Psychopathy: The Self

Psychodynamic structures: who you became

This is the fourth article in a series on understanding psychopathy. Previous articles covered the framework, biology, and environment. This article covers the D (dynamic) and A (agency) levels – the psychological structures that developed and how you understand your own intentionality.

Introduction

The substrate (G and N) and the shaping (E) produce the self (D). This is the level most people think of when they think about “who someone is” – not their genes or brain scans (not merely their outward behavior either), but their psychological organization, their characteristic patterns of relating, their attitudes and motivations, their experience of themselves.

This article describes the major D-level variants I’ve identified through conversations with friends who have these presentations. It also introduces the A level – how people with different presentations understand and narrate their own intentionality.

These are modifiers, so it stands to reason that someone with only D-narcissistic would not be considered to be significantly psychopathic in any of the many senses, but I rather wanted to include more variants rather than fewer to make the system more expressive. This way it can be used to show, for example, that if someone has D-narcissistic and A-amnestic and acted violently in rage is not lying about not remembering it but actually doesn’t remember it, a sign that a diagnosis of ASPD would be unhelpful for them.

D-Level: Psychodynamic Variants

D-anatta: The Empty Self

The term comes from the Buddhist concept of anattā – “no-self.” Individuals with this presentation have minimal sense of identity. There’s no stable “I” that persists across contexts. At the extreme, there is no “I” ever.

Self aspect. The inner experience is one of absence and direct experience. Identity is borrowed from context: They become what the situation calls for, but it’s a thin mask, not something that actually gets imbued with identity. There’s no intrinsically compelling reason for them to identify with “themselves” more than with others, so respecting others’ autonomies can be unintuitive to them.

Relational aspect. They mirror those around them, take on contextually appropriate personas, and usually don’t feel like they are in touch with anything that is genuinely “them” underneath the adaptations.

Agency style. Often A-observational: “I watch myself do things.” There’s no felt sense of deliberation or choice – actions emerge from some ranking process without an “I” in between. They’ll say things like that they’d rather not travel because they tend to commit crimes when they do, or that their loved ones please call the police on them if they act abusively. It’s as if their own body is as foreign, mysterious, and wayward to them as it is to a third party.

How it differs from other presentations. D-anatta individuals don’t have the preoccupation with power or self-image of sovereigns. Control and grandiosity are means to an end for them, but they don’t need them or have identity invested in them. They may be predatory (D-predatory) in an instrumental way, but it’s not about domination – it’s about getting what they want, filling the void, passing time, or curiosity. When faced with hardship, D-anatta is more likely to say “I don’t care,” whereas D-sovereign is more likely to lean into a kind of stoicism that I call contumacious pride, “You think you can beat me, but pain only makes me stronger!”

Example. This interview with M.E. Thomas describes her no-self experience well. But I’ve also run into someone who talks like M.E. Thomas (or James Fallon for that matter) but has an avoidant vibe. How can someone without a self have avoidant attachment? I will just assume for now that that’s possible, but if I change my mind, I’ll update these sections.

D-narcissistic: The Unstable Self

This is classic narcissistic personality organization – unstable self-esteem, a fear of worthlessness and compensatory need for specialness or admiration, with episodes of shame, anxiety, and sensitivity to rejection.

Self-aspect. A deep fear of worthlessness that is defended against by a positive split on the self where any perceived flaws are disavowed, and the person perceives a lot of agency and optimism, and a negative split where the supposed flaws are conscious but the agency is disavowed to externalize the responsibility for the flaws. For people with a pure D-narcissistic presentation, the positive states are often unstable and need to either be actively maintained through positive feedback or protected by avoiding negative feedback. A view of the self as defined by how it appears to others (a teleological mode) makes it highly sensitive to circumstantial factors, so that these can appear as threats to be defended against.

