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.
findmyself- Mine loved the Sopranos as well. He believed it all! I am feeling like you….Cant wait till the day I feel nothing for him. I repeat thoughts of seeing him, when I am feeling, looking and doing good. Seeing him and feeling nothing or just repulsed! Today is a down day for me, I am struggling to be strong and yet again trying to figure things out. I go up and then go down with my emotions of it all. It saddens me that it has to be this way. That HE has to be this way and he really cant help it. I feel sorry for him, I am angry with him, I am so very upset and hurt about it all. It is toxic in so many ways. I remember once him telling me that the relationship is a roller coaster….but just like a roller coaster you may be scared and get a bit quezy but you get back on and ride again. It is true, and I did..again and again. Right before our last break he also told me in one of his nasty moods that he predicts that I will go through this another year. A week later he got mad at me and hasnt been in touch since. I dont know if he is done with me or it is part of the game. I do know that I NEED TO BE DONE with HIM! Being on this website has put me on another plane and with working on myself I am truly trying to be done even if he is not.
My former sociopath loves the Sopranos and all things mob related. He seemed to spend a large amount of time watching TV and movies like The Departed. He also liked internet porn. He would always say he had gotten 2-3 hours of sleep a night, but strangely never had a few moments to communicate with me. He would go for days without answering my e-mails, completely cutting off the communication between us. When I would finally see him, he would act as if everything was totally fine and normal. He considered himself a sociopath and told me so! I spent a lot of time trying to talk him out of it! How could he be a sociopath when he was obviously so introspective! How could I be so naive?
I saw on mine’s computer sometimes -his history would be full of mysexmatch.com and craigslist categories like relationships with “no strings attached” ads…. and tons of porn sites. In the beginning before I started getting so turned off by his cheating and his actions.. we had tons of sex and I couldnt figure out why he needed all these sites. Also the cheating.. as much as we were active with it.. why need more.. how in the heck did he have the energy for more? He told me once he looked at porn sites cuz he’d been married for so long that now in the dating world again he needed to see what was acceptable and to get more up with the times on dating and sex. He didnt want anyone but me of course. LOL
LOL…WOW, Dis- Mine as well loved the porn, never got any sleep, or too much…so he said. Sleeping was his excuse many a days and nights when he didnt answer a call, or make any and basically cut off communication. I told my socio..that I thought he was one. He just used it to excuse himself.
Findmyself-Caugt him on match.com with the interest of what he was looking for– ANY all the way down the list!-He didnt care who it was! When confronted he said his family told him to put himself on the site because he just moved back into town from FL. Mind you he was living there with an older wealthy woman for a year. I hate/love putting these puzzle pieces together.
EnnLondon,
Over the past nine months I have been on an amazing–and brutal–journey of discovery that would never have happened had it not been for my husband’s one and only tactical error.
But first, a little background. (Proof-reading now, I see I’ve actually written a lot. Sorry for the long post. Once I started, though…) Since the middle of 2003, DH (damn husband), an ER nurse, has been having an affair with a woman (also married) he met at work. He was planning on leaving me for this woman (who I’ll refer to as “K”) June of last year, after a visit from his parents who live out of state. (He wanted to keep the facade going for them.) By that time, K had already thrown her husband out, filed for divorce, in fact had obtained a totally trumped-up restraining order against her husband, keeping him away not just from her, but from their 14 year old daughter too. (Nice, huh?)
DH’s plan was to make up some bogus reason for leaving. Of course. For 18 years he had convinced me and everyone else that he adored me, that he was an utterly devoted husband and family man. No, he would never admit the truth; he’d leave under false pretenses (as he’d done to every woman he’d been with before, I’ve discovered). He’d provoke an argument and say he needed some time alone. Then he’d never come back.
That would have happened. And I would never have known the real reason for his leaving had it not been for several wild flukes (which I now see as miracles) and his one tactical error.
