A reader says: “I kept wondering what was going on in his head. I could never follow his thinking. I think he might have been into alcohol and drugs and that in itself messes the brain, and along with his other personality disorders, sure makes for a confusing relationship.”
The thinking patterns of the psychopath are indeed weird. It seems there are biological and intentional reasons for this. In others words, he is unable to think very logically PLUS he intends to mislead. No wonder he is hard to follow!
Below I list several factors which together make the psychopath a most bamboozling character.
The odd speech of psychopaths
The psychopath makes “frequent use of contradictory and logically inconsistent statements”, says Robert Hare in ‘Without conscience.’ E.g. “A man serving time for armed robbery replied to the testimony of an eyewitness, “He’s lying. I wasn’t there. I should have blown his fucking head off.” It is as if, says Hare, they have “difficulty monitoring their own speech”.
Psychopaths may also construct strange words: ‘unconscientious’ for unconscious’, ‘antidotes’ for ‘anecdotes’. Perhaps there is something about the brain of the psychopath that contributes to his odd speech.
Drug and alcohol abuse
With their poor ability to tolerate frustration and their high need for stimulation (same thing?), the psychopath is likely to abuse drugs and alcohol which obviously affects the ability to think. Chronic abuse damages the brain.
But, as M.L. Gallagher recently writes, he speaks in riddles purposely too.
The intention to deceive
This doesn’t need much elaboration here. The psychopath wants to get something. He may simply take it by force. Otherwise he will use his cunning to fool the other person. (Interestingly, the illogicality of his arguments doesn’t stop him successfully conning one person after another.)
Logical fallacies
Most of us use logical fallacies when we argue or try to persuade. Some of these are errors in our own thinking, some are conscious manipulations. Just accentuating a different word can make all the difference: “Mom said that we musn’t throw stones at the windows” (i.e. she didn’t say anything about hitting them with a tennis racket).
We can fully expect that the psychopath, with his flawed thinking plus his intention to deceive, will use every logical fallacy in the book. Bear with me for a couple of paragraphs.
Take the example the logical fallacy, the ‘ad hominem argument’. It has two types, circumstantial and abusive. In the circumstantial ad hominem argument the circumstances of the other are confronted instead of the evidence: “Of course you don’t accept that it’s OK to be a loan-shark. You’re a Christian and Christ drove the money lenders out of the temple.” (But that’s irrelevant; if I was Jewish what would your defense be then?)
In the abusive ad hominem argument the opponent is attacked instead of their argument: “You criticise me for loan-sharking, but three years ago you were arrested for drunk driving.” (What does that have to do with loan-sharking?)
Paramoralism
But the psychopath uses fallacies with an evil twist. Whenever possible he’ll use a logical fallacy as a paramoralism. In other words, he won’t use a fallacy only to win a point but also use it moralistically in order to corrode the other’s moral thinking.
How would a psychopath argue ad hominem? Several readers have mentioned precisely this example: “What kind of Christian are you to accuse me of this?” (Again, the other’s Christianity is irrelevant to the topic at hand.) Can you see the difference? Unlike the examples above where the opponent’s Christianity is used to score a point or bring the argument to an end, here the other is being denounced as a bad Christian. An open-minded person is likely to say to themselves, “Maybe he’s right. Perhaps I’m the bad one here.”
Perhaps you have an example to share of the bewildering speech of a psychopath?
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For glimpse into the wacky thought-processes of the narcissist see this article.
I found this in the archives,(been reading a lot of great stuff there, all morning) but thought it timely and interesting. It’s hard to tell who is and isn’t a P…but a red-flag is a red-flag…
Kim, the “contadictory” views that they will put out there, or the ” WORD SALAD” which is a very “high sounding” list of sentences or part sentences, strung together to sound very introspective or deep, but if you actually look at the CONTENT you say WTF? What is he/she saying here? Then they get defensive about you “questioning” them, their thoughts and so on. Many times will accuse YOU of starting a fight, or of “refusing to discuss” something. Either way, you can’t win with them.
Because many times their word “salad” is just like a bowl with lots of different salad ingredients all tossed together it is difficult to pick out the ingredients and put them backk together to get them to “make sense” because they just don’t go back together easily!
Picking them out on here usually isn’t too hard if you really look. They will come on ARGUING or disagreeing with some article and then say that the underlying idea of the article is false. LIke saying “Not ALL psychopaths are cruel” (so broad a statement, we’re not able to prove objectively that that statement is 100% FALSE, so it will get an argument started)
Then once the argument is started, it heats up, and so on. My gosh how they love arguments and feeling like they “WIN” over “us” just to show us that we “ain’t as smart as we think we are.”
Most of us here that have been through these “Troll wars” from time to time, aren’t usually sucked in for LONG, if at all. The thing that I “fear” the most from them is that they will get a row started with someone who doesn’t know what they are. I don’t want someone new who is raw and heaing to be triggered off and hurt. I think that most of us here that have hung around for quite some time quickly “get it” about them and recognize a RED FLAG from a Potted plant or a gray rock.
I think you have been around long enough Kim to remember some of the more verbal of some of the troll posters, but also to remember some people who said they came here for “support” and blogged a long time, who in the end, acted pretty much like a troll themselves, slinging abuse at others–there actually were several of these–and that is why we’ve got our lovely “report abuse button.” (thank you, Donna!)
Yea, LF has some interesting articles, even if you have read them before, it is always good to go back and re-read them again.
Thank you for that validation, Oxy…I was starting to doubt myself…still have to conscously restrain myself from engaging, however….sigh.
Dear Kim,
Me TOO!!!!