Relational aspect. A defended form of disorganized attachment where there is often a person who is idealized as ideal source of parental love but who is simultaneously also a threat because criticism, rejection, or boundaries are devastating to the self and can only be tolerated when they can be safely dismissed, which requires the paradoxical devaluation of the idealized surrogate parent. These aspects of self and other – the idealized other and child-like self, and the devalued other and self-sufficient self – are incompatible and require splitting for them to stay unacknowledged. Relationships with those who are seen as mildly inferior are safer, because they can be dismissed as needed, but are also unsatisfying because they don’t provide the safety of paternal love.

Agency style. Often A-narrativizing or A-retroactive in the positive split and A-externalizing or A-selective (true-but-partial explanations) in the negative split.

How it differs from D-sovereign. D-narcissistic is oriented toward positive feedback or admiration and away from negative feedback. It’s organized around a fear of worthlessness and a corresponding compensatory need to be special. D-sovereign (below) is oriented toward power – controlling others. It’s organized around a few of being helpless or exposed to someone else’s will. Crucially, D-narcissistic retains capacity for shame, guilt, and empathy (even if defended against), while D-sovereign has these dampened by the psychopathic substrate, an antagonistic and sadistic or Machiavellian outlook on others, and avoidant attachment more toward civilization as a whole than just individual friends or partners.

D-echoist: The Self-Effacing Self

The opposite of narcissistic grandiosity – minimal self-assertion, other-focused, needs subordinated to others’.

Self aspect. The inner experience is of having no preferences, or of preferences being illegitimate. The self exists to serve.

Relational aspect. Accommodating to a fault. May attract narcissists (complementary dynamics). Takes responsibility for others’ emotions and actions.

Agency style. Some types are structured along the lines of D-narcissistic, while some might rely on A-absorbed, especially if it’s a borderline-like presentation of echoism: “It’s my fault they did that to me.” The A-absorbed presentation in echoism confuses self and other and is characterized by impaired reality-testing, unlike the presentation of A-absorbed in sovereignism.

See my article on echoism and its relationship to narcissism.

D-sovereign: The Power-Oriented Self

This is my term for the combination of pathological narcissism with psychopathic callousness and ego-syntonic sadism – what Otto Kernberg called malignant narcissism, but with a focus on the control-orientation or sadism rather than the paranoia. As such it’s a wider category.

I’ve written about this extensively in my article on sovereignism. The key distinction from standard narcissism: Sovereigns are oriented toward power and control, not admiration or avoiding criticism.

Self aspect. The inner experience is of needing and enjoying control – of others, situations, outcomes. As such, they’re oriented around a fear of being helplessly exposed to someone else. Others are threats not acutely for a few hours when they say something critical but chronically so that they need to be defensively devalued at all times. This extends to state authorities who are just as much antagonists as are individuals. At first approximation there is no one whose opinion of them deserves respect so their self-esteem can appear stable, affected only by their own perception of their own level of control.

Relational aspect. At first approximation, relationships are only possible through controlling the other (there is no destabilizing need to idealize them) or by psychologically merging with the other, forming one joined identity, which is very risky with humans and easier with companion animals. But I see sovereignism as a particularly stable variation on narcissism, so the first approximation is usually an oversimplification: Some individuals do come to respect others as equals or do engage in mild forms of idealization that are more typical of standard narcissism. Sovereigns almost invariably have high avoidant attachment and low preoccupied attachment in their grandiose moods.

Why the psychopathic substrate stabilizes it. People with standard pathological narcissism need to break their empathy at the level of the mentalization – the flexible simulation of their own and the other’s mind. They impair their cognitive empathy to keep their defenses intact. This impairs their functioning as better understanding is generally adaptive. Add to that the paradoxical conflict between idealization and self-sufficiency in romantic relationships, and the self-deceptions in standard pathological narcissism become very unstable. Avoidant attachment and even ego-syntonic sadism – not respecting others or actively and antagonistically wishing them harm – work hand in hand with impairments of affective empathy to obviate the need for this self-limiting defense. The pervasive reduced respect for others thwarts the ability to idealize. The result is a personality structure that is highly fortified against outside threats – “I have to humble myself because no one else can humble me,” as a friend of mine put it (paraphrased).

