In reply to:

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Although there is a decent relationship between self-reports and informant (family mambers) reports, the correlation (at best) is only around .48 -- that means that there's a ton of missing information when it comes to self-reported psychopathy. Researchers should be paying closer attention to family members if they want to get a better handle on all aspects of psychopathy (but then I digress. . . .).

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Digress all you want! Thanks for that. Very interesting. SOme quite deep stuff there which I'll have to chew over at leisure...

hi JAM, how're things?

since I spend my days with N and P a few feet from me
in "cubical land", I devote a fair bit of
time to wondering about this topic.

what I've focussed on is that these two are strikingly
grandiose.

P seems to be so "to the bone" -- he sails through life
like the title character in Carly Simon's "You're So Vain".

I remember we were talking about one of our favorite
spots -- a bar/hut/dance club on the beach in the Carribean.

since his primary topic is carnal conquests, I mentioned
that "hey P, these girls aren't looking for guys like you
and me, they're looking for millionaires with yachts from
X". he replied "I am a millionaire with a yacht from X",
and I was just bowled over with how convincing he was.
I was able to fall under the spell for a moment.

with N, the grandiosity is skin-deep. his real train of
thought is an open sewer of self loathing, scatological
references and in-your-face homophobia (he's a homosexual).

he goes through a "girl-friend" about every 10 days, and
one of the team rituals is having to listen to a litany
of the latest one's short comings. eventually I became
a bit Irked with this, and challenged him to say one nice
thing about any of the women he's gone out with.

to my Amazement, he had a complete loss of composure,
and I was treated to a hysterical outburst of his
concerns with me. (Projection)

I didn't respect him, I lied to him, I set him up to
fail, blah, blah, blah, for a good minute or so.

he must be hanging on my every word desperate for
Narcissitic Supply which I guess he's not receiving from me.

Ironically, after reading up on N's, I had been deliberately
giving him Narcissitic Supply, just to get along with him.

go figure.

in another amusing incident, he stopped saying "good
morning" to me, and I didn't notice. in retrospect, I
realize that communicating this snub to me was so important
to him that he had to keep escalating his behaviour to
bizarre extremes before I noticed. eventually, things
came to such a pass, that we would meet on the elevator,
I would say "good morning", and he would stand silently,
not looking at me, with a look of ANGUISH so extreme,
it looked like his head was going to explode like
in that cool "Scanners" movie. then, we would both
walk to our area silently, where he would explode into
a spasm of Sociability, saying "good morning" to all
and sundry except me, so I finally got it. ROTFL.

it must be living hell for his self esteem to be so
dependent on me, and I don't even notice.

P doesn't seem to care what I think of him. most of
what I learn about him is PIT gloating about things, or
N dropping info inadvertently -- he's not the sharpest
knife in the drawer.

the main area where P's self esteem depends on me, is that
he seems to genuinely feel that isolating me, and destroying
my relationships with other people is a creative work
of art on his part. if someone is nice to me in his
presence, you can just feel how UNJUST this seems to
him -- he can stew for days in a sniffling, brooding
slow burn after an event like that. the Horror.

anyway, enough of my petty concerns.

thanks for the great posts Shelley, "co-morbidity" is
my new term -- Very Cool.

Vaya con Dios,

-WK

"hi JAM, how're things? "

Thanks for asking... Hmm. Ill give you the personal physical answer. Still struggling with weight gain since giving up smoking October last year. Ive been a heavy smoker all my adult life and despite that have always had a good appetite. As soon as I stopped smoking I seemed to turn into the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Krall.. or that plant from the Little Shop of Horrors..."FEED MEE!!!"

Apart from that...ok

"anyway, enough of my petty concerns."

Er... dont hold back. Thats exactly the sort of post that I find so useful. Fleshes out the theory with real people. Just what I was hoping for. As Ive found the character of the P I know about rather confusing at times in terms of pure psychopathy as defined by the Hare Checklist. Your and others accounts have clarified certain issues for me.

It does seem to me that an individual can answer to the cassification of 'psychopath' according to the Hare definition and at the same time exhibit a mnumber of characteristics from the definition of NPD. The guy I know about looks like a mix of your descriptions of N & P. Mostly Psychopath ( His wife of 16 years and I have plotted him at about 32 - plus or minus up to 4 points due to uncertainty and lack of info about some things) on the Hare Scale - Yes I know we're not qualified! but if anybody can assess him she can!) with a distinct overlay of some more purely Narcissistic characteristics.

