feel stalked by someone, especially a stranger whom I am uncertain of their capabilities but I find myself thinking back to a teacher I had in grad school, Dr. G. 

Dr. G was a man in I'd say mid 50's.  He was very gentle in many ways but his passion for psychology grand and his experience extraordinary.  Dr. G taught psychopathology and during his year long class we'd cover all aspects of pathology particularly personality disorders. We were as novice students given firm instructions to never take on more than two patients with personality disorders at a time. None of us at the time of course understood what he meant. We were eager and young and the concepts invigorating. My school was smart, by the second year they got you into the room alone with patients and soon it became very clear why Dr. G gave such warnings. These people are exhausting, their coping methods defy reason and their methodology of approaching problems all for the means of avoiding feelings can be hard to handle if not flat out dangerous. In time I would see all to many cases where rage took over, sabotage got the best of patients and an unsettling evil took over what at once was a peaceful if not guarded relationship. 

I have had no personal interaction with Ms. Webber so her obsession even more disturbing.  Recently she wrote a response on one of my entries on this blog.  I obviously made a copy before deleting it but she was in no uncertain terms making a threat that someone how I've claimed copyright for something I hadn't written.  I have begun to question her sense of reality and concerned that she has taken this step of contacting me directly.  That is one step forward in stalking and online terrorism. Ive had to draw on experience and gain some outside consults to guide me. It's sounding like going to the police at this point is sadly my only choice. I know Webber has become obsessed with some online people before as I stated in the piece. The anger at these victims continues but have currently been replaced mostly by me. Without disclosing too much, I am aware through public court documents and other means that she has a history of some obsessive rage that led to her being accused of domestic dating abuse. That's violence and then some in the state this occurred. While I won't know for certain until I obtain the formal documents and speak with the police more thoroughly I am accepting now that a history of obsession leading to violence can mean that her obsession with me may equal the same and I am taking no chances. One loses tolerance quickly when one is potentially in danger or worse, their family might be. It's odd, I didn't take what she did so seriously prior. I tossed it off in many ways like Travis Alexander did when Jodi Arias began behaving in inappropriate ways. We all know his refusal to speak out or call the police didn't turn out so well and I am certainly choosing to learn from that tragedy. I wish that I had paid more notice and specifically took action to help others that I saw being bullied & harassed by Webber. I apologize and I feel badly. They must have felt as I do now, uncomfortable and vacillating between thinking this person is just crazy and wondering just how crazy. I'm imperfect like all of us, and fall down and lift myself up. I'd like to do better this year and live bolder with my eyes more open and my courage more accessible when it can actually do some good. I'm going to put aside all that clinical empathy that I was encouraged to have for people like this and do what needs to be done.

Ironically, in a very strange way she doesn't even realize it will be good for her too.

(All rights reserved. March 2, 2014)

All items within personal blog The Narcissism of Violence by Cheryl Prevor Psy.D. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at http://thenarcissismofviolence.blogspot.com.

USING ONLINE NARCISSISTS FOR BENEVOLENT MEANS

ONLINE NARCISSISTS: CAN THEY HELP OR HARM

I've done something I am not necessarily proud of.  I've used someone who is innately malevolent, likely due to loss, as a means to attempt to do something benevolent, which will likely lead to a lack of loss. While I can rationalize my behavior and believe merit still exists, I have had an epiphany about this matter and would like to choose a higher path.

I am very active in following murder trials, particularly the murder of Travis Alexander by a woman named Jodi Arias.  If you are not familiar with the trial this isn't the moment I want to explore the details but of importance is that Jodi Arias has been found guilty of the premeditated murder of her ex-boyfriend Mr. Alexander in the state of Arizona. She is currently awaiting a trial to tend to the issues of whether she will be given life without parole of given the death penalty. It is my opinion that she deserves the death penalty and I am not alone in my thoughts.  This particular trial was salacious because Ms. Arias is by all intent and purposes a Narcissistic Sociopath.  She has been identified by experts to have Borderline Personality Disorder and that certainly played into the immature and paranoid manner in which she engaged in relationships, however it is her over sense of entitlement that allowed her to do the things she did and the sociopath in her that felt pleasure in killing Mr. Alexander for it relieved her of facing total exposure for heinous acts of manipulation. The evidence in this case is extraordinary, over 2 dozen stab wounds, a stab to the chest, a sliced throat that almost decapitated him and then as a finally "damn you," she shot him while he was already dead.  But we live in a world of Narcissists so nobody likes taking responsibility. Initially denying she was even there, she changed her defense to two masked intruders broke in.  Two years later when the evidence so strong she would never escape, she changed her defense to "self defense" in a step that shocked America and the prosecutors.  But Jodi Arias doesn't like people to think badly of her so in an effort to not take any responsibility she falsely claimed he was physically abusive and worse that he was a pedophile.  I assure you he was neither.  She was just a sociopath trying to manipulate the world.

