The Phantom Psychopath

In my work with couples and families as well as my work with institutions and corporations I have seen a process that looks like there is one person highly committed to the Sociopathic Style operating in the system. As I have interviewed each person in the system I have been unable to find the psychopath.

When this happens it takes me back to my early work as a relationship therapist. I remember talking with one of my supervisors about a case. I told him that when I met with the wife it was very clear to me that the husband was very disturbed and needed therapy. When I met with the husband it was very clear to me that the wife was very disturbed and needed therapy. As I put it to my supervisor, “When I talk to him it is clear that she is crazy and when I talk to her it is clear that he is crazy. I don’t get it because they both seem sane to me.” My supervisor’s response to me was, “So, how do you understand this?”

I discovered that the ways he was stimulating her would create a “crazy” response from her and the ways that she was stimulating him would create a “crazy” response from him. Neither was in and of themselves “crazy”, but they were “crazy” in their interactions with each other.

I also began to realize that any closed human system has a naturally entropic spiraling toward craziness. This is why sexual abuse has to be kept secret. If it were revealed outside the closed human system it would be forced to stop. This is why religious cults require secrecy and isolation. This is why the alcoholic is able to continue the addiction inside the family system. No one within the closed system will expose the “elephant in the room”. It is the “Emperor Without Clothes” syndrome. The craziness of the system cannot be maintained in the face of exposure to others outside the system.

Through the dynamics of the Sociopathic Style™ I am able to explain the dynamics of this process and how to change the dynamics to change the process.

I will be developing a number of articles to explain this phenomenon as well as tools to prevent its happening.

I believe there develops in human systems a “Phantom Psychopath” that is neither individual in a couple or any one person in the system and yet is just as destructive and lethal as a real individual, if not even more powerful and destructive. This is the stuff out of which great corporations like Enron fall and into which the Abu Ghraib debacle developed. It is out of this that the Roman Empire fell and our culture will as well unless we are aware of the development of the “Phantom Psychopath”, the dynamics of the “Phantom Psychopath”, and the tools to de-power the “Phantom Psychopath”.

Dr. John L. McCormick; May 15, 2005

Back to Top