My inaugural guest is Dr Nathan Brooks PhD from CQUniversity. He’s a forensic psychologist with a background in researching psychopaths. He (and a couple of colleagues) have a new book that came out just after mine, called “Corporate Psychopathy: Investigating Destructive Personalities in the Workplace“. It’s an academic book looking at many of the same issues as mine. It was great to speak to him last week and find that we agreed on everything, from the size and importance of the problem, to the causes and the cures. AUTOGENERATED TRANSCRIPTION (typos may occur) What would you say the biggest problem facing the human race is today . Climate change, wealth inequality, reality TV, these are all good options. But in my recent book, The Psychopath Epidemic, I try and make the case that actually the biggest problem facing the human race today and the thing that is standing behind creating those other problems that I mentioned are psychopaths. Now most people , when they think of psychopaths today , still think of , I think , serial killers or Third World dictators . And that’s mostly thanks to Hollywood’s depiction of psychopaths over the last 30 or 40 years , when in fact your average psychopath is more likely to be the movie studio producer or the director off those films , not the serial killers . They’re the ones that we need to be worried about in my book . I argue that psychopaths are in positions off power in all of our large and influential organisations , not just business organisations but political , religious , military , law enforcement , justice system , the media , education , etc . And that if we could remove psychopaths from positions of power in these organisations , we would probably be able to solve a lot of the world’s problems much faster much easier than we can with them getting in the way . So this new podcast , My Name is Cameron Reilly , by the way . Hi . If you’ve never listened to my podcast before , Thanks for joining me . I’m going to be talking with other people about psychopaths and the problems that they face and what we could do about it . Very pleased that my first guess is fellow Aussie fellow Queenslander Dr Nathan Brooks , PhD forensic psychologist . He and a couple of his colleagues have , in fact , also just come out with a book on psychopaths , and Nathan joined me recently to talk about his work and his views on the problem posed by psychopaths in the workplace with you . Nathan , thanks for coming on on DH , chanting to me . I’m excited that you’ve agreed to be my first guest . Tell the audience a little bit about yourself . Where you where you’re based is a good starting point . Thank you , Cameron . What’s great , Teo be involved and talking about such an important topic ? So I’m based currently at Central Queensland University . I’ve recently relocated up to towns , were some working in our forensic psychology programme up here , which is which is a new programme and my background for for many years prior to that has been working in both the public and the private sector as a forensic psychologist , particularly with high risk offenders , violent offenders , sexual offenders and also , of course , the subject for today psychopathic individuals . Can you explain for those of us who like everything that we know about forensics comes from ? See what a forensic psychologist actually does ? Yes , what’s very different ? TCs I sew and still looking at the scientific leftovers in terms of things like DNA , etcetera . That’s not the area off focus for forensic psychology . So we’re really looking at the role of psychology in crime . So things such as the offenders motivations the reasons that they acted in specific ways , why they may have chosen a certain victim or a certain method or process off offending . And it’s a really trying to understand the the interplay and that the number of psychological factors that drive offending behaviour , and also how that results in that expression of that offending wow and your work in the past , you said , has led you Teo , do some study on psychopaths and I believe you and a couple of colleagues have a book coming out on psychopaths . Thiss month . Is that right ? Yes , yes , it was just released a couple of days ago , actually , thank you . So it’s really around . It’s more of a critical review from probably in some ways , that academic perspective off . Where are we at with corporate psychopathy ? So what do we know ? And what ? Maybe do we require further investigation around ? But But really , we’ve gotten to a point now that we can have quite a strong argument to say that that it is a thing and that , you know , we do see corporate psychopaths or successful psychopath . So the book really is that academic perspective on trying Teo create the idea and trying to get the message out there that this this is a valid area on . We really start to get this science now to support that . And so the book , the book title is corporate psychopathy investigating destructive personalities in the workplace . Fantastic . I’m really I was really excited when I heard that you were coming out with a book that was an academic book is mine is most definitely not an academic book , although , you know , I read a cz much of the academic literature as I could get my hands on in research for the book . But mine is very much a book designed for a popular audience . But it was great to know that you were coming out with yours quickly on the heels of mind . So if anyone complains that my book about my lack of academic credentials , I can just say Go read Nathan’s book , That’s great s so explain to me if you can sort of the main ideas off your book well , part of it is doing it . It initially begins by a quite an extensive overview off the literature on psychopathy , and I mean , there are some people out there that still debate the idea of psychopathy , but from my perspective and I think many others in the field , it’s certainly an established construct . And there is a body of evidence around so Carpathian the criminal context , and we’re now starting to see emerging evidence in relation to some of these individuals that may be about to reside in the community and then some that may even be able to be successful . So that’s where we initially begin is looking at where we currently at and then moving Mohr into exploring , for example , differences between criminal psychopaths and non criminal psychopaths . Way also propose a model , because at the moment we tend to have some issues around . We view psych , copper , a CZ essentially being one entity or everyone that his psychopathic is essentially the same , which is problematic for a number of reasons . So within the book of proposed , the importance of really having a classifications criterias . So how do we narrow down what type of psychopathic individual we’re dealing with ? And then we also look at processes off assessment within the corporate or the business setting on DH . There’s a few different assessment modalities out there . We have developed what we what . We’ve turned the corporate personality inventory , which is it’s a twofold measure . So it’s a self report measure , so that’s filled in by the individual . And then also , we have 1/3 party version of that . So that’s someone writing the individual on DH . There’s another measure that’s quite it’s going quite a lot attraction , and that is through . Robert Hairs will work , and that’s the B scan , and that’s another measure that’s currently under development at the moment and then lastly , we finished the book off by looking at What do we do about the problem ? And that’s really the essential question in all of this , and part of that answer is the recruitment stage and then the second part is the management stage . That’s fantastic , because these are a lot of the issues , you know . I guess the vast majority of my book is talking about why I think psychopaths impositions ofthe management inside of all sorts of organisations , not just business but political organisations , religious organisations , the military , law enforcement , the justice system , the media , etcetera is a problem for society and looking at examples off how I think that Khun be identified and how manifests not just in terms of individual behaviour but in terms of cultural behaviour inside of these organisations , a cz well , when you have a sufficient tipping point of psychopaths in the management , I think it can then become embedded into the culture of an organisation and I go through example of that . But the last chapter’s about what do we do about it and , you know , in the media interviews I’ve been doing in the last couple of weeks , since my book came out . When they often ask me , What’s the number one thing we can do ? I say that , you know , I want to see testing done . Mandatory testing done particularly of individuals in management across of these organisations , some sort of clinical testing on using Bob has PCL R or whatever tools are available to us to determine who the psychopaths are in the management ranks because I think it’s it’s important that we at least know what we’re dealing with here . What can you tell me about the beasts can ? What’s the beasts can ? I haven’
