This week we received the following email: My daughter is married to a man I consider a psychopath. My daughter has not spoken with me for many months. She has totally changed her personality, voice, she says things she never would have said before, she attacks me to my friends. My daughter and her husband seem to have their own version of reality, truth, and morality that is not consistent with those outside her marriage or in the world. My husband doesn't want to invite them to our house for the holidays or have anything to do with them. I feel the same way, too, because of their attacks and saying things that are not true about us. I have gotten advice on this blog to try and have a …
Radio show to discuss the children of sociopaths
Sociopathy is a disorder that doesn't afflict a person as much as it does his/her family! Since the disorder is also partly genetic it afflicts the family for generations. This week I have heard many amazing and tragic stories and I would like to share a few of them with you. These stories are about the children of sociopaths. I am working on a project to document symptoms of psychopathy in accused and convicted con artists. As part of this project I am interviewing the family members of con artists. That is how I became acquainted with the 17 year old daughter of a convicted con artist. She wrote me a nice note saying that if I wanted to know about her father, I should study conduct …
Reflections on antisocial behavior (Part 3): Is that person a sociopath/psychopath?
Five and a half years ago I started a quest to understand sociopathy/psychopathy and antisocial behavior. Long before that, in 1981, I attended a lecture by Dr. Sarnoff Medick at USC. During that lecture, he presented the results of his research. His research on adopted children indicates that antisocial behavior has a strong measurable genetic basis. His studies did not single out anyone “diagnosed” a sociopath/psychopath they only examined antisocial behavior in parents and their biologic and adopted offspring. Remembering these studies, I read them again and found many others demonstrating the genetic basis for antisocial behavior and sociopathy/psychopathy. Also at the beginning of my …
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Reflections on antisocial behavior (Part 2): It’s genetic!?
Behavior genetic studies of children, adolescents, and adults all report that the overlap of antisocial tendencies (broadly defined) with other psychopathic traits (e.g., interpersonal, affective) can be explained by common genetic factors.-Robert Hare, Ph.D. The most profound things researchers say about reality are often so difficult to understand that the average person wants to turn and run away when the researchers begin to speak. The statement above might have that affect on you but stick around because I want to explain it this week. This statement gets to the heart of the most important controversies regarding sociopathy/psychopathy. First I will give you a definition of …
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Reflections on antisocial behavior (part 1): When women are sociopaths
This semester I am teaching a course on personality and psychopathology to graduate students in counseling. I am very excited about this course and am considering making it available online to everyone. I sat down with a colleague this week and explained the content of the course. During that conversation the topic of gender differences in personality came up. My colleague said something like, “Yeh, we expect men to compete, sometimes act aggressively and to spread their seed, women are biologically preprogrammed to stay put and to nurture.” I countered by saying , “While that formulation has some truth, we often fail to appreciate that females also have aggressive tendencies rooted in the …
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Crimes of Persuasion: Schemes, Scams, Frauds
Yesterday I had a conversation with a woman who was married to a con artist for over 5 years and she didn't know it. The man she met online, had married her representing himself as a “hedge fund manager.” She helped him entertain clients who invested in his company. He also had a business partner, someone who had known him for over 10 years. That business partner was also conned and lost a great deal of money. It turned out that everything about the man other than these two very real people was a sham. Every word out of his mouth was spoken as part of some pathological lie. The man is without doubt a sociopath/psychopath and con artist. In the aftermath of being taken both personally and fi …
Esther Elizabeth Reed: Profile of a female con artist and sociopath/psychopath
Sociopathy or Antisocial Personality Disorder is a psychological disorder that affects about 4 percent of the adult population. The extreme form of this disorder affects 1 percent of the adult population and is also called psychopathy. Among those with sociopathy/psychopathy, there is a spectrum of severity and the traits/behaviors that make up the disorder are also found in non-disordered people. These observations have led the American Psychiatric Association to consider a prototype approach to diagnosis. I believe the prototype approach is very useful to both professionals and the educated public so I will explain it. The prototype method of diagnosis involves describing what someone …
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Are all psychopaths/sociopaths criminals and are all criminals sociopaths?
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) a …
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Why don’t people get it about sociopaths/psychopaths?
Two weeks ago I started a series on the treatment of sociopathy/psychopathy. That series was interrupted by the need to discuss the case of the con man who kidnapped his daughter. Now it looks like he also may be implicated in the disappearance of a California couple. The con man, like many in his profession has had a number of different identities. Before I go back to talking about treatment, I want to discuss con artists and the nature of sociopathy/psychopathy again. Donna and I had the good fortune to speak with Dr. Robert Hare this week. I wanted to talk with him about the fact that there is not much in the scientific literature linking psychopathy to con artistry. In that …
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Con man kidnaps daughter from supervised visitation
It is already Friday and the daughter of Sandra L. Boss has been missing since Sunday when she was abducted from supervised visitation by her father a con artist. On behalf of other victims of love fraud, I want to tell Sandra that we are praying for her and her daughter. We also understand how an intelligent, loving, successful person can be duped. Sandra L. Boss asks for return of daughter Last night Sandra appeared before the cameras to ask that her former husband return the child, age 7. To see the video visit ABC News. She gave the following message: "Clark, although many things have changed, you will always be Reigh's father and I will always be Reigh's mother,We both love her …
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