The Myth Of The Female Psychopath

Why research has gone off in the completely wrong direction...

Disclaimer. This article is not about all females. It is about the females that employ a specific strategy to elevate themselves over those that they wish to tear down and remove from the playing field. It is referring to the “mean girls” of the world.

Recently I watched a video of Jordan Peterson speaking about antisocial traits in females, and what he said reminded me of an article that I was asked about a few years ago.

For some reason, there is this idea that psychopathy in females manifests in female behavior. This is something that seems to be a prevalent thought in research and psychological circles, and I have to say, it’s pretty funny. Let’s look at what this idea looks like first.

How to Identify a Female Psychopath

Is there a female psychopath lurking in your life?

Be impressed people. This article was written by someone with a Ph.D., so you know it should be well researched, with solid evidence.

Let’s look at the first article, shall we? That’s where the initial premise for psychopath spotting was laid out, so it is best to give it a cursory read.

People high in Machiavellianism are duplicitous, cunning, and manipulative. They place a higher priority than most on power, money, and winning.

Seems to be a fundamental issue with understanding psychopathic priorities. Power, money, or winning really mean nothing. The priority rests with none of these things, the priority rests with the self. Psychopaths are entirely self-focused, and that means that what that person is drawn to personally will be what their focus is on.

There is likely a psychopath, or many for that matter that are focused on those things, but assuming that it is because of the psychopathy is a misstep. Those goals are important to that person. What I enjoy has nothing to do with those things. I would guess that with a psychopath that is a CEO of a company he or she would have been unlikely to share my interest in ballet. That was my interest. Do I even need to mention that she decided to use Amy from Gone Girl as her example of a psychopath? Only a neurotypical would think that she is remotely psychopathic. She was an emotional illogical wreck, but whatever neurotypicals… you do you.

The next paragraph focuses on lack of empathy. Yup, psychopaths lack empathy. See how easy that is? It didn’t take an entire paragraph and another comparison to Amy from Gone Girl to demonstrate it. (Seeing an unhealthy fascination with Amy from Gone Girl here Dr. Burkley. Just sayin’. Sort of seems like an obsession. If I wasn’t a psychopath, I would be concerned for you…or maybe your husband).

Next. Narcissism. She spends a great deal of time explaining narcissism, conflating narcissism, and NPD which in and of itself is something that someone that is accurately educated in these terms would not do, but then also doesn’t do the work to tie narcissism and psychopathy together. There is not one mention of psychopathy in that entire paragraph. It’s on the page twenty-eight times, but not once there. She also states that narcissists have;

“unstable self-esteem.”

This is true, of narcissistic personality disorder. It is certainly not true of psychopaths. The overarching consensus is that psychopaths have unassailable self-esteem as well as not caring what people think of them. You cannot have such and;

“unstable self-esteem.”

Pick a lane doc. All right, now that we have established that she has some weird fascination with movie characters, and that she isn’t consistent in her own writing and doesn’t establish arguments but instead expects you to arrive at conclusions based on implication, not science, let’s move onto female psychopaths, shall we?

She begins with a factually incorrect statement;

In fact, the few studies that have been conducted tell us that an estimated 17% of incarcerated women fit the criteria of a psychopath

(compared to 30% of incarcerated men)

This is drawn from things written by Robert Hare who notoriously disliked psychopaths and also over-diagnosed them. He also accuses strangers that he has never met of being psychopathic (see Jon Ronson’s book, The Psychopath Test). As for the stat, here is one from far more balanced research;

Abstract

As currently construed, the diagnosis of antisocial personality disorder grossly over-identifies people, particularly those with offence histories, as meeting the criteria for the diagnosis. For example, research shows that between 50% and 80% of prisoners meet the criteria for a diagnosis of antisocial personality disorder, yet only approximately 15% of prisoners would be expected to be psychopathic, as assessed by the PCL-R.

Psychopathy/antisocial personality disorder conundrum.

So she is starting with scare tactics. Not a good beginning. It doesn’t improve;

The stereotypical signs of a psychopath, including animal abuse in violent psychopaths

Ah! The Macdonald Triad. The myth that will never die. You would think a professional would know that this was debunked a good while ago, and animal abuse, fire setting, and bed wetting tend to be indications of an abused child, not a psychopath.

I went into detail here:

The Macdonald Triad

It came out in the sixties, and was debunked by the very man that thought of it within a decade of it being released. But well done, really. Show the world how well you keep up on not even very current research. Makes you, Dr. Burkley, a very reliable source. Then there is this gem;

Female psychopaths are different. They’re more covert about their narcissistic tendencies. They smile and praise you face-to-face, but think they are better than you behind your back.

…You know you just described women… right? This is standard female behavior. Every woman reading this knows it too. Women suck, I mean completely and totally suck, at being friends with other women. It is so prevalent that it’s a running joke. This isn’t a pathology, this is how women are wired.

I get it, Dr. Burkley, maybe you had some friends that were female and mean to you, or you got bullied in middle school, but guess what? That’s life. That’s what women do. There are a lot of women that refuse to be friends with other women because of this being so common. Female psychopaths are incredibly rare, and you are trying to chalk up catty women to us? Your personal problems are showing Dr. Burkley. Or as my SO said in the voice of an overhead pager;

“Dr. Freud, your slip is showing. Dr. Freud, your slip is showing.”

I would give a pass to Peterson trading in this nonsense as he is male and this sort of behavior might look like something to pathologize because it is toxic as f*ck, but… but Dr. Peterson, you are the one that discusses dominance hierarchies and how females select their mates.

