Managers in high positions should undergo a personality test before being given the job.

Front page photo over, from NRK film: “Crimes of the Future.

The Seducers of People and Nations.

What do we do with that madness, which the mad do not see in themselves, and do not want help with, and which those around them do not see through either, but instead cheer, because it is rhetorically unsurpassed, often simple and divisive, but appeals to the most primitive instincts in us, when we are not well ourselves, or lie with a broken financial back, and have nowhere to place the misery? (World history has many of them, even today. You don’t just have to go to the USA to find examples.)

We who allow ourselves to be seduced

Powerless, without a job that makes it possible to get by financially. If we have at the same time low education, status and minimal influence on either our own lives or the nation’s, then the following can happen: We buy bit by bit the madness of him or her with the gifts of speech, their black and white thinking, the image of the enemy that they serve, often in a vernacular language we recognize.

Often an irresistible charm.

Because these “mad” people most often have high intelligence, are oriented to time and place, and are able to position themselves very strategically in the landscape they maneuver in. Many around them are fascinated. –“She is strong, an iron woman for her time, she will clear the way for me! He is the strong rescuer, it is now that we need him. Yes, I need her or him, more than anyone!”

Why don’t we discover this mask in time?

Worst of all, it takes far too long for the environment to realize that this person is completely insane. Not psychotic, which is usually associated with this term mad, but psychopathic or sociopathic, – where the deep psychological damage is transformed into power and domination.

For this person,let’s say it is the guy on the photo above. It may originally be a question of a survival strategy, which may have been necessary to save themselves in an unhappy growing up situation. But this way of being is later denied or glorified, and sometimes even the opposite, – it is justified as the very lesson, that life is a battle, win or lose, eat or be eaten yourself.

Where do we find these deviant individuals?

We recognize the phenomenon in all organizations, both public and private, civil and military, in schools and hospitals, in politics and in state leadership.

The climbers who really lack compassion for anyone but themselves, but even there the compassion is limited, it’s about reputation, not inner pain. But these madmen and women, can play nice, accommodating and submissive to superiors on the way up, while at the same time sticking sticks in the wheels of clever but gullible colleagues.

Finally at the top,- gold and green forests are promised to people in the organization. It must be cleaned up, implemented, modernized and action taken.

But what happens then, when the person get the power and glory he has fought for all his life?

Soon the purge of forces around them will begin, who want dialogue, nuanced debates about the choice of path, constructive criticism. The madman cannot stand this, and takes it as an offense, and takes revenge by freezing out, throwing out, dismissing, or in the worst case, having this offender removed by murder.

What about the CEO in a business organization?

Fear begins to prevail in the administration. You don’t dare speak up. You only dare to stay at your post, by taking the wrong one, so as not to lose everything, in the worst case, you yourself will be taken away.

If it is about serving an entire organization, this service will weather and become dysfunctional over time. If it is about serving an entire nation, the discontent will increase to the point where the strategist has to start a diversionary maneuver, by pointing to forces outside the country’s borders, which are destroying his program and plan for the country. In the worst case, if the internal frustration in the country ends in protests and actions, a war must be started with neighbors, in order to raise patriotism and unity within against a created external enemy.

To detect a person with clear psychopathic traits.

It is very common to test workers on the ground level. If you go to a large group that sells clothes, food or a large retailer of electrical items, computer equipment, white goods, TVs, flat screens, etc., the rule is that all employees must have undergone extensive personality testing, in addition to an interview.

Those at the top have escaped being tested for far too long.

If you are going to become an executive director, politician, member of the government, prime minister, president or other head of state, there is probably no requirement to have undergone a revealing personality test.

People in very important and high positions should be tested before they get the job.

What professions do people with clear psychopathic traits choose?

Researcher and psychologist Kevin Dutton has written several books about psychopaths, and explains in the business magazine Forbes that some occupational groups are more attractive to psychopaths than others:

Positions with a high proportion of psychopaths:

    1.Managing directors

    2. Lawyers

    3. Media persons (TV and radio)

    4. Sales people

    5. Surgeons

    6. Journalists

    7. Police

    8. Priests

   9. Chefs

    10. Public officials

(I don’t know if we can rely on this and the list below, but will take them into consideration for those who might find it interesting.)

Jobs with the lowest proportion of psychopaths:

1. Care workers

    2. Nurses

    3. Therapists

    4. Craftsmen

    5. Stylists

   7. Charity workers

    8. Teachers

    9. Creative professions

   10. Doctors

    11.Accountants

NB: There should now be a requirement that people in high positions who influence an entire company, organization, party organization, military defense and not least state leadership should undergo personality tests before qualification. These must be tests where you cannot hide or lie about your psychopathic, sociopathic, narcissistic personality traits and demeanor.

