RECENSION. This year, “Surrounded by idiots” celebrates its tenth anniversary, the book that, after a tentative start, became a newsstand hit. It is said to have sold 1.5 million copies in Sweden alone, which in that case should mean that every fourth adult Swede has read it.
Behind the success is a bizarre story that many people know by now.
The sales success was based on the fact that the book – with its ingenious division into red, blue, yellow and green personality types – was sold as scientifically based.
The author Thomas Erikson himself claimed to be a behavioral scientist and there were no obvious reasons for his readers to doubt that this was the case.
The book was published by Bonnier, Erikson was also called a behavioral scientist in SVT’s “Fråga doktorn” and Aftonbladet gave him his own psychology column.
Only a drunken leaping crazy person would have dared to stretch a lie so far?
Erikson was not a behaviorist at all
It turned out, however, that Erikson was made of different wood. Soon it was revealed that he was not a behavioral scientist at all, and not only that – his name did not exist at all in the Ladok grading system.
In other words, he lacked education not only in behavioral science, he didn’t have a single college credit – in any subject.
Perhaps not entirely unexpectedly, given the apparent lack of respect for facts, the so-called DISC model (with the four colors) turned out to be totally pseudoscientific.
“It’s hard to imagine a worse scientific support,” psychologist Dan Katz summed it all up. When Katz himself attended one of Erikson’s lectures, it became painfully clear that the latter was not an autodidact behaviorist either.
Erikson also lacked the most basic knowledge in the subject where he was now by far the country’s most recognized expert, at the same time that large parts of the country’s population were trained in the DISC model at their workplaces.
“Sweden’s most translated author”
Recently I looked up Erikson’s new book “Omgiven av lögnare”, the latest in the series which has now been translated into 56 languages, which according to the cover makes Erikson “Sweden’s most translated author”.
Of course, the title makes it tempting to think that he now wants to atone for his crimes. “Who can really teach you more about lies than me, the country’s most foolish peasant prisoner?” had the book been able to begin.
What is hidden behind the treacherous cover – Astrid Lindgren’s books, for example, have been translated into 109 languages – is, however, something completely different.
Erikson has chosen to completely ignore the fact that he has already been exposed, it is both laughable and uncanny to read a text with such a manipulative scheme.
The book is about completely different liars than himself.
Surrounded by liars by Thomas Erikson (Bookmark publisher).
Erikson tries to sound mature
To try to shore up his premise, Erikson occasionally half-heartedly refers to research, but most of all he tries to sound mature in general.
Often it becomes murderous, as when Erikson states with an authoritative tone that he himself is “of the absolute conviction that the Holocaust, Hitler’s systematic mass extermination of Jews based on unimaginable anti-Semitism, is true”.
Or when he seriously announces regarding the con artist Anna Sorokin that “my analysis after looking in detail at her progress is that she is a full-fledged psychopath”. The reader is expected here to disregard the fact that he is a behavioral scientist in the same way that I am a fashion model or an FBI agent.
This becomes extra laughable when he tries to adopt a collegial approach to real experts. In one chapter, he writes, for example, that his “way of presenting this is a little different from the way a psychologist thinks.”
Later in the same chapter, he writes that “Aldert Vrij, a psychology professor and leading expert on lies, believes that body language is rarely completely predictable. I can agree.”
Brings to mind Karl Power
Erikson’s actions bring to mind Karl Power, the photobomber who dressed up as Manchester United players and uninvitedly attended the team’s team photo shoot – with the obvious difference that Erikson claims his expertise in bloody seriousness and has remained disguised as a psychology expert for over a decade.
However, the laugh gets stuck in the throat when he writes about frauds which – completely uncommented – touch on his own. Large parts of the book are about the fight against fake news and who you can really trust. Then the reading is eerie and nasty instead.
Already in the first chapter, he writes horrified that “unfortunately, there are many less accurate individuals […] realized the enormous potential in creating and spreading stories designed to deceive and manipulate public opinion”, before warningly stating that “the peculiar thing is that the person who one moment refers to science to support his opinion the next moment completely ignores from scientific evidence”.
Later in the same chapter, he nonetheless – after having himself referred to “psychological research” – traditionally introduces the pseudoscientific DISC model.
Limits to gaslighting
In another place he writes that “a real lie has a purpose, a conscious choice to mislead. Someone who wants to lie to achieve something.”
Since he does not mention with a single syllable how he reached his position as a best-selling author, the text at that point borders on gaslighting. A concept he himself takes up, by the way, where someone lies in such an obvious way that the recipient begins to doubt his own perception of reality.
In fact, he declares of a known con artist that she was accused of “lying about her educational background”, whereupon he diagnoses her as a “distinct narcissist”. Look who’s talking!
During the reading, I return to two overarching questions. The first is how I will manage to finish reading such a difficult book. The second question concerns Erikson’s motivations: is he an elaborate prankster or does he really believe what he writes?
I’m leaning towards a combination. Already in “Surrounded by idiots” I was struck by how badly the scam was hidden behind the colorful matrices. Without the statements about science, I think few readers would have let the message pass their critical radar. In the rich flora of science hoaxers, he is not among the more sophisticated.
Again, some wording is so obviously crazy that I have to read it several times to make sure it’s not just me who misunderstood what he means.
A puzzling detail is also that the main argument in his defense of DISC throughout the years has been that the model not describes personality types, but only “behaviours”.
Where the difference would consist is of course unclear, but in this book Erikson describes the DISC colors precisely as personality types!
Drops his defensive line
As when he reasons that the blues have a particularly good disposition to reveal lies: “My own thesis, which I can’t really prove with any actual data, is that those with blue personalities […] undoubtedly has an edge.”
Apart from the fact that we are all taken to our beds when the professor suddenly has no data to back up his theses, it becomes clear once again that he is no ordinary liar, as he single-handedly ruthlessly undermines his most important (albeit tenuous) line of defense .
It’s really hard to find redeeming features in such an endlessly puckered book.
Erikson’s tactful attempt to appear smart does the opposite, making me think unsolicited of Leif GW Persson’s assessment of Horace Engdahl, as a person “who makes a slightly backward impression while describing reality after his own head.”