A researcher conducts a study that reveals just how much narcissists focus on themselves. Read: The definitive fMRI test for narcissism, on PsychologyToday.com. Link supplied by a Lovefraud reader. …
LETTERS TO LOVEFRAUD: Layers of shame and guilt
Editor's note: Lovefraud received the following email from a woman who is herself a mental health professional. Names have been changed. The sociopath has an amazing ability to determine who can be manipulated or is vulnerable. When I separated from my sociopath, I had to recognize how I was conditioned as a child to be trusting and compliant. I was rewarded when I took care of others; my parents wanted a kind child. Their shaping was successful and I care very well for others. What I lacked was the ability to care for myself and to discern who deserved my care, who would return the love and respect that I gave. Lack of this discernment exposed me to many abusive personalities. I became a …
When Love Isn’t Real – The Shame Of Deception
I've just travelled back from the UK today, and during my journey I read an article that made me sit up and take notice. It's the story about a teenage girl, Gemma Barker, who created three separate male aliases in order to dupe her female friends in to sexual relationships with her. She had made enormous efforts to develop and maintain these aliases. She succeeded so well, in fact, that not only the victims but also their families were fooled in to believing that Gemma was a boy. Whilst it's claimed that she suffers from autism spectrum disorder and ADHD, the judge still called her “Cunning and deceptive” and the report states that she showed no remorse when handed her sentence. Ring any bel …
Does anything work in getting a victim away from a sociopath?
Since Lovefraud launched in 2005, I've collected 2,850 cases—people who have contacted me to tell me about their experiences with a sociopath. In nearly 100 of these cases—3.4%—the person who contacted me was not actually the victim, but was a friend or family member who was trying to pry the victim away from the sociopath. For example, here's an email that Lovefraud recently received: I have a sister-in-law who is dating a married man, who claims he will be getting a divorce, which is still yet to happen. Now she's pregnant with his kid so things are more serious. They were supposed to move out together a couple months ago, but when the day came he disappeared, then a couple weeks later s …
Does anything work in getting a victim away from a sociopath?Read More
When hope becomes malignant
By Joyce Alexander, RNP (retired) What is hope? The word “hope” means a kind of “expectation of obtainment” and an emotional state of optimism, a trusting that what we want is going to come true. Here is how Wikipedia defines hope: Hope is the emotional state, the opposite of which is despair, which promotes the belief in a positive outcome related to events and circumstances in one's life. It is the "feeling that what is wanted can be had or that events will turn out for the best" or the act of "look[ing] forward to with desire and reasonable confidence" or "feel[ing] that something desired may happen". Other definitions are "to cherish a desire with anticipation"; "to desire with expect …
What is forgiveness? Does it condone evil or defeat it? (Part II)
Editor's note: The following article refers to spiritual concepts. Please read Lovefraud's statement on Spiritual Recovery. Special note from the author, Travis Vining: Some of the content in this article may be unsettling to some. I would ask that the reader please recognize that the following definition and interpretation of forgiveness is from years of personal experience, reading, learning, practicing and teaching. It did not come easy, and in the beginning, I was just as unwilling as most to accept forgiveness as a possible solution to my problem. It is very “normal” to experience an emotional response to the idea that we play a part in our own suffering when the pain is still fres …
What is forgiveness? Does it condone evil or defeat it? (Part II)Read More
Saying “Yes” Without Reading The Small Print
This week my post is inspired by a throw-away comment from my son. We were sitting in the kitchen, eating vegetable soup together while he downloaded a new app for my iPhone that will allow us to stay in contact more easily when I'm in the UK. As is often the case, the carrier has updated their terms and conditions so, before I could complete the download, I had to agree the changes. “You don't really want to read the 55 pages of new terms and conditions do you Mum?” asked Dylan, just checking the seemingly obvious before checking the “I agree” box. I laughed and shook my head - of course I didn't! And that's when he said “Did you know that's the biggest lie that people tell — not just on …
BOOK REVIEW: Character Disturbance
Character Disturbance—The Phenomenon of Our Age, the new book by George K. Simon, Ph.D., does two things really well: It paints a no-nonsense picture of how people with personality disorders, including sociopaths, behave. And it explains why traditional psychotherapy, in attempting to understand these individuals, gets it so wrong. The basic problem, Simon explains, is that classic concepts in psychotherapy, like those advanced by Sigmund Freud, propose that people develop defensive strategies against a cruel, heartless world in order to protect their deep, authentic selves. This results in "neurosis," defined in Wikipedia as "a variety of mental disorders in which emotional distress or u …
Other aspects of crime and mental disorders
I read two interesting articles in the newspaper this morning. The first was about the original mass murderer, Howard Unruh, who in 1949 walked down a street in Camden, New Jersey, and killed 13 people in 20 minutes. Psychiatrists at the time tried to find out why he did it by giving him "truth serum." On Oct. 20, 1949, Camden County Court Judge Bartholomew A. Sheehan signed the final order of commitment for Unruh after a team of four psychiatrists classified him as a case of "dementia praecox, mixed type, with pronounced catatonic and paranoid coloring." In modern parlance, he was a paranoid schizophrenic, a classification that would appear again and again in Unruh's records. Read …
Woman who left U.S. with kids faces extradition
After her divorce in 1997, Eileen Clark, 54, left the United States with her three children for the United Kingdom. she now faces extradition back to the United States. It will be interesting to watch this case—so far I haven't seen any information to indicate whether this woman or her ex-husband were abusive. Read: Mother-of-three facing extradition from Britain and a trial in U.S. for kidnapping her children 15 years after fleeing an unhappy marriage, on DailyMail.co.uk. Link supplied by a Lovefraud reader. …