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.
tryingtorecover,
I wonder if yours and mine are identical twins separated at birth.
Yeah, when I started to figure everything out, my husband kept saying he wanted to blow his brains out or drive off a cliff. He knew that was a dandy way to manipulate me because I would always go into a panic and wonder: What if he actually did that? I knew I would blame myself and never be able to live with myself if he did.
I’m beyond that now, thank God. A few months ago my son (31) came home for a visit and listened to a voicemail my psycho husband had just left, in which he threated to kill himself. I asked what should I do? Should I call him? Check on him? What?
My son, and one of my daughters, the one who still lives at home both advised me to ignore him. “He’s only manipulating you,” they said.
I finally broke down and called him an hour later. He asked if I had tried to call him before, I said no, he said because he would have missed my call. He said he had left the house where he was staying to go kill himself but decided to stop at a gas station and buy some cigarettes first.
While there, he ran into a downtrodden character who he was able to help. Like an angel from heaven! So he decided he had reason to live.
EnnLondon,
I just read your question about the tactical error. It will take me a while to write a response and I don’t have the time now, but will do so later.
stunned – Thanks for the heads up about Dysphonic Aphasia. It would be fascinating to know if this is a widespread correlation.
findingmyselfagain and jules- Psychopaths can use anything to further their goals, including witholding sex. As for the weird word-usage, their may be neurological impairments in the psychopathic brain that contribute to this. (I was struck by the one yours came up with ‘worthwild’ – it just sounds more dangerous, doesn’t it?)
gillian – Thanks for this little test which others can use: “funny how I never had that problem with anyone else.”
tryingtorecover, ennlondon, and gillian – the pity play and the ‘angel from heaven’: yet another two roles to play!
EnnLondon,
My moment of truth was when I read a love letter from him (that wasn’t to me), explaining how much he hated me and loved her, that she was the only one for him….”She” was my 15yo daughter.
It took a few months of re-running the “film” of my life through my head to realize that he lied about EVERYTHING and speaks in opposites. Quite literally. Like, “I love you:” really meant “You mean nothing to me but I love your paycheck because I don’t have to work and yet I have enough money to date”; “I’m working alot” meant: “I’m stealing everything that isn’t nailed down until my employer figures it out and fires me”; “I’ve gotten tired of my boss’s crap, he’s an idiot”: means “I got caught stealing and got fired, again”; “I would never cheat on you:” means I cheat on you so much I really don’t see how I have time to bother to talk to you except that I love your paycheck…..” EVERYTHING he says is a lie, except his name… although I’ve heard he’s using an alias from time to time lately. So now, even that isn’t true.
My mom likes to refer to it as “off-balance.” He kept me so off-balance that I was too busy trying to right myself and clean up his messes that I couldn’t see what was going on. It was months before I could make any kind of decisions- I hadn’t heard my own voice in my head for so long, I had trouble understanding me!
And gillian, I like that “funny how I never had that problem with anyone else.” It’s so true, but we’re so busy swimming in lies, a concept that simple just doesn’t surface. Hindsight’s a beach, isn’t it? 🙂
Before I left my husband, I was in counseling, and my counselor had me keep notes of events…because I would always forget details of what happened. I was looking through them for examples of “bewildering” ways of talking. I found this one example. My five year old son put on his daddy’s work clothes and was “acting” like daddy. As he was acting, he started verbally insulting me, immitating what how he heard his dad talk to me….”Hey, studid idiot…do this” “Your fat, lazy ass wouldn’t know how to do that”. I pointed this out to my ex….that it was sad that his five year old son would portray his father like that. My ex then started acting like a mean, evil witch the way a five year old might do it. I ignored him, and he said, “Oh it’s not so funny when he immitates you, is it?” I said, “He’s not immitating me, you are, and once again you are putting me down.”
