The Credibility of Authority

There are good clinicians and researchers out there, but academia is a dead weight hindering the progress of psychology.

They have political and social agendas: 'People are inherently good,' they say. 'Just give them a hug, a puppy dog, and a musical instrument and they're all going to be okay.' "

That isn't science. That's like a religious doctrine.

Therefore, no matter what, they just won't know the truth about psychopaths and other narcissists. And they won't let you know it, either.

The new clericalism of academia rivals that of the magisterium. Academics will try to tell you that, though you have lived with a narcissist for 20 years, observing his or her behavior every day, you know nothing about NPD.

That's absurd.

In fact, chances are that, if you have lived or worked with a malignant narcissist for a long time, you know more about NPD than many, if not most, of the so-called "authorities" do.

Why? Because your knowledge is based on facts, established by first-hand observation. Frequently repeated observations. A billion of them. But the so-called "authorities" have no respect for this kind of knowledge. Their inability to appropriately judge its value destroys their own credibility.

What's more, if you are a narcissist, chances are that you know more about NPD than most of the so-called "authorities" do. But they don't respect your knowledge of yourself, either. According to them, narcissists like Sam Vaknin know nothing about NPD? Give me a break. Insofar as he wishes to, Vaknin knows exactly what goes on in his head. And academia's failure to appreciate the true value of such knowledge again destroys its own credibility.

Of course, everyone's credibility must be assessed, but I'm beginning to wonder whether academia has any idea how to estimate credibility. They seem to think it equals the three little letters "P", "h" and "D." As though it is some power bestowed on one like a priestly mantle or surplice.

And where do they get all this superior information that makes them scoff at the experience of us lesser beings? From books. Book learning, almost all of which is pure thought, conjecture, not science. AND and from asking a handful of these pathological liars in treatment questions about themselves.

It ain't smart to pretend that they don't see what's wrong with that.

Since the 1980's they have been nailed for relying on the self-reports of psychopaths and other narcissists - pathological liars by definition - but they refuse to clean up their act.

Animal behaviorists and anthropologists have much more complete and reliable data to base their theories on than psychologists do. They study their subjects in the wild, but psychologists are too lazy to get out of the clinic. (See below.)

Plus, academia is notorious for slavery to groupthink, largely because academics are notoriously intolerant of free thinking. And so, for a long time the psychiatric "authorities" claimed with one voice that homosexuality is a mental illness. When the politically correct wind shifted, the weathervane minds all came about and decided that it is not a mental illness but that smoking cigarettes is.

That's credibility?

Is this credibility?

One issue in the diagnostic assessment bias literature is errors in applying the diagnostic criteria (Rabinowitz & Efron, 1997). In one demonstration of this bias, Morey and Ochoa (1989) asked 291 psychiatrists and psychologists to complete a symptom checklist for a client whom they had diagnosed with a personality disorder. When the checklists were later correlated with the DSM criteria, nearly three of four clinicians had made mistakes in applying the diagnostic criteria. Kappa coefficients of agreement between clinicians' checklists and the DSM criteria varied from 0.09 to .59, indicating a poor-to-modest level of agreement (Babbe, 1998). These results demonstrate the pervasiveness of errors in applying diagnostic criteria.

Errors in applying the DSM criteria were also reported by Davis, Blashfield, and McElroy (1993). They asked 42 psychologists and 17 psychiatrists to read and diagnose case reports containing different combinations of the DSM-III-R criteria for Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD; APA, 1987). They found that 94% of the clinicians made mistakes applying the diagnostic criteria, and nearly one out of four clinicians made a diagnosis of NPD even if fewer than half the DSM criteria were met.

Rubinson, Asnis, Harkavy, and Freidman (1988) found clinicians making more mistakes of omission than of commission in applying the DSM criteria. Researchers sent 113 questionnaires to a random sample of clinicians asking them what criteria they used to make a diagnosis of Major Depression. The 54 questionnaires returned indicated that clinicians' most often erred by failing to use all the diagnostic criteria in their diagnostic decision making.

— Jerry McLaughlin, "Reducing diagnostic bias," 01-07-02, Journal of Mental Health Counseling

In the 1970's a TV movie about a character with Multiple Personality Disorder was a big hit. Guess what happened? There was a dramatic increase in the diagnosis of MPD in the United States. Only in the United States. Is that credibility? Is any of this credibility?

As that article says, this is precisely why health insurance providers won't pay for mental health care, and I don't blame them. No court on the planet would force an insurance company to pay for that.

Confusing psychopathy with antisocial behavior is credibility?

Traditionally, affective and interpersonal traits such as egocentricity, deceit, shallow affect, manipulativeness, selfishness, and lack of empathy, guilt or remorse, have played a central role in the conceptualization and diagnosis of psychopathy (Cleckley; Hare 1993; in press); Widiger and Corbitt). In 1980 this tradition was broken with the publication of DSM-III. Psychopathy- renamed antisocial personality disorder- was now defined by persistent violations of social norms, including lying, stealing, truancy, inconsistent work behavior and traffic arrests.

Yeah, so Lee Harvey Oswald is just a narcissist until the day he assassinates President Kennedy: then he becomes a psychopath: psychopathy (a disease) = assassinating President Kennedy (an act). Absurd.

And, I'm sorry, but the average person knows the difference between your average street criminal and your sick-o, like the serial killer, rapist, child molester, or other psychopath. Why can't the so-called "authorities" tell the difference?

How can we take such "authorities" seriously?

Incredibly, not until 2004 was the first actual population survey conducted by one of the National Institutes of Health, giving us the first LEGITIMATE estimate of the prevalence of personality disorders in the United States.

That's credibility?

What kind of junk science estimates the prevalence of personality disorder in the GENERAL POPULATION without surveying the GENERAL POPULATION? These clowns just used the statistics they gathered from people who showed up in clinics for treatment. No wonder the 2004 survey showed that they were off by about 200%.

It doubled the DSM estimate of 6–9%, estimating that 15% of Americans meet the diagnostic criteria for at least one of seven personality disorders — not counting borderline, schizotypal, and narcissistic disorders.

Since Grant conducted the study among a randomly selected population-based sample, the prevalence rates from her study diverged from those presented in the DSM-IV-TR in some cases.

For instance, according to the DSM-IV-TR, dependent personality disorder is "among the most frequently reported personality disorders encountered in mental health clinics," the study report pointed out. However, Grant's study found it to be the least common in the population.

In addition, the DSM-IV-TR estimates that the prevalence of avoidant personality disorder in the general population is between 0.5 percent and 1 percent, yet Grant found it to be 2.36 percent.

Grant explained that prevalence estimates of various personality disorders in the DSM are based on relatively small, clinical studies of patients who are receiving mental health services on an inpatient or outpatient basis.

"You can run into problems if you rely solely on clinical samples," she said. "If you want to know the true prevalence of a certain disorder, you have to get out of the clinic."

Psychiatric News September 3, 2004
Volume 39 Number 17

Duh! Grant was putting it diplomatically. I won't: Real scientists would never have produced estimates from such shoddy "research" as that which her work corrected. Indeed, no college science major would dare hand in research based on such invalid statistics as that.

You find mediocrity everywhere, but it seems to me that this doesn't even measure up to that. Pyschopaths and other narcissists are predators who go through life hurting other people. It's time academia in this field stopped being so callous about that.

Not that they have no sympathy - but look where it all goes!!! Disgusting. Absolutely disgusting. And that doesn't help their patients any more than it helps their pateints' victims.

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