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 you expect them to come across differently?
I am beginning to wonder whether there may be two broad types of psychopathy – a ‘male’-type and a ‘female’-type. I place these in quotes because, when I think about it, men with might be thought of as ‘female’ psychopathy come to mind and we all know about women with ‘male’ psychopathy. And yet, at the risk of being un-PC, I want to maintain these descriptors for now so that the difference I think I see doesn’t disappear.
A ‘female’ psychopath would not necessarily commit crimianl/antisocial acts like her male counterpart, but she woud be as power-driven, as toxically narcissistic as a ‘male’ psychopath. The control, the manipulation, the dishonesty, the selfishness, the callousness – all these would be present, but we might not recognise them for what they are because of 1. media portrayal and 2. medical diagnosis of psychopaths. The difference would come in the gendered style of their behaviour.
In my clinical work I have come across this phenomenon. For example, a woman I now consider to be of the ‘female’-type of psychopath didn’t come close to committing a crime and yet the way she mothered her daughter, my patient, came close to destroying the child’s mind. This seems to me to be a perversion of motherhood eqivalent to the perversion of fatherhood we read about on this website.
Do readers have any comments? I’m particularly interested in any examples you might have of how ‘female’ psychopathy – if such a thing does exist – manifests itself?
learnEDthelesson….I can’t hide anywhere! And you’re already in the schools? Get ‘m, girl. New life skills program…balance a checkbook (or online bill paying)…the resume…and RED FLAG P detection and avoidance! You deserve a generous federal grant, plush headquarters office, summers off, and a 6 figure, or 7, salary!
Just think of the funds saved by the government in future support services for victims!
Look for me in the 2007 articles…nobody goes there…except you, I guess!
Son good?
Jim
Jim….I know what to do with the duct tape….but all the red tape at school???!!! But Im not giving up, and its about time the government LEARNED A LESSON or two or three or 100!! And new Life Skills Program….great name!
My son is doing really well! Thank you… Back to school for half-days until Dr. appointment next week. Also new insulin which allows him to eat anything he wants (sweet stuff in moderation)…never was I so elated to see him with icecream from cheek to cheek — and a big smile in between –his first icecream cone in over a year! Life is good!
Hope green flags surround you…or even yellow … heck black/white too! 🙂 Abby
Oh dear. First time on here and already having to take my foot out of my mouth. So if I may I’d like to temporarily digress from Dr. Steve’s topic …
First of all let me say that I have nothing but praise for your website Donna. I’ve cited it all over the place, to everyone who shows the remotest interest in this topic. Since I’ve come across the topic of psychopathy/sociopathy this is the best reference I’ve found by far.
Secondly, I’d like to thank you (Donna) for posting the links to the author’s page, and apologize for jumping the gun re: hidden authorship.
I’m quite tech savvy (I work in I.T.) so it’s not like me to miss things like that, particularly when I go looking for them. So, with the understanding that there’s no such thing as a stupid question, and that if I’ve had difficulty others may have too, I thought I’d post what happened to lead me to that conclusion. There were a number of factors that served as red herrings:
1) when searching for creditation for articles, I came across or searched out three pages which speak to the topic of credentialed authors, but do not contain (or at least I didn’t see them) links to the “Authors” page. Perhaps your webmaster could add them or make them more obvious?
a) “Articles to help you understand and heal
Written by people who shared your experience”
http://www.lovefraud.com/Articles_in_Lovefraud_Blog.html
b) “About Lovefraud”
http://www.lovefraud.com/10_aboutLovefraud/about_Lovefraud.html
c) Clicking on the blogger’s name. This takes you to a list of their blogposts, but not to their author profile.
2) The “Authors” link is fairly far down on the main blog page. I incorrectly assumed it was a reference to authors of related books, so didn’t bother to follow it.
The problem with hidden ownership/authorship/interests is a big problem on other “psychopathy” websites (particularly Hare’s “Aftermath” – which I’m surprised at considering he’s quite respected and appears above board), and I was dismayed to think I’d found it again here, and now very happy to be proven wrong.
So, once again let me apologize for jumping to conclusions, and thank you for your creation of this excellent resource.
Annie…we have fun here, too. Sometimes we have to laugh to just avoid crying. And your observations are good…a while back I lost my direct link to the blog portion of this site and ended up on a new and improved homepage…and couldn’t find my way to this blog easily….creature of habit, old and decrepit, declining mental capacity, early onset of CRS…old peeps got lots of excuses!
No apologies necessary…I enjoyed your input…but….
Don’t jump at me! I’m no conclusion! LOL!
Welcome!
Thanks to everyone here for your kind comments to my post. Getting back to Dr. Steve’s thread:
Jim, thanks for your vote of confidence. I think you’ve hit the problem squarely on the head:
“The idea of psychopathic mothering is not an idea the psychiatric community wants to acknowledge”for the impact that validation would have on the legal system and current culture.”
and I loved your comment: “But in the bottom currents of the cultural river”reality prevails.”
Glad to hear people have fun here – you’re right that we have to laugh about this stuff. For the moment I think I have some “junk” to get off my chest before I can pull out my sense of humour – but give me time and I’ll get there!
