I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that I had ordered the book In Sheep's Clothing: Understanding and Dealing with Manipulative People, which is written by a clinical psychologist named Dr. George Simon. Since I completed class a few days ago I decided to spend some of the time I would have spent on homework reading this book instead. It is not a long read, so I was able to complete it within a relatively short period of time.I will start by saying that the book really does not address normal people who have a tendency to manipulate. The book is more focused on people who are habitually manipulative in all aspects of their lives. I do know people whom this describes, but I don't really know many of them. At least I have not been able to identify many of them.
The author's thesis is essentially that psychology as a field does more harm than good in addressing issues with manipulative people because traditional psychology takes the perspective that everyone with problems is a neurotic. A neurotic, at least from a psychological perspective, is someone who has an overactive sense of shame and guilt. Simon asserts that truly manipulative people are polar opposites from neurotics, and have little or no guilt.
According to Simon, all people fall on a continuum between the extreme neurotic (overactive conscience) and the extreme character-disordered (without conscience). Simon states that almost all chronic manipulators are on the extreme character-disordered side of the continuum.
The structure of the book after Simon has established his thesis is straightforward. He provides examples of people (mostly who he has had as patients) who have been manipulated by others close to them. He then outlines the tactics that manipulative people use and provides guidance for how to deal with people who do manipulate.
My goal with the book was to assist in identifying if someone is trying to manipulate me. I think it assists in that regard only in as much as it is a truly manipulative person who is doing the manipulating. The real benefit I got out of the book, though, was the understanding that there is a class of people who really have little to no conscience. That is something that I simply have a hard time grasping. Understanding this, though, will help me not look for deeper meaning in someone's actions where there is none.
One question that was continually going through my head while I was reading this book was whether someone with a very weak conscience could truly ever be saved. How can someone who thinks so highly of himself or herself truly submit to God unless he or she is somehow browbeaten into it? It's not impossible, but only God could cause it to happen. It's probably also none of my business.
6 comments:
The scary thing is the few people that are truly manipulative that I know claim to be christians. I also am worried about their salvation.
I knew some truly manipulative students when I was a teacher. Unfortunatly, my mother was one of those truly manipulative people as well, I believe. I think people who work in criminology see most of these people, they have no problem committing crimes.
These are not the droids you are looking for.
I learned a while ago that everyone manipulates to a point. Children learn very early on to manipulate to get their needs met. It's part of Maslov's need of hiearchy. Hopefully they start to grow out of it as they get older and can meet their own needs. They then start seeing people as people. Working with troubled kids, I do see some kids that I can say do not show much of a conscious. Those are the scary ones because they are so hard to reach. It's frightening to imagine what kind of adults they will turn into. We usually attribute it to a way of protecting themselves from further pain that they have suffered at some point.
I certainly don't know much about manipulative people. Simon's take is that the idea that most manipulative people are not the way they are because of past trauma, but rather due of a combination of genetic traits and authority figures who enable the problem behaviors. I tend to accept that viewpoint since it aligns well with the worldview that I already have, but it could be wrong.
The author flat-out states that he is disagreeing with established psychological beliefs, though. That needs to be considered too.
The point about children manipulating is interesting and true. Here's a question: Do pets manipulate? I say yes, in the same way that children do, because that's the only means they know to get their way.
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