First fluke–and it was a biggy–one afternoon in December 2005, two people DH worked with dropped in on us for a visit. They had not been invited; they just happened to be in our area. In the almost three years DH had worked at that particular hospital, this was only the second time anyone from his work had even been to our house.
While these people were over, they asked DH why we weren’t going to the ER Christmas party that night.
“Christmas party?” I said to DH. “You never told me there was a Christmas party tonight.”
DH said, oh, he hadn’t told me because he didn’t want to go as there might be a**holes at the party. “So you don’t sit with them,” I said. Then he said he didn’t want to go in case people got sloshed and made fools of themselves.
“What are you talking about?” I said. “That’s half the entertainment!” (Which was true; other parties we’d been to got boring when the company drunks left.)
I changed the subject because the conversation was turning into an argument and I didn’t want to make our guests uncomfortable. I was suspicious, though, because I knew DH was lying, so that night, after he was in bed, for only the second or third time in all the years we’d been together, I went through his wallet, which I never would have done had those people not come over that day.
And that’s when I discovered the one piece of evidence that ultimately led to every other discovery I made.
What I found was a white rectangular peel-off label (the kind hospitals use to print patient info on for charts, lab orders, etc.) on which DH had written the name of a hospital in the middle, an area and phone number on top, and a four-digit number on the bottom.
I don’t know why I took the label out of his wallet. I didn’t know who or what it was for. It wasn’t obviously suspicious. But for some reason, in spite of the fact that his wallet bulged with many other business cards and phone numbers, I sensed this one thing might be significant. So I removed it from his wallet, peeled it from its backing, stuck it on a sheet of notebook paper, hid it somewhere, and then immediately proceeded to forget what the label said and where I had put it.
I didn’t forget about the Christmas party though, and a couple months later I asked DH about it again. This time he came up with a new explanation. Said he didn’t want to take me to the party in case some other woman acted like they had something going on.
“Why would a woman do that?” I asked.
You never know what goes on in some women’s heads, he said, and, besides, he added, women throw themselves at him all the time. That last part was somewhat true–he is extremely good looking and, of course, very charming–so I accepted–uneasily and again for just a time–his new story.
A couple months later I broached the subject again. This time, under increasing pressure, he admitted that nine months prior to the Christmas party, one of his co-workers had gotten drunk at a social event and had told K’s husband that “everyone at work thinks [DH] is f#*@ing your wife.”
I was stunned. I said I knew sometimes rumors can be unfounded but often there is some truth to them. Rumors don’t usually start over nothing.
Oh, but in this case they did, DH said. The guy that started the rumor is an idiot, he’s a troublemaker, he’s just jealous because he couldn’t get any action if he wanted to.
But the rumor wasn’t just that this guy thought they he and K having sex; it was that *everyone* at work thought they were having sex. So I asked DH why would everyone think that? Did he like K? Did he flirt with her? What had he done to make people think they were having an affair?
DH said no, no, no, nothing; he never liked K at all. He couldn’t stand her. She’s obnoxious, she’s crass, she’s phony, a bitch. She’s not cute but thinks she’s all that.
And then he said that K didn’t even work at the hospital anymore. “She doesn’t?” I asked. “Where does she work?”
DH said he didn’t know.
“You don’t know?” I said. “You mean to tell me that someone started this rumor, someone told K’s husband about it, he confronted you at work, and she quit her job because of all this, and you don’t know where she works? I find that hard to believe.”
“I don’t know because I don’t care,” DH said, but when I kept pressing he admitted he thought she might work at a hospital near where she lives.
“Where does she live?”
“I don’t know. I think maybe in [name of town on the label I found in his wallet],” he said.
By that time I had forgotten what that label said, forgotten even where I had put it so, for the time being, I let it go.
But a few weeks later, while organizing some papers, I came across that number again. [Town where she lives] Hospital, it said. In capital letters. Husband’s handwriting. I called the number. Punched in the four digit number when asked for the extension. “Recovery Room!” someone answered. “Could I speak to K?” I asked. “Just a minute,” they said.
