A four-dimensional model offered by Williams et al (2007) summarizes ‘psychopathy along four key dimensions: interpersonal manipulation, callous affect, erratic lifestyle and criminal tendencies (e.g. antisocial or counterproductive behaviour)’.1 It is a personality trait characterized by enduring antisocial behaviour, diminished empathy and remorse, and disinhibited, bold behaviour.2
Psychologists define psychopathy as a particular constellation of antisocial behaviour and emotions, including shallow affect, low remorse, low fear, low empathy, egocentrism, exploitative instinct, manipulativeness, impulsivity, aggression and criminality (Cleckley, 1964; Hare, 1993). Much like the psychological construct of narcissism, psychopathy has been extensively studied by both clinical and personality psychologists. Generally, researchers believe there are two factors of psychopathy. The first factor is called primary or instrumental psychopathy. This results in shallow affect, low empathy and interpersonal coldness. Individuals with profound levels of these traits are sometimes referred to as ‘emotionally stable’ psychopaths. The second factor is secondary or hostile/reactive psychopathy. This is composed of socially manipulative and deviant facets of psychopathy. It has been referred to as aggressive, impulsive and neurotic psychopathy.3
Psychopathy is described as a syndrome of extreme interpersonal, affective and behavioural traits. Some researchers argue that the concept of psychopathy should not include criminal behaviour. It could be seen as a potential consequence rather than as a part of the personality syndrome of psychopathy.4 The primary tendencies include impulsive thrill-seeking, cold affect, manipulation and antisocial behaviours, often falling into a primary (affective shallowness, lack of empathy and remorse, superficial charm, and manipulation) and secondary component (social deviance, low socialization, impulsivity, irresponsibility, aggression, sensation seeking, delinquency).5
In terms of lifestyles, psychopaths lack realistic life goals, have parasitic orientations, are altogether irresponsible and impulsive, and seek stimulation. In conduct, psychopaths have poor behavioural control, evince early behaviour problems, engage in juvenile delinquency, are criminally versatile, and have records of noncompliance/revocation of conditional release. When charged with their crimes, they present themselves as guiltless and are prone to externalize blame.6
It appears that psychopathy has remained, more or less, a pejorative label. However, the most recent debate among scholars entails the use of more behavioural criteria than personality traits to effectively diagnose psychiatric illnesses. Notwithstanding its evolution, two features of this mental disorder have remained relatively constant. First, the presence of psychosis is an essential criterion for the existence of psychopathy. Second, psychopathic individuals are generally considered untreatable. Some researchers have debated the fate of psychopaths in asylums or prisons. Most agree that their dispositions are largely unchangeable. Given the foregoing historical analysis, we are yet to see the implications of present-day correctional and psychological practice for psychopaths.
4
NEUROTICISM
Neuroticism, as an aspect of human personality in various forms, has been a subject of study for thousands of years. In ancient Greece, personality types were categorized into four basic temperaments: choleric, melancholic, phlegmatic and sanguine. The melancholic personality had many traits associated with neuroticism. Greek doctor Hippocrates (460–370 BC) suggested a biological basis for personality. He claimed that melancholy was caused by excessive amounts of black bile in the body. More recently, neuroticism has formed the basis of numerous personality models.
German-born psychologist Hans Eysenck (1916–97) also believed that personality traits were attributable to biological factors. He developed a model that quantified personality according to two dimensions: extraversion and neuroticism. In modern psychometric studies of personality and psychopathology, neuroticism tends to be identified as a first general factor (i.e. the biggest variable in explaining individual differences). For example, a large percentage of variability in the types of mental illness characterized as ‘internalizing’, such as depression, anxiety, obsessive-compulsive neurosis, phobia, and hysteria, can be explained by a general dimension of neuroticism. Thus, neuroticism almost always appears in modern trait models of personality, though sometimes with slightly different theoretical formulations or names (such as trait anxiety, repression-sensitization, ego-resiliency, and negative emotionality). Eysenck popularized the term neuroticism in the 1950s by including it as a key scale in his popular personality inventory.