This subject of labelling multi dimensional personality disorders is obviously a problem. It seems to confuse many people, and gives me a headache too.

Personal accounts of psychopathic and narcissistic individuals like yours do help to 'flesh out' the picture.

Ta

JAM

Hi WhiteKnight,

What a great description of the emotional lability of your narcissistic friend! Yes, I think that where you want to distinguish the two (NPD and Ps) it has to be around core emotional expression and response.

Hi JustaMan,

There's lots of literature on the question of comorbidity in mental health problems. For example, anxiety disorders have high rates of comorbidity with depression. For mental health researchers, knowing this has lead to a better understanding of things like Panic Disorder. We understand better that depression likely emerges secondary to the anxiety and that if you can treat the anxiety, the depression often lifts.

In terms of what this might mean for NPD and Ps, if I had to take a stab in the dark here (and that's all this is -- pure speculation), I would guess the following:

P is largely a biological/genetic condition probably present from birth. (There's a twin study that is particularly compelling that suggests that the callous-unemotional component of psychopathy is strongly genetic. See Viding et al, Evidence for substantial genetic risk for psychopathy in 7-year olds. In Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry. 46(6), 2005, pp 592-597. A very cool article, if you can get your hands on it.)

NPD is a learned condition, but is perhaps sometimes secondary to some type of biological predisposition toward (social?) anxiety in some. (No good evidence for genetic influence in the development of NPD, but there IS soem evidence that parental permissiveness and authoritariansm is associated -- See Ramsey et al in Self-reported narcissism and perceived parental permissiveness and authoritarianism. In Journal of Genetic Psychology. 157(2), 1996, 227-238).

In some Ps, perhaps narcissism is a learned response --Ps normally (if I can use such a word here) don't care about others or their feelings (callous and unemotional, remember?), but perhaps some Ps come to find the admiration of others especially rewarding? If this is the case, then they would crave it and seek it out at others' expense, but then they might also be emotionally subject to narcissistic injury/hurt when someone doesn't pay attention to them in the way they feel they deserve. (My idea -- to researchers out there, you'll need to cite me if you use it!)

This is speculative, of course. But I haven't seen any good evidence to suggest that NPD is biologically based whereas P IS -- So, my suggestion is plausible -- the condition being that Ps find the admiration of others rewarding and the loss of it aversive.

Of course, I find that my idea fits very well with the Narcissistic P in my own life -- but my personal experience doesn't constitute evidence -- it is just suggestive.)

Whew!

Gotta run for now.

Shelley~

Thanks Shelley. Very interesting.

especially....

"P is largely a biological/genetic condition probably present from birth. "

"No good evidence for genetic influence in the development of NPD"

wow JAM, that really sux, giving up smoking and all.

now that you've taken the load off your body, can you
substitute exercise for your nicotene habit? the Dublin marathon
is only 360 short days away!!

today is the first day of the rest of your life!!!

can you get into amateur body-building competition? contrary
to popular misconception, it's VERY mental. calculating
and planning your workouts and your diet, could get you
out of the twinkie binge rut.

even if you never get NEAR the winners circle, it's pretty much
guaranteed Mrs. JAM will LOVE it.

further on the N vs P thing, N seems to be playing from
a static mental model that doesn't seem to have been
updated since adolescence. he never seems to adapt to
new circumstances.

e.g. we're all watching t.v., and I guess a naked female
torso was flashed. we all missed it except N who exclaimed
"was that a female breast"? we're in mixed company,
and I'm guessing at this point we've all seen one, so
there's no response from the group. so, as a conversational
ploy, in desperation, he repeats himself three more times,
with no response from anyone. I guess this was fascinating
stuff when he was thirteen, or maybe in his frat house,
but that's ten years in his past, and he hasn't updated
his paradigm since.

P on the other hand adapts. e.g. VF and I are really into
NLP. since his VF conquest, now so is P. for whatever
reason, V and I spontaneously mirror each other a lot,
and now P winds up mirroring me just to break up the
rapport. P is _very_ smooth about it. PIT also does this
now, though he's clumsier, and can be quite comical at
times.

