Dr Karen Mitchell- Persistent Predatory Personalities- new interview.

Jones

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The Mind Matters crew did an interview with Dr Mitchell in August last year and that can be found here:

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Post in thread 'New Show: MindMatters (RIP Truth Perspective)'

We had an opportunity to speak with the terrific Dr. Karen Mitchell, whose research into psychopathy, and the very field itself, seems to be as broad and as deep as anyone else's out there. Probably more so given the new areas she shines a light on. In any case, enjoy the interview!

MindMatters: Predators in High Places with Dr. Karen Mitchell​


Today on MindMatters, Dr. Karen Mitchell, founder and CEO of the Kalmor Institute, shares insights from her pioneering PhD research on the "persistent predatory personality." Unlike previous studies that relied...
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There's a new interview with her conducted by Mark Vincente who was the director of the film What the BLEEP do we know? After that movie and from his bio:

Deeply moved by the unprecedented violence, taking place in Mexico, Mark released ‘Encender el Corazon’, a film about the rampant kidnapping epidemic in Mexico and a small communities efforts to stand up to the Cartels. It was bittersweet victory; while the film touched many people deeply, it was by association supporting the criminal enterprise NXIVM. Mark made the difficult decision to pull the film from distribution and, with a small band of whistleblowers, exposed their criminal behavior, resulting in multiple arrests and prosecutions.

This journey is captured in the 9 part HBO Documentary Series “THE VOW”. He has since developed a keen and passionate interest in exposing the coercive and duplicitous environments of high-control groups.
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Vincente now has an interest in studying and exposing cults and has two film projects underway - Empathy not included: the narcissism epidemic and Coercion: invisible chains, the slow motion bullet, trauma bonding and coercive control.

1hr 17mins.

While there are some points of similarity with Mitchells Mind Matters interview, this interview covers some new ground on the danger of empathy towards DP's and considerations for reporting workplace harms.

Have attached a copy of Dr Mitchells thesis Pychopaths, Narcissists, Machiavellians, Toxic Leaders, Coercive Controllers: Subsets of one overarching 'Dark' Personalty type? that is also discussed and summarized on the Ponerology substack.
 

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What has saved me in the past from these types and what will prevent getting too involved with these types in the future is a mix of proper self worth, staying close to reality and focusing on achieving success and goals in society.

I say this because these types do a number of things. The chief things I recognize are:

1) they take advantage of those with low self worth/confidence

2) they create a fantasy not based in reality - if they give you what you want it’s their way and they create a fantasy structure. It is your choice to engage

3) They give you a raw deal. It is not an “even” exchange their requests their wants and their end game puts you in a lower losing position they will attempt to lower your morals.

Ultimately a big part of it is they want to “get over” or “one up” you thus those with normal self worth and confidence feel the unevenness of their energy, those close to reality see that these types are trying to construct/manipulate what is and if you are striving to achieve meet goals and be successful in reality you with your morals intact you will recognize that these types make this harder for you…

It is a fight for your soul, your consciousness, your spirit and your life on different levels. Every human is tested during their life. These types are part of the test.

Best of luck and remember it’s ok to disengage, be alone for sometime or start over. Your soul/spirit/consciousness is most important don’t ever sacrifice it for another man/women/human…In time God/The system can undo what humans do here on this Earth.

Gain knowledge without fear and don’t move too fast gain experience while contemplating the experience that’s where the wisdom comes in and those with high wisdom aren’t bothered by these types. God bless
 
Dr Mitchell claims that there are three types of people in the world - predators, prey and normal people. In her thesis she gives a list of 20 attributes and 25 tactics of her overarching dark personality type that she calls the persistent predatory personality. I thought about constructing a list of attributes of those that end up being prey for the PPP. They are probably signs that the PPP is looking for in a potential target or things that make an individual vulnerable to them.

In the animal kingdom, the phenomenon or prey testing or prey assessment has been observed. The objective of prey assessment has a number of aims. Ensuring the energetic economy of the hunt and capture means that if the hunt fails, the predator has not wasted too many resources. Also the hunt may be risky and prey assessment to reduce risk also reduces the possibility of injury to the predator. In other words, predators test for vulnerabilities to weigh up the costs and benefits of the hunt.

