What makes this interesting is not just the behavioral analysis but the easy to use applications.
In addition for those of us who had the unfortunate situation of being involved with toxic individuals this would be a great as a learning tool of how to tell if the personality trait disordered individual is telling the truth or operating from a false sense of self.
If I may briefly address a personal situation in which I married/divorced a malignant narcissist/sociopath/psychopath after an eleven year marriage.
What I read in this new work by Jack Schafer was exact and was used to address the predator and the prey if you will.
For example in my case he was a manipulator, con artist, and able to use these techniques such as silence, gaslighting, hovering, triangulation, projection, mirroring, and more to uncover my responses and internal mechanisms in order to use that information against me especially with regards to the discard/devalue/smear campaigns that came later on.
The elicitation skills, the use of flattery, the eyebrow flash (his favorite) and head tilt, it all was utilized in my own personal situation.
Cognitive dissonance is something that I've always noted on my self help site with regards to revealing more information by using small talk and forming that sacred bond of trust.
Speaking in general terms: What a narcissist lacks in empathy, listening, communication, reciprocation they make up for in other brain washing ways.
That sincere smile was often more of a smirk and shitty grin as we know it from DC politicians and beyond (as mine worked in OBP) but folks it's still the same compliment, wine/dine/ impress with money and move quickly.
So often we can use these techniques to garnish exactly what we want to learn, uncover, and diagnose and often we can as noted in this work -solve cases.
I adored the examples provided in showing just how easy it was and how fast people reveal information without knowing they are giving up 'vital/crucial' bits of sacred ground.
Remember a little goes a long way and just that crack in the iceberg can reveal a tremendous treasure trove of information.
This was probably one of the better books I've read on this topic however, I will note I'm someone whose been abused and manipulated my entire life both by family, friends, and and ex husband.
When I get anxious I will often touch my nose, shake my leg, fidget in my seat etc especially as an ADHD individual yet what would upset me is this would be misconstrued as being inaccurate, not believable, nor credible simply because of my external body movements rather than upon the evidence I provided in court which was damming.
For those of us who must sit next to our abusers these tactics should not be used against us as we are being honest but are nervous being forced to testify against our abusers, sit next to them, and be in the spotlight with regards to PFA's or arrest, or even probation situations as in my case when he violated the PFA and was subjected to ICC violation with mandatory anger and drug counseling, 3 months probation, and more.
So in closing as easy as it's to give up information we must remember these individuals are human and it's not always the case that we should jump to assumptions or second guess based on simply body mechanics.
Thank you to Jack, the pub, Netgalley, and Amazon Kindle for this ARC in exchange for this honest review.
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