Dr. Dorothy McCoy, a licensed professional counselor and psychotherapist, has developed online quizzes to help you figure out if you are dating a psychopath or narcissist. The behaviors identified by the quizzes will certainly look familiar to Lovefraud readers. Psychopath Quiz Narcissist Quiz …
More on powerful men behaving badly
John Edwards has joined the parade. The former North Carolina senator and presidential candidate was indicted last week for using campaign contributions to keep his mistress and their baby in hiding during his 2008 run for the White House. He follows former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who admitted fathering a child with a member of his household staff, and Dominique Strauss-Kahn, who had to resign as head of the International Monetary Fund after he allegedly tried to rape a hotel maid in New York City. A lot of people are asking, why do they do it? Why are these rich, powerful men willing to chance ruining everything they have achieved for momentary pleasure? Psychology …
Powerful men and sexual impropriety
Time magazine writes about Dominique Strauss-Kahn, accused of assaulting a hotel maid in New York City, Arnold Schwarzenegger's child with an employee, and how society views powerful men taking advantage of women. Read Sex, lies, arrogance: What makes powerful men behave so badly? on Time.com. Link supplied by a Lovefraud reader. …
LETTERS TO LOVEFRAUD: He is forbidding me to see my son
Editor's note: Below is an email exchange that I had with a reader whom we'll call “Vera.” Her ex-husband is a sociopath and a lawyer. I am co-parenting with a sociopath and I am at my wits end. He is constantly using our son in his ongoing battle to torment me. The boy is still in elementary school and spends time with him alone at his mountain home. I am concerned that besides being emotionally abused as he is, he will be physically harmed. I am in a terrible bind though. Being a lawyer and a sociopath, he conned his way into custody by paying over $100,000 to hire the best divorce lawyer in town. Without a six-figure retainer or his manifest abuse of our son, I cannot amend the custody …
LETTERS TO LOVEFRAUD: He is forbidding me to see my sonRead More
After the sociopath: Being heard, being validated
Last week I posted two articles related to the Vienna Presbyterian Church in Vienna, Virginia. Between 2001 and 2005, as many as a dozen teenage girls may have suffered sexual, emotional and spiritual abuse from a church youth director. This year, the youth director was long gone, but church leaders felt that the wounds had not be properly addressed and healed. So a few months ago, the pastor and church issued a public apology. Lawyers for the church's insurance company warned the church not to accept responsibility for the failings of the youth director. Doing so, the insurance company said, would jeopardize the church's coverage in case a lawsuit was filed. The Vienna Presbyterian …
Donna Andersen and Dr. Liane Leedom present research at psychopathy conference
Dr. Liane Leedom and I spent last weekend, May 19-21, at the 4th Biennial Meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Psychopathy in Montreal, Canada. Approximately 200 people were at the conference, including the biggest names in psychopathy research: Robert Hare, Paul Babiak, Paul J. Frick, Kent Kiehl, David Kosson, Joseph Newman, Christopher J. Patrick, and many, many more. Also in attendance were graduate students and researchers from all over the world—nine different countries were represented. It was an opportunity to learn about the latest research going on in the field. A total of 46 researchers made 15-minute oral presentations of their work. An additional 91 g …
Donna Andersen and Dr. Liane Leedom present research at psychopathy conferenceRead More
Vienna Presbyterian Church gets it right with abuse scandal
Last week Lovefraud posted an article about the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia and its evasive response, or nonresponse, to claims of clergy sex abuse. It was actually written by a member of the church review board, who was as dismayed as many of the faithful. Read Criticizing bishops in the Philadelphia clergy abuse scandal. The Vienna Presbyterian Church in Vienna, Virginia, faced a similar situation when a youth director maintained inappropriate relationships with multiple teenage girls. Eric De Vries infiltrated their lives and manipulated the girls into what they thought were mutual romantic relationships. They said he drew them in as a trusted mentor, friend and …
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More psychopath cartoons
Two Lovefraud readers have created animations related to their experiences with psychopaths. They're posted on YouTube. Take a look—you'll certainly be able to relate! But I love you—daily psychopath talk By Openeyefilms Be a warrior NOT a psychopath By Sarah Strudwick …
Getting over the relationship that didn’t exist
Lovefraud recently received the following e-mail from a reader: How do I process a relationship that had so many lies in it that I don't know really with whom I was involved? I miss the person I thought I knew so much, but at the same time, he was involved with someone else, and others, since at least last June. I thought he had had one affair—but not anything to the extent that it looks like now. How do I process a relationship I never had? Was he lying the whole time acting out the "I love you's", the romantic comments, and the idea that we should be together? Is it all an act? Most of us are reading and posting on Lovefraud because we were intensely, callously, brutally deceived in …
Criticizing bishops in the Philadelphia clergy abuse scandal
In February, a Philadelphia grand jury indicted four priests of sex abuse and found evidence that an additional 37 had also abused. The panel that reviews sex abuse cases for the Philadelphia archdiocese was as surprised as anyone. In an article in Commonweal, a lay Catholic publication, the chairwoman of the review board criticizes the archdiocese, saying it "failed miserably at being open and transparent." The problem, writes Ana Maria Catanzaro, was the clergy's attitude of superiority. She writes: So why haven't they gotten it? In a word, clericalism. In his book Clericalism: The Death of the Priesthood, George B. Wilson, SJ, articulates “unexamined attitudes” typical of clerical cult …
Criticizing bishops in the Philadelphia clergy abuse scandalRead More