That brings me to this posting.  As you might imagine Jodi Arias captivated America not only because of her outrageous lies but because for all intent and purposes she was an attractive young woman and because of that several rather mentally unstable people came out of the woodwork to support her. Numerous articles have been written about this case as have numerous books, but what developed online had never occurred before in the history of the judicial system.  Hundreds of people (the minority of course) came out in support of Jodi Arias claiming everything from that she was innocent to even accusing the state of framing her.  The "Arias Supporters" as they known on the website and Facebook community boards are aggressive, delusional, unable to tolerate facts in evidence but mostly there have been a few very aggressive and dangerous supporters who in an attempt to "discuss" their opinions of the case transformed their lives with Hitler like determination to destroy any one who remotely displayed a higher intelligence or even a basic sense of reason.  It was as if we were seeing true sociopaths engage in Malevolent acts in order to derive pleasure out of harming others.  One particular one caught my eye, her name was Sandra Webber.  I must emphasize that I have neither met Webber, we have never privately contacted one another, we do not interact on the same boards, nor do we engage on these boards.  Out of all of the "Arias Supporters" she appeared to take true pleasure out of personally making it her mission to investigate "Travis Supporters" and do anything possible to defame them.  As a clinician I truly wondered about her but had not given her much attention for most of the trial.  All I knew about her was that at one point she seemed quite reasonable and even empathic, writing loving blogs about her mother's experience with Alzheimer's Disease and her eventual passing.  She seemed to be an orphan lost who had become broken by the pain and channeled whatever was inside her into utter hate at the world.  She became  infamous not for her points on the case but for hacking I guess into people's Facebook profiles or searching maniacally online for photos and information about their life and publishing it online, on youtube and anywhere she could.  Why, I wondered would she behave so hostile to people she didn't know? Why would she appear to take such pleasure in causing such aggravation? and why if she really believed that Arias was innocent didn't she spend her time focusing on trying to explain her actual beliefs? The answer in my opinion was that she somehow connected to Arias and through Arias she was able to develop an online presence that made her feel important, it gave her a voice of sorts that perhaps she never had.  And one day, not too long ago I realized that I could use her rage to insure that the story I was hiding would not go unnoticed.  See just like her and so many followers I too held a deep secret and was uncertain how best to deal with it. 

I noticed Webber baiting me online indirectly, making small comments in an attempt to diminish mine.  Now I hold a doctorate degree in psychology and numerous other certifications. I am by all means an expert in medical errors and have a keen ability to notice seemingly insignificant details, investigate them, and not only correct diagnoses but alter courses of care.  I notice when medical care is not ethical and certainly when it is wrong. I understand investigations as all psychology and medicine is reliant on strong investigative skills. To fully comprehend the Jodi Arias murder trial you needed to be heavily advanced in my skill set so I imagine my postings about the case made Webber feel inferior and perhaps stupid.  I did know there was likely instability and I did find myself secretly longing for the day when she would crack and finally start using my name.  See I want to tell a secret and what better way to insure that the secret is known than by poking the person I perceive as the internet's biggest bully.  Although she runs a blog and a Facebook page called Inconvenient Truths, I was well aware that her annoyance at me was becoming rather convenient.

I had hoped to get this up sooner but a bad flu and some other matters have delayed my final draft but here is the situation I had wanted to get out. The rest will come soon along with documentation.

