What is the difference between BPD and psychopathy?

This question was recently asked on Quora with the following introduction:

I came across an article on Huffington post named "10 signs your man is a psychopath" and all the symptoms listed are almost identical to those of describing BPDs.. I was quite sure my ex-husband was a BPD, but after reading the article, I am not sure. So what's the difference that would help me understanding who exactly was he?

The Huffington post article by Kiri Blakely listed the following indicators that a person could be a psychopath.

1.      Flattery like you've never heard before.

2.      He is just like you. Psychopaths will try to convince you that you and he are soul mates using lies in the process.

3.      Pity plays including fake illnesses and injuries to themselves and others.

4.      Manipulative handling of relationships such as long silent treatments, introduction of third parties, sudden discarding followed by an about face and begin bombarding you with pleas to stay together.

5.      Great sex.

One of the great strengths of the Humm-Wadsworth is that is perhaps the only profiling system that identifies psychopaths who are people who have a high Hustler component.  I have blogged about Hustlers extensively and the characteristics listed above of lying flattery and faking, manipulative relationships and focus on sex are all characteristics of Hustlers.  

Borderline Personality Disorder or BPD is completely different.  Originally defined as a someone being on the border between psychosis and neurosis it is now defined by someone with very erratic behaviour and lacking self-control.  Some characteristics are:

1.      Significant mood swings triggered by minor comments. 

2.      Impulsive spending, sex, or drinking

3.      Turn up to emergency departments with self cutting.

4.      Distressing fears of abandonment.

5.      Confrontation behaviour for medical and mental health staff.

6.      Shy, no friends at school.

7.      Hate themselves and believe they are evil.

The Humm-Wadsworth would describe such people as having a very low Normal Component.  The good thing about BPD is that it is treatable.  Not only is the Normal the one component that increases with age, you can also grow it with mindfulness training.

Now of course you can a person with very high Hustler and very low Normal.  Depending on their upbringing they may either become criminals or investment bankers.  On the other hand if the person is narcissistic, as most Hustlers are, it is difficult to see them exhibiting much of the behaviour of BPD.  They like themselves too much, see themselves as winners to whom the normal rules do not apply and spend time preening themselves.

Should you trust your first impression?

I was recently sent a YouTube video link titled Should You Trust Your First Impression?  The video has two messages:

1)      A bad first impression is difficult to overcome.  People tend to stick with the negative bias about someone despite subsequent attempts at remedial action.

2)      However if someone is perceived as being exceptionally competent in area (say a goal scoring machine like Ronaldo) then this person is perceived as being competent in other areas.  People then see a positive aura about the person and bad actions tend to be overlooked.  This is otherwise known as the 'halo' effect.

In other words our initial analysis of people is easily biased.

One of the key steps in lifting your emotional intelligence is developing empathy.  My Chinese partner, Michael Chen of Zest Learning , recently was in Sydney on holiday with his family.  He has now given a number of my Emotional Intelligence courses in Selling and Management to a number of multinational companies in China.  He tells me that the easily the most popular part of course is the development of empathy using the TOPDOG acronym.  TOPDOG stands for Talk-Organisation-Position-Dress-Office-Gambit and you can read about how it works in these two blogs:

Emotional Intelligence - Stage 3 Social Awareness  (Part 1)

Emotional Intelligence - Stage 3 Social Awareness  (Part 2)

So now a salesperson who is making first call can use the TOPDOG technique to work out what are the two or three dominant core emotional drives of a prospect and dramatically increase the chances of selling success.  However the question then arises is whether the salesperson’s guesses are correct?  Michael has worked out a cunning technique to answer this question.

It is possible to do on my website a simple quiz to establish your dominant components.  It takes less than five minutes and consists choosing between 21 pairs – if you want to do the quiz go here. 

What Michael has done is translate the quiz into a Humm mobile phone app.  Once the salesperson has guessed what he thinks are the core components of a prospect he then hands the prospect a mobile phone containing the app and asks the prospect to complete the quiz.  Within seconds the app comes back with the prospect’s dominant component components according to his or her subjective answers.  It is not perfect but it does give immediate feed back to the salesperson whether is guess is right and if not what may be the other components in the prospect’s personality.

According to Michael the TOPDOG/Humm Mobile Phone App is a most powerful tool for teaching someone empathy and overcoming what would otherwise be biased first impressions.

Neuroscience and Emotional Intelligence: The Seat of the Normal

I am the first to admit that up till now I have considered the emphasis placed by Emotional Intelligence experts on the link to neuroscience to be exaggerated.  I wrote a blog about it in June 2013 “Emotional intelligence is a huge part of leadership, but how should we measure it?” Also late last year in November 2014 I wrote a blog “Emotional Intelligence Myth#1: The Amygdala Hijack.”

However a recent article “The Trip Treatment” in the 9 February 2015 edition of The New Yorker, has caused me to modify my position.  The article is about the recent rise of psychedelic drugs in the treatment of illnesses such as cancer, mainly as palliative measures. What really interested me was work being done by Robin Cathart-Harris in London where he and his team have been injecting volunteers with psilocybin and LSD and then using a variety of scanning tools to observe what happens in their brain.

It turns out the psychedelic drugs did not work by exciting the brain.  In fact it was the complete opposite!! In 2001 a paper by Marcus Raichle first described the “default-mode” network.  The default-mode network comprises a centrally located hub of brain activity the links parts of the cerebral network to older parts of the brain such as the limbic system and hippocampus.  The default-mode network has been described by Cathart-Harris as the “brain’s orchestra conductor”.  It lights up when we are day dreaming or engaged in higher-level “meta-cognitive” processes as self-reflection, memory time travel, or thinking about other people’s thinking.  It has an inhibitory effect of lower level parts of the brain that deal with emotion. 

What happens that when a volunteer takes a psychedelic drug the brain scans show the default-mode network shutting down and according to the volunteer it feel like their ego is dissolving.  A similar result has been demonstrated when the brain scans of experienced meditator are compared to those of novices.  Experienced meditators can suspend the working of the default-mode network and this allows other brain regions to be let off the leash and so generate a mystical experience.  Regions of the brain that do not normally talk to each other do so engaging in what is known as “cross-talk” which then can lead to mind blowing effects such as vivid hallucinations.

To a Humm-Wadsworth practitioner the default-mode network is neuro-physical counterpart of The Normal Component.  In the original 1934 paper Humm and Wadsworth defined the Normal as primarily a control mechanism providing rational balance and temperamental equilibrium.  It is essentially a brake which causes restraint and persons with a very high Normal will become indiscriminate conservatives. 

While I consider the other six Humm components to be genetically based, I am now ready to concede that the neuroscience has discovered the seat of the Normal.