Читать книгу A Guide to the Scientific Career - Группа авторов - Страница 149

George K. Simon

Character Development, Forensic, and Clinical Psychology, Little Rock, AR, USA

For several years I was both a consulting and supervising psychologist to a private company managing a women's correctional facility in a relatively remote part of the state. One day, the nursing supervisor asked me to check out a situation in which an inmate had secured two prescriptions from a consulting psychiatrist for medicines that could easily be abused. I arrived at the inmate's housing unit just as correctional officers were following up on a tip that the inmate in question might have recently sold Valium and Trazodone to another inmate, who, when she did not pay as agreed for the drugs, was viciously assaulted. It appeared the inmate who was earlier prescribed the medications “cheeked” them deftly before leaving the clinic and attempted to make the sale very shortly after returning to her housing pod. She also was overheard bragging about how easy it was to “score” the drugs she obtained and was advising other inmates on strategies they might use to do the same. Because I had substantial experience working with disturbed and disordered characters, and because the consulting psychiatrist in question was a private practitioner with little experience with such a population, the nursing supervisor asked if I might facilitate a discussion with him about the incident and emphasize the need for greater caution when prescribing certain medications. The facility was desperate for medical personnel, and the physician (whom I'll call “Dr. James”) was one of only a small handful both available and willing to meet the need. So, after carefully reviewing the inmate's chart and gathering as much information as I could about her background, I agreed to visit with Dr. James.

I remember ever so vividly the sincere yet surprising statement Dr. James made to me when I asked him if he'd considered the possibility that the person he interviewed earlier might have misrepresented her symptomatology, harbored hidden agendas, or perhaps even successfully feigned pathology for untoward purposes. He looked me straight in the eye and without flinching asked: “Why would she lie?” I was really taken aback. This woman's character pathology was such that you could write an entire book on all the reasons she might lie at any given moment, including the possibility of lying purely for “sport” and even when the truth would do just as well. But the nature of Dr. James's practice and experience didn't really prepare him for dealing with someone with this level of character disturbance, so for several days thereafter, over coffee and donuts, we had a collegial discussion on personality and character disturbances, and especially, the art of manipulation.

It was only five years prior to this incident that my first book In Sheep's Clothing: Understanding and Dealing with Manipulative People had been published. I wrote the book for two reasons: First, character pathology was rapidly replacing “neurosis” as the dominant psychological problem coming to the attention of mental health professionals; and second, I wanted to provide both professionals and lay persons a relatively comprehensive yet straightforward and easily digestible framework for understanding and dealing with some of the more troubling personality types among us. To avoid being taken advantage of, you have to be able to rudimentarily assess the character of a person and to know how to spot and appropriately respond to the most common tactics of manipulation and responsibility‐resistance that impaired characters use to gain advantage over others. So, in the book, I gave folks some practical ways to determine what kind of person they might be dealing with and outlined the most common tactics of manipulation, responsibility‐avoidance, and impression management, as well as the problematic thinking patterns and attitudes that frequently predispose and accompany these behaviors.

These days, it's pretty safe to assume that everyone has at least some degree of character pathology (and the use of term character here is not meant to be synonymous with personality – character being that aspect of personality that reflects a person's moral fiber). As I emphasize time and again in my book Character Disturbance: The Phenomenon of Our Age, character pathology exists along a spectrum or continuum, with the malignantly narcissistic, highly manipulative, and empathy‐devoid predators we sometimes call psychopaths or sociopaths at an extreme end. Fortunately, such folks are relatively uncommon. But there are many other character‐impaired folks out there, and some are quite skilled in the art of manipulation and responsibility‐evasion.

In your professional career, you won't just find manipulators or other disturbed characters among your patients. Character disturbance of some type or degree is simply too prevalent to avoid encountering it no matter what setting you work in. You may find yourself dealing with manipulative or otherwise character impaired supervisors, facility administrators, pharmaceutical company representatives, and colleagues. And even if you're planning a strictly academic career, you're likely to find the politics of the “publish or perish” and turf‐sensitive environment dominated by unspoken “angles” and hidden agendas of one type or another. You're also likely to encounter subtle undermining, backstabbing, and various other forms of covertly aggressive behavior as your associates jockey for power, positions of influence, and territory.

One of my dearest friends and mentors had an experience I'll never forget while we were working at the same hospital. My friend was of somewhat advanced age, but he brought with him not only years of seasoned experience but also a most stellar reputation. His presence at the hospital as the primary attending psychiatrist on one of the behavioral health units was probably the biggest single reasons its beds stayed full and it managed to recruit and keep a stellar support staff. Both the administrator of the hospital and a group of other physicians wanted to “phase out” my friend's influence and presence. Theirs was primarily a teaching hospital, and not only that, one increasingly invested in building a name for itself in two areas of psychiatric research. Although my friend had done a bit of research as a younger man, running subjects and publishing was not his main interest. He was at heart a clinician and not a researcher, and was fast becoming a poor fit for an organization seeking to recruit and groom scientist‐practitioners. But the powers that be didn't want to get rid of my friend too soon, because they knew what it would cost them in the way of goodwill and bed count. And they didn't want to state their intentions openly to him because they feared he might quit and possibly even sign on with a competing entity. So, they had a series of meetings with my friend in which they laid out plans for him to “free up” some of his precious time to do much more of the hands‐on work that he loved and less training (which for me was a very big loss because of how much more his years of experience and wisdom brought to the table as opposed to solely reviewing dry research findings). In the end, they “used” him well, and when they no longer had need for him, they unceremoniously let him go. And as is so often the case, the manipulation involved was in all the little things weren't said or weren't done. The real agenda was clear from the start, but no one wanted my friend to know the truth – until, that is, they were ready for it to be known.