How to recognize and recover from everyday sociopaths - narcissists

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Gerhartsreiter guilty, sentenced to 5 years but the judge still doesn’t get it

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Today after 4 days of deliberation a jury found Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter (a.k.a. Clark Rockefeller) guilty of parental kidnapping and assault with a deadly weapon. The jury foreman read a statement saying that this was a complicated case and that they “considered ALL the testimony" including that provided by a psychiatrist and psychologist who testified that Gerhartsreiter/Rockefeller was “insane” at the time of the kidnapping and assault. The jury apparently found the Harvard Psychiatrist, Charles Chu to be more credible than the defense experts. The judge, after making a statement sentenced Gerhartsreiter/Rockefeller to 5 years in prison. I was happy the jury considered ALL the evide …

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Is the predator always a sociopath?

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Sociopaths, as a group, tend to be predatory personalities. But does the converse always hold? Are predatory personalities, by definition, sociopaths? Is it possible to prey on innocent people, and victimize them, yet not be a sociopath? I think the answer to this question is yes...it is possible to be a predator and not a sociopath, although let me state as strongly as possible that, sociopath or not, the predator's exploitation is no less damaging. How one defines the predatory personality makes a difference. For purposes of this discussion, here's how I'm going to define it: The predatory personality recognizes (if not actively seeks) opportunities for personal gratification, and …

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A classic story of sociopathic manipulation

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The following letter, written by a young woman who we'll call Chloe, is one of the most complete stories of psychological manipulation that I've ever seen yet. Chloe wrote this letter secretly while the sociopath she is living with was at the gym. I met my boyfriend two years ago. I was 18; he was 33. He's a photographer; we live on an island that is very small. He has lived here forever (10 years) and I had only been here a few months when I met him. Everybody, especially women on the island, adore him, he is THE BIGGEST charmer. He told me that he had moved here with his fiancée, that she had said she was going home for a week, and then never came back. He said she'd gone to therapy b …

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After the sociopath: How do we heal? Part 9 – Returning to Wounded Innocence

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In the series on recovering from traumatic relationships, this is the third article on grieving and letting go. It is an extension of the last one, which discussed exploring the past to understand our patterns of belief and behavior. This is about how we do it and what we find. Or rather about how I did it, and what I found Unpacking frozen memories This week I reached out to someone whose name is part of my history. She was once the lover of a man I regarded as the great love of my life. He was an alcoholic poet who died when I was 23. She is a poet too. I found her web site, read a poem about the first time they made love, and wrote her an e-mail to introduce myself. She wrote back, …

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Fake Rockefeller case: Are Ablow and Howe “hired guns”?

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The back cover of Whores of the Court: The fraud of psychiatric testimony and the rape of American Justice by Margaret Hagen, Ph.D. has a picture of a graphic that says, “Expert Psychological Opinions For Sale.” In her book, Hagen is justifiably critical of psychologists and psychiatrists who function as “hired guns” in the court room. These hired guns, in collaboration with unethical attorneys often do the dirty work of psychopaths and make it difficult for victims to get justice. Both the American Psychiatric Association and the American Psychological Association have issued strong statements about the ethics of acting as a “hired gun.” Such conduct is not considered ethical. The America …

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Aging out of sociopathy?

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Research has suggested that some sociopaths may experience something like “sociopathic burnout,” characterized by a reduction in their antisocial behavioral output as they move through middle and older age. (This is a type of decline in production to be glad for.) What this does not mean is that sociopaths “outgrow” their sociopathic orientation, anymore than a career thief outgrows his thief's mentality. “Sociopathic burn-out,” let me stress, is not to be mistaken for something as chimerical (and unrealistic) as the sociopath's “personal growth.” One might be tempted to regard the aging sociopath's “mellowing” as a signal of his perhaps, finally, “growing up;” of his acquiring perhaps, f …

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Diagnosing the problems correctly

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By Ox Drover I flashed on something a while back. I know a man who went into the navy at age 16. When he was 18, he was on shore leave and met a young girl, rapidly fell in love with her, married her, set her up in an apartment and went back to sea for nine months. When he got back to shore, she was gone. He couldn't understand why. Later, when he was 22, he met another girl when he was on shore leave and married her as well. Lived with her a couple of weeks, during which time she got pregnant, and then left her and went back to sea for a year. When he came home, his wife and baby daughter were gone. At this time, he started thinking about “what had gone wrong” with his two mar …

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Lovefraud extra: Let’s support Sandra Boss

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The kidnapping trial of "Clark Rockefeller" the psychopathic con artist who is charged with parental kidnapping is happening at the time of this writing. The defense is claiming "insanity" and attacking Sandra Boss for having fallen for his lies. A survey of internet blogs reveals public abuse of Sandra. Please add your comments in support of Sandra to the blogs, particularly this one http://www.boston.com/news/local/breaking_news/2009/06/rockefellers_2.html. To watch the trial live visit:http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/specials/05_28_09_Rockefeller_live_video/ This is outrageous,Sandra was worked over by the defense. Someone (perhaps an attorney who reads this blog) …

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The philosophy of a sociopath

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Lovefraud recently received a letter from a woman who we'll call Valerie. She met her husband, who we'll call Dylan, at age 18, and has been with him for seven years. She thought they were happy together in their wonderful home with their family of pets. Suddenly Dylan started acting erratically. He said he didn't want to be with Valerie any more. He picked fights. She asked Dylan to leave, but made it clear that she was willing to do whatever was necessary to help him. So he left, and wouldn't tell her where he was. Eventually, Valerie's intuition told her to check her husband's Facebook page, where she found Dylan's love letters to another woman. Then Valerie found how Dylan described …

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PTSD, defeat and the victim identity

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When I was a med student, I studied animal models for human stress and depression. The best animal model of what a psychopath does to others is that of the rodent resident-intruder paradigm. In this model, males are introduced into the home territory of other males, they experience social defeat and are removed before they are injured. Repeated exposure to this situation produces a defeated animal who is chronically submissive and gives up without a fight whenever he encounters other males. Below is the posture of a defeated mouse. The physiology of this defeated rodent resembles human depression very closely. The defeat state can be reversed with antidepressants. Defeat is associated …

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