Personality Disorder, Anyone?

There is a body of opinion that the good Dr Hannibal Lecter was right saying that psychology is not a science.?(Maybe it is an art.?He himself, we should not forget, had a big psychoanalytic practice prior to the events that led to his captivity.)?I agree and so should you, in my opinion.

Consulting my clients I often discuss with them testing as a way to measure a person’s personal and professional traits, and as back 20 years ago, now I still firmly believe that this is a vain spending of time and money and that the soul cannot be measured by a ruler. Or by a wannabe psychologist.?As to why, there are too many reasons to list them all here. The main two reasons, to me, are these.?One, a person might perform differently in different life situations, e.g. if she or he calculates badly during a test then the same person can cope with the same task superbly when in a less stressful situation, i.e. in a well-known, stressfree environment.?Two, the same goes for so called personality traits.?As my personal life experience showed you can live with someone for over twenty years and then this person will surprise you.?Therefore anyone but the most “simple minds” cannot be analysed.?In my personal experience I took psychometric tests some 3 times in my life over the past 30 years and each time the results were saying that something was wrong, that I did not answer the questions honestly, or fiddled with the tests somehow, but such personalities do not exist.?The machine never worked with me, it broke.?And I suggest that for any person who has a mind and the psyche more developed than the average they will never work, or will lie.?

So we cannot measure a person by submitting him or her to any psychometrics – as ages ago, the so called gut feeling on the part of a professional consultant coupled with good references from the market is what should, at least in my theory, suffice.?And yes of course, also, comparing the needs of the position and organisation with proven capabilities of the candidate.?Company culture and personal beliefs should fit.?

Unfortunately, not all of my clients agree.?They still believe a person’s so called “character” (as if such a thing existed) can be measured as easily as her (his) body temperature.?The same people, it must be noted, also believe in “national characters” and some even consult horoscopes at an interview.?I would advise to such business executives to go to the wise woman.?The result will be better, more precise and definitely more reliable; often it will be cheaper, too.

(The wise women are best at solving all life problems.?Let’s remember that when Black Adder discovered he was in love with what seemed to him as a boy and went to the wise woman she gave him the following options.?“I would sleep with him if I were you.?I always sleep with people I like.?Of course I have to drug them first me being so old and warty.”?“But think of my social position! Never!” “Then three other options are open to you, three other ways to ease your ailment.?The first is easy.?Kill Bob.” “Never!” “Then try the second!?Kill yourself.”?“And the third?” “The third is to make sure that nobody else ever knows.” “That sounds more like it! How?” “Kill everybody in the whole world!”)?

Obviously Black Adder did not pay for the consulting session.?And neither should we, for any so called personality tests, aptitude tests, psychometric tests, whatever tests.?That is, if you are advised by a professional search consultant.?Recruitment agencies (resume sending services) are different (they are not worse, they are just a different kind of service).?How to assess their product to me remains a mystery.?Reference checking could be tried I believe.?

At the same time psychology (as an institution) gives us several types of so called personality disorders.?Personally I believe each one of us has a bunch of them.?I would not term them disorders because again to quote Dr Lecter, murder does not exist in the animal world; everything termed as normal or abnormal is a subjective view of a person or a government or a society.?It is the same as beauty.?However there truly are some behavioral patterns that can be noted in people and definitely they should be taken into account when assessing a person (which is an intrinsic part of our consulting service).?Apart from killing living things and/or making them suffer, I would not consider any of the “personality disorders” an illness or an ailment; as noted before we all have them in us up to good measure; each one of us, with this mixture of “disorders,” can perform very well, or very badly, in any given situation, be it personal life or work.?

Let’s remember that some companies (please pardon my for over-simplifying), for certain positions, may prefer a hero, or a star, or a slug, or a loser, or whatever.?I will forever remember my one good client, an American transnational corporation; I consulted them on the placement of a marketing director.?When I described someone as “the best and the brightest” the human resources director firmly stated that she will never even meet with the best or the brightest; “they will not survive a week with us,” she explained.