Agency style. A-strategic, A-retroactive, A-narrativizing, A-selective, A-absorbed. Seeing themselves as “out of control” is worse than being seen as “evil” (which is powerful and positive). They may also claim impulsive actions as intentional regardless of whether others may consider them blameworthy. They may say, “First I try positive reinforcement; if that fails, I gaslight; if that fails, I rage as deterrent; and only if that fails, I act remorseful” – but sometimes this is a post-hoc rationalization of a reactive sequence, not genuine planning. When suffering abuse, some sovereigns will blame themselves along the lines of A-absorbed but without confusion of self and other or impaired reality testing: E.g., they’ll claim the abuse is their own fault because they could’ve left or killed the abuser but chose not to.

D-autonomic: The Freedom-Oriented Self

Hypersensitivity to perceived constraints on freedom; autonomy as the core value. Mild form of D-avoidant (only mildly avoidant) and D-sovereign (little sadism or callousness).

Self aspect. The inner experience is organized around freedom from constraint. Any perceived imposition threatens the self. “No one tells me what to do.” The reactive anger can cause momentary callousness.

Relational aspect. Relationships are evaluated through an autonomy lens. Implicit expectations feel like impositions. Only explicit agreements count. “I didn’t agree to show up, so your expectation is your problem.” Associated with fairly high avoidant attachment but stopping short of the antagonistic attitude vis-a-vis society as a whole that characterizes sovereignism or the cold disregard for it that characterizes D-avoidant.

Subtypes.

• D-autonomic-offensive. Controls others to secure own autonomy. “I’ll control everything so no one can control me.”

• D-autonomic-defensive. Reacts to perceived constraints with rage or withdrawal. “You asked me to work overtime? I quit.”

• D-autonomic-symmetric. Values others’ autonomy equally. “I respect your freedom; respect mine.” Principled libertarianism.

• D-autonomic-asymmetric. Values own autonomy, disregards others’. Hypocritical application.

• D-autonomic-non-interfering. Extreme symmetric autonomism: Won’t violate others’ autonomy even to help them. “Your life is your business; I don’t interfere for good or evil.”

Origin. Often from E-I-avoidant and E-C-controlling environments. The child who was never allowed to have boundaries rebels by defending them on a hair trigger.

D-avoidant: The Walled-Off Self

Extreme dismissive attachment taken to its endpoint. Nothing matters; no one matters; independence is the only value.

Self aspect. The inner experience is of detachment – from emotions, from desires, from connection, from society. There was usually a lot of pain that led to this walling-off, but the pain is no longer accessible. When attachment is as vital as it is dangerous, one can either enslave oneself to it entirely or reject it entirely to escape the conflict.

Relational aspect. Relationships are minimal or purely instrumental. Attachment is threatening. Someone with disorganized attachment may choose this path as a momentary release. Some may lean into universalized anger or hate to reach this state. They can often leave it as suddenly as they’ve entered it.

How it differs from D-sovereign. Extreme and pervasive avoidant attachment is part of D-sovereign but D-avoidant is a purer form that doesn’t imply any preoccupation with control or sadism or a rigid self-image the way D-sovereign does, though individuals with D-avoidant may behave in sadistic ways out of boredom.

D-secure: A Stable Self

A normal self, usually associated with secure attachment.

Self aspect. An inner experience of interpreting perceptions from a consistent perspective; reasonably stable preferences across time and contexts; continuity over time; complexity of contradictory drives that can be resolved.

Relational aspect. Can trust others but also trusts themselves. Respects others’ autonomy but reacts proportionately to infringements on their own autonomy.

Agency style. Often A-narrativizing or A-observational.

A-Level: Agency Attribution Styles

Beyond D-level structure, people differ in how they understand and narrate their own intentionality. This is the A level – not a separate dimension of the self, but a lens on how the self is understood.

