Lovefraud could have written about Drew Peterson at any time since he was declared a suspect in disappearance of his fourth wife, Stacy Peterson, who vanished on Oct. 28, 2007. Drew Peterson, who at the time was a sergeant in the Bolingbrook, Illinois police department, didn't seem to be at all concerned about his wife's whereabouts, claiming that she probably left him for another man. He cheerfully talked to the media, despite sordid allegations about his past. After Stacy disappeared, Peterson became a suspect in the death of his third wife, Kathleen Savio, who was found dead in a bathtub. While they were married, police were called to the home they shared 18 times for domestic …
Sociopaths, cluster B personality disorders and psychopathy
A sociopath is someone who has a pervasive and persistent disregard for the rights and feelings of others. This disregard is manifested in the antisocial behavior sociopaths show. While we usually think of antisocial behavior as criminal, not all antisocial acts are illegal. A person who slips up once is not a sociopath. Sociopathy is a lifestyle. Since humans are designed to live in society, a healthy personality has prosocial inclinations. Therefore, people who are pervasively antisocial are disordered in the sense that they are not the norm (thank God). Although antisocial behaviors are observable actions like lying, stealing and assault, there are personality traits that cause …
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LETTERS TO LOVEFRAUD: Child of an undiagnosed sociopath
Editor's note: A Lovefraud reader, we'll call him Allen, tells his story. I know the story starts way before my time with my dad, so I can only tell you what I saw growing up and what I now see in hindsight. I think the biggest thing that I see in him is that he takes no personal responsibility for anything. Somewhere in his late 20's he “found God” whatever that really means to him, and it was right around the time that my mom finally left him because of physical abuse that he denies to this day. He says that he never laid a hand on her and then when I remind him that I was there that day and saw everything he still denies it. He claims that pushing her over a couch and through a screen …
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The flaw in viewing sociopaths through normal eyes
Lovefraud recently received an e-mail from a young man, we'll call him Kyle, who has just broken up with a woman whom he now believes is a sociopath. Based on the behavior he described, I'd say the guy is right. The woman cheated on him, and when confronted, either downplayed her behavior, said it was none of his business, or verbally attacked him. She had no interest in resolving problems. "Her solution to everything was to run, wait awhile, and then pile on affection as if nothing ever happened," Kyle wrote. Kyle has been researching sociopathy to try to grasp what is really going on with this woman. Here's more of his e-mail, which I have reproduced with his permission: First of all, I …
After the sociopath: How do we heal? Part 3-Denial
This column is dedicated to my sister, who is my best friend and wise counsel in so much of this learning In Part 2, I wrote about painful shock, our instantaneous reactions to stabilize us until we have time to heal, and the everyday process that we use to resolve trauma. In a relationship with a sociopath, something goes wrong with this process. We don't handle “bad things that happen to us” in an expeditious way. It may be that we do not have skills for fast processing of emotional trauma, because we are burdened by residue of previous trauma. But beyond that, the typical sociopathic technique of recruiting us through seductive love-bombing, followed by withdrawal of positive attention, …