Best,

-WK

Hi JustaMan,

Interesting viewpont -- but my take on the article would be somewhat different. Certainly I'd agree that psychopathy occurs on a continuum, and I'm not really an advocate of genetic determinism, but I would point out that the effect of genetic influence was extraordinarily high in statistical terms. In addition, subjects with high levels of CU showed absolutely NO influence of shared environment. To me, this was the most striking aspect of the study. Of course, here we're talking about shared environment and not unique environment which tends to have a greater impact on behavior.

Since kids with high Callous-Unemotional characteristics showed no influence of shared environment, they would seem the least likely to benefit from a behavioral/environmental intervention (and it might, as Dr. Hare suggests, turn them into better psychopaths). So, in terms of helping kids, it would seem better to put efforts into dealing with kids with moderate levels of CU -- at least we know that environment has some impact.

Also, it seems to me that Viding makes a huge contribution to the literature in separating the behavioral and emotional components. As I suspected, it is the emotional component that is the kicker for P and it is where researchers need to go to clarify the disorder.

I'd agree that follow-up is a great idea. But longitudinal studies are expensive and, well, they take time. However, since this article was published this year and it generally is a long haul between data collection and publication, I'd guess that by now Dr. Viding has collected (or is in the process of collecting) her follow-up data on the 9 year olds. I'd be curious about how that is going and what her sense is from the data collected so far -- but I suspect she wouldn't want to share that at this point

Shelley~

"wow JAM, that really sux, giving up smoking and all.

now that you've taken the load off your body, can you
substitute exercise for your nicotene habit? the Dublin marathon
is only 360 short days away -- times awasting!!!"

Unfortunately Ive always hated running, even at school. I'm tall ( 6'1" ) but have completely the wrong body shape. Exactly the opposite of those Kenyans and Ehtiopians who are so good at it - Ive got a long back and relatively short legs... finding shirts with long enough tails is a problem!

body building does not appeal. Overly developed muscles and an absense of the normal ammount of body fat look ugly to me...

Some of those bodies you see on the front of body building magasines make me feel physically nauseous - I can only look at them for a few seconds - especially the women.

I'd rather spend my spare time reading a book going oout for a walk in the woods - with plenty of stops to examine intersting stuff - or listen to some music. Body building does seem like a relentlessly repetitive and mindless activity. I dont think I could stand the boredom and the feeling of wasted time.

In reply to:

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"Since kids with high Callous-Unemotional characteristics showed no influence of shared environment, they would seem the least likely to benefit from a behavioral/environmental intervention (and it might, as Dr. Hare suggests, turn them into better psychopaths). So, in terms of helping kids, it would seem better to put efforts into dealing with kids with moderate levels of CU -- at least we know that environment has some impact.

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It may be wishfull thinking, but I prefer to live in hope. The thought of effectively 'writing off' some kids at an early age gives me the willies. The straw I'm grasping at is the plasticity of the developing brain. The hope that if you get to the psychopathic child when they are young enough something can be done to influence even the most emotionally deficient in a positive direction.

Hi Shelley,

I usually stay out of the NPD and psychopathy debate because between all the conflicting theories from duelling experts, overlapping behavioural characteristics, subsets, and differentiations etc. it gets pretty convoluted. Also, at some level, I personally find it difficult to be clinical about a subject that has caused so much grief for me. I can see why others debate the topic though and I'm glad for that.

This part of your post stood out to me though:

In some Ps, perhaps narcissism is a learned response --Ps normally (if I can use such a word here) don't care about others or their feelings (callous and unemotional, remember?), but perhaps some Ps come to find the admiration of others especially rewarding? If this is the case, then they would crave it and seek it out at others' expense, but then they might also be emotionally subject to narcissistic injury/hurt when someone doesn't pay attention to them in the way they feel they deserve.

My take on Ps seeking out the attention of others (and the injury they may experience when their efforts are unsuccessful) is that it goes back to the profound feelings of rejection many of them felt from their parents (usually the mother it seems). I've seen it in the personality disordered individuals I know and it's VERY pronounced. It has always seemed somewhat odd to me that these otherwise callous individuals show this vulnerability.

Another reason I think is that popularity is socially desirable, a status/power symbol of sorts, and Ps would naturally covet that.

Sylvie

Edited the end of the first para just to clarify it.