Lions and wolves might engage in a short flush and pursuit to test the prey for vulnerabilities and weaknesses that can be exploited and if not apparent, may call off the hunt for easier prey. Hyena's are also know to engage in feints to test prey. It is apparent that human predators might start with small boundary violations to see how their target responds, but their initial engagements might include testing for the following.

Anyways, here's a list that I've come up with so far.

20. Ignorance - of both the existence of the PPP and ones own vulnerabilities to them.
19. Apathy
18. Developmental wounding - retuning of the ANS so that signals of safety and danger might be neuroceptively confused - also relates to point 7.
17. Self blindness.
16. Need for acceptance or validation.
15. Illness Physical or mental frailty—sickness, exhaustion, or chronic conditions marking weakness.
14. Spiritual by-passing.
13. Right hemisphere - left hemisphere communication gap. Pathocracies operate on LH view of the world and may perhaps hack the hemispheric split in the brain. Right hemisphere may have some awareness, but has no language to communicate what it's picking up on.
12. Inability to grasp PPP sadistic motives, includes pity and the rigid belief that everyone has some good in them.
11. People pleasing.
10. Chronic self doubt.
9. Over-trusting nature.
8. Tendency to isolate - no network. To easily sharing info about distance or split from support network indicating to a predator that the prey target might be easily isolated.
7. Poor threat detection - polyvagal neuroception.
6. Hypersensitivity to guilt or shame.
5. Low self sufficiency or co-dependency.
4. Rigid attachment to and expression of positive traits like empathy, kindness, compassion, conscience and conscientiousness applied in a black and white fashion. The awareness of the possibility of a PPP in the environment might modify when these traits are expressed.
3. Excessive need for approval
2. Weak or porous boundaries.
1. High emotional reactivity.

Stoicism seems like it might be the best defence from a PPP unless communicating with a trusted network and I wonder if stoic practices also might serve as camouflage. It also occurs that many of the main characters in the Romantic reading project are stoics.
 
I follow her on X and listened to the Mind Matters interview. Her work is very valuable and I enjoy reading her posts (don't know if enjoy is the best word, they aren't pleasant, but they're insightful).

I haven't read her thesis yet, so what I'm going to say comes from a place of not having seen the details of her work. I appreciate her effort to unify the understanding on this subject and to bring awareness to it. One BIG issue is always the fact that un the field of psychology, there aren't many people working on this or who understand this well-enough. And a lot of therapists end up with clients who are victims of these types but because they don't know, they can't help much. So, if people in the the psychology field don't know, the lack of awareness in any other field becomes a bigger issue: schools, workplace, government, etc. We know that here.

Having said that, one thought that comes to mind is that even though there's a huge benefit in determining an umbrella like the Persistent Predatory Personality for the really evil ones - the ones who cause more damage to people and society in general -, there's is a variety of people who won't fit that umbrella but can be harmful as well, and I think they are mostly the ones that most people encounter in their regular lives. Like people who might not act with wilful malevolence but are too self-centred/narcissistic, lack self-awareness and therefore harm people around them in ways that are more subtle. I think Dr. Ramani Durvasula does a good work covering these types, although I also don't agree with her in all of her views.

Perhaps this is off-topic because Dr. Mitchell's work is about a specific type of malevolent people, but I just thought that part of the difficulty in unifying this topic is that there are people who engage in narcissistic/criminal behavior who might not be completely malevolent but are harmful nonetheless and that can create confusion as to whether you treat them as the same or not. My guess is that these are very different phenomena which Dr. Mitchel alluded to as well in a post:


Do you know what the difference is between a psychopath and a sociopath?

This is an important distinction so I repost this regularly….

My PhD data indicates that narcissists, psychopaths and Machiavellians are all subsets of one overarching dark personality type - which I refer to as Persistent Predatory Personality (PPP).

This personality type (including psychopaths) is supremely self focused, manipulative, sadistic, cruel, and profoundly dishonest, although they often seem upstanding and normal.

MRI imaging work shows PPP, subsuming psychopathy, Machiavellianism and narcissism, have prefrontal cortex, and amygdala brain anomalies. They are wired to be like this.