ennlondon. yes lots of female friends and i use the word friends loosely here. he liked single mothers apparently easy to rescue them i guess, and the one girl he had a relationship with after he left me was well not that attractive to be polite and a large girl too in fact very unfemanine looking, almost the complete opposite to me in fact which is a bit strange now i think of it, cause he isa very vain and into apearences and attractive people and the funny thing was she was bright and studying phsycology of all things he and her were opposites, he liked to go out and she liked to stay home so he used to just go out without her at night. a friend who went to school with her told me she was a bit crazy at school however and told everyone her father was molesting her. i also think he has a friend who is large and has trouble attracting men she is also a very loud person im sure he sleeps with her casualy, im sure she has feelings for him but he he just uses her for sex. i msure he lied to me about her too while we were together and after. i asked him once a fter we split if he sleeps with her and he flew into a rage and would not talk to me for sometime after. now to me when you meet a guy with lots of female friends something is not right. he also used to say the most hurtful things then turn around after when i asked him about it and say i dont know why i said that or i didnt mean it. and he even said to me once i dont do one night stands, this made me laugh no he doesnt he keeps them going for longer than one night. also i n regards to the speech thing mine had other funny problems dont know if related to the sociopathic side of things but, he always slept very well even when all the bad stuff between us was happening and i struggled to sleep due to the stress he was putting on me, but he had this thing where his legs would jolt about in bed while he slept, he didnt wake but it kept me awake i think its called restless leg syndrome, i made him go to the doctors and get something for it cause it annoyed me so much. also he would fidget with his legs while relaxing with me on the lounge almost like he couldnt sit still sometimes. and this one i found strange but didnt notice it till we moved in together but when eating he made funny little grunting noises almost like a baby does while feeding i found that very unusual, it was subtle but after a while you really noticed it i ve never seen that in anyone before. now he sounds like a total freak but this is true and when i started to notice these things and his other bad behaviour towards me i was really thinking it was something deeply wrong in his brain causing these strange little things he did. also for a grown man he would get so engrossed in t.v even really boring stuff like cartoons and bad sitcoms he really enjoyed them and everyone else is like why are u watching that crap but he was engrossed like a child is when watching kids stuff. now i think all these things were red falgs but it took a while for me to put it all together.even with the eating noises i would be embarassed if it was me but he was like oblivious to it like it wasnt even happening but if i could hear it he must of too. maybe its like some developmental thing when they are growing up, who knows any doctors on here know anything about these,i would love to know as it is so strange. also i remember one day when we were i thought in love we were talking about baby names for girls as a relative of mine had just had a baby, and he came up with some funny ones, one name he said i think that name is sexy, and i thought we are talking a bout a new born who relates that to sexy how weird to say that. i later found out the names all of them he suggested as nice names were females he knew and probably slept with or was sleeping with. when i found out i was pretty upset but i never said anything as it was a long while after when i found this out and i think he forgott that conversation he seemed to forgett a lot of conversations even important ones. once he said to me when he called me after he broke up with a girl that they had been apart for three weeks, then later in another conversation he told me they spent christmas together, whch would mean he rang me a bout 3 days after they broke up. this was after telling me he did not want to see me again even as friends mind you. then when i questioned him on it he said oh did i well our relationship was very rocky on and off all the time i must of lost track of time, yeh right. so much seems to happen with them in a short space of time, like more than normal relationships somethings are even hard to remember cause there is so much. you start telling one thing and others come to mind in fact i could write a whole book about all the stuff that happened.
Hi Jules, They have immature sides, Yes my ‘ex’ used to watch cartoons like a kid. One day he showed me some porno cartoons on his phone and I was really shocked because they were like the kind of teenage toilet humour, really crass and childish but even more shocking that he actually found them really funny.
