The Psychopathy of Everyday Life: How Antisocial Personality Disorder Affects All of Us

218 Pages·2006·3.24 MB·English

by  Martin Kantor MD

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The Psychopathy of
Everyday Life
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The Psychopathy of
Everyday Life
How Antisocial Personality
Disorder Affects All of Us
MARTIN KANTOR, M.D.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Kantor, Martin.
The psychopathy of everyday life: how antisocial personality disorder affects all
of us / Martin Kantor.
p. ; cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0–275–98798–1 (alk. paper)
1. Antisocial personality disorders. I. Title.
[DNLM: 1. Antisocial Personality Disorder. 2. Personality. WM 190 k16pa 2006]
RC555. K36 2006
616.85'820651—dc22 2006015393
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available.
Copyright © 2006 by Martin Kantor
All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be
reproduced, by any process or technique, without the
express written consent of the publisher.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2006015393
ISBN: 0-275-98798-1
First published in 2006
Praeger Publishers, 88 Post Road West, Westport, CT 06881
An imprint of Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc.
www.praeger.com
Printed in the United States of America
The paper used in this book complies with the
Permanent Paper Standard issued by the National
Information Standards Organization (Z39.48-1984).
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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For M.E.C.
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Contents
CHAPTER 1. Introduction 1
CHAPTER 2. The Psychopathy of Everyday Life 11
CHAPTER 3. Behavioral Manifestations 29
CHAPTER 4. Some Psychopaths of Everyday Life 55
CHAPTER 5. A Few Cases 73
CHAPTER 6. The Core Personality Structure 85
CHAPTER 7. Differential Diagnosis: Associated
and Overlapping Disorders 107
CHAPTER 8. Social Issues 123
CHAPTER 9. Successful Psychopaths 133
CHAPTER 10. Cause 137
CHAPTER 11. Course and Prognosis 153
CHAPTER 12. Therapy of the Mild Psychopath 157
CHAPTER 13. Coping with the Psychopaths of Everyday Life 179
Notes 195
Index 203
About the Author 209
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CHAPTER 1
Introduction
Psychopathy is both a serious psychological disorder that threatens our
individual happiness and a widespread social problem that threatens our
entire civilization. Yet to date the sensed diagnostic unity that we call psy-
chopathy remains a diffuse and poorly drawn entity that comes close to
defeating our attempts to precisely describe it, thoroughly understand it,
and effectively treat it.
One of the biggest problems in understanding psychopathy is the liter-
ature’s tendency to lump serious but rare psychopaths like John Wayne
Gacy and Ted Bundy with the less serious but common psychopaths, the
many in our midst who suffer from a milder and less obtrusive form of
what the DSM-IV (The American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and
Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) officially calls “Antisocial Personality
Disorder.”1 Martha Stout calls these less serious, more common psy-
chopaths “the sociopaths next door.”2 I call them “the psychopaths of
everyday life.”
They include men and women like the following composites:
The motorist who is aggressive, narcissistic, and selfish, a man or
woman without kindness, empathy, altruism, or regret—the one who
honks remorselessly at people who do not move fast enough, bends a
fender, then leaves the scene, grabs a parking space right out from under
his or her “territorial rivals,” and goes through red lights with a narcissis-
tic vengeance that proclaims: “the green, yellow, and red lights are all my
own personal go-signals.” He or she blames everyone else for his or her
accidents, as did the motorist who hit me from behind when I was stopped
at a red light and then, instead of apologizing, emerged from her car and