By Hal Brown, MSW, Retired psychotherapist
Bullies may or may not be literally sick in the medical or psychiatric sense. However, some of them could be diagnosed as what is now called (in the diagnostic manual or DSM) anti-social personality but best understood by the public as being sociopaths even though they only have some of these characteristics:
- Not following social norms, usually shown by constant law-breaking
- Continuous lying for your personal gain
- Impulsive behavior
- High amounts of physical aggression, sometimes getting into fights
- No care for your safety or the safety of others
- Financial or social irresponsibility
- A lack of remorse after physically or emotionally hurting someone
I would broaden these criteria as follows (in red). Ask yourself whether this would change how you assess someone.
- Not following social norms, usually shown by constant law-breaking or defiance of generally accept ed norm of good behavior
- Continuous lying for your personal gain
- Impulsive behavior
- High amounts of physical aggression, sometimes getting into fights or heated arguments
- No care for your safety or the safety of others including making other feel unsafe
- Financial or social irresponsibility the later including in a way someone you'd consider social responsible would act.
- A lack of remorse after physically or emotionally hurting someone (emphasis on causing emotional distress)
Some bullies, Donald Trump being an exemplar, can reasonably be described as not only meeting the criteria for being a malignant narcissistic personalty (also not an "official" diagnosis) but also having sadistic personality disorder.
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| A sadistic tooth-drawer using a cord to extract a tooth from an angonized patient. Pen drawing after J. Collier, 1773. Iconographic Collections Keywords: John Collie CC by 4.0 |
This diagnosis was in the 1987 diagnostic manual but removed in subsequent editions because the psychiatrists writing the manual thought it would be used as a defense in criminal trials. Consider the traits listed for this disorder:
According to the DSM-III-R diagnostic criteria Sadistic personality disorder is defined by a pervasive pattern of sadistic and cruel behavior that begins in early adulthood. It was defined by four of the following.
- Has used physical cruelty or violence for the purpose of establishing dominance in a relationship (not merely to achieve some noninterpersonal goal, such as striking someone in order to rob him/her).
- Humiliates or demeans people in the presence of others.
- Has treated or disciplined someone under his/her control unusually harshly.
- Is amused by, or takes pleasure in, the psychological or physical suffering of others (including animals).
- Has lied for the purpose of harming or inflicting pain on others (not merely to achieve some other goal).
- Gets other people to do what he/she wants by frightening them (through intimidation or even terror).
- Restricts the autonomy of people with whom he or she has a close relationship, e.g., will not let spouse leave the house unaccompanied or permit teenage daughter to attend social functions.
- Is fascinated by violence, weapons, injury, or torture.
Theodore Millon, a psychogist, broke down the types of sadistic disorder:
| Subtype | Description | Personality traits |
|---|---|---|
| Spineless sadism | Including avoidant features | Insecure, bogus, and cowardly; venomous dominance and cruelty is counterphobic; weakness counteracted by group support; public swaggering; selects powerless scapegoats. |
| Tyrannical sadism | Including negativistic features | Relishes menacing and brutalizing others, forcing them to cower and submit; verbally cutting and scathing, accusatory and destructive; intentionally surly, abusive, inhumane, unmerciful. |
| Enforcing sadism | Including compulsive features | Hostility sublimated in the "public interest," cops, "bossy" supervisors, deans, judges; possesses the "right" to be pitiless, merciless, coarse, and barbarous; task is to control and punish, to search out rule breakers. |
| Explosive sadism | Including borderlinefeatures | Unpredictably precipitous outbursts and fury; uncontrollable rage and fearsome attacks; feelings of humiliation are pent-up and discharged; subsequently contrite. |
It must be noted that people can have more than one psychiatric diagnosis and that being a sadist can be part of another disorder, for example alcoholism. One can, but not necessarily, need to meet the criteria for narcissistic personality disorder to be a sadist.
Everyone understands that a bully is one who is habitually cruel, insulting, or threatening to others who are weaker, smaller, or in some way vulnerable.
Bullies don't always target specific people or groups who are weaker, smaller, or vulnerable. Some just try to bully everyone any figure their aggression will be so broad it will work to intimidate some while others will be able to resist it or fight back.
In some ways it's a race to the top of the list for who is the biggest bully in the GOP. Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis (see
vie for the title, but there are runner-ups like, among politicians, Jim Jordan and Marjorie Taylor Greene. Among celebrities pretending to be pundits Tucker Carlson beats everyone else. They compete for the Ms/Mr. Non-congeniality award.
Not everyone can pull off being a bully. Someone can try and be so bad at it people they attempt to bully don't take them seriously. They may not have the demeanor to elicit fear in those they want to victimize. However, if they have the power to hurt them, for example a work boss, even if they come across as meek, they can be effective bullies.
There are several benefits to being a successful bully. One is that if a person is a sadist they get pleasure from making people suffer. Another is that it helps them achieve their goals. From a personality perspective because many, perhaps most, of these bullies harbor feelings of insecurity, in some cases because they were bullied in childhood, becoming a bully protects them from experiencing these feelings.
Hopefully it is obvious that a person doesn't have to be a MAGA Republican to be a sadistic bully. I am sure there are liberal Democrats who meet the criteria.
I've read that Katie Porter, who I admire, has been called a bad boss who intimidates her staff, and that Hillary Clinton did the same. The Democrat who was known notoriously to be a bully is LBJ.
I think we have to look at being a perfectionist who is intolerant with those who don't meet high performance expectations but don't take any pleasure in making underlings uncomfortable and compare them with those who relish making them squirm.
I am hard pressed to think of any Democrats in the public eye who come close to meeting the actual criteria for being sadist personalities.
1 comment:
Hal, let's add a wrinkle to your symptoms: With "high amounts of physical aggression, sometimes getting into fights or heated arguments"
Let us add in, deliberately provoking to encourage the victim to respond or retort and initiate a conflict; taunting, goading, jeering, hurling brickbats, specifically and generally combining other adversarial behavior qualities so as to assure a conflict will arise.
I know that's a lot of words. However, these a-holes are best described by a lot of pejorative words. I cannot post anywhere else, but what I personally know about bullies, and what I know about being the victim of one once, is that you must physically stand up to them, you must initiate the assault, you must wait until the level of hurt is overwhelming, and then, you must pummel them - physically.
They only understand physical violence, they only understand when you hit, kick and punch. They only understand tooth and claw and nail and law of the jungle, because they are incapable of use of their higher functions for anything that doesn't get them what they want.
What it requires of all of us - in the level of restraint we must exhibit, in the orderliness we must keep trying to manifest, in the degree of hardship we all personally must go through to endure these very damaged and dangerous persons,
It is a call for being superhuman. It is a call for us all to endure their trauma. It is a call for us to gather together and appropriately deposit these folks in the giant dustbin of history, in a rather dark and unpleasant, sticky sort of end for it all.
It is all about belling the cat. None of us mice want to get after that, it simply is too unsafe, because of the jeopardy we place ourselves in.
All of your other additives are spot on.
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