Encountering someone who displays a combination of Machiavellian, narcissistic, and psychopathic behaviors can be a profoundly upsetting experience. They often leave people feeling exploited and emotionally violated, making it difficult to feel safe and trust again. Psychologists Delroy Paulhus and Kevin Williams identified this pattern as the ‘Dark Triad,’ which describes how these traits combine to form a tendency towards…
False Self
The false self is a psychological concept used to describe a constructed persona or façade that people develop as a defense mechanism to cope with external pressures and traumas. In the context of abusive power and control, the false self is used for offensive and utilitarian purposes in manipulation schemes. The construct was created by British psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott, an influential thinking in the areas of object relations theory and developmental psychology.
THE FALSE SELF IS A FAKE PERSONA dysfunctional people invent as a psychological defense mechanism against re-living adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), such as traumatic stress. A child’s construction of a false self is an adaptive process. Children may develop it to cope with unmet needs, especially the absence of support the child requires to differentiate themselves from their caregivers. When…
IMAGINE LIFE WITHOUT the ability to experience genuine feelings of joy, love, or compassion. It’s hardly a stretch to suggest that one’s internal ecosystem would be a bleak and desolate landscape. However, if you were to open up the mind of a pathological narcissist and look inside, what you would find is a psychological wasteland riddled with persecutory objects. The ambiguity of malignant…