Disturbed character

Disturbed character is a personality type applied to people who are unencumbered by qualms of conscience and who passionately pursue their personal goals with indifference to - and often at expense of - the rights and needs of others, and cause all sorts of problems for others and society at large. Character-disordered personalities lack self-restraint when it comes to acting upon their primal urges. They have too little conscience or in extreme case no conscience at all. They typically resist making concessions to societal demands, may have some antisocial tendencies and have diminished capacities for experiencing genuine shame or guilt. Erroneous thinking patterns and attitudes underlie dysfunctional behaviors they display. These problematic behavior patterns may be habitual and automatic, but they also are conscious and deliberate. These distorted characters resist changing their attitudes and core beliefs despite having plenty of insight and awareness. What they need and can benefit from are:

• limits
• confrontation
• and most especially correction.

Cognitive-behavioral therapeutic approaches are the most appropriate in this regard.

When dealing with disturbed characters, it is however also important to craft win-win scenarios so that they do not feel like they have to lose.

Brief Summary of Problematic Patterns of Thinking of Disturbed Characters

• Self-focused/self-centered thinking
• Possessive thinking
• Extreme 'all-or-none' thinking
• Egomaniacal thinking
• Shameless thinking
• Quick and easy thinking
• Guiltless thinking

The aggressive personalities

Among the most character-disordered personalities are covert-aggressive personalities, the more extreme cases of which are:

• the tele-evangelists,
• cult leaders,
• political extremists,
• Sunday night TV "success" peddlers and
• militant social activists

They use the tactics of manipulation in their overall modus operandi and seek to rise to position of substantial power and influence. They gravitate toward and exploit the excellent opportunities for self-advancement and the wielding of considerable power under the guise of service available in such endeavors.

Examples

Science

In his historical lecture at Sorbonne University in 1864, Louis Pasteur denounced the doctrine of spontaneous generation, supported by evolutionists of his day, as error. From that time on, Georges Clemenceau was among those who became Pasteur's fierce opponents, holding his scientific discoveries in disdain. For twenty years the future "Tiger" had been waiting for opportunity to thwart Pasteur and his methods. What was at stake here was the very future of the vaccines. In 1886 Clemenceau joined Pasteur's adversaries, who were trying to discredit his method of antirabies vaccination whenever a death of patient occurred, and who were ready to unleash hostile campaigns at every opportunity. The French press, and the scientific press in particular, facilitated this by their tendency to look for scandal wherever they could, and by the important position they had gained in society since the first half of the nineteenth century. Pasteur however had no doubts about the effectiveness of his vaccine, and he made sure to respond to every one of these hostile articles based on manipulative, aggressive and false accusations, whether in the general press or in specialized journals, defending his findings and his conclusions. Instead of using underhand means, Pasteur showed science in action, personifying the march of progress and at the same time casting his aggressive adversaries, along with other archaic opponents of his method, "into the shadowy realm of the wicked".

See Also

• ABC Theory of Emotion