A-observational

“I watch myself do things.”

The person has minimal sense of deliberation or choice. Actions emerge from some process they observe rather than control. Common in D-anatta.

Example: “I don’t have an internal narrative anymore. My decisions flow automatically from some ranking process with no intention happening between ranking and action.”

A-strategic

“I plan, then act.”

Genuine prospective intentionality. The person simulates outcomes, evaluates options, and chooses. This may be accurate self-description, or it may be how they prefer to see themselves.

A-narrativizing

“I tell myself a constant story about what I’m doing.”

Real-time rationalization. The person maintains a running narrative that explains and justifies their actions as they happen. The narrative may or may not be accurate.

A-retroactive

“I act, then explain.”

Post-hoc rationalization. The person acts first and constructs an explanation later when challenged. Common in D-narcissistic.

A-selective

“I delayed because I was exhausted.” (True, but only 20% of the picture.)

Picks one true motivation and presents it as the whole story, omitting ego-dystonic motivations. The stated reason is accurate but incomplete. Common across presentations.

A-externalizing

“They made me do it.”

Locates causation externally. “It wasn’t me; it was the situation / my upbringing / their provocation.”

A-absorbed

“It’s my fault they hurt me.”

Takes responsibility for others’ actions. Common in D-echoist.

Maximizes self-attribution to avoid the intolerable feeling of helplessness. Common with D-autonomic.

A-amnestic

“What mistake? I don’t remember that.”

Forgets ego-dystonic actions. Dissociative amnesia for events that would threaten the self-concept.

Why D-sovereign and N-hypoactive Can Look Tightly Correlated

This is speculative, but it matches a pattern I’ve noticed: The “cold” substrate (low fear, low guilt, low empathic cost) seems to co-occur with NPD more often than a naïve independence model would predict (1% prevalence of N-hypoactive × 5% prevalence of NPD = 0.05% prevalence of sovereignism – or lower if sadism is independent). A few mechanisms could produce this:

Early Trauma

Maybe these sovereigns were born with a regular amygdala, but neglect trauma in their infancy caused E-I-avoidant, and that caused their originally more active amygdala to atrophy at such an early age already (maybe before age 3 or so when they can retain memories) that they remember no time when they still felt different.

• Sovereigns seem to invariably have high avoidant attachment.

• Violent trauma is more likely to cause E-I-disorganized and N-hyperactive or N-dissociative.

• E-I-avoidant also prevents memory formation of attachment traumas (these cease to be traumatic once all expectations of attachment are destroyed), so these sovereigns are more likely to report a childhood that was “normal” or “fine” with little detail.

• Replications of the Strange Situation experiment (ages 9–30 months) show that avoidant attachment is still associated with high stress at that age. This might change as the amygdala atrophies. Perhaps it is these children that consistently develop D-narcissistic, D-sovereign, D-autonomic, and others.

• Some sovereigns are closer than others to “malignant narcissism,” i.e. are paranoid, have ADHD, and generally show subtle signs of N-hyperactive rather than N-hypoactive but exert strong self-control most of the time. Perhaps the atrophy is incomplete in their case. Their etiology is less surprising, and perhaps there is a range from this less surprising to the more surprising (N-hypoactive) presentation due to different levels of atrophy.

Punitive Parenting

Children with N-hypoactive can be challenging to parent, and parents may fall back on punitive parenting methods that incentivize the child to become more conniving to escape the punishments. Parent and child become enemies along the way, which causes the child to develop E-I-avoidant (avoidant attachment) and high trait antagonism, and thus a sovereign outlook against life.

• Arguably, such parenting is more likely to produce E-I-disorganized, but:

• Perhaps there is a temperamental difference that causes some children to develop E-I-avoidant under these circumstances, and

• NPD might serve to bolster the self-concept in the grandiose mood for ostensible E-I-avoidant despite actual E-I-disorganized. I’ve seen some of my sovereign friends in grandiose and vulnerable states, and the devalued self concept of the vulnerable state provides the preoccupied component for overall E-I-disorganized.

