When Donna and I talked with Dr. Hare last week, he addressed the question of whether or not all psychopaths are criminals. He also sent us a paper he wrote on this topic. He said that it is possible for a person to score high on the PCL-R and not have an arrest record and not to have committed felonious crimes. He insisted, though, that “antisocial behavior” is central to the disorder and is found in all people who score highly on the PCL-R. The paper he wrote has the following quote regarding Dr. Hervey Cleckley, the psychiatrist who wrote the first book describing psychopathy.
Cleckley (1976) noted that he was “in complete accord” with the description of the psychopath as “simply a(n) antisocial individual” (p. 370). “Not only is the psychopath undependable, but also in more active ways he cheats, deserts, annoys, brawls, fails, and lies without any apparent compunction. He will commit theft, forgery, adultery, fraud, and other deeds for astonishingly small stakes, and under much greater risks of being discovered than will the ordinary scoundrel.”
If all psychopaths/sociopaths are by definition antisocial, then are all individuals who commit antisocial acts sociopaths/psychopaths? As described in the statement above, sociopaths/psychopaths are distinguished by how readily they commit antisocial acts. As the DSM puts it, a sociopath has a pervasive pattern of cheating, lying and disregarding the rights of others. Other recent scientific writers have equated “career criminals” to psychopaths, the idea being that career criminality indicates a pervasive pattern, not just a one or two poor choices.
Since many antisocial behaviors are also illegal, separating criminality from sociopathy/psychopathy is not that straight forward in practice. Where would we find a sociopath who does not engage in criminal deeds? Two groups set out to identify college students with psychopathic personality traits. They used a battery of psychological tests. On the basis of fancy statistics they identified a group of people they called “aberrant self promoters” (ISPs) These people promoted their own self-interest without regard to the rights of others.
Interestingly, as a group ISPs (like psychopaths) are characterized by the combination of narcissism and antisocial behavior. A close look at the group also revealed that they were not particularly law abiding citizens. One of the studies actually measured levels of psychopathy in aberrant self promoters. The average score for the group was 15, well below the cut off of 30 needed to diagnose “psychopathy.” It is also well below the average PCL-R score found in incarcerated criminals. This comparison indicates that many criminals are significantly psychopathic and that their levels of psychopathy exceed those of community “successful psychopaths.” The authors estimated the prevalence of ASP to be 10 percent of the non-incarcerated population. That is a lot of people who are significantly narcissistic and antisocial—but not necessarily felons.
Over the last three weeks I have discussed sociopathy as the combination of narcissistic personality traits and antisocial behavior. I can now say a few more things about psychotherapy and behavior therapy for sociopaths. Most therapy is aimed at reducing the antisocial behaviors that are so central to the disorder. Therapy has been found to be effective in reducing antisocial behaviors in people who are at the lower end of psychopathy/sociopathy. The high end folks are characterized by greater treatment resistance and more difficulty with change.
At the higher end of psychopathy, we see people who are very narcissistic and very antisocial. This combination is especially treatment resistant because grandiose people never think they have a problem.
I also heard again from one of our readers who is struggling to break away from a spouse who is psychopathic and in prison. If you are struggling to break away from a very harmful, antisocial, narcissistic person please help yourself by spending time with some loving, prosocial people. If you do not have anything to contrast the sociopath’s behavior to, it is easy to forget how abnormal they are. Even according to the most lenient criteria, psychopaths at most make up 10 percent of the population. Ask yourself if you want to spend the rest of your life with someone who is at heart, worse than an “ordinary scoundrel.”
wow perky, even though he lived with me, its as you say, the talk was about their stuff…..and whenever i tried to talk, he said i talked about my stuff all the time!!!!!!!
and bev yes the play drama and sex/mind games..it was just about the only way he could operate…..when i would try to be lovingly intimate, his common response was THIS is about my orgasm, yours can be about you…..never about ours!!! that definitely point to his control
perky that must have hurt ..him never even staying……you were wwwayy too good for him…like we all were…..eeewwwwww
Bev Tomorrow my internet will be unplugged but I still have acsess to internet just not as often. I have really connected with you and wish you the best. Thanks for your insight and word’s of wisdom. After all I have learned about myself and (HIM) I miss him more all the time. I know he doesn’t even think of me but I think of him all the time. I hope this will pass because it is still taking a tole on me………….peace
Hi Henry,
I am jumping in here. I don’t miss BM anymore. I think this will pass for you too. It takes time to release the illusion and embrace the truth completely.