Some people engage in the same behaviours as Persistent Predatory Personalities however, their motivation is not the same.

Their behaviours are a consequence of abuse, childhood trauma, etc. These people are often referred to as sociopaths.

They are different to PPP in key ways.

Over time several terms have been developed to distinguish between the 2 groups of people exhibiting similar behaviours with a different motivation…
Psychopath v sociopath, malignant narcissist v vulnerable narcissist, type A psychopath v type B psychopath and so on.

My data indicates there is just one over-arching dark personality type which is deeply malevolently motivated - PPP (including psychopaths), and another kind of person who exhibits the same behaviours but do not have the same brain anomalies.

The second group of people experience shame and are often willing to seek support. With work they may become more effective in their functioning.

Some high profile psychopaths claim to be sociopaths as this is seen to be more palatable.
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So, I'm sorry if this post just creates more confusion, but it is just a thought I have when I read Dr. Mitchell's work. As I said, covering this other type seems important as well as it seems to be something that people encounter more in their regular lives and sometimes their experience may be dismissed because they aren't dealing with the truly evil ones, so to speak.
 
I also follow Karen Mitchell on X, but was sad to read her post that she wishes to take a break from social media as it is too hard. It seems that they are going after her:

 
Thanks @Jones for posting the video. I just finished watching it and I love how Karen has done her independent research on this topic. I wish they were able to stay on topic a bit more, instead of jumping around, but I guess that can't be avoided in this sort of interview.

I found her statement :

...Some of the academics (from) what my research says, is that some of these academics are themselves dark personalities, and they're actively throwing us off the scent
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This seems like an example of 4D STS utilising their human minions to muddy the waters, and hide the truth about them.

I'm going to have a look at her thesis now.
 
Yas said:
I haven't read her thesis yet, so what I'm going to say comes from a place of not having seen the details of her work. I appreciate her effort to unify the understanding on this subject and to bring awareness to it. One BIG issue is always the fact that un the field of psychology, there aren't many people working on this or who understand this well-enough. And a lot of therapists end up with clients who are victims of these types but because they don't know, they can't help much. So, if people in the the psychology field don't know, the lack of awareness in any other field becomes a bigger issue: schools, workplace, government, etc. We know that here.
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I think part of the reason that she was able to pull the thesis together was that she wasn't a psychologist. I don't think she would have survived if she'd tried to do that from within the profession. She's in corporate and corporate culture change with BAppSc, GradDipBus, MCom (Master of Commerce) and PhD. Coming at the subject of dark personalities from that angle means that she could appeal to a business desire of wanting to improve the bottom line by improving work place focus, cohesiveness, morale and productivity by getting rid of the conscienceless sadistic types from the organisation. The business angle carries a lot of weight in competitive markets.

But now that the information is out, it's good that some psychologist will be able to take it on board for the benefit of their clients.

Yas said:
Perhaps this is off-topic because Dr. Mitchell's work is about a specific type of malevolent people, but I just thought that part of the difficulty in unifying this topic is that there are people who engage in narcissistic/criminal behavior who might not be completely malevolent but are harmful nonetheless and that can create confusion as to whether you treat them as the same or not. My guess is that these are very different phenomena which Dr. Mitchel alluded to as well in a post:
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I don't think it's off topic. I think that there is a danger that the true dark personality will just use this nuance to claim trauma - I mean they can and do already so it's not a new thing. The unaware are still likely to be hooked by that. Mitchell herself might get caught on that and it seems that she may have - I think she has perceived danger where there was safety in some of her recent responses, and maybe even the opposite too. It seems that she was super hair triggered in some cases. The difference being though that the traumatised who realise the harm of their actions can have conscience and want to limit the harm to their friends, families, work colleagues and society in general. Getting to that point might take some time and practice. Next if Porges, Mate and Levine are taken into account with the general idea that trauma isn't what happens to you, it's what happens inside of you, we can surmise that some people can experience traumatic events, but that the events have minimal internal impact. That might be as far as they can go within their fields to give a nod to the idea that DP's don't experience traumatic events in the same way because they are made differently.
 
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