Bundled Transmission (Psychopathic Parenting)

A psychopathic parent can “bundle” two things: (1) constitutional callousness/fearlessness (G-callous → N-hypoactive) and (2) narcissism-inducing shaping (E-I-avoidant/disorganized, E-C-unattuned/neglect/controlling). If early care is emotionally thin, conditional, or coercive, children may end up seeking substitutes for reliable love and safety (admiration, dominance, invulnerability) without having internalized stable parental introjects. In this picture, this “vacuum” can be filled to form D-anatta, D-narcissistic, or D-sovereign depending on what gets reinforced.

• This seems less likely to me because G-callous and N-hypoactive from birth should have some shielding effect against attachment trauma and thus NPD.

• Many of my sovereign friends have unemotional or sadistic parents, but it’s unclear whether that’s a sign of G-callous or also N-hypoactive from atrophy and avoidant attachment.

Attachment Compromise Hypothesis

Many sovereigns still want people in their orbit but fear dependence. Control can be a way to do closeness without vulnerability: “I can have you as long as I’m not at your mercy.” That makes N-hypoactive (low fear) and D-sovereign (control-based relating) a stable pairing.

Stability Filter

Pure NPD can be unstable over time: shame collapses, cycling, and relational fallout. Add a “cold” substrate and the grandiose control-structure can become more stable and socially survivable. By the time you’re mostly meeting adults in their 30s–50s, the stabilized variants may be overrepresented in the people who remain networked and high-contact.

Adult Ecology Visibility

By the time you’re meeting people in their 30s–50s, the profiles that stay socially networked and relationship-active tend to be the ones that can maintain stable roles (work, friendships, partnerships). Sovereigns often can (they can be charming, competent, and strategic). Some non-NPD psychopathic variants are less relationship-motivated, less self-disclosing, or more likely to drift into isolation, so you see fewer of them up close.

Taken together: N-hypoactive doesn’t “cause” sovereignty, but it makes sovereignty viable, and certain developmental and temperamental pathways make it reinforcing and stable.

Why Sovereigns Say “It’s Just Strategy”

One pattern I’ve noticed in conversations with sovereign friends deserves special attention: When asked why they do normal, prosocial things – being nice, maintaining friendships, helping people – they often say something like: “It’s just a social tactic. Besides, it makes me look good.”

This sounds suspiciously convenient. Every action, no matter how kind, gets explained as Machiavellian – and the explanation always fits perfectly with the sovereign self-concept. When motivations seem that simple and that aligned with the self-image, it’s usually a sign that something is being compressed or obscured: A-selective.

Here’s how Tiffany explained what’s actually happening:

The Explanation Serves Multiple Functions

1. It’s partly true. Usually the motivation really is strategic to some extent. Early in the recovery, this is typically the only conscious motivation.

2. It’s protective. “I don’t want to be taken advantage of. I hide or obscure whether I’m doing it for a self-serving or altruistic reason.”

3. It covers genuine ambiguity. “It can be difficult for me to tell whether I think someone’s useful or I like them being around.”

4. The strategic language comes easier. The utilitarian/calculating vocabulary is more fluent than emotional vocabulary.

5. It’s an honest warning. “I want them to realize that even when I’m doing it because I think I’m helping them, it can come out as selfish, coercive, and maybe even sadistic.”

The Actual Motivational Landscape

When a sovereign says “I’m being nice because it keeps them around,” the reality might be a combination of:

• Sometimes: Genuine liking – “I like people. I want to do nice things with and for people I like.”

• Sometimes: Utility calculation – keeping someone around for what they provide.

• Sometimes: Control/shaping – “trying to change someone to be a better companion.”

• Sometimes: Just being nice – no ulterior motive at all.

The “it’s strategic” explanation roughly fits all these scenarios, so it gets used as a catch-all. As my friend put it: “That explanation roughly fits the different situations I end up in and is still roughly true if I’m being shallow as well.”