Two years ago my father Michael died.  He was at The university of Pennsylvania medical center and under a fabricated clinical trial for cancer using engineered T-Cells.  I say the trial was fabricated because there was no clinical trial approved for anyone using these particular type of cells for any other disease except Mesothelioma.  My father became connected to Penn and a famous researcher named Dr. Carl June who frankly was pretty desperate to get himself a body for his personal trials but the FDA would not approve such.  June, is the pioneer of T-Cells that use the virus that causes AIDS and alters it so that the cells attach and destroy a targeted protein. He certainly had success with Leukemia but a blood disorder is very different than a solid tumor cancer.  All Cancer's these days are being examined by their protein and in fact in several years we may not even identify cancer by organs such as Ovarian or lung but rather by the proteins they originate from.  The problem was my father dying with very advanced cancer that had spread into so many areas it was deemed completely inoperable.  He had been diagnosed with several months prior and by the time he made it to Penn he had been debilitated by ineffective chemotherapy.  Although it was indeed initially suspected that he might have Pancreatic Cancer, later special tests ultimately proved he didn't.  Other studies such as whether he had a cancer that was Mesothelin positive or not had equally been shown to be negative --- and yet, there my dad was at Penn about to be enrolled in a Pancreatic Cancer trial that targeted Mesothelin.  How he got there was rather simple, he paid a million dollars under the table with the promise from Carl June that this was the best treatment he could do. He paid because emu brother convinced him this was the best chance he would have.  Nothing could be farther from the truth.  Nothing. I will go into this entire story in my proper planned post but the point is the enrollment was spearheaded by my brother Jim who was definitely feeling shame that he had allowed a misdiagnosis of Pancreatic Cancer to occur and definitely ashamed that he had proclaimed online so publicly that he would save my father and cure Pancreatic Cancer forever.  Delusions of Grandeur certainly as if there was a cure it wasn't hidden in an outhouse and the doctors too lazy to find it. But when Jim meet Carl June, there were two narcissistic opportunists and the results were deadly.  Carl June has recently published an article discussing my father's case, ironic, as Penn denied he even existed for quite some time and certainly denied he received the precious T-Cells.  There is no doubt that the doctor fabricated the disease as he identified my father as having Pancreatic Cancer.  In research, vastly different than care by a practitioner, you cannot proclaim a disease unless there is absolute proof via a positive biopsy.  My father had none. In the article about my father, the researchers lied about the extensive side effects that occurred, manipulated the Pet Scan results by omission of information of drugs given to alter the reading and even claimed they got cells from my father on a day he was already dead and his body prepared for transportation to another state.  This was a terrible circumstance to begin with, nothing more painful than seeing your father & mother suffer unnecessarily.  But there is more. The day after the funeral I had been the victim of a physical assault from my brother when he realized I fully understood what he participated and encouraged.  I've never been assaulted.  The physical damage was terrible and the PTSD even worse.  I feared terribly what would Carl June or Penn or Novartis the big drug company who joined with Penn do if I exposed them all? Would they come after me too? Would they try to suppress my truth? Could I be harmed? Could my child?

I had already spoken with the FDA and knew that they did not approve my father's trial even though that is what my parents were told. I had already spoke to the Pennsylvania Medical Board who equally begged me for information. Ive know this for a while but the recent article had solidified exactly what I needed to do and why.  I had saved all the records, all the emails, all the text messages, all of Jim's blogs and I took photographs and video of my father to document what state he was in and what they did.  My parents were scammed. My heart has been broken.  As I watched my father dying I knew that one day Penn might come around and use him further and I decided in spite of my fears that if that day came, I would be ready. If you return to my blog within the next two weeks or so you will get to know the whole story.  You will see documents, you will read truths, you will know all the details of this cancer scandal and the impact cancer and narcissism has had on my family. You'll hear about how almost a year after his death, investors who gave great money to Penn swore to me they thought my father was alive based on what they'd been told. You'll hear how my family divided and that almost all couldn't face the feelings that they might have contributed to this tragedy.  In truth people frequently undergo experiences of severe medical misconduct, they just don't usually know it. Sometimes this occurs because illness makes people desperate, some ignorant and some simply naive. I've come to recognize that it is intolerable for most people (thankfully) to think they could have caused harm to another and terrifying to think they may be surrounded or close to someone who could.  As a result, they became venomous to me as I held up the mirror and didn't want to put it down.  In the meantime, before I disclose my personal family cruelty, I want to save lives (including my own) and I want to put it online so that no medical or institution board can suppress the information. I do not want money paid off to keep this quiet and just in case something bad happens to me I want an alibi. This blog will be my alibi because there is a medical patent in place on that treatment, millions if not billions of dollars to be made and reputations about to be destroyed. Bu the simple truth is people will die if they have this treatment. They already have and not just my father. If this goes broad, patients will suffer and they will die long before anyone truly realizes this is all a fraud. They say it takes somewhere about seven years after treatments start clinical trials for the medical community to recognize that the original data relied upon was flawed.  About 2/3rds of all studies that initially claim success are, at some point later on, found to be unsafe, deadly, and/or simply ineffective.  With the truth on my side and the records in my hands, it sounds like the odds are in my favor.