I got stuck on the part where he said “I will love you always and endlessly” . That’s the one that causes the ouch.
If it wasn’t for that, he’s just talking head. And walking away would be easy.
Once you swallow that hook, its much more work to get free.
It is a language invented to convery a seperate reality.
Maybe there is a parallel Universe and the little green guys will come and take them all back?
Dear Silvermoon,
We (victims) seem to fall for that “and we will live happily ever after” part because we have been raised on fairy book tales and “good wins out over evil” and “there is good in everyone” and “it takes two to fight” and “there are two (valid) sides to every story” and ETC. PUKE!!! Where is that puke emoticon when you need one! ? LOL
Yes, just like when a fish swallows the bait “hook, line and sinker” there is little chance of them getting away without ripping their intestines out. Even if they do get off the hook, many times it is at the cost of their lives. Unfortunately, that is too close an analogy for the women (and men) who die every year just in the US of spousal abuse. In many other countries it isn’t even a CRIME, it is a given that the male controls the family, whatever it takes, iincluding killing a woman who “shames” the family in any way.
While women are the numerical “winners” in the physical abuse contest in the west, that seems to be changing in this country at least. Higher violent crime rates are being found for women at a steady increase and the prison population for violent women is steadily increasing.
Learning isn’t just a western problem, it is a world wide problem and though we preach “no violence” unfortunately, I think our culture still condones to a large degree domestic violence–“if there is provocation.” For example, frankly, I LAUGHED when I saw the forwarded joke of “Tiger Woods Christmas Card” with the picture of him with teeth knocked out, her holding a golf club, bent, across his head and two golf balls stuffed in his ears. In reality, this is NO laughing matter while frankly, I empathize with his wife wanting to beat him unconscious. She was surely provoked enough I have no doubt. It still doesn’t make it RIGHT for what she did.
SNL did a skit on Mrs. Woods beating up Tiger–Ha ha NOT!—but you know, the unfortunate thing is too many end up like Nichole Brown Simpson.
I have done and mostly SAID some pretty inappropriate things when I was “provoked,” that today I think and hope I would never repeat that kind of behaivor or verbal abuse, NO matter how “provoked” I was (Unless it was a life-threatening situation and then I WOULD protect myself.)
On that note…………………….
What do you tell a psychopath with two black eyes?
Nothing. You’ve already told him twice.
Just kidding.
Dear Kim, I couldn’t help but laugh! I’m a baaaaaddd girl! BOINK ME!!!!! LOL
I went up and reread this whole article and the part about the PARAMORALISM is so true.
Back a couple of years ago when the entire family cut off communication with my P son, my gosh did he PANIC. AT that time the $$$$ was also cut off so he went into HYPER DRIVE with the drivel “communication.”
He would write people and tell them he was “worried” about my egg donor, and ask them to call and see if she was “Okay.”
Then he would write and play the pity play, then the angry play, and the you have let me down play, and I am worried play,etc. finally in frustration he wrote to a minister friend of the family that he knows and write this letter telling the minister what BAD Christians we are because we would not “give him unconditional love.” HUH??? UN-conditional love for someone who tried to KILL ME????? Yea, right! Of course his definition of LOVE=$$$$ didn’t seem to fly with me, and at the time, the egg donor wasn’t sending $$$$ either, but she now “loves him” (sends money and lies for him) so he is happy now that she has UN-conditional “love” for him. LOL
The minister sent me a copy of my son’s letter and his answer as well, which was 10 pages hand written of ‘DOUBLE SPEAK’ or a lesson in how to “say nothing in 10,000 words or more” LOL I was absolutely amazed that the minister could pull that one off! LOL He is a wonderful, very caring and loving man, but He has learned, through me and my P-son what psychopathy is all about. He is now very active in some DV programs as well as his prison ministry too. But he no longer swallows the idea that “there is good in everyone” and has come to see psychopathy for what it really is. The prison ministry he is in though has only a 10% recidivism rate instead of 60+% of the gen pop of prisons. So it is probably doing some actual good, but I also imagine that there are those like my P-son who are “conning” there as well.
In fact once my P-son was called out of church to be put in solitary for infractions! He was livid because he said (to the Trojan Horse Psychopath in a letter) “you know, they tell us we wouldn’t have been arrested and be in prison if we’d been in church—so that proves that sure isn’t true!” LOL
Looking back over just about every relationship with every psychopath I have known, if you will LISTEN to what they say without “interpreting it” into “normal speak” they will usually TELL you by their paramoralism and inconsistencies and so on what they are. Some of them are better than others, but the bottom line is they really don’t SPEAK HUMAN, there is always like they are “translating” from one language to another.
‘
Like I never got good enough in spanish or any other language that I didn’t have to “translate” from english into spanish and then say the few words I was trying to remember. It wasn’t FLUID, and I thinkk many times the Ps patter is not as fluid as it was if “emotional language” was their “native tongue.”
Oxy, I think, for me the main thing that distinguishes psychospeak from human interactions is that the p displays his need for dominance and control, in language as he does in everything else….he’s not seeking a solution, or any kind of par understanding, or clarification, but, as always seeks to win.
Always the antithesis, never the synthesis.
If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.
If, we, as problem solvers try to engage, we will probably lose, because we play by the rules…like logic, sticking to the point, trying to make ourselves very clear…they will deliberatly obfulscate, confuse and when it’s not working, cry victim. Sigh.
Better to recognize them for the potted plants they are.
although, I like potted plants. They are nature, and provide oxygen to the envirnment…so, let me retract that and correct by saying instead, plastic plants.