#11 The Mind of a Psychopath | Dr. Reid Meloy

If you have ever wondered what the word “psychopath” meant, you will find the answer in this episode. Dr. Reid Meloy is someone I respect deeply and he is sharing his knowledge of psychopathy and dark personalities in this episode. Dr. Meloy is a really big deal in my eyes and in the world of psychology and he is one of the tops experts on the subject of psychopathy in the world. I have had the pleasure of working alongside Reid twice, once at Facebook and another time at DigitalOcean, both times I had invited him in to speak to the Safety and Security Teams at each company and he was as compelling as he is in this interview. Please note, for the first 2 and a half minutes, we get pretty thick into weeds of psychological diagnosis and I’m leaving it in! But fear not, the rest of the interview is easily understood.Dr. Meloy is a board-certified forensic psychologist (ABPP) and consults on criminal and civil cases throughout the U.S. and Europe. He is a clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of California, San Diego, School of Medicine, and a faculty member of the San Diego Psychoanalytic Center. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences and is past president of the American Academy of Forensic Psychology. He has received a number of awards and honors, and was the Yochelson Visiting Scholar at Yale University in March, 2015, and Visiting Scholar at University Hospital of Psychiatry Zurich in May, 2018. Dr. Meloy has authored or co-authored over two hundred forty papers published in peer-reviewed psychiatric and psychological journals, and has authored, co-authored or edited twelve books. He has been consulting, researching and writing about personality disorder, psychopathy, stalking, narcissism, criminality, mental disorder, and targeted violence for the past thirty years. His first book, The Psychopathic Mind (Aronson, 1988), was an integration of the biological and psychodynamic understanding of psychopathy. His co-edited book with Drs. Hoffmann and Sheridan, Stalking, Threatening and Attacking Public Figures (Oxford University Press, 2008), led to a commissioned study for the National Academy of Sciences on threats toward public figures published in 2011 (www.nap.edu). His recent book with Dr. Hoffmann is the International Handbook of Threat Assessment (Oxford University Press, 2014). Dr. Stephen White and he created the WAVR-21 V3 (www.wavr21.com), a structured professional judgment instrument for targeted workplace violence. Dr. Meloy has been a consultant to the FBI, Quantico, for the past eighteen years, and is the originator and developer of the TRAP-18 (Terrorist Radicalization Assessment Protocol, www.gifrinc.com). He was a member of the Fixated Research Group for the United Kingdom’s Home Office concerning threats to the Royal Family and British political figures, and is a consulting member of Work Trauma Services, Inc., headquartered in San Francisco, Team Psychology and Security in Darmstadt, Germany, L&S Threat Management in South Africa, and the Freeh Group International Solutions. He was also an associate editor of the Journal of Threat Assessment and Management. Book Link: https://amzn.to/3No4uiY This is an affiliate link. It will provide me with a small commission on purchases made through it and help the podcast (but it won’t affect the price you pay).