Which personality tests are most suitable?

There are many personality tests that are intended to reveal psychopathic traits in the individual. I’m afraid many of them allow themselves to be seen through, by the fact that you can lie to yourself from a high negative score.

So I won’t set out to rank any of them. I will only deal with two, – the best known test, and the one I have used most myself.

Perhaps the most widely used test today is the Hare Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R), which is usually used to detect a person’s psychopathic and antisocial tendencies. It is also based on factor analysis, consists of 20 questions where the score on the test can be compared with the typical score for a psychopath. It is applicable both outside and within the criminal part of the population. (It was constructed by psychology professor Robert Hare, former teacher at the University of British Columbia, Canada. He has also worked as a forensic psychologist for many years.) (R.D. Hare “Without Conscience” 1993)

Who can become violent and dangerous?

Hare’s personality test is considered a valuable instrument in estimating a person’s propensities to use violence in various situations. This test also seems to capture sexual aggressiveness in both men, women and young people. Thus, it can estimate with a certain margin of uncertainty how likely it is that a person will commit an offense, for example acting out with violence

In Norway, with a population of around 5.5 million people per the end of 2022. We estimate that there are around 110,000 people with clear psychopathic, anti-social traits. (projected from Svenn Torgersen’s numerical material estimated by NRK 2014, when this diagnosis included around 100,000 people, and the population was 1.5 million) This is approx. 2% of the population.

Psychologist and lawyer Grethe Nordhelle explains that there are several personality traits that are repeated in people with psychopathic traits, here popularly described as psychopaths. She highlights three of the main features: They lack empathy and the ability to empathize with other people’s situations, they lack the ability to see themselves in perspective and they are very rigid and stuck. They also have a reality disorder that makes them believe in their reality as the only correct one. (www.klikk.no.Helse)

It is the victims who get sick and seek help, never the psychopaths.

In addition to the traits highlighted above, I would add that if you treat the victims of these antisocial deviants, which I have done for many years, with threats and life as a stake, – it becomes clear that psychopaths are very predictable in their projections and its vulnerability. By listening to what the psychopath thinks about the motives of his spouse, partner, lover and friends, who come to harm in order to point out the person’s behavior, possibly his own children who are not idealized, you actually see right into the psychopath’s own emotional life, circle of motives and plans. “It’s everyone else who is crazy, sick, evil, idiots and wants to hurt me, – I myself am wonderful!”

Where you cannot cheat the test, or lie without being discovered.

The test I have the most experience with is the MMPI (The Minnesota Multiplastic Personality Inventory). The MMPI-2 test consists of 567 true-false questions and takes approximately 60 to 90 minutes to complete. The test has its own lying score, i.e. where both exaggerations and understatements and contradictory statements make it possible to interpret the extensive profile that appears on a form in a very nuanced way. The form forms a curve that looks like “mountains, valleys and ridges”, on a sheet of paper. The height of the peaks in the profile indicates the extent to which a person is characterized by the various personality traits that are measured.

A more relational and psychodynamic manual for interpretation of the graphic scores on the MMPI

I have created a psychodynamic compendium for the interpretation  of these complex profiles, which has proved very useful for understanding the way the patient, through his psychological defenses and his way of feeling and thinking, has coped with the relationships this person has been in, earlier in his life.

It has also been possible to predict how much the patient internalizes conflicts, is able to process them mentally, or reacts psychosomatically, in that the body has to take the strain in the form of body pain, stiffness, stomach ulcers, asthma, inner turmoil, etc.

In addition, and it is probably almost the topic of this article today, how much of their conflict material the patient acts out, and how likely it is that the act out is violent and directly dangerous for those around them. For the time being, only my students have received this compendium, and those I have guided further towards the specialist degree.

Unfortunately, it seems that people with strong psychopathic traits, (pure psychopaths) are beyond treatment, both because they will almost never condescend to be treated, and because their personality is so rigid and hardened that their entire reality and self-concept stands and falls on this reinforced structure.

Our planet would be a better place to live on for people animals and the environment if these people were demasked on an early stage of their career.

But I believe that the world would be a better place for most people if these people were discovered early in their development, and in any case before they had climbed into very influential positions. Therefore, tests should be compulsory for people who aspire to high positions, and especially those with great local and national social responsibility.