Cue the Online Narcissist.

Sandra Webber has grown angry with me.  She doesn't like how I speak about science, the case, psychology or medicine.  She doesn't like when people like my posts or when I engage in discussion and make friends.  She's learned I am happily married with a beautiful young daughter, that I live in Los Angeles in likely a nice home. She doesn't like who I am in part because she is not me and in part because I am not her.  We are different and yet we are similar.  Both "orphans" with family gone or estranged I actually connected to her pain and genuinely wished her well. As I struggled daily to keep my misery suppressed so that I could focus on helping others, I too found her intolerable as she was taking her misery and turning it into hate and harm.  What better person to inflame that Sandra Webber?  When you include her presence online, manic postings and throw in the Arias trial, with my name being linked I felt more and more confident every day that I would be able to expose what I needed to help others and keep myself safe. In an unusual series of events, I corresponded with someone about how medical reports were generated and they, an established blogger, happened to include my name in an article. Sandra Webber responded to this blog about medical reports in a manner she usually does, not stating facts but judging character and deflecting.  She speaks just to speak and I confess not in judgment but that I frequently do not know what she is stating because it is usually off topic or filled with incongruent statements.  Amongst many of the responses, I wrote one response to her that was extracted from the actual trial we were all following, it said, "When truth is on one's side, one argues the truth.  When truth isn't on their side, one just argues."  The lead prosecutor in Jodi Arias Death Penalty case said that.  It's true.  When you actually have the truth on your side you can actually discuss, you are free to present facts and discuss them, you don't really care about what others say or do when you have truth on your side because, well.. you have truth.  There is no need for anger or fear. I didn't see it but apparently she went off on a narcissistic rage not remotely discussing the subject but devaluing me, criticism me and basically behaving like a child having a tantrum.  The posts were removed before I saw anything but the discussion and whispers amongst the trial folks roared.  I said nothing back. I don't know the woman. Never met her, not interested in doing so. Narcissistic rage makes me nervous.  Narcissists are one lane over from the sociopaths on the Highway of entitlement.

Then almost like clockwork, she wrote a blog about me and a post about Jodi Arias. The blog about me started rather silly and benign but as her inner anxiety appeared to grow it evolved almost hourly into a heinous masturbation of her broken ego. With each manic search for crumbs online and with each disorganized word, she attempted to break apart my character. But without the ability to filter, her broken ego shined through and she ended up appearing fair more disturbed than I had ever actually imaged. Her responses don't make me look silly or deceptive, they made her seem angry, uneducated and utterly entitled.  This made my understanding of what an online Narcissist could really be and it was dangerous but ultimately sad and pathetic.  Who even has time for such effort into an utter stranger? Wouldn't time be better spent researching a person one claims is innocent? The problem was Jodi Arias wasn't innocent, she was fully guilty of the premeditated murder she was convicted of and so much more.  So what's a gal to do when there isn't evidence on their side? Divert, derail, distract, defend, disgust.  The online communities are actually a very enjoyable experience when you find something you have a passion for.  And yet, as a participant in an online community, we have no obligations to one another.  These are moderately sensible groups of people each with enormous things to add and a place for discussion or even healthy debate. They are not for violating other people, except with Ms. Webber. She is one of the only people if not the only people in the entire trial experience who uses the computer in a truly malevolent manner.  Our responsibility as an online community is to attempt to be civil and if the subject postings become heated we actually do have a choice whether to engage or walk away. This was impossible for Sandra Webber. It truly seemed utterly impossible. Her preference was not only to engage but to attempt to annihilate. The more I examined her behavior and read her messages, I began to truly understand that the abnormality was potentially uncontrollable.   