Re: your first reply to me: I haven’t read your other posts (yet) and don’t know your situation, but I’ll speak from my own experience and hope that this might have some relevance for you.
I have an excellent 2nd year psychology university textbook which contains a very good section on “immunizing influences” in regards to severe child abuse. This is another topic which gets short shrift. I think your therapist is correct about your influence on your daughter – you appear to be acting as an “immunizer”, in which case she’s a lucky girl to have your influence in her life.
I think that the dynamic that happens being raised by a psychopathic/sociopathic parent (similar to any relationship with a psychopath) is literally brainwashing, exactly the dynamic that goes on in POW camps, cults, despotic &/or tyranical regime changes (e.g. China’s cultural revolution, Iraq under Suddam, etc…), except writ small. One of the most important factors for a successful “indoctrination” is the isolation of those being “programmed”, so that no other influence can interfere with the “message”. This can be done in ways other than physical isolation i.e. by painting any other contacts as the enemy. That would be you, of course. But in my experience, as long as your daughter doesn’t see you as the enemy, or even if she does right now, your love and caring of her and your effort to teach her and just do the daily tasks of normal child-rearing will sit with her and eventually win out, and prevent her mother’s message from totally destroying your daughter’s mind. Speaking from my own experience, what’s most important is to establish a normal healthy family relationship that just doesn’t include any reference to the psychopathic person. It’s important not to get sidetracked on those negative influences. Give her an experience of a loving family home where she doesn’t even have to think about her mother – make her mother a non-entitly in your relationship with your daughter, and refuse to be goaded by anyone (including your daughter) into breaking this.
For what it’s worth, I think the mother/daughter relationships you’ve described sound more like narcissism than psychopathy (which also bodes well for your daughter). A psychopathic mother INTENTIONALLY puts her (targeted) children in harms way – of course in a way that includes plausible deniability. I think there is a fair degree of sadism in most psychopathic mothering – an element of pleasure in seeing the child suffer.
Anyway, I’ve gone on long enough here. Glad that Dr. Steve broached this topic, and hope to learn more.
One more question: does anyone know of any research being done on female psychopathy? If not, does anyone know of researchers who might be inclined to consider undertaking it?
Elliott Barker, M.D., D. Psych, F.R.C.P. (C), is the Director of the Canadian Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children and the former editor of the journal Empathic Parenting.
I also found this interesting link.
http://www.naturalchild.com/elliott_barker/mothering.html
BloggerT7165… are you doing research on female psychopathy..or involved with a book “What About When Mom is the Abuser?”… I just started researching about Annies question and came across the above! Sounds interesting!
learnthelesson:
Thanks for your posts, LTL (do you mind if I shortform your name?!?) Very interesting perspective in the article you linked to : linking psychopathy with excessive capitalism/materialism! And I’m glad to see a reference there to “”immunologic” factors”.
I just hope that recent research in brain plasticity will help to make the author’s conclusion incorrect: that damage in the first three years is untreatable. Also, I would have felt more comfortable with his conclusion if he had made a point to say that exposure to this does not guarantee that the traits are passed on, inferring that all children of psychopaths/bad parenting are by definition the next link (this is what I fight with when I try to speak about my experience, either psychopathic mothers don’t exist, or I am viewed as inevitably personality disordered by virtue of growing up with one, and it takes literally months of work before that suspicion is put to rest). I was blessed to have a number of immunizing influences in my life, but rarely do I hear this considered when you read of the children of sociopaths. Now I realize that life’s too short to waste convincing someone of something they don’t want to acknowledge, and I just leave them to their beliefs and move on.
BloggerT7165: I found the following at your blog:
“There is more but that is enough to make my point. Now through all these years no one ever spoke up and said anything about her. In fact as an adult I was frequently pressured by people to go visit or talk to my mother. That I had to “respect her” because she was my mother. Almost anytime the she came up as a topic I would hear people say things like that. Even AFTER I would tell them the everything. Because she gave birth to me it was like she was given special rights no matter what she did or how she acted. It did not matter that she would do things like tell me to “call your father” and when I would pick up the receiver she broke it over my head. It did not matter that the only thing that mattered to her was her. She had no conscience and was not above doing practically anything to get her way. Lying and manipulating people came as natural to her as an otter to water. And no one ever, until I got got much older, ever seemed to believe that she was capable of such things. A “mother” just could not do these things.”
What you’ve said is exactly what I myself experienced – in an odd way the worst part of what I experienced because it ensures that there will never be any validation, let alone any protection. And healing? How can you need to heal from something that couldn’t possibly have happened? I’m sorry that you had to live through that.
And Jim:
I may have been wrong about what I said to you earlier. My grandmother provided me an example of a loving caring home whenever I stayed with her, and my mother was never mentioned. And I’ve been able to draw on that in my later life. But the fact that neither she nor anyone else ever said that there was something wrong really f*#*! with my mind, and I didn’t have any tools to overcome the damage that did happen. So, I’ll have to think about this. I think, ideally, I wouldn’t change a thing re: the relationship with my grandmother, and ideally a third person would have stepped in to send the message that what was happening to me was wrong.