Amazingly, and I’m embarrassed to admit this, when I confronted my husband with this he was still actually able to convince me he was innocent. First he said that K’s best friend in the ER gave him K’s work number and he only took it to be polite. I asked why he didn’t throw it away. He said he should have, he meant to, it must have slipped his mind and without thinking he put the number in his wallet.
Then he called a co-worker from the ER and this woman vouched for him completely. She said that the guy who told K’s husband the rumor is, in fact, an idiot and that she knows my husband absolutely adores me. All he talks about is Jill, Jill, Jill. And talks nonstop about his children. She wouldn’t lie to me either, she said, because she’s been in that position and she knows how much it hurts. “You’re one of the lucky ones,” she said.
And I knew she meant it. She meant every word, although now I also realize that she was only being exploited. To DH, she was just another pawn in his giant chess game of life.
But at the time I took her word. I had no hard proof of DH’s guilt and, besides, it felt far less painful that way.
Last April, though, I finally came to my senses. I was cleaning out my purse when I came across that number again (I had stuck it inside a zipper pocket). And here’s another fluke. This was on the very day (I later found out thanks to the internet) that K filed for divorce from her husband.
Finding that number again started me thinking: I’ll bet the one friend I’d confided in didn’t believe me when I told her DH hadn’t cheated. I started looked at things more objectively, as if through someone else’s eyes. I started asking more questions; started digging; turned into a regular Columbo. Spent literally hundreds of hours investigating. I ended up uncovering tons of evidence–most of it circumstantial, naturally–of what can only be described as staggering duplicity–not just of this one affair but almost an entire marriage of his living a double life: two other long-term affairs, countless other conquests and flings, some even concurrent with K, times he called as many as four different women in one night. It’s unbelievable, really.
And I would never have known a thing had it not been for his one tactical error. Of putting that phone number in his wallet. I’m sure DH never dreamt I would ever find out who it was for.
He thought he was so clever. He thought I’d never know anything. Between him and K–she must be a P too–they had devised such elaborate schemes: secret signals, taking sick days off work and subsequently “misplacing” paycheck stubs that would have revealed the deception; using a go-between; she had a blocked phone number; him calling me frequently to check on my whereabouts (especially when she was at our house) and to make me think he was missing me. I believed it too. Everyone did. My phone would ring and I would scamper to the phone. “I love you baby!” he’d say. “Can’t wait for you to come home.”
Gillian,
Thanks for explaining – I’m always interested to know how things ‘slotted into place’ for others. I can’t imagine how you must feel. How strange though that you focussed on that bit of paper. Don’t you almost feel sometimes that the subconscious takes over and guides us towards what’s important?
I hope you at least feel more peaceful now. It does sounds as if he and K might have been made for each other (hiss). How long did he do his ‘I’m going to jump off a cliff’ thing for? What did he expect to achieve with that?
gillian – wow you have been through the ringer, poor girl. I also have to say that I hate how they turn us into detectives and make us end up poking around in things. I was so not that way until I met my S. Their secretive ways make you start looking and the more you keep finding, the more you cant stop looking for more! I think at some point you cant believe what you are actually seeing so not only are you out to prove that they are skunks, but you also need more and more proof to yourself that this is actually going on. I guess I choose to be naive half the time, as I just dont get how they can create such horrible tales of innocence and yet be living this double life, guilt free. Its pathetic.
findingmyselfagain,
Yes, you keep looking for more because what you discover is so unbelievable, plus they keep lying and denying and gaslighting, so then you’re trying to prove it’s not all in your head. I think that’s almost the worst of it. Well, one of the worsts of it. Several months ago I started having panic attacks about where I had put my keys. I would set them down somewhere then forget where had I put them. (My mind was so distracted at the time; I was hardly ever “in the moment”) I would think: where are my keys? and feel a sudden sense of panic that wouldn’t resolve until I found them. As soon as I’d find my keys I’d tell myself to keep track of them and pay attention to where I put them. It was very strange.
