‘Relationships’ at Psychology, Philosophy and Real Life, Page 21

The experiment is to get in touch with 100 years before and after your birth. Why 100 years? This is the time span that we are fairly directly personally connected to: from our grandparents to our grandchildren, roughly speaking.

Predatory Aggressive Personalities (i.e., psychopaths or sociopaths) consider themselves superior to the rest of the human race. They view individuals with inhibitions rooted in emotional bonding to others as inferior creatures and, therefore, their rightful prey.

The covert-aggressive personality employs a potent one-two punch: the covert-aggressive conceals aggressive intent to ensure you never really see what’s coming; and he or she exploits your normal sensitivities, conscientiousness and other vulnerabilities to manipulate you into succumbing.

To help our server deliver a snappier response time for the thousands of readers of our threads on Dr Carver’s ‘Loser’ article — the most recent of which has attracted over 350 new comments, we’re going to open this new thread and close the previous one. Combined with around 175 questions on personality disorders submitted to the ‘Ask the Psychologist’ service, we’ve now had over 1000 questions and comments from readers affected by this topic.

Sadists love to build themselves up at the expense of others. It makes them feel powerful to wield almost tyrannical influence over those they perceive as weaker or inferior. They derive pleasure from watching others cower, grovel, or struggle in one-down positions.