I think there are several stages of “getting it.” We get it intellectually. Then we get it on a visceral level. When we get it in our bones, we are released. At least I hope that is true for everyone. It would be terrible to pine away for something so false to the end of time.
I have been released. :o)
Perhaps it’s in relation to how long we spent with them. Perhaps it’s in relation to how powerful the seduction was.
Have you read: The Art of Seduction? It’s a long one but I am finding it to be very interesting. It has been recommended here by several readers of LF.
Have a oood day!
As usual, Gang, Aloha has hit the nail on the head with her analysis of how long and why it takes to “get them out of our heads” I too have gotten my own Bad Man (BM) I just love the symbolism of calling them BM’s ha ha, just a little scatalogical humor there! LOL
I too thought I would never stop dreaming about the fantasy and wanting it, regretting that it wasn’t true, etc. but now I don’t think about him, or if I do it is not with EMOTION attached. It’s just like I said before, talking about what we did together etc. is emotionally just like me telling you about a movie I saw that elicited a big emotional response. Just telling you the plot, what happened, etc. but NO EMOTION attached to it NOW even though at the TIME there was SO MUCH emotion attached.
I’ve reached the stage of INDIFFERENCE. I don’t love him, I don’t pine for him, I don’t hate him, he just IS and it doesn’t make me hurt any more. I no longer LONG FOR the FANTASY of finding another soul mate. I am OK where I am and if I never find another soul mate that’s OK too. I AM OKAY.
I no longer sit and pine and grieve because I am (GASP!) ALONE. Being alone is OK because I am OK. Being with someone would be nice, IF IT WAS A GOOD PERSON, but I have no guarentee that I will find a good person, but I know FOR SURE I do not want a dysfunctional relationship with a P or a common jerk. I am HAPPY NOW, so why would I want to be UNHAPPY just to be with someone? Of course I don’t.
It took me a LONG TIME to get to the point that I wasn’t depending on a “relationship” to make me happy again. A long time to realize my life is not LOST without a man, without that kind of love, without sex (I just can’t bring myself to have sex unless I am in a committed, loviing relationship) So I’m finally in the last year or so at a place I know I am OK WITHOUT ANYONE ELSE.
Sure, and most of the guys my age that I would be interested in can get a “younger” woman, but on the other hand, they aren’t going to find anyone “better” than I am. If a “younger woman” is what they want they are entitled to that, and I wish them happiness. But I no longer look in the mirror and bemoan my wrinkles, my gray hair or the “BUTT WRINKLES” LOL that is TOOOO FUNNY!
Reminds me of an old joke, Do you know how to stop sex in people over 50? TURN ON THE LIGHTS! LOL ROTFLMAO
A gal I know says that the “reason our eyes go bad around 50 is that God did that so we wouldn’t see the wrinkles in our partners.”
Bev, him making sure you knew he got someone “younger and better” than you is just his way of saying “na na na naaaa na, I got a better toy than youuuuu do” like a 5 year old. I guarentee EVEN IF HIS GF IS MISS UNIVERSE, he didn’t get anyone even CLOSE to you! He lost the chance of a life time with you….but he’s to psychopathic to appreciate it.