Neuroticism figures prominently in the widely accepted big five model of personality disposition (a model that considers five factors to produce its assessment: openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism). It is measured on a continuum, ranging from emotional stability (low neuroticism) to emotional instability (high neuroticism). A neurotic personality is characterized by persistent, often disproportionate, worrying and anxiety. A person may strive to be a perfectionist during their everyday activities, experiencing stress as a result of events beyond their control. Neuroticism can cause an individual to dwell on the negative aspects of a situation rather than the positive ones. They feel envious towards other people when they feel they are in a position of advantage as compared to them. They may be prone to frustration, irritation and anger as they struggle to cope with the stresses of life.
Some define neuroticism as a tendency to be aroused quickly when stimulated and to gain slow relaxation from arousal. Others define it as emotional instability, negativity or maladjustment as compared to emotional stability, positivity or good adjustment. Still others define it as lack of self-control, poor ability to manage psychological stress and a tendency to complain.1
Neuroticism signifies the tendency to experience negative emotions such as guilt, nervousness, depression and fear. It involves behaviour such as lack of self-acceptance, perfectionism, and not being open to criticism (Costa and McCrae, 1995).2 Individuals who score low in neuroticism tend to be more emotionally stable and less reactive to stress. They tend to be calm, even-tempered and less likely to feel tense or rattled. Although they are low in negative emotion, they are not necessarily high in positive emotion.
Scoring high in positive emotion is generally an element of the independent trait of extraversion. Neurotic extraverts, for example, would experience high levels of both positive and negative emotional states. An ‘emotional roller coaster’ of sorts.3 4
Alec Roy5 demonstrated that neuroticism is an important personality dimension associated with depressive and anxiety disorders. Both genetic and social factors are thought to contribute to neuroticism. His study aims to examine whether early childhood adversity may be a determinant of neuroticism. He made 532 abstinent substance-dependent patients complete the childhood trauma questionnaire (CTQ) and the Eysenck personality questionnaire (EPQ). The result of the survey showed a significant relationship between total childhood trauma scores on the CTQ and neuroticism scores on the EPQ. There was also a significant correlation between neuroticism and CTQ sub-scores for emotional abuse, physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional neglect and physical neglect. To conclude his study, he claimed that childhood trauma may be a determinant of neuroticism. This could be one way in which childhood trauma plays a role in the development of psychiatric disorders.
Accruing research data show that individual differences in neuroticism are substantially inheritable (which means they can be passed on from parent to child). Inheritability estimates based on twin studies generally fall in the 40–60 per cent range. The remaining individual differences in neuroticism are primarily attributed to unique (non-familial) environmental differences. The shared familial environment appears to exert virtually no reliable influence on individual differences in neuroticism. Researchers speculate that an overreactive limbic system in the brain is associated with high levels of neuroticism. An overreactive limbic system signifies excessive reactions to usual and day-t
o-day stimuli, and manifests in the individual’s emotions and motivations. However, specific neurochemical mechanisms or locations within the brain and nervous system have not yet been identified.
5
EVERYDAY SADISTS
Everyday sadists are distinguished not by their impulsiveness or manipulativeness (which are in the normal range), but by their enjoyment of cruelty. Sadism is essentially defined as the derivation of pleasure from the physical or emotional suffering of another, or from the control and domination of others.1 Sadists have also been described as aggressive or malignant narcissists, as their pleasure is derived at the expense of others with no apparent concern for their well-being.2
Unlike psychopaths, they rarely use physical force in the commission of crimes. Their aggressiveness is embedded in an interpersonal context and expressed in social settings, such as the family or the workplace. This narcissistic need for an audience manifests itself in other circumstances. Sadists strive to humiliate people in front of witnesses. This makes the sadist feel omnipotent. Power is important to them. And they are likely to treat people under their control or entrusted to their care harshly, be it a subordinate, child, student, prisoner, patient or spouse. They are all liable to suffer the consequences of the sadist’s ‘control freak attitude’ and exacting ‘disciplinary’ measures. Sadists like to inflict pain because they find suffering, both corporeal and psychological, amusing. The sights and sounds of a creature writhing in agony are pleasurable to them. Sadists go to great lengths to hurt others. They lie, deceive, commit crimes and even make personal sacrifices merely to enjoy the cathartic moment of witnessing someone else’s misery. Masters of abuse by proxy, they terrorize even their dear ones into doing their bidding. They create an atmosphere of dread and consternation by promulgating complex ‘rules of the house’ that restrict the autonomy of their dependants (spouses, children, employees, patients, clients, etc.) They have the final word and their decisions must be obeyed, no matter how senseless.
