The term character disturbance describes a continuum of disturbed personality types. Psychopathy, or sociopathy, is the severest form of personality disorder at one extreme end of the range. Not everyone with a character disturbance is a psychopath.

People with aggressive personality styles are frequently already operating in an aggressive mode long before they ever become angry. For them, brandishing anger is more of an intimidation tactic than a genuine expression of emotion — and that’s why many don’t respond particularly well to traditional anger management interventions.

Gaslighting is a sophisticated manipulation tactic which certain types of personalities use to create doubt in the minds of others. Here’s how it works and what to watch out for.

When a domineering and aggressive personality is confronted with “No” there’s a great risk of intensified verbal and physical intimidation and abuse. Before you decide to move out from under a controller’s thumb, be sure to have a safe plan and a solid support system in place.

Some of the longstanding and commonly accepted explanations we’ve been given about human nature are simply wrong. Worse, believing them leaves us vulnerable — both individually and as a society — to the manipulations of predators among us. And there are predators among us. They are not “sick.” They are just disturbingly different and unfathomably dangerous.

True psychopaths are neither as common nor as easy to identify as the popular media would have you believe. But many do go unnoticed or are totally misperceived. Avoid victimization by those devoid of empathy, remorse, and conscience by understanding more about this personality type.

For better or worse — no, actually for better and worse — psychology has developed a huge number of labels for classifying and describing human behavior. It’s up to all of us to make sure these labels are used constructively.