HENRY: “Meet for coffee and tears” WONDERFUL comment! Yep, that’s it, “coffee and tears” just like LF–I sit here and drink my coffee and sometimes cry, or laugh, but it’s my “sewing circle.” LOL
oxy coffee and tear’s or coffee and giggles either way it would be great to spend a few hour’s with perky and everyone else on LF I think to bring a human face a real connection with cyber friend’s would help us validate our feeling’s I think most of us here need that physical connection with someone that truly understands and relates to the experience with a p Those hug’s would be the best form of therapy…..
Beverly – You know what? They may be with a younger person now. But you and I both know they would get nekkid with us in a heartbeat if we gave them a chance. Oxy is right, it’s there way of playing with our head’s. Beside’s they were not looking for someone younger when we kicked them to the curb, they were looking for the first good person to take advantage of…
You know, Henry, I sometimes thing about how LUCKY we all are here on LF–we have computers and access to them and to LF, and how about those women and men who are so impoverished by the Ps that they are in shelters or can’t afford a computer or if they had one couldn’t hook it up to the net, or don’t know how if they had one. Those poor people are out there ALONE, or in DV shelters that are pushing them to get out and get a job (I can’t even imagine WORKING during the worst of my “fetal-position on the floor sucking my thumb” (metaphorically speaking) times. How can you work when you cry all night, can’t sleep, your kids cry cause DAddy or Mommie is gone and they can’t understand how daddy or mommie could break your nose, or their noses. Or shake them til they get brain damage.
Shelters are so over loaded now that they PUSH these people out, and I honestly think a pretty good percentage of people in the shelters are personality disordered too and were in a “scrap” with the other partner who is also personality disordered who happens to be bigger and stronger. What about those poor children born with such genes and in the environment too. And we wonder about the violence in our society.
I’m no shrinking violet, I have no doubt that when I am threatened with real life threatening violence I would point a gun at someone and be prepared to pulll the trigger, but that is in my opinion now violence but SELF DEFENSE. There are those though that are so beaten down that they wouldn’t have the emotional strength to pull the trigger even if someone was beating them to death.
I’ve been in some “doozie” arguments but I have NEVER RESORTED TO HITTING OR PUSHING SOMEONE IN ANGER. Doesn’t mean I wouldn’t (I think many of us are capable of violence if driven to the point of “crazy” emotionally.) I have just never seen physical stuff as a way to solve an argument or a dispute. I can get LOUD, (imagine THAT! LOL) and I from time to time say something ugly–I once called my mother a ” senile old bat” in anger when I was trying to reason with her, but I immediately apologized (though my apology wasn’t “sincere enough” for her liking LOL)
But children who grow up around physical and emotional and verbal abuse of family members think that it is “normal” and this is the way you behave when you get angry. Add into the mix psychopathic genes and BINGO you have got a violent criminal psychopath who will pass this on to the next generation.
Children who are abused and beaten down grow up with low self esteem, trying to “help” fix up others and become victims.
My X-BF P has only one child, a son, and that son is just like him. Saw his mother emotionally and physically abused, saw his dad do “manly things” like CHEAT—Bingo—another one.
One of my neighbors (ex-neighbor now) was a player, and his son is just like him, and the “family” is quite respectable. The females in that family are all good folks (I know them well) and fortunately married good men and raised nice children, but this man’s son and his son’s son are just like him. He even used to take his GF to deer camp with him and his male grandkids wh0o were 8-12, and tell them to keep quiet “what happened at deer camp stayed at deer camp” Fortunately one of the kids “told on Pa-Pa” and Grandma finally kicked the rat to the curb, but I have watched 4 generations of this family, with the male Ps doing the same thing daddy and Pa Pa did.
In our community though, women stayed with these jerks because that was just “what you did” and it is a shame. Some of them finally got out when they were about my age and went out and got jobs and are making it on their own. Some got “lucky” and the guy died young.
Just about “everyone” in the community “knew” though, but no one gave the wife much empathy and the man was accepted (though talked about a bit behind his back if he was drunk in public) without much sanction from the community.