Not satisfied with just her blog, Ms. Webber seeked attention for her wounded ego through a post she she wrote on her Facebook page, a public forum where she deletes any posts she does not want to appear.  Within the Facebook page she proudly directed her hundred odd followers to read about her obsession with me.  Perhaps the power of an Online Narcissist isn't in what they actually say it's that they can indeed manipulate their presentation of self within their small domains.  What these followers thought of me, I do not know or care but what she followed with impacted me differently. In response I think to a statement I made somewhere that asked why does she (Webber) do what she does? Why she is so hostile that she'd attack cookie makers in middle america and people who have nothing but innocence and a search for justice on their mind? Why does she seemingly spend 23 hours a day searching the internet for tidbits of nothing or to find that one comment she feels she can respond with a winger? Who does that and why do they need so much power.  I found the answer in the note she wrote.  In an unusually expressive message to her fans, she expressed that the reason she does what she does is because Jodi Arias is in pain. Jodi Arias, through a set of convoluted circumstances found herself guilty of a crime she didn't commit. Jodi Arias is sitting in her small cramped space - day after day - experiencing intense feelings of loneliness and injustice because one truly understands her, that she, Webber, needs to be her voice so to speak and stand up for the terrible tragedy of people like Jodi Arias.

As a therapist, I knew this wasn't accurate. I knew this screamed of projection. No one behaves the way they do and then blames their actions on a convicted murderer. It has dawned on me she is more broken inside than I realized and I feel ashamed and realize I don't want to be that person who mocks her or feels anger towards her. I don't want to be the person who knows with certainty that she is severely in distress and then use her for my own needs. I don't want to use her lack of empathy for others as a means to illuminate my abundance of empathy.  I don't want people to die. I don't want people to suffer. I don't want anyone to feel pain. Now I will tell you honestly these aspirations are not easy.  Her behavior is abomidible and I and others probably should pursue legal action and I will certainly monitor a decide if I need to do so but until that moment I am going to remember she is just a broken bird who feels invisible because she doesn't know how to fly off into the happy horizon that so many of us have been able to do. And somewhere in the past day or so, I decided to root for her in spite of her cruelty. I decided I want her to rise up and be the person I think she can be and to stop using the trial for bad and evil acts and use her feelings for good.  I want her to stop her nonsense and write about things of significance that make her look like a good person and not make her appear envious and unstable.  She and I both lost someone we loved, parents.  We both must have at some time and place felt tremendous pain and loss and voids. We simply chose a different path to deal with our feelings. We chose a different path.

So Ms. Webber, since I understand you continue to obsessively read this, I release you. Do whatever you want, blog away if you must, get it out so it doesn't stay inside but for god sake, reconsider where you put your attention. Do you want to be that person people say you are?  because you alone are creating this maligned reputation. I like people more I suppose. I appreciate people and I believe in others and their ability to be empathic even if it's been tarnished and rusted by hate.  We may have limitations, some may premeditate killing online reputations of people who didn't love them, others premeditate killing lovers who didn't love them. But for me, I am going to be better than that and I will do anything I can to not let my own anger be misdirected nor wasted. I need to help save some people from a very dangerous cancer treatment, I need to do what I must to protect myself, set a good example for my daughter about how to look after others and I think I need to find a way to protect my mother from further manipulation. Those seem like the goals of a person I am really starting to appreciate.

I will post again soon.
Thank you,
Cheryl

(All rights reserved. February 22, 2014)

All items within personal blog The Narcissism of Violence by Cheryl Prevor Psy.D. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at http://thenarcissismofviolence.blogspot.com.

Update: Please note that as of today's update (2/24/14) there appears to have been an attempt made from an outside source to hack into this account. For whomever attempts this, if you are found out, I will not take this aspect of activity lightly.  You will be prosecuted.

Antisocial Personality Disorder - No remorse

What is Antisocial Personality Disorder?

When a person is diagnosed with Antisocial Personality Disorder it means that a professional has determined that they have an ongoing pattern of manipulating, exploiting, or violating the rights of others.  In general, Personality Disorders are ways that clinicians diagnose Personality patterns that are pervasive and inflexible, they represent distorted ways in which the person perceives themselves, others and the world.  With an Antisocial Personality Disorder diagnosis, a clinician is saying clearly that this person has a blatant disregard for other people and that they repeatedly violate the rights of others through things they say, things they do and the choices they make. People with Antisocial Personality Disorder have an impoverished moral sense or conscience, they are beyond just missing a "sensitivity chip" they are calculated, cold,  intending to harm and intending to get away with the harm they cause.  These are people who don’t care about anyone truly unless someone is able to further their pathetic manipulation of others.  Once generally thought of to be behavior exclusively of criminals the diagnosis has evolved to be a predominantly immoral personality that can impact anyone and be found anywhere.  On the surface they may actually appear quite normal, pleasant, even socially appropriate, but underneath that facade is a person who on a daily basis is engaging in thoughts, feelings and/or activities that most people would find morally repugnant.

