Human Predators
Dr. Karen Mitchell's new book is now available
Two years ago I wrote a series of articles on Karen Mitchell’s PhD thesis on the Predatory Personality Model (links further below). Her more approachable book on the subject is now available for the mass market. You can purchase it on Amazon or Abbey’s (Australia and worldwide).
In anticipation of the book’s release, Karen and I recorded the following discussion:
On this episode we discuss Dr. Karen Mitchell’s book Human Predators and her research on harmful people across settings such as business, law, medicine, media, religion, and politics. She argues that predators outside prison are common, often act covertly through emotional and social abuse, and share similar traits and tactics regardless of labels like narcissist or psychopath.
We also discuss her view that the DSM can blur distinctions between predators and traumatized victims, especially in categories like borderline personality disorder and antisocial personality disorder. Karen describes how predators target vulnerable “prey,” use gaslighting and coercion, and can cause severe psychological harm, while also pointing to behavioral red flags and the need for better awareness and screening in leadership roles.
Karen’s recommended shows (referred to in the discussion):
Wild republic (German miniseries)
Fifteen-Love (British miniseries)
Unknown Number: The High School Catfish
Wild, Wild Country
Escaping Utopia
Fake (Australian miniseries)
The Tinder Swindler
Dr Death
The Family
Website: https://www.kalmor.com.au/
Twitter: https://x.com/karenmitchell__
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drkarenmitchell_/
I recommend my readers buy and read the book. And while you’re at it, get a copy for a friend or family member. If you have already read her thesis, this is mostly new material you won’t find there. As I wrote in my endorsement for it, I think it is the first book since Cleckley’s Mask of Sanity to break new ground on the subject.
For those readers who may have missed it, here is my series on Karen’s thesis:
Introducing the Persistent Predatory Personality
In my recent interview with Unbekoming, I mentioned that a reader had recommended the work of Dr. Karen Mitchell. Since then I have been continuing to read her 2024 PhD thesis, Psychopaths, Narcissists, Machiavellians, Toxic Leaders, Coercive Controllers: Subsets of One Overarc…
How to Investigate Successful Predators
How can we effectively study “successful” psychopaths? It’s easy enough to study the unsuccessful ones: prisons provide a captive audience for researchers. But what about the elusive corporate psychopath? The corrupt but charismatic governor? The well-respected bank exec who is also a pedophile? Maybe we can gain access to one or a few for close study, …
Control through Calculated Ferocity
“It is truly terrifying being up against them. It is also isolating. It is also very difficult to describe. Once you know the type you can recognise it, even when others can’t see it. They are highly dangerous people.” (Category 2 participant)
The Intraspecies Predator
Dr. Karen Mitchell describes the second set of persistent predatory personality attributes like this: “They are motivated and operate differently and darkly.” In other words, there is something fundamentally different about the PPP, and this difference has a particular quality: a predatory, malevolent core. Lobaczewski would call i…
Masks of Sanity
So far I have summarized the first two groupings of attributes in the persistent predatory personality model. Group 1 (“Drive the agenda”) covers the PPP’s need for control in all situations, and their response to having that control challenged. Group 2 (“Motivated and operate differently and darkly”) highlights the exceptional dif…
Dead Inside
The fourth and final set of five attributes in Dr. Karen Mitchell’s persistent predatory personality (PPP) model has to do with the inner landscape of such people: “they don’t experience feelings in the …
Twenty-Five Predatory Tactics
The persistent predatory personality (PPP) tactics are covered briefly in the main text of Mitchell’s thesis, but more extensively in the final appendix (O). She lists 25 of them, which DPs (dark personalities) “use to punish, harm, humiliate, demean, and destroy others; to win; to …
The Varieties of Predatory Experience
We’ve now covered the attributes and tactics from Karen Mitchell’s persistent predatory personality (PPP) model. This post rounds out the model with a number of differentiators. In other words, these items are not diagnostic, because they will manifest differently in dark personalities (DPs) on an individual basis.
Pathocrats Want To Destroy You
Chapter 5 of Dr. Mitchell’s thesis concerns a number of “points of contention and other issues.” I will only cover a handful of the issues as the rest are covered briefly in my previous articles.
Absolutely no aspertions or accusations of any kind meant against Dr Mitchell or you, but:
[The entire argument about human predators could just as easily fit as a strategy used by such a person to snare victims into unthinkingly following the one informing them about predators.]
It is the same problem, or almost the same, as when you write a book about poisonous plants and mushrooms/toadstools; it serves just as well as a poisoners field manual.
That said, it is good to learn the tells of the entire family of what was called personality disorders when I took very basic psychology at uni as part of sociology. The hardest for most I think is realising and accepting that true personality disorders cannot be cured or even treated (barring incarceration) - there's simply nothing to cure. The disorder is the outside world's judgement on the aberrant behaviours deemed unacceptable, but the personality is the true one of that person.
One might just as well try to cure lefthandedness.
A hard lesson for well-meaning people who do not want others to suffer, or cause suffering, but a necessary one lest the good become victims or even worse, enablers and protectors of the disturbed ones.
Obligatory caveat: as with all mental disorders, forms of retardation and what not, it is important always to remember that any kind of behaviour, any phrase, any thing about someone can easily be pathologised and turned into "proof" that there is something wrong. Clear and systematical and consistent patterns are what to look for, not random oddities.
Thank you, Mr. Koehli, I'll be buying the book.
Still dealing with these types every day. I've some new insights since you and I had our brief conversation a couple of years ago, and I can't escape the nagging suspicion that I'm still (to some degree) "reinventing the wheel."
Actionable information on specific methods for dealing with DT types in business, is rather thin on the ground. Trying to refine my methodology as I mentor my staff on precisely what to do, how and when.
If you ever have the "bandwidth" and are curious about individual cases, send me a PM.