Psychologists talk about the dark triad in personality, representing a perfect-storm combination of narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism. People high in the dark triad traits callously use people to their own advantage, seeing them as tools to be exploited in order to get what they want. To be sure, enjoying the suffering of others—the hallmark of sadism—can be a part of the picture in the dark triad constellation. However, personality psychologists are beginning to believe that a predilection for cruelty stands on its own in understanding why one person would want to harm another. Along with behaviour that results in humiliation, maiming or death, there’s a kind of everyday sadism that shows up in a more benign form.
University of British Columbia psychologist Erin Buckels and collaborators (2013)3 decided to investigate the idea that everyday sadists are willing to inflict real, not just vicarious, harm. They reasoned that people with high levels of this less overt form of sadism might become more aggressive when provoked than other individuals. Further, they believed that sadism could provide unique predictions of antisocial behaviour, above and beyond those of the dark triad qualities. To investigate everyday sadism, they needed to come up with a laboratory task that would mimic the kind of casual, harm-producing behaviour people might perform in their daily lives. But translating everyday sadism into a lab setting is, understandably, a challenge. You have to invent a task that will not actually hurt people but which will seem realistic. Buckels and her team zeroed in on killing bugs. They argued that the act of killing a bug would satisfy a sadistic desire to cause a living creature harm through direct physical contact.
To test their theory, they offered participants a choice of tasks. Killing bugs was one of the alternatives among a set of unpleasant but non-sadistic options. They settled on three choices (including killing bugs) a participant could pick as possible ‘jobs’—assisting someone else in killing bugs, cleaning dirty toilets or putting their hand in a bucket of ice water. (In case you’re worried, bugs weren’t actually killed. But it looked like the bugs were supposedly ground in a machine that loudly crunched them to bits.)
To identify the everyday sadists in the sample, Buckels and her team used the short sadistic impulse scale (SSIS) developed by University of College Cork psychologist Aisling O’Meara and her team (2011).4 They also administered dark triad questionnaires to tease out the separate contributions of sadism from the other two qualities. As expected, participants who scored high on sadism were the most likely to choose the bug-killing task. After completing the task, they also reported enjoying it the most. And if they had opted for a different task, they regretted not choosing bug killing in the first place.
The second laboratory task involved a button-pushing competition. The highly sadistic participants were compared with their less cruel counterparts in their willingness to attack an opponent who they believed would not attack them back. Over the course of the experiment, participants had the opportunity to blast white noise into their opponent’s headphones for every trial that they won. The situation was rigged as there was no actual opponent. However, the participants were led to believe that their opponent would not attack them back after receiving the ear-disrupting blast.
The question then, was whether those who were highly sadistic would continue to inflict the aversive stimulus upon a non-attacking opponent. As it turned out, the everyday sadists were not only quicker to harm their opponents but also worked harder for the opportunity to blast them some more. Dark triad qualities, as in the bug-killing experiment, didn’t predict the outcome of noise-blasting tendencies. However, sadism did. We have fairly solid evidence now that people who score high on a questionnaire measure of sadism may also behave in casual, everyday ways that might be similar to these lab tasks. The questionnaire measure appears to have a reasonably good validity in predicting who would kill for the sake of killing (bugs, of course, not people) and who would inflict harm on an opponent who is offering an olive branch.