Then one evening I was talking to DH on the phone and he went into his: What if you’re wrong? routine. Almost immediately, that feeling of panic welled up inside of me because, well, what if I was wrong? That would mean there was something seriously wrong with my mind. I felt that terror in the pit of my stomach and I realized that he was making me question my own thought processes and it was this fear that underlied my panic over my keys.
Once I realized that I was able to relax about the keys. There was nothing wrong with my thinking and my keys weren’t going to disappear into thin air.
And yes, I was not a distrustful person before either. Of course my husband exploited that. And exploited my trustworthiness. If I said I was somewhere that was where I was. If I said I was doing something that was what I was doing. In his case, he spoke the truth only if it suited his purpose.
Back in June, just a couple weeks before he moved out, DH said something very interesting and surprisingly insightful. He said: “To a liar the truth sounds the same as a lie.”
Correction; what he said is: “To a liar the truth IS the same as a lie.”
EnnLondon,
Yes, it is strange that I focused on that bit of paper. I’ve always been a skeptical person, very logical and analytical. It’s almost as if–just weeks before DH was set to just up and leave–my subconscious or maybe even some supernatural force grabbed hold of me, saying Do this! Look at that! Pay attention! Listen to your intuition! So many times during this whole process, I have discovered things intuitively, which would then be confirmed by a strange reaction–usually brooding or stunned silence–on my husband’s part.
Last April, when I came across that phone number and started asking questions again, DH started talking about driving off a cliff or blowing his brains out. It was a way to control me, to get me to shut up. And it did for a time.
A week or two later I questioned DH again. I thought of it as his one last chance to admit to an affair that at the time I assumed was singular and past tense. And that I would forgive him for–after he fell into my arms remorseful and sobbing (yeah right).
And, again, he denied it. I said I could forgive an affair but I could not forgive lying and I knew he was lying so I was leaving. As soon as I left he threatened to kill himself again. He called my cell phone, I ignored it, I listened to his voicemail, he said he was going to drive off a cliff (we live in the mountains so cliffs aren’t hard to find), I told myself to ignore him, couldn’t, called him back and we met at a park where he lied to me some more until I finally gave up and went to my mom’s for a few days.
While at my mom’s, one afternoon I drove to the beach. I parked on a bluff overlooking the ocean. I pulled out that piece of paper. I stared at it and I could almost hear a voice whispering to look carefully at what was written. “There’s a clue here. Just look.”
So I sat in my car patiently, waiting. And all of a sudden I realized two things. One, the last explanation my husband had given (he’d changed the details several times) for how he came to have that number had to be false. He had said K’s best friend had scrolled it up for him on her cell phone. “Oh yes, I remember it now,” he said, even holding out an imaginary cell phone and pushing imaginary buttons to demonstrate.
But if K’s friend had scrolled the number up on her cell phone, the extension wouldn’t have been displayed, only the area code and phone number.
Two, I realized DH must have called that number because off at an angle, to the right of the words “[name of town] HOSP,” he had scribbled the words “Valley hospital.” Kind of like an afterthought, a clarification absentmindedly written while on the phone.
When I got back to my mom’s I called the number and sure enough they answered the phone: “[name of town] Valley Medical Center.” Then I noticed that those added words appeared to have been written in a slightly different color of blue ink. Using a magnifying glass, and under a bright light, I verified this. He had used a different pen! So he definitely had called the number.
When I confronted DH with my findings, he stopped denying he had called K. Instead, he started inventing various reasons for why. Which only led to more questions and me making more discoveries. Lots more discoveries.
The last nine months have been a trip through hell for me, but lately I’ve been able to start letting go of my obsession and have actually been feeling some happiness.
I think the turning point for me was when, last month, I finally got it that everything with DH is a manipulation. Everything. Like John Mayer says, the giving up’s the hardest part. But once I did that, everything got easier and now I’m starting to feel a peace that several months ago I never would have thought possible.