Erikson: An Invented Storm and the Trouble with Labels

The storm can be checked. The motive is harder

The story appears in Chapter 8, about “yellow” people, one of the types in Erikson’s colour scheme. The chapter begins by drawing parallels between talkativeness, charm, a desire for attention and traits the author calls psychopathic. It then supplies an example to which he refuses to apply that inference.

In Erikson’s account, Janne wants to be liked and entertain his audience, not hurt them. Nor does he invent stories constantly. The author proposes distinguishing these cases through intention and frequency.

The first part of the anecdote offers a way to check the claim: Janne’s wife contradicts the boat story. The second asks for a different kind of trust—in the author’s explanation of why Janne lies. In this episode, Erikson does not show an independent check on that motive. He knows his friend and explains his behaviour; the reader receives the explanation already settled.

That does not establish that Erikson is wrong about Janne. But borrowing his certainty to assess a colleague would be an extra step. Evidence that a story is false does not provide equally strong access to the teller’s intentions. This is where an accessible scheme risks turning an observation into a label.

A list of traits does not confer professional training

Erikson himself cautions against the easy inference. Early in Chapter 1, he objects to the oversimplification of calling disagreeable people psychopaths. Janne supplies a concrete counterexample in Chapter 8. The afterword also rejects the need to suspect everyone. It would therefore be unfair to attribute a simple “liar equals psychopath” rule to the book.

The author also invokes Robert Hare’s checklist. Here the distinction between reading a list and using a professional assessment matters: on his PCL-R page, Hare explicitly warns of the considerable potential harm from misuse and requires adequate training and experience.[1]

That warning does not refute every story Erikson tells. It changes what a reader is entitled to do with one: recognising a trait in a popular book does not by itself justify assessing an acquaintance with a professional scale.

What remains when the label is removed

Chapter 16 explicitly addresses manipulation by people Erikson does not consider psychopaths. One illustrative case involves a boss pressing an employee to take on an additional project requiring substantial unpaid time. The author proposes delaying the answer to consider the demand rather than agreeing immediately.

Understanding this constructed example does not require classifying the boss’s personality. There is a task, a cost in time and pressure to agree now. In a workplace chat, those details can be clarified separately from the question of what “type” of person is asking. This is an example of ordinary negotiation, not a guide to resisting violence; the book’s confrontation scenarios are no substitute for professional help in a dangerous situation.

For the narrow question of lying and labels, a concise account is enough. Janne’s story is useful not because it teaches readers to identify psychopaths. It requires a pause at the point where a falsehood has been established but everything else has not. There was no boat. That is enough reason to disbelieve the story. It is not enough to settle the question of who the person is.

This essay examines Chapters 1, 8 and 16 and the afterword of the Ukrainian electronic text; it does not assess the whole book. The publication year of this particular copy has not been established. The Janne dialogue above is paraphrased from that translation, not quoted from an English edition.

Sources

[1] https://www.hare.org/scales/pclr.html — Robert D. Hare — The Hare Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R) [2] https://folio.com.ua/books/v-otochenni-psihopativ — Фоліо — В оточенні психопатів, або Як уникнути маніпуляцій з боку інших