These people are violent, deceptive and greedy.  They seek out others only for their own benefit and have little to no empathy for the quality of others lives unless their presence serves them.

The symptoms (or Characteristic Behaviors) for Antisocial Personality Disorder (ASPD) consists of the majority of the following:

•  Failure to conform to social norms with respect to lawful behaviors as indicated by repeatedly performing acts that are grounds for arrest.
• The traditional method for diagnosis relied heavily on identifying that the person had an actual arrest history as the diagnosis is contingent on a person meeting the criteria for Conduct Disorder with a childhood onset or an adolescent onset *. However most clinicians  today recognize that it is far more important to do an extensive history that includes but is not limited to: interpersonal relationships (social, sexual, peer, and family),  education history, interaction with authorities, drug use, experience with animals, work experience and general method of navigating conflict, to assess whether the person failed to conform to social norms with regards to lawful behavior.  People behave in illegal and immoral ways every day.  The significance as to whether or not they were caught or held responsible by others has become irrelevant for assessment. 

• Deceitfulness, as indicated by repeated lying, use of aliases, or conning others for personal profit or pleasure.
• Deceitfulness can be demonstrated in many forms.  The concept of lying excessively even if just to make it appear to others that one is a better person than they are is an Antisocial Personality trait. We all want others to think well of us, but people with ASPD are excessively deceitful and their lies are purposeful and without remorse. They are almost unable to be authentic in any manner as their entire methodology of navigating the world is orchestrated by the desire to not allow anyone to know their true self.  They take great pleasure in lying to others so much so that the act of lying becomes more common than telling the truth.  They are highly skilled at deception. In times where the person must achieve a goal their lying becomes so profuse and frequently so convincing that others around them can't imagine that they are possibly untruthful.  They lie with conviction.  They lie to who they know will accept their lies.  They lie to anyone they need to fulfill whatever scenario they want others to accept.  Part of their lying has a Narcissistic basis.  While some with ASPD will appear not to care about others opinions at all, the vast majority have overlapping Narcissism and their lies are heavily expelled in order to force others to see them in a good light. In Antisocial Personality Disorder, we see people who are frequently conning others.  The con itself is pleasurable and the outcome of the con usually profitable be it by money, status, or acceptance. These are the  men and women who kill their spouses or hide multiple spouses, the financial analysts and brokers who scam innocent people into relinquishing their nest eggs, these are the children who manipulate their elderly parents for extensive inheritances, and the people who run from the law, run from responsibility and run from anything that might connect them personally to the horrible acts they have participated in.

• Impulsivity or failure to plan ahead.
• People with Antisocial Personality Disorder are impulsive.  They do things and say things without giving thorough thought as to what the consequences will be and that is because they do not care about consequences.  In their mind they will be able to escape consequences.  Traditionally, people with ASPD do have the ability to execute master plans but they have difficulty evaluating the long term affects of their plan.  They care greatly about short term gain and if they can achieve long term it would be celebrated but in general it is a moment by moment decision of satisfaction.  They are the criminals we as a society know all too well  but they are also the neighbors who hide many secrets.  While it is stated that they do not plan ahead, this is meant to refer to the person being unable to curb impulses when in the moment, not necessarily to drifters or gypsy like personalities whom strategic planning is a challenge.    An impulsive crime may be pursued but they lack awareness that this might lead to a potential life in jail sentence.  An impulsive abandonment may be made but they lack an awareness of the experience they might have if it means a potential lifetime without that person.  An impulsive walk out of place of employment may feel satisfying and empowering but they lack an awareness that this might lead to financial ruin, loss of a home or even a record on their resume.  In short, they make impulsive decisions frequently done in anger and fail to execute the thought one needs to insure the decision does not result in long term undesired effects.

• Irritability and aggressiveness, as indicated by repeated physical fights or assaults.
• People with Antisocial Personality Disorder are aggressive physically.  They tend to engage in violence when words would do, tend to yell, when discussion could occur and they tend to feel incredibly entitled to be abusive with whomever they choose whenever they choose.  They lack a certain emotional intelligence and rely on primitive ways to handle their frustrations.  Differences in gender and age impact how a person with ASPD expresses this criterion as well as time of onset as those with adolescent onset* show a marked decrease in traditional violence symptoms but can frequently develop into more aggressive people later in life.  Alternatively, some people tend to get more withdrawn and irritable later in life perhaps because they lack the physical ability to express their frustrations as they had in the past.  They are moody people who put on great facades with many people but internally are like a volcano ready to erupt at any moment.

• Reckless disregard for safety of self or others.
• With Antisocial Personality Disorder, a person takes what they want when they want without regard for how their actions may harm themselves or others.  The covet the prize and dismiss the body counts. Like the Narcissist, they care mostly for themselves and will go out of their way to insure their needs are met (which involve the safety of their lives: stability, financial security, status, etc.).  This particular criteria is not about the Antisocial displaying a disregard for their personal safety, it is simply a safety for themselves to not receive negative punishment. These are the pathological criminals who commit first-degree murder  because their rage at the victim is simply overwhelming but they are also the arrogant drug dealer who justifies the lives he/she ruins or the teacher who takes sexual advantage of a student and even the family members who allow atrocities to occur against one another in order to protect their own interpersonal standing and security.  They are innately cowards and if at all possible will delegate out their antisocial acts, but if they must put others at risk (physical, emotional, financial, etc.) they will gladly do so while justifying their behavior.  They are thrill seekers people who use others for their thrills. They are the people who can damage lives without regard to how it will affect those who care about them.  They are entitled, massively entitled to do what they want and to whomever they want.

•  Consistent irresponsibility, as indicated by repeated failure to sustain consistent work behavior or honor financial obligations. 
• Because people with Antisocial Personality Disorder ultimately lack impulse control, they are highly irresponsible and will be reckless with their work and financial obligations. People with this criteria again have a large overlap with Narcissistic Personality Disorder.  They have a tremendous lack of gratitude, strong sense of entitlement and no remorse when they have taken advantage of others kind nature. The irresponsibility they demonstrate can be seen early on as they believe they are deserving of more, angry that others are withholding, and this inner rage of entitlement allows them to be reckless usually knowing that there will be some poor sucker coming their way that they can manipulate into saving them.  Many of them tend to move from job to job but mostly because they cause ruin within their employment and can easily be fired. Those who decide to go into their own business frequently find naive benefactors who they can repeatedly scam with lies into continuing to support them.  Those that try it completely on their own may be the type who move from house to house, city to city, carefully and purposefully manipulating others and staying one foot ahead of anyone trying to catch them.

• Lack of remorse, as indicated by being indifferent to or rationalizing. 
• Because of their very low or absent capacity for remorse, individuals with ASPD often lack sufficient motivation and fail to see the costs associated with antisocial acts. They may only artificially simulate the expressions of remorse rather than truly experience remorse: they can be seductively charming and dishonest, and may manipulate those around them in order to maintain their trust so that they can continue their antisocial acts.  Like the Narcissist, people with Antisocial Personalities are obsessed only with themselves and are willing to do anything necessary to maintain the idealized image they have presented. One of the absolute hallmarks in Antisocial Personality Disorder is a lack of remorse and a very obvious response of indifference or rationalization.  In a true psychopath, there is this almost tangible indifference to others even when grave harm has occurred as a result of their actions.  In others who are less criminal but equally pathological, they care greatly about how other people perceive them which leads them to take great steps to insure that others will not become aware of their behavior.  These particular people rationalize their horrid acts.  You will frequently hear benign comments such as “they made me do it” to overt lies suggesting acts never occurred.  They tend to apply a plethora of defensive mechanisms to maintain a space between their actions and those behaviors they want people to believe. They always have a story and it is never based truly in reason or fact. They take advantage of the fact that people do not want to believe in evil and will choose to accept good if it is presented as a possibility. An astute person will notice their rationalization and not find it a possibility.  For these people, the wrath of the Antisocial Person can be filled with hate, revenge and attempts to annihilate.   It doesn’t matter if they are rationalizing their drunken fist fight, stealing money, hitting a sibling or abandoning their grandchild, these people will always have an excuse.