Females, no matter how much they want to deny this, are attracted to strength and power. A place where we divide from our more primal ancestors. Looking at the dominance hierarchy of chimpanzees and humans, chimpanzee females are promiscuous maters. This means that they will mate with any male available, and it is the dominant males that chase off the competition to ensure their genes are passed on.

Human females however do not follow this strategy. Instead, we peel off the top of the dominance hierarchy. We want that high-level mate, and we will compete with other females for that mate. How do females compete in a society that has removed the acceptable avenue of violence? Females tear each other down and destroy the competition. That is the normal natural state of female relationships, especially when the females are of breeding age. I think that an overfire of this aspect is also why some women try to obtain a taken mate. It is in the wiring to prove to herself that she can take from another female. It reassures her that she is indeed a higher value mate over the competition.

Both of these people with PhDs should know better, or get out more, or deal with their childhood trauma of being bullied (Dr. Berkley) more effectively. I don’t know, whatever it is, ya’ll need to start paying attention to how females interact and stop trying to pathologize it. I mean, maybe you should now that social media has taken this to a whole new level of insanity, and the competition isn’t even between real people anymore, but between filters and lighting on Instagram, but seriously, none of what you list has anything to do with psychopathy. In fact, I find all of these behaviors tiresome and annoying to watch and always have.

Perhaps that’s it, perhaps it is because I am outside all of this mess that I can observe it and see that it is totally normal and happens all the time. Mind you, when I say that it is totally normal, I am not making an argument that it is healthy, it’s just normal. Females looking for ways to get ahead of those they see as competition is just how it goes, and it runs perfectly with the whole mate selection bit.

But wait, there’s more!

Female psychopaths are better equipped to fly under the radar. This is because they tend to display their aggression relationally. They spread gossip about you at work. They gaslight you to the point that you doubt your own sanity. They leech off you and manipulate you into doing their bidding (think Jennifer Jason Leigh’s character in the movie Single White Female). And if you refuse to go along, they threaten to harm themselves in response. They are master puppeteers, triggering everyone’s buttons and pulling people’s strings to get what they want.

Again… and I cannot stress this enough, this is called being female. And believe me, they aren’t puppet masters, they just look that way when you are all caught upin your feelings about the matter. It’s just a matter of directing the emotions and getting there first. By that I mean, females will believe the side of an argument delivered to them by the person that gets to them first. It’s completely lacking in critical thinking skills, but that’s how it is. If you want people on your side, you have to be the one with the fastest flapping gums and the most sympathetic story. If you have those, you have allies.

Also, what is her deal with chicks in movies? Especially these particular bad examples. The one from Single White Female was just an unhinged nutcase that has no basis in reality. This is like saying Michael Myers is diagnosable as anything other than “bad guy with stabby things”. No, he isn’t. He’s just a movie character. If you can only come up with examples from movies, me thinks you might be watching waaaaay too many of them Also, I think looking up and learning the difference between fictional films, and documentaries would be a good move. More grounded, more rational. Documentaries can be very slanted, but at least they are on subjects that are tangible in reality, not fictional movies about really dumb characters. This should not be in the biography of a professional woman:

As a writer, her work has appeared in the 2017 Women in Horror Annual and The Psychology of Dexter, Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and Twilight books.

It makes articles like these seem like she is trying to legitimize her fanfiction and that is not a good look, just sayin’. I think we all have had enough of Fifty Shades of Nonsense, so why don’t we all stop trying to extend real life into the fictional world, and vice versa.

Also, again, the paragraph above is pretty standard female behavior. I can’t count women that I have known, or how many guys have told me about their exes that threaten self-harm, lie about pregnancies, make false accusations about abuse and rape, run absolute smear campaigns against a woman they don’t like, pure underhanded self-serving manipulation of friend groups and their friends’ friends to get people on their side, lie to make themselves look good, or make others look bad to gain their ends, etc. This isn’t female psychopathic behavior, it’s female behavior.

That’s not to say that there aren’t plenty of balanced women out there, but it takes looking for them, and they are getting to be rarer and rarer in my estimation.

So, the point-by-point description of how to identify psychopathic women? That’s it. She used women as her stand-in. If that’s the bar to writing articles on Psychology Today, buckle up ladies. All the secrets are coming out.

If this is what they think female psychopaths look like, they will never correctly identify psychopathy in a woman. They are looking for histrionic behavior, which is highly emotional, to identify women that watch that behavior and not understand why it works on anyone. I mean, I get why it works, I just think that the fact that it works to be ridiculous. It’s all tiresome games that have no appeal to me.

Psychopathic females can get high-value mates without trying. They come to us, and we can accept or reject them. There is no need for us to compete with anyone, there is no need to tear down other women as they have nothing to do with us or our lives. We live in a totally different world entirely removed from such things outside of observing it.

All of that emotional nonsense has fallout. To a female psychopath, that fallout is not at all attractive. To women that are like this, they thrive on that drama and stir it just because they can. The thing is, there is no need to label this as a disorder, it’s just their nature, and it is from their hardwiring.

To people with PhDs that think that they have really “done something” in the identification of mean girl syndrome and thinking that it links to psychopathy, you need to actually meet a psychopath because you are way off the mark.

There is a saying that Peterson is fond of.

Set your house in perfect order before you criticize the world.

That would be good advice for this subject. Granted, this rule is about mass killers, so it is a bit dramatic for our purposes here, but the message is the same. You should be taking a look at the normal behavior of women and realize that is all this is. That is why it is a running joke among women. It has nothing to do with psychopathy. I mean, that might actually be good for us that this is what you think, but when you pathologize normal behavior, you remove the ability to understand its origins, and its solutions.

3 Key Traits That May Be Red Flags for Psychopathy

How to Identify a Female Psychopath