Chapters in the book Emotional Intelligence and Egopathy: Why Good People Behave Badly
by Cedric S. Wood, Ph.D.
Chapter One: Emotional Intelligence: This chapter gives an overview of the development of emotional intelligence since 1990 when Salovey and Mayer published their article on it. It covers the development of the movement after Dan Goleman published his best seller Emotional Intelligence. It also includes how Reuven BarOn figures into the movement.
Chapter Two: Emotional Intelligence: This chapter covers some news ideas about emotional intelligence and assesses the ones which are in the literature. All is not complete in the world of emotional intelligence. There are flies in the soup and flaws in the foundation of emotional intelligence. This chapter reveals where emotional intelligence could use a little improvement.
Chapter Three: Egopathy: what is it and how does it work? This chapter introduces the idea of egopathy and expounds the parameters of what egopathy is and where this knowledge can be applied. This chapter will include information on the brain and how it processes sub-character attitudes such as jealousy, resentment, judgmentalness, and punitiveness. It also covers Retributional Rage.
Chapter 4: Big Bad Bullies (BBBs) and PCDs (Power, Control, and Domination.) This chapter is more playful and yet deadly serious. It uses less academic concepts to explicate the precepts of the egopathic personality that can also be called “PCD personality” because of the three central behaviors of most egopaths.
Chapter 5: Narcissistic Personality, Sadistic Personality Disorder, Psychopathy, Anti-Social Personality Disorder, Bipolar Disorder and their Relation to Egopathy
There is a rich history of looking at bad behavior but it is always been given a name which distances the behavior from our everyday lives. Cleckley and Hare have called it “psychopathy.” Millon and Smith have called it “sadistic personality.” Dillon has written about violence in the home. …. written about Anti-Social Personality. Masterson and Linehan have written about Borderline personality. All of these diagnoses have more innocuous versions which are nonetheless a problem if they occur consistently in our offices and homes. The current progress being made by personologists such as Costa, McCrae, Millon, and Widiger are included.
Chapter 6: Egopathic Defenses/ Ego Expressiveness, Schemas and Hidden Agendas
This chapter summarizes some of Freud’s concepts about ego defenses. Information is also taken from Blackmon’s book “101 Ego Defenses.” Ego expressiveness is a concept that is new. It suggests that our behavior can be an expression of our maldeveloped ego, not just a “homunculus” deep inside our “unconscious mind” pulling the strings to control us toward a goal of anxiety avoidance. I have added “Ego Aggressive” and “Ego Humorous.”
Chapter 7: The Roots of Disempathy and Cruelty: The Developmental Personology of Egopathy
The concept of “developmental personology” is introduced and the developmental aspects of egopathic personality and behavior are explicated.
Chapter 8: Families Behaving Badly Everyday countless acts of cruelty and meanness are committed in our homes and in our families across our country and around the world. How do we rectify the problem?
Chapter 9: Doctors and Professors Behaving Badly:
Doctors are our royalty. In little towns across the country the wealthiest men and women are doctors. In every social setting it’s the doctor who is most revered. It takes a great deal of brains to become a doctor. So for those of us who are not doctors we feel awe and a little jealous of their intelligence, skill, and earning power. On the other side, doctors can come to expect this deference to their skill and talent… and power to call the shots. “You have to check that out with your doctor first” we have said a thousand times. But what does this do to the mind and mental attitude of the doctor? It does have an effect. And it’s not good.
Chapter 10: Workplace Incivility, Egopathic Bosses, and Healthy Workplaces
A new concept being promulgated by three woman scholars is “Workplace Incivility.” The concept of “workplace incivility” fills a need to have a name for the rude, inconsiderate, and hurtful behaviors that are so often the stuff of conflicts and stress in the workplace. The most common source of workplace incivility comes from the egopathic bosses who are fully controlled by their egopathic shadow side. The APA initiative to encourage Healthy Workplaces is reviewed and suggestions made about how to improve the program and how to encourage use of the program.
Chapter 11: Personality and EQ Assessment: Which one reveals egopathy best?
There have been hours and hours of work on assessing emotional intelligence but no work discovering how to assess egopathy. Unless I want to include the work Les Morey is doing with the PAI. We need to identify people who are egopathic and then look at their profiles for markers which will help us identify future egopaths so we can help them.
Chapter 12: Examples in books, on TV, and in the movies.
This chapter will be focusing on the myriad stories we hear every day in the news on TV, in the movies, and in books. Certainly the killers of children we see in the news will be examined from the Columbine killers to Charles Roberts, the killer of the Amish children.
Chapter 13: Examples in Academic Literature, the Popular Press, and Other Media
The academic press of psychology, counseling, family therapy, and psychiatry will be examined for examples of egopathic acting out. Also the Popular Press will be mined for stories of incredible egopathic acting out.
Chapter 14: Public and Private Figures Behaving Badly in the News
This chapter is devoted to the men and women of our country who have power and control in their private lives and in their public professions. We will discuss why these people are driven and why they feel the need to be so much in control even to the significant detriment of their fellow human beings.
Chapter 15: Happiness, Health, and Positive Psychology
It is absolutely necessary to discuss the nature of happiness because it is so seldom discussed from the angle that our happiness is often robbed from us by egopaths. There is an article in every popular magazine about how to find happiness. However, it is seldom expressed that the reason we lose our happiness is the onslaught of the outrageous behavior of the egopath we are close to. I will explicate the four types of happinesses, the multilayered nature of happiness, and how it is demolished when egopaths are allowed to purge their unresolved pain all over their victim in an inefficient attempt to get rid of the pain.
Chapter 16: So what can I do about it? Remonstrating and High Character Communication
This chapter gives you the bright side of the egopathic conundrum. We can do something about it. There are techniques to deal with the egopath in your life. I will also include a few original concepts such as: The “You Really…” technique and “Describe what you see.”
Chapter 17: A class in Parenting/Relationships in High School; a class in Developmental Personology in graduate schools. Why is this chapter included? Because it is the chaotic and abusive homes in which disorganized communication takes place that egopathy is created. We must provide relationships education to our young and psychological understanding to our graduate students.
Chapter 18: The Vocabulary of Egopathy and High Character Communication: This chapter includes all the words which are utilized in creating the epistemology of character disorders in general and egopathy in particular. There are also several new words to help in understanding this baffling, clandestine, and yet common personality style.
Chapter 19: The Structure of Emotional Intelligence and Egopathy: The Diagrams, Figures, and Lists: This chapter will be the repository of the lists, models, and diagrams used throughout this book to help the reader understand the underlying structure of egopathy.
