The universe is about to crack open like an egg. I’m reading three articles each one special on differing lines.
As long as the universe is cracking eggs open, I figure I’ll make a universe omelette from the information that’s arriving on track 23 – All Aboard!
I especially like Nedeljković, Dinić, & Tucaković (2023) on the Dark Triad, forgiveness, and anger rumination. They are my new all-time favorite of favorites.
They are spot-on to the pathogen, seriously spot-on.
Seriously.
If I’m Professor Childress grading papers, Nedeljković, Dinić, & Tucaković (2023) is an A+. If this was the Olympics of research, I’d give them a 10.0.
Nedeljković, Dinić, & Tucaković (2023) is my new favorite article. They’re going to get heavy attention on my citation playlist. This is an excellent study. They are unlocking things that need unlocking, they are revealing the patterns within the patterns.
Nedeljković, B., Dinić, B., & Tucaković, L. (2023). The dark triad and forgiveness: The mediating role of anger rumination. Personality and Individual Differences, 215, 1–6.
Guess where they’re from? The University of Belgrade, Serbia and the University of Novi Sad, Serbia. Hey, I was just there. I was in Serbia in May and this article was published in December. I’m apparently dancing on pinpoints.
Darks are here.
The Darks are here in the family courts. Family courts, let me introduce you to the Dark personalities… Dark personalities, you already know the family courts. You two should get better acquainted.
Forgiveness.
The Forgiveness line is open. That has major implications for me in the work,, not so much for you… for a while. The Forgiveness line will open wonderful things later on, but it will flow on the under-line for a while.
All the attention will be to the Dark when the Darks arrive at a place they’ve been this entire time… unseen.
Now they’ll be seen.
Forgiveness is a huge-huge line of force and power. You won’t see it actively on the over-line for a couple of years, but it’s moving now and it’s going to do good things in necessary places once we reach the necessary places.
For me, Nedeljković, Dinić, & Tucaković (2023) means I can now weave Forgiveness on the Empathy lines.
And anger rumination is oh-my-gosh spot-on to the spot-on to the spot-on. With anger rumination, the authors are in the sweet-spot of the pathogen’s core. One more step… link the anger to the sadness, it’s sadness rumination, unresolved grief and pathological mourning….
… showing up as anger rumination about the grievance that caused them pain.
They nurse their grievances, they nurse their pain… into revenge. The ability to unravel the sadistic gratification in causing our suffering is found in the rumination on their anger-and-pain.
It feels good to cause our suffering – it gratifies a hunger, causing pain gratifies a desire to cause pain – understand the term gratify – causing suffering feels good, it relieves an inner tension of pain.
The nurtured grievance, the anger rumination, is the source of their revenge, their desire to cause pain. You can see it prominently displayed by the child’s symptoms
The Dark Triad is coming to the family courts. The Dark Triad is already here… waiting to be seen, waiting to be revealed.
The Dark Triad:
From Nedeljković, Dinić, & Tucaković: “Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy are three interrelated malevolent traits known as the Dark Triad (Paulhus & Williams, 2002)…. Machiavellianism refers to manipulative tendencies, goal-orientation behavior, and moral relativization. Narcissism trait represents a subclinical manifestation of narcissistic personality disorder and frames the features of grandiosity, superiority, domination, and need for admiration. Psychopathy encompasses callousness, lack of empathy and remorse, and disinhibited behavior.”
Anger Rumination & Impaired Forgiveness:
From Nedeljković, Dinić, & Tucaković: “There is longitudinal evidence that ruminations about the wrongdoer and wrongdoer-related past events impede the process of forgiveness and foster avoidance and revenge motivation (McCullough et al., 2001).”
The Dark Triad leads to Anger Rumination, leads to Revenge, leads to Absence of Forgiveness. It’s a path. The study by Nedeljković, Dinić, & Tucaković (2023) is called a Path Analysis.
From Nedeljković, Dinić, & Tucaković: “Previous findings pointed to relationships between dark traits, anger rumination, and forgiveness (e.g., Coelho et al., 2018; Jain et al., 2022). As discussed previously, the Dark Triad traits, particularly Machiavellianism and psychopathy, have been found to relate positively to anger rumination and negatively to forgiveness (Giammarco & Vernon, 2014; Taylor, 2020). Additionally, anger rumination has been linked to lower levels of forgiveness (Chatzimike-Levidi & Collard, 2022), and it has been suggested to impede the forgiveness process (Barber et al., 2005). Therefore, we assume that anger ruminations will mediate the Dark Triad and forgiveness relations. In other words, we expect that anger ruminations will likely foster revenge motivation in the Dark Triad (Burtaverde et al., 2022) and thus hinder forgiveness.”
Yep.
From Nedeljković, Dinić, & Tucaković: “Machiavellianism and psychopathy were positively related to anger ruminations and negatively to forgiveness. In contrast, narcissism showed weak associations only with thoughts of revenge and had no significant relationships with other dimensions of rumination or forgiveness scales. These results are aligned with earlier studies that showed Machiavellianism and psychopathy (but not narcissism) are associated with higher vengefulness and lower forgiveness (Giammarco & Vernon, 2014) and with higher anger rumination (Yang et al., 2019).”
Anger Rumination & Vulnerable Narcissism:
From Nedeljković, Dinić, & Tucaković: “Studies directly comparing grandiose and vulnerable narcissism have indicated that only the vulnerable aspect of the trait is linked to anger rumination (see Krizan & Herlache, 2018; Krizan & Johar, 2015).”
Vengeance gratifies dark motivations.
From Nedeljković, Dinić, & Tucaković: “Although Machiavellianism and psychopathy showed positive associations with all dimensions of rumination, it is important to highlight that these traits exhibited the strongest association with thoughts of revenge. One could assume that individuals high in Machiavellianism and psychopathy, in addition to ruminating about their angry feelings and memories, tend to ruminate the most about revenge due to the anticipation of experiencing positive emotions following vengeance.”
Family courts, may I introduce the Darks – the Dark Triad, Vulnerable Dark Triad, and Dark Tetrad.
And oh-my-goodness, may I introduce Nedeljković, Dinić, & Tucaković: (2023) from the University of Belgrade and the University of Novi Sad, Serbia.
I’m tellin’ you, the Balkans are a happenin’ place. They have so many angels, no kidding. Lots.
Craig Childress, Psy.D,.
Clinical Psychologist, CA PSy 18857
GreatCosmicMothersUnite 