Yesterday I attended a family celebration in honor of my little niece's First Holy Communion. The guest of honor, my niece, is in the second grade and is a beautiful, vibrant child—blond hair, blue eyes with a sprinkle of freckles across her nose. In her white Communion dress, she looked like a little angel. It was a sunny day and a pleasant get-together. Most of the guests had left when my niece and her friend, another little girl, wanted to put on a “show” for those of us who remained. We, of course, agreed to be the audience. With a video clip from the Internet providing the music, the girls sang and danced to the song Beggin' On Your Knees by Victoria Justice. I was horri …
BOOK REVIEW: Cold-Blooded Kindness
Reviewed by Joyce Alexander, RNP (retired) Cold-Blooded Kindness: Neuroquirks of a Codependent Killer, or Just Give Me a Shot at Loving You, Dear, and Other Reflections on Helping That Hurts is the tongue-in-cheek title of this book by Barbara Oakley, with a foreword by David Sloan Wilson. It belies the serious research and investigation done by this remarkable, highly educated and acclaimed woman. Oakley is associate professor of engineering at Oakland University in Michigan, and her work focuses mainly on the complex relationship between neurocircuitry and social behavior. The list of her varied experiences reads like fiction ”¦ she worked for several years as a Russian language tr …
Psychopaths, silly science and James Bond
The headline of an article that a Lovefraud reader recently sent to me is: Why women really do love self-obsessed psychopaths With a headline like that, of course, I had to read it. The article, from 2008, describes research on the “Dark Triad” and mating behavior. The Dark Triad refers to the personality disorders of narcissism, psychopathy and Machiavellianism. I had some problems with the article, but before I ripped into it, I figured I'd read the original study. Here it is: The Dark Triad: Facilitating a Short-Term Mating Strategy in Men This study was published in the European Journal of Personality in 2009, and the lead author is Peter K. Jonason. To be honest, I find …
Culture or Psychopathy?
Editor's note: The author is well-known to all Lovefraud readers as "Ox Drover." By Joyce Alexander, RNP (Retired) I read an article today that made me start to think about psychopathic behavior in groups of people. About groups of people without empathy, without altruistic thinking. Looters hamper rescue efforts in tornado-ravaged Alabama Most of us here in the U.S. have read many stories about the horrible damage done in Japan by both the earthquake and the resulting tsunami which washed over the land, killing tens of thousands, and devastating a large thickly-populated area. We've read where people's life savings, stocks and bonds, and cash were found many miles from their …
Do Sociopaths Get The Last laugh?
We know that there are many unapprehended sociopaths who, exploiting others' vulnerability, have greedily taken things from them, material and otherwise—valuable, precious things they neither deserve nor deserve to enjoy, yet which they may feel they both deserve and deserve to enjoy, and often perversely do enjoy. And we know that many of these sociopaths possess smug, contemptuous and notoriously “shameless” attitudes about their exploitation—these attitudes, and the patterns they form, reflecting the essence of their disorder. And some of these sociopaths may indeed, in a certain sense, get the proverbial “last laugh?” Picture the sociopath lying on a Carribbean beach, or lounging …
Chernobyl–mistake or mischief?
Yesterday was the 25th anniversary of the explosion at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in the Ukraine, which was part of the Soviet Union at the time. Russia and the Ukraine held ceremonies to mark that terrible day. Read the story and watch the video on Russia, Ukraine mark 25th anniversary of Chernobyl nuclear meltdown at NYDailyNews.com. What caused that terrible explosion? In Nuclear Renewal, Richard Rhodes writes the following: Without question, the accident at Chernobyl was the result of a fatal combination of ignorance and complacency. "As members of a select scientific panel convened immediately after the...accident," writes Bethe, "my colleagues and I established that the …
Naming the social predators among us
Editor's note: This is a more complete explanation of a proposal I made a few weeks ago. How do you avoid a social predator? First, you have to know that they exist. I didn't know they existed. So when a charming, charismatic and supremely confident man swept into my life, I didn't know that charm, charisma and overconfidence were red flags that he might be a predator. And he was. This man took a quarter-million dollars from me, cheated with at least six women during our 2.5-year marriage, had a child with one of the women, and then, 10 days after I left him, married the mother of the child. It was the second time he committed bigamy. “He might be a sociopath,” my therapist com …
Sociopaths Going Backwards
Sociopaths rarely go forward with their lives with reliable, sustainable momentum; at best, they may zig-zag for a while with the good (and bad) luck of a gambler; or go sidways for a while, “seeming” to hold it together. But eventually, the sociopath tends to go backwards. He is much like the person on a high-speed treadmill who, no mattter how hard he or she walks or runs, finds himself, sooner or later, drifting off the end of the machine. His disordered lack of empathy, detachment from others, detachment from an emotional connection to the world that keeps the rest of us on fairly solid ground, giving us at least a chance to hit solid ground, and hit it running—the sociopath is miss …
RESOURCE PERSPECTIVES: The psychopath cartoons
Editor's note: Resource Perspectives features articles written by members of Lovefraud's Professional Resources Guide. Sarah Strudwick, based in the UK, is author of Dark Souls—Healing and recovering from toxic relationships. Mr. Invincible and other Un-Inspiring Characters By Sarah Strudwick Sarah Strudwick profile in the Lovefraud Professional Resources Guide As many of your know, having come out of relationships with sociopaths often we feel powerless. Some like Donna and others like myself have felt inspired to speak up and share our stories and talk about their experiences. I had this little voice that wanted to shout from the rooftops in the hope that o …
Might does not make right
By Ox Drover Sometimes former victims of psychopaths have voiced to me that they just want others to know that the psychopath was not the victim, but the abuser. Former victims are frustrated that others don't recognize someone is an abuser. Many times the actual victim has instead been painted by the real abuser as the “bad guy.” I remember reading a letter from my psychopathic son from his prison cell who told me in the letter he knew that I had to be the one who was “wrong” because he got along with everyone in the family circle and I got along with no one, so therefore I had to be the one “in the wrong.” Well, democratically voting on something does not make something “right,” it …