Why This Matters for Recovery

In more dissociated states, sovereigns have an illusion of clarity about their motivations – a typical sign of operating from a false self. In more connected states, they have less clarity – they’re fumbling for words, unsure what they actually feel.

For those in recovery, learning to tolerate the messier, less articulate emotional frame is part of the work:

“I have to allow myself to be more human if I want to feel like one.”

This connects to why secondary presentations have an easier time accessing this whole range of emotions than primary ones. If the strategic frame is a compression of messier underlying motivations (including genuine liking), then recovery involves expanding back to the mess – letting yourself fumble, tolerating ambiguity, using emotional language even when it doesn’t flow as smoothly.

The Illusion of Intentionality

A philosophical aside: The concept of “intentionality” may be less coherent than we assume.

Consider: If you simulate outcomes, narrate what you’re about to do, and then do it, it feels intentional. If you first do it and narrate later (without altering the ordering in the narration), it feels impulsive to many people regardless of when the simulation happened. But the narration doesn’t change the action. What makes one “intentional” and the other not?

The case of people narrating impulsive actions after the fact in a way that changes something about the ordering such that the actions feel intentional is an interesting case, perhaps one that sheds light on how narration works for many of us for all sorts of everyday decisions. The difference is then not so much anything about intentionality but rather what decisions we are ready to endorse as intentional and which we’d rather reject as impulsive. Intentionality becomes a question of values and their influence on our actions.

Someone without an internal narrative (A-observational) may experience decisions as simply emerging – no “I decided” moment, just observation of what happens. I would argue that this is the most accurate description of how decisions actually work, stripped of the narrative illusion.

Our social contract requires that, by and large, every person take responsibility for their own actions. That sentence is loaded with implicit assumptions of common knowledge of selfhood and responsibility, so being caught up in a shared illusion that makes these fairly arbitrary assumptions intuitive is interpersonally useful – a bit like it’s useful to think that you actually believe in God if you want to succeed as a religious leader.

Combinations and Profiles

D-level features can combine. A full profile might include:

• D-sovereign + D-autonomic-offensive. Power-oriented, sadistic, controls others to secure autonomy.

• D-anatta + D-predatory. Empty self, instrumental orientation. A cold manipulator without grandiosity.

• D-anatta + D-autonomic-symmetric. Values freedom, has minimal self, principled libertarian without the heat of D-autonomic-offensive.

Profiles are more informative than single labels.

How D Relates to G, N, and E

The D level is produced by the substrate (G, N) and shaping (E) interacting:

• G-callous + E-I-secure + E-C-normal → D-secure pathology. Constitutional callousness without adverse shaping may produce no pathology.

• G-callous + E-I-disorganized + E-C-controlling → D-sovereign. Constitutional callousness shaped by control-focused adversity may produce sovereignty.

• G-reactive + E-I-disorganized + E-C-chaotic → D-avoidant. Reactive temperament shaped by chaotic adversity may produce a walled-off defense.

• G-minimal + E-I-avoidant + E-C-golden → D-narcissistic. No particular callous loading, but narcissistic shaping produces an unstable self.

The mapping isn’t deterministic, but there are patterns.

Summary

D-Level. Psychodynamic self-structure and relational orientation. Major variants: D-anatta (absent), D-narcissistic (unstable), D-sovereign (power-oriented), D-avoidant (walled-off), D-autonomic (freedom-oriented), D-echoist (self-effacing).

A-Level. How the person understands their own intentionality. Major styles: A-observational, A-strategic, A-narrativizing, A-retroactive, A-selective, A-externalizing, A-absorbed, A-amnestic.

Combinations. D and A features combine into profiles. A full profile (G + N + E + D + A + B) is more informative than any single label.

Next: The Mechanics

The next article explores how empathy fails – a detailed breakdown of the different stages at which empathic response can break down, and why different people fail to empathize in different ways.