Another weird thing he did. Somewhere we went, there was an unattractive woman who would openly make eyes at him. He sat down next to her, broke wind (without me knowing) and then asked me to change places with him, so that she gave me the most dirty looks thinking I had broken wind – he though this was highly funny. I looked at him and thought – what IS he doing.
yes very child like, like they didnt grow up over the age of 13 or under even. i know some pretty mature 13 year olds. another thing he liked was horror movies the really uncomfortable ones that no girls really want to watch he liked them! he also blatantly stared at other girls if he thought they were good looking even when we were togethr i think he thought i did not notice this but did all the time but it was like he just did it without noticing he did it himself, like a normal thing to do when your partner is there, i know most guys have the occasional look but when you there with them most dont. and i am fairly attractive in fact men look at me a bit too. and if he saw someone staring he would get totally mad a bout it on our first date this guy at another table kept staring at me and he was going to go over there and punch the guy i mean for real not just saying it. even when we broke up, he left me by the way we were having a coffee and this young guy was looking at me and he went right off he better not do that again i will kill him he said. i am like well why did you leave me then. confusing like, a posession thing. but a lot of things he was child like. once he came to visit me he had love bites all over his arms and a few scratches from some girl i supose he even wore a singlet to make sure i seen them , when i asked who put them there he said they were bruises from his mates wrestling him. i mean its like teenager stuff who does that. when i met his mum for the first time they had a weird relationship, she would not call him for ages then when she saw him she was all over him like a rash. well we went to dinner with her id never met her before and she was very odd she totally ignored me most the night and sat there talking to her son my s path. anyway i was getting a bit annoyed she made no effort to make me feel part of the family like most parents would. anyway he was like a little kid talking away to his mum an didnt even try and include me in any conversation it was a terible night for me. i thought this was immature any other guy would include you in some way to make you comfortable any of my previous boyfriends would have. when i asked him about it he blamed me of course it was all my fault. but the t.v thing he would get so involved with silly shows it was like you werent even in the room at all. at work yeh i worked at the same place, he would hang around all the girls like a little school boy chatting and flirting and i am like we are at work cant you just do your work and be professional. the work thing caused a lot of fights the woman at work would tell me stuff about him flirting with them and he would deny it and lie about it i found stuff out later on.
I JUST REMEMBERED THIS ONE IF I EVER QUESTONED HIM AOBUT A LIE HE TOLD ME EVEN WHEN I KNEW THE TRUTH, HE WOULD FLY INTO ONE OF HIS RAGES I MEAN REAL ANGER AND SAY, IF I TELL YOU SOMETHING YOU SHOULD BELEVE ME. THEN HED BE MAD AT ME FOR A LONG TIME FOR EVEN ASKING HIM WHATEVER I DID. OR IF HE GOT ANGRY AND I SAID WHY ARE YOU SO AGRESSIVE WITH ME, HED SAY I M JUST TIRED. THATS A GOOD ONE OWNDER IF I SAID THAT TO HIM ONE DAY IF I SAY SOMETHING YOU SHOULD JUST BELIEVE ME, ID LIKE TO SEE HIS REACTION AND HIS FACE IF I SAID THAT. TURN THE TABLES AND USE HIS EXACT WORDS.
I JUST REMEMBERED THIS ONE IF I EVER QUESTONED HIM ABOUT A LIE HE TOLD ME EVEN WHEN I KNEW THE TRUTH, HE WOULD FLY INTO ONE OF HIS RAGES I MEAN REAL ANGER AND SAY, IF I TELL YOU SOMETHING YOU SHOULD BELIEVE ME. THEN HED BE MAD AT ME FOR A LONG TIME FOR EVEN ASKING HIM WHATEVER I DID. OR IF HE GOT ANGRY AND I SAID WHY ARE YOU SO AGRESSIVE WITH ME, HED SAY I M JUST TIRED. THATS A GOOD ONE WONDER IF I SAID THAT TO HIM ONE DAY, IF I SAY SOMETHING YOU SHOULD JUST BELIEVE ME ID LIKE TO SEE HIS REACTION AND HIS FACE IF I SAID THAT. TURN THE TABLES AND USE HIS EXACT WORDS.