Yet please let me give a list, maybe not complete and maybe not so professional-looking, but it is all we have at the moment from renown psychologists (or psychiatrists), of what they term as personality disorders.?I do think we should try to discern these in the person we assess (maybe starting with ourselves) and then do our best to measure whether this person is fit for the position we are consulting for.?(Some jobs will require a certain type of a “personality disorder”, without which it will not be possible to do these jobs, by the way.?And vice versa.)?I do believe that these traits (I would rather call them traits rather than personality disorders) are just as important in our understanding of the person as are such terms we frequently use in our reports such as: hands-on, would not take no for an answer, analytical skills, open personality, good mixer, presentation skills, and all the rest.?One comment before I give a brief list below – when consulting your client, maybe the same traits should be measured in the people with whom the future employee will have to interact – colleagues and superiors??As much as company culture??Interesting thought.?

So, the below list may help you assess a person.?Whatever this person may be – yourself, your candidate or your client.?This assessment may help you and your client establish whether a certain person is more or less fit for a particular company, team, organisation, or work.?

What also this understanding can give you is this.?We all pretend, some more and some less.?I personally really hate when a person is all smiles with you and then stabs you with a knife in the back.?But my point is this.?We all wear some kind of a “person’s suit” (to quote Dr Lecter’s personal psychoanalyst).?And if we take as a given that each one of us has a bunch of traits I will now list below, then, if we understand what traits we have, we have a better chance of hiding them, if we want to, beneath this person’s suit.

So here you are:

Dissociative identity disorder (DID) (before called multiple personality disorder).?“Voices in my head told me to do it” I think will be the best illustration.?One is not really sure how many people this one is.?Good examples may be Gollum, Red Dragon, and Sammie, Dr Lecter’s neighbour in the clinic (who presumably had cut off his mother’s head and given it on a platter in a church as his donation when the hymn sang “give your best to the Lord”).?The danger of having a person with this trait nearby is you never know who she (he) believes she (he) is and so at some point you might be pushed under a train or something.?People affected by this disorder are usually male, their career choices are usually deception and crime, and they like to manipulate and abuse others.?Many suffered abuse in their childhood.?

In women, this disorder usually has a mild form called “borderline” and usually the worst they suffer from in this state is feeling lonely and unhappy, overspending and overeating, among other, equally harmless, things (shoplifting and alcohol abuse among them).?In any case, even borderline, it is extremely difficult to live or work with such people.

Paranoid – this trait shows itself in people who are overly suspicious of everything and are sure that everyone will want to do them harm.?I am sure you will recognise it when you see it in yourself or others.???

Schizoid – these people stay away from all others and never show any emotion.?To me, I find it hard to see any major differences between paranoid and schizoid, but then I am not a psychoanalyst, of course.?

Histrionic – overly emotional, drawing attention to themselves, but in fact emotionally shallow.

Narcissistic – demanding admiration, under-estimating all others, prone to angry outbreaks if believes that is outshone by someone.?

Avoidant – fearful of criticism, shying from any situation where they can be criticised, criticism humiliates them.?

Dependent – extremely fearful of being alone, they try to never displease people, they will always be pretending to love and approve of everyone around, they like to be submissive.

Obsessive-compulsive – preoccupied with perfection, setting inflexible rules for self and others, keeping order, maintaining control.

I have omitted from this article some traits which I personally find hard to understand and which I have rarely if even seen in people, such as schizotypal personalities.?I also am not mentioning here something that is surrealistic and not belonging to this world, such as aura, or energy giving vs. energy sucking people, yet as we know such things exist and affect us.??As you see from the above list which I repeat is far from complete, far from scientific in any way, the traits above can – in their most part – make you (or someone else) a less attractive personality to others.?They also can be in the way of doing your job.?And at the same time some of the same traits can help you.?Consider for instance jobs where you have to be suspicious (purchasing? audit? security? Maybe not!), or accurate to perfection (accounting? banking? science?) The list could go on….

Of course to do professional assessment of a person, or to pick the best-fitting person’s suit for yourself (which will hide your imperfections) you will need more than the brief overview; in this case all the professional literature about the “disorders” is at your disposal.?

Obviously there are zillions of other “traits” or “disorders.”?I only listed some most prominent?ones.?But there are more!?I will never forget how a woman described her husband to me as “a cock, a pure cock” (meaning hen’s husband, nothing more) when I voiced my concern that in any conversation this man was always “right,” always argued with everyone else and humiliated people if their opinions were different from his own.?

To me personally, to fight my own “disorders,” I always found that being around “normal” people more often helps a lot.?Just as meeting “problematic” ones will suck you in.