Although sadistic personalities seem to be an increasing percentage of the aggressive personality types in prison settings, they do not appear to be very common in the general population. Nonetheless, they cause an inordinate amount of distress for those who happen to become entangled in some kind of relationship with them. Traditional theories on personality development have always presumed that sadistic individuals became the way they are because of deep-seated feelings of inferiority, or as a reaction to being severely abused or demeaned as children. But there is no evidence to suggest that all such personalities have these characteristics in their background, although many will lie about it to engender the sympathy of others. It seems that the majority of these individuals simply consider themselves superior to those whom they perceive as weak.
Paulhus notes that everyday sadists may be drawn to jobs such as police officers or the military, where they can harm others in a legitimate guise.5 This is not to suggest that all law-enforcement personnel are sadistic, simply that their ranks may have a higher than average number of everyday sadists.
In summary, the independent or collective presence of Machiavellianism, narcissism, neuroticism, psychopathy and everyday sadism in a person can significantly influence that individual’s behaviour negatively. Collectively, these personality traits can be a perfect recipe for disaster. These personality traits are largely hereditarily transmittable. Therefore, the presence of these traits in an individual can generally be traced back to the genes.
II
THE KURUS
Personality Assessments of Common Lineage
1
THE DYDE
Satyavati and Shantanu
Satyavati: An Insecure Mother
Not much has been mentioned about Satyavati in the Mahabharata. Despite her low-caste origins, she changed the fate of the royal hierarchy of Hastinapur. A little bit has been written about her in Harivamsa, and more so in the Devi Bhagavata Purana.1 All the texts mention Satyavati’s fisherman father. He was the reason behind Bhishma’s pledge and the event
ual downfall of Hastinapur. Some scholars consider Satyavati, and not her father, responsible for both of these. While her presence of mind, far-sightedness and mastery of realpolitik are praised, her unscrupulous means of achieving her goals and her blind ambition are criticized.
Satyavati was the biological daughter of Uparichara Vasu, a Gandharva king. He refused to take her with him as she was born out of a fish (a cursed nymph called Aadrika) according to mythology. Eventually, she was adopted by the chief of the fishermen clan, Dasharaja. She used to row the boat on the Yamuna to cross the river where she met Maharishi Parashara. By satisfying his sexual desire, she turned from Matsyagandha to Yojanagandha.2 After marrying King Shantanu of Hastinapur, she became the queen of Hastinapur.
There are certain noteworthy instances in the Mahabharata that highlight Satyavati’s behaviour and enable us to ascertain the kind of personality traits she exhibited. The first incident was her encounter with the sage Parashara. Pradip Bhattacharya (2004) praises Satyavati’s handling of this encounter. He notes that, although young, she tackles the persistent sage with great maturity and presence of mind. Bhattacharya remarks, ‘With a maturity and frankness that astonishes us even in the twenty-first century, she points out that coitus ought to be mutually enjoyable.’ (Bhattacharya, 2004) She is not deluded by the belief that the sage will marry her and in exchange for her virginity, tries to raise her future status in society.
The second incident when she showed her ‘characteristic far-sightedness’ and ensured the future of her children with Shantanu was by indirectly deposing off the crown prince Bhishma.3 Some scholars such as Indrajeet Bandopadhyaya (2013) opine that Satyavati did not have ‘spiritual merit’ as she manipulated Shantanu by hiding her previous encounter with sage Parashara. And her adopted father Dasharaja stepped in to fix the prerequisites of her marriage. This led to the dispossession of Bhishma’s right as the heir apparent to the throne, while Satyavati played the coy lady who would not go against her father to protest the injustice done to Bhishma.4 Kisari Mohan Ganguli, in his English translation of the Mahabharata of Krishna Dwaipayana, describes this as: ‘The fisherman said, “O king, what I ask of thee is this: the son born of this maiden shall be installed by thee on thy throne and none else shall thou make thy successor.”’5
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