How to recognize and recover from everyday sociopaths - narcissists

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Reflections on antisocial behavior (Part 3): Is that person a sociopath/psychopath?

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Five and a half years ago I started a quest to understand sociopathy/psychopathy and antisocial behavior. Long before that, in 1981, I attended a lecture by Dr. Sarnoff Medick at USC. During that lecture, he presented the results of his research. His research on adopted children indicates that antisocial behavior has a strong measurable genetic basis. His studies did not single out anyone “diagnosed” a sociopath/psychopath they only examined antisocial behavior in parents and their biologic and adopted offspring. Remembering these studies, I read them again and found many others demonstrating the genetic basis for antisocial behavior and sociopathy/psychopathy. Also at the beginning of my …

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LETTERS TO LOVEFRAUD: The Biggest Lie

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By James A few days ago while watching television with my oldest son, he turned to me and said, "You know, Dad, what biggest lie she ever told us was?" I said, "No, son, I don't." "When she told us nothing was going to change, and how much everything has changed." "Guess so, Son. Maybe that was the biggest lie she ever told us." I remember that day so well, as if it only happened yesterday. It was the evening of May 22, 2006, between the hours of 7 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. The cold months were ending and summer would soon be here, only this summer would be much more different than my children and I could ever imagine. I just finished with the washing, trying to help out more around the …

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Young pop star scores with sociopathic hit song

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Lovefraud recently received the following e-mail from a reader in the UK: I wonder what your take on this pop-music video is? This song is played ad-infinitum on radio stations in the UK; you simply can't escape it. What disturbs me is its indifference toward the glorification of sociopathic, even psychopathic, behaviour. Clearly the character the singer is playing out has a taste for control; inflicting degrading, humiliating behaviour, even torture, pain and —as the finale of the video suggests—murder; everything the UN Convention on Human Rights was meant to prevent. The reader included a link to the song Sweet About Me, by Gabriella Cilmi, on YouTube. Here it is: …

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Reflections on antisocial behavior (Part 2): It’s genetic!?

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Behavior genetic studies of children, adolescents, and adults all report that the overlap of antisocial tendencies (broadly defined) with other psychopathic traits (e.g., interpersonal, affective) can be explained by common genetic factors.-Robert Hare, Ph.D. The most profound things researchers say about reality are often so difficult to understand that the average person wants to turn and run away when the researchers begin to speak. The statement above might have that affect on you but stick around because I want to explain it this week. This statement gets to the heart of the most important controversies regarding sociopathy/psychopathy. First I will give you a definition of …

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The vacancy of the sociopath

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Sociopaths have been described in many ways that, at least, from time to time, might describe some of the rest of us: As glib, manipulative, exploitative, superficial; as seeing and relating to others as objects rather than persons. Sociopaths, in other words, don't have a patent on these qualities. You can be a nonsociopath and be glib and superficial. You can be a nonsociopath and be a constitutional bullshitter and sometimes manipulator: Just go visit the used-car salesmen at your local dealership, and see for yourself (sure, some of them may be sociopaths, but not most). Naturally, when you begin to combine these qualities—especially adding “exploitative” to the mix—and identify them as …

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Forgiving Yourself for Being Human

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By Ox Drover In my journey toward healing from life's pains, and from the PTSD and the pains caused by the trauma from the psychopaths, I think one of the hardest things has been to forgive myself. I was raised in an abusive Christian atmosphere with a terrible, impossible definition of “forgiving others,” no matter what they did, no matter if they weren't sorry, or how likely they were to repeat the abuse to me. I was programmed to try to meet my obligation to “forgive” when there was NO WAY I was going to trust them again. How could I? While this previous “definition” of forgiveness of others who are unrepentant has changed post-trauma to a definition of getting the bitterness out …

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How to talk to friends and family about sociopaths

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Last Sunday, the Asbury Park Press, a New Jersey newspaper, published a front-page article about the career of Edward J. Devine. On August 1, 2008, Devine was sentenced to five years in prison for bouncing checks and deceiving nonprofit and educational institutions. The bulk of the story was not about those crimes, but what Devine did to the women in his life. Claiming to be the heir to a Sonoma wine company and a trucking mogul, he left one wife, Donna Devine, and her mother $400,000 in debt. He wiped out the inheritance of another wife, Deborah Weiss. He forced his first wife, Carol Ceralli, into bankruptcy. It's a story that many of us know, and some of us have experienced. But …

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Reflections on antisocial behavior (part 1): When women are sociopaths

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This semester I am teaching a course on personality and psychopathology to graduate students in counseling. I am very excited about this course and am considering making it available online to everyone. I sat down with a colleague this week and explained the content of the course. During that conversation the topic of gender differences in personality came up. My colleague said something like, “Yeh, we expect men to compete, sometimes act aggressively and to spread their seed, women are biologically preprogrammed to stay put and to nurture.” I countered by saying , “While that formulation has some truth, we often fail to appreciate that females also have aggressive tendencies rooted in the …

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LETTERS TO LOVEFRAUD: Finding sanity after the sociopath (part 2)

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Editor's note: The following essay was submitted by Lovefraud reader “Presseject.” This is part two of his story. Part one was posted yesterday. By Presseject About two weeks after I confronted my S, there was a very dark day in which I was cut to pieces. I am okay now recalling it, but at that time, and for many weeks afterwards, it was like a knife in the heart. I would like to share a bit further with you the silver lining to this part of the story and how that relates to the good work you have done with the site. You see, it went like this: I had my S visit and stay with me for my birthday weekend. He presented me with fun gifts and a card that included the words signed with "tons of l …

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LETTERS TO LOVEFRAUD: Finding sanity after the sociopath (part 1)

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Editor's note: The following essay was submitted by Lovