<
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2026/mar/10/how-to-recognise-handle-psychopath>
"Coming face to face with a probable psychopath was enough to make Dr Leanne
ten Brinke rethink her career choices. Early in her 20s, while studying
forensic psychology in Halifax, in the Canadian province of Nova Scotia, Ten
Brinke was volunteering at a parole office, which would hold weekly group
meetings for released sex offenders. “Most of the men showed contrition,” says
Ten Brinke. “They really seemed to recognise the damage that they had done.”
Except for one. The treatment programme seemed “like a game to him”, she says.
One week, in a discussion about the impact their crimes had on victims, this
rapist stared at Ten Brinke and, smiling slightly, started to say how much his
victim looked like her, “and how I was ‘his type’. Clearly he was trying to
scare me, and he did.”
It put her off a career working with convicted criminals, but she remained
fascinated with “dark personalities” – psychopathy, mainly, but also
narcissism, machiavellianism (manipulating and exploiting others) and sadism.
From politics to business to the media, it wasn’t as if there was a shortage of
people to study. There were selfish, callous, impulsive and manipulative people
everywhere, often presenting as gregarious and charming. “It started to occur
to me that these traits aren’t just confined to an underworld. These traits
appear in all aspects of our lives,” she says.
Now associate professor of psychology at the University of British Columbia,
Canada, Ten Brinke says these people could be in our families, or living next
door. They’re the trolls online. They’re at work, at school, leading our
institutions and our countries.
Instead of being specific conditions that one either has or hasn’t, psychopathy
and other personality disorders are now thought to exist on a continuum, says
Ten Brinke. It is estimated that 1% of the general population have clinical
levels of psychopathy (scoring highly on the PCL-R, the psychopathy checklist
assessment commonly used for diagnosis). Other studies have suggested that up
to 18% have “elevated” levels – what we may call “dark territory”, as Ten
Brinke puts it in her new book,
Poisonous People: How to Resist Them and
Improve Your Life. Within the prison population, the instance of clinical
psychopathy is about 20%. However, these dark personalities – who are
potentially the most dangerous and likely to reoffend – are particularly good
at convincing parole boards to release them, probably because they can be so
persuasive.
Although the vast majority of people do not have clinical levels of
psychopathy, people with elevated dark traits cause an outsize harm to society,
whether that’s in the criminal or political arena, or in the corporations they
run. “The research suggests that nature and nurture both play a role,” Ten
Brinke says. “That’s promising in the sense that we know that affecting the
environment can change people’s outcomes.” This is particularly true for
children with “callous unemotional” traits and persistent aggressive behaviour.
This can be measured, says Ten Brinke, “as early as two or three years old, and
getting these kids into treatment as early as possible is important because
there we can see changes to traits over time”."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
