'A person is known by the company he keeps'

Human beings evolved in communities, packs or groups, gangs, tribes or clans. As a mammalian species, we are unable to survive alone.

From birth we need care and guidance, we need a community. That is why developmental theorists explain to parents and teachers, and later on to new supervisors at work, that from infancy children must learn how to socialise, and later on, as they grow up, how important teamwork becomes.

After childhood, our parents are not the major influencers in our lives. Post-adolescence, our friends and associates have a major influence on us and who we "hang out with" is key to who we become.

The old proverb, "A person is known by the company he keeps," was originally spoken in 620 BC by the ancient Greek Aesop. He used it in the classic way in which wisdom is transmitted from one generation to another. Telling a story, a method that wise people still use, is now mainly reflected in TV or video series that philosophers and politicians use to influence the public. Because it works.

When I was first trained in recruitment theory and practice, I was surprised that one of the areas I was told to explore was the job applicant’s early childhood development (ECD). I soon learned that I was wrong in considering it to be classist and discriminatory.

As I had grown up at a time and in an era when primary schools were full of emigrant children from different war-torn countries and cultures, I was taught, for example, to find out whether the applicant had played sports or been part of a team, if they had brothers and sisters and what kind of mischief they got into as children. It gave evidence of creativity, problem-solving ability and the ability to adapt to diversity.

The relationship-building that spoke of the ability as adults to motivate others, to lead others from in front, to lead from within a group, or more importantly, to lead from behind, is developed through play in childhood. There is an advantage I learned in being part of a large family where sharing, supporting and learning to "get along" with brothers and sisters was evidence of that.

Have you ever noticed that classism, elitism and "one percent-ism" have become pejorative terms, descriptions to be shunned? Those from deprived childhoods who have lifted themselves out of poverty through sheer determination, the ones that choose a path and stuck to it, are the ones that reached the top.

One of the schoolmates of the Trump attacker, Thomas Matthew Crooks, not a friend – apparently he had no friends at school – is reported as saying he was bullied at school and shunned by other children. He always sat alone at lunch. He was the last to be chosen for a team.

The emotional and psychological pain that scars an adolescent who grows up isolated by his/her peers never goes away. It builds psychic pain, anger and hatred that has to find an outlet.

When they become a part of the workforce, if and when they do, their obsession with control stands out.

Forbes Magazine once quoted the 1990s Robert Hare Personality Scale as a valid measurement, characterising the three-four per cent of senior managers in the US who exhibit the characteristics of a psychopath. I am not trying to diagnose by journalism – you have to be trained to use the scale effectively – but seeing the blank expression of the young man in the photographs published of him, I wondered if it might just be possible that young Mr Crooks would be amongst those thus diagnosed.

The symptoms of psychopathy include a lack of a conscience or sense of guilt, lack of empathy, egocentricity, pathological lying, repeated violations of social norms, disregard for the law, shallow emotions and a history of victimising others.

I have seen this profile again and again amongst disruptive students in schools. Most practitioners in the industrial relations field have encountered it when grievances at work turn sour, against the expectations of one or the other party to a dispute.

It is not a mistake that the research has focused on executives, heads of organisations, chairmen of negotiating teams, senior trade union leaders, CEOs or those who have the expectation of being CEO and heads of political parties that lead their people to war.

Expectations unfulfilled may exacerbate the presentation of symptoms in those who believe they have a right to anything, from sex to status at work, whether they are entitled to it or not.

Originally designed back in the late 1990s to assess people accused or convicted of crimes, it marks out many of them by their intelligence and creativity. The test consists of a 20-item symptom-rating scale that allows qualified examiners to compare a subject's degree of psychopathy with that of a prototypical psychopath. While it is unlikely that any one person exhibits all the 20 symptoms listed, it is accepted by many experts in the field as the best method for determining the presence and extent of psychopathy in a person.

The Hare checklist is still used to diagnose members of the original population for which it was developed – adult males awaiting psychiatric evaluations. Recent experience, however, suggests that the test may also be used effectively to diagnose females, adolescents and sex offenders.

It is important to note, however, that the test is mainly limited to people over 18.

In light of the recent focus on mental illness in employment situations, it may be possible that this test will be attempted by people not fully trained to do so.

It is a dangerous possibility, equivalent to sending a gardener to do an appendectomy, and it should only be used by qualified experts.