The cops wouldn’t “get involved” in domestic disputes. Once when my mother’s brother got drunk and held my grandmother at gun point and abused her for three days, he finally fell asleep and she called me and I went to get her, carrying a gun, with every intention of killing him if need be. I stopped by the sheriff’s office to talk to the sheriff and get him to send a deputy with me, and the sheriff, who was my cousin and knew my uncle wouldn’t send a deputy. I told the sheriff I had a pistol and intended to use it if necessary to get my grandmother away from my uncle, and he said “Oh, well, if you do, he’s PAID FOR.” In other words, I am not going to send a deputy to protect you or your grandmother and get involved, but if YOU KILL HIM, it’s okay.” DUH! This was about 1973. Fortunately, when I got there my uncle had woke up and left. My grandparents ended up renting an apartment in another town to live because they were afraid to go home. Later, my uncle went into “rehab” and they moved back home. He never made any other attacks on my grandmother, because he knew my grandfather would kill him. At the time he did the attack on my grandmother, my grandfather was in the hospital with a serious injury. My P uncle never would “bow up” against a man or against a woman that WOULD defend herself. He was always the ultimate coward, abusing people he knew would not fight back.
It is odd too that at the time my uncle attacked my GM, my mother would have done the same thing I would have done, pulled the trigger if necessary. It was ONLY after my GM’s death that mother assumed the “family role” of Toxic Enabler, and her stance of “let’s just pretend none of this happened.” It was a 180 degree turn from the way she was prior to that. I thought it was interesting at the time, but later after I studied “family role” theory in school, I saw the PATTERN. In order for a family to be “stable” (keep the dysfunctional status quo) you have to have someone to fill that role of “enabler” or, the family will no longer be “Stable” and might “disintergrate”—-Mom trained me (or tried to) to fill that role when she was gone, but because I rebelled at age 60, she couldn’t maintain the “status quo” without an enabler to take her place, so she was going to use my DIL to fill that role. Man O man, what a twisted way to live!
I look at so many of the Ps in our community and the roles that their wives and mothers played as “enablers”—but there are more breaking free, and upsetting the apple carts of these psychopaths. Unfortunately there seem to be new generations of them coming on to fill their places with DV.
Henry if it makes you feel any better, they are users but they are not dumb. These people feel like we have hurt them by insisting they play fair, keep their promises, etc. and they DO think of us. They think of us all the time. My first husband has not contacted me in years, but I hear through the grapevine he is still obsessed with me, discussing me and bashing me to anyone who will listen.
My second (bit of an N) husband still calls me and tells me whenever he gets an idea or wants to do anything in his life. I think he knows in the back of his mind that I was one person who actually cared for him in his long loner existence. (he’s not an evil man, just incredibly dumb about relationships) He is very much into power and control, and never understands why I won’t play along.
And now my recent ex-cheater bf, who I was sure was completely indifferent to me, has resurfaced through some letters from his latest cast-off, in which she informed me that he is still obsessed with me and “can’t stop talking about me” and that I am like a disease that is destroying his mind!!???!!!
Trust me Henry, he thinks about you ALL the time. Otherwise why would he try to torment you with photos and letters. After all, if he didn’t talk about you, his new bf wouldn’t even know you exist. They don’t understand us “real people” and god knows they don’t want to need us, but they do desperately need us, because they can’t be controlling users if there is nobody to control and use, can they? Therefore the victim has control over the supply that they live off from.. and they think about it ALL the time.
Oxy…”It took me a LONG TIME to get to the point that I wasn’t depending on a “relationship” to make me happy again. A long time to realize my life is not LOST without a man, without that kind of love, without sex (I just can’t bring myself to have sex unless I am in a committed, loviing relationship) So I’m finally in the last year or so at a place I know I am OK WITHOUT ANYONE ELSE.”
Heck yeah GF! This is where I am slowly coming to as well. I am really ok, it’s not like I don’t have plenty of other stuff to worry about, and I really like being alone with my kids in the evenings, no man demanding my attention, or a home-cooked meal lol 😛