• It has an onset in adolescence or early adulthood, is stable over time, and leads to personal distress or impairment and impacts those around them. 
• The modern clinician knows that a person with Antisocial Personality Disorder is no longer exclusively the career criminal. This, like all personality disorders, are seen now more on a spectrum with the most significantly pathological being the emotionally barren mass murderer to the quite neighbor who happens to take secret pleasure in terrorizing their family. We look for signs in childhood that would reveal the most significant pathology.  In those children under 10 who demonstrate pathology it is almost certain that they have been victims of severe child abuse, however in older children, we see a shift in personality where an adolescent isn't fitting in quite well. They may isolate themselves in groups or be loners. But there is an attitude towards the world that is defiant and entitled.  There may be elevated expectations from the child to parents or peers, or the start of deviant liar for status or monetary gain. In adulthood, when a clinician may not be told the accurate childhood history, we look for overt signs of manipulation, a detachment from things that normally would breed attachment and a lack of empathy or remorse for situations or people whom they may have harmed or conned.   When we evaluate the person for the criteria and they meet it, a clinician will tend to start digging deeper and see the many ways they may have masked their true Antisocial Nature.

* In Antisocial Personality Disorder with Adolescent-Onset, one will not see any criteria characteristic of Conduct Disorder prior to age 10.   These children, or young adults as they should be called, tend to have substantially less or no aggressive behaviors and more normative peer relationships.  However, in the company of others such as family, school authorities and friends, they frequently display distinct qualities that can be quite subtle and overlooked.  They will be more manipulative than violent and more societal appropriate than deviant.  The range in this group can be enormous. A distinction for this subtype compared to the Childhood-Onset subtype is that they are more directly influenced by life experiences.  During adolescence, this subtype will evolve and alter in motivation and may not even develop Antisocial Personality Disorder but merely the spectrum characteristics whereas the Childhood-Onset maintains a similar motivation from childhood to adulthood and without intervention is almost certain to develop Antisocial Personality Disorder.

Personality functioning manifest by:

The following explain the areas of functioning impacted by a person with Antisocial Personality Disorder.

      Impairments in self functioning:

       * Identity:    Ego-centrism; self-esteem derived from personal gain, power, or pleasure.

       *Self-direction: Goal-setting based on personal gratification; absence of prosocial internal standards              

Impairments in interpersonal functioning:

*Lack Empathy-Lack of concern for feelings and/or the needs or suffering of others. Lack of remorse after mistreatment or hurting another.

*Lack of true intimacy - use of others to exploit, use of deceit and coercion, use of domination to control others

a.             Pathological personality traits in the following domains:

*Antagonism - Manipulativeness: Frequent use of subterfuge to influence or control others; use of seduction, charm, glibness, or ingratiation to achieve one„s ends.

*Deceitfulness: Dishonesty and fraudulence; misrepresentation of self; embellishment or fabrication when relating events.

*Callousness: Lack of concern for feelings or problems of others; lack of guilt or remorse about the negative or harmful effects of one„s actions on others; aggression; sadism.

*Hostility: Persistent or frequent angry feelings; anger or irritability in response to minor slights and insults; mean, nasty, or vengeful behavior.

Disinhibition, characterized by:

*Irresponsibility: Disregard for – and failure to honor – financial and other obligations or commitments; lack of respect for – and lack of follow through on – agreements and promises.

*Impulsivity: Acting on the spur of the moment in response to immediate stimuli; acting on a momentary basis without a plan or consideration of outcomes; difficulty establishing and following plans.

The International Classification of Disease  ICD-10

    Has a diagnosis called Dissocial Personality disorder.  

      This is an overlap of Antisocial Personality Disorder with some  elements of Narcissistic Personality traits.  It falls under a medical diagnosis and serves as a means to describe people who at their core do not feel responsible for their actions. Although traditional diagnosis of Mental disorders have fallen under the realm of DSM et al., this allowance for a medical diagnosis offers a broader charcterization of the disirder and could provide complimentary medical assessment as the diagnoses evolves.

         It is characterized by at least 3 of the following:

Callous unconcern for the feelings of others;

Gross and persistent attitude of irresponsibility and disregard for social norms, rules, and obligations.

Incapacity to maintain enduring relationships, though having no difficulty in establishing them.

Very low tolerance to frustration and a low threshold for discharge of aggression including but not limited to violence

Incapacity to experience guilt, any real sense of true remorse and have a failure to profit from experience, particularly punishment.

Marked readiness to blame others or to offer plausible rationalizations for the behavior that has brought the person into conflict with society or others.

The ICD states that this diagnosis includes:
 "amoral, antisocial, asocial, psychopathic, and sociopathic personality". 

I've seen this and I cannot agree more with the description.

(All rights reserved. January 27, 2014)

All items within personal blog The Narcissism of Violence by Cheryl Prevor Psy.D. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at http://thenarcissismofviolence.blogspot.com.