How to recognize and recover from everyday sociopaths - narcissists

You are here: Home / Archives for 2008

Pennsylvania State Senator Vincent J. Fumo on trial for corruption

//  by //  11 Comments

Daily newspaper accounts of two big trials currently underway in the Philadelphia area have put sociopaths on display for all to see, if only people knew what they were looking at. In the first trial, Pennsylvania State Senator Vincent J. Fumo, a Democrat who represents Philadelphia, is accused of 139 counts of conspiracy, fraud, obstruction of justice and filing false tax returns. The testimony emanating from the Philadelphia courtroom is far more colorful than those charges sound, and we'll get to that in a moment. In the second trial, taking place across the river in Camden, New Jersey, five young men, all foreign-born Muslims who grew up nearby Cherry Hill, are accused of plotting a …

Pennsylvania State Senator Vincent J. Fumo on trial for corruptionRead More

The psychopathic world of David Mamet’s plays

//  by //  46 Comments

Hilton Als writes this in a recent New Yorker magazine: Among the many terrible realities to which David Mamet exposes us in his exceptional, calculated work, one theme stands out: suckers will never get a break in this wretched world. In the sixty-year-old playwright's fictional universe, the humane are too soft and dim-witted to survive; their tormentors chew them up with dry relish. Mamet treats the stage as a kind of bloody forum; the gladiators one finds there are skinny con artists, callow film producers, real-estate agents in cheap suits, and ghastly lovers who spar, using the author's hyper-stylized language as both spear and shield. Even to refer to some of Mamet's characters as …

The psychopathic world of David Mamet’s playsRead More

More confusion over antisocial personality disorder, sociopathy and psychopathy

//  by //  179 Comments

This semester I taught both Forensic Psychology and Abnormal Psychology at the University of Bridgeport. The students there are an ethnically diverse group and I think are fairly representative of America's young adult population. In both classes we discussed those individuals who have a “a pervasive pattern of disregard for and violation of the rights of others.” I wrote antisocial personality disorder, sociopathy and psychopathy on the blackboard before we began our discussion. I then asked the students if they had heard of these terms and if they could tell me the definitions. Only a small percentage had heard the term antisocial personality disorder, nearly everyone had heard the word …

More confusion over antisocial personality disorder, sociopathy and psychopathyRead More

How a deficits disorder can cause so much grief and pain

//  by //  233 Comments

Sociopathy, many experts agree, is a deficits disorder. The sociopath, in this view, is missing something—things like empathy, remorse, and basic respect for the boundaries of others. When you think of a deficit—something missing—you don't necessarily think dire consequences. You may think, instead, things like less”¦incomplete”¦limited. For instance, the idea of intellectual deficit might spark the association, mental retardation. Instead of invoking fear, this tends to elicit our understanding, even empathy. The mentally retarded individual is missing something that most of us have—a normal intellectual capacity. You think, this is unfortunate, for that person. When you think o …

How a deficits disorder can cause so much grief and painRead More

Turning in My Father in 2004

//  by //  11 Comments

My memory of the murders (Lost Memories of a Sociopathic Killer) my father committed came back to me on a Thursday. On Saturday morning I called information for retired homicide detective Dan Nazerchuk's home phone number. He was the lead investigator that helped convict my father of murder 17 years earlier. I was nervous about it but knew it was the right thing to do. My biggest fear was that news of this might get out and affect my family and career. I'm married with a beautiful daughter and heavily involved with the community and her school. I also own a small business and most people & associates around me knew nothing of my father. It is hard to explain the mixed emotions that …

Turning in My Father in 2004Read More

LETTERS TO LOVEFRAUD: I have looked into the eyes of Satan

//  by //  185 Comments

Editor's note: A Lovefraud reader, we'll call him Jeff, sent the following e-mail to tell his story. In 1981, I met the woman who later became my wife when we worked together in a furniture factory. She was 44 and married and I was a 30-year-old single "Christian." What started out as a frequently adversarial interaction became a friendship within a year, and by 1982, she was telling me how horrid her marriage was because her husband was so loveless and mistreated her. White knight that I thought I was, I let my sympathy turn into action and eventually was convinced I loved her, which led to her inviting me to her home on an evening when her youngest daughter and husband were gone. It now …

LETTERS TO LOVEFRAUD: I have looked into the eyes of SatanRead More

Lovefraud Extra: Colombian victims of corporate sociopaths riot in the thousands

//  by //  2 Comments

Many have conjectured that the recent financial didaster in the US is due to corporate sociopaths. I do not know enough about economics to agree or disagree with that. But consider a society where drug cartels run by sociopaths have a strangle hold over the government. That appears to be the case in Colombia. To watch an amazing video of tens of thousands of people posted by the UK Guardian click on this text. The company, DRFE was apparently a money laundering front for a drug cartel. According to the Associated Press "A total of 600 million pesos ($270 million) is believed to have been lost by the investment company "Dinero Rapido Facil Efectivo," or "Easy Money Fast Cash" in English." …

Lovefraud Extra: Colombian victims of corporate sociopaths riot in the thousandsRead More

A ‘female’-type psychopathy?

//  by //  747 Comments

We know only too well that by far the majority of psychopaths are men. Or at least we think we know that. Could it be that the criteria used to identify psychopaths are biased towards men? After all Hare began his work in male prison. Think about it. While behaving and being the way the PCL-R without doubt earns one the label psychopath, this is simply a list of symptoms. It says nothing about the underlying dynamics. If psychopathy is life centered on the principle of power (as opposed to love) and if it is therefore characterised by what Liane Leedom nicely calls 'warped empathy', then wouldn't you expect there to be more or less the same number of woman as men psychopaths? And wouldn't …

A ‘female’-type psychopathy?Read More

Sadism and warped empathy in sociopaths

//  by //  230 Comments

Many who have been hurt by sociopaths develop a general distrust of others. This distrust is understandable given how difficult it often is to tell if another person is a sociopath. However, going through life with distrust is not a pleasant way to live. Victims naturally then want to know in detail what sociopaths are about so they can identify the untrustables, and go back to trusting everyone else. One of the purposes of this website is to describe sociopaths and teach people to identify them. Sociopaths are pathological liars who like to talk as experts on many topics. They manipulate others and generally have a high opinion of themselves. They also lack remorse for their actions and …

Sadism and warped empathy in sociopathsRead More

A Call for Help Denied

//  by //  58 Comments

The Call - December 12, 1987 I came home in the late afternoon one day and put the news on before going to work. We had a sunken living room and I was standing in the middle of the room when I saw the report. I had been watching the news very closely lately (with good reason). I was looking for news about a recent murder”¦but I wasn't ready for this. It was one of the local news stations. I immediately recognized the artist sketch of the suspected murderer. It was my father. They had just identified the body of a missing woman and they described the suspect. They had found her body three days earlier, in the same field where two bodies were found just days before. My father was re …

A Call for Help DeniedRead More