Manipulators Among Us

Holy Water Salt has posted a checklist on her blog, a list of the prime characteristics of [subcriminal] psychopaths as seen through French eyes.

It's drawn from the book "Les Manipulateurs Sont Parmi Nous" [The Manipulators Are Among Us] by Isabelle Nazare Aga.

Having read through this list, I think it's likely to be extremely useful for identifying workplace abusers [all the way up to psychopathic "Snakes in Suits"], in particular.

I'd want to expand item 22, though, to explicitly add:

Never admits errors, no matter how egregious and how widely recognized the errors may be, and never apologizes for problems created by the errors or their refusal to admit to them.

[In my experience, that phony-infallibility-whatever-the-cost is one of the largest red flags that workplace abusers exhibit.]

And item 10, the tendency to divide and conquer, is characteristic not only of workplace abusers and subcriminal psychopaths, but also of borderline personality disorder - a topic I've neglected here, about which much more needs to be said. Stay tuned.

I've requested permission from HWS to reproduce the list in this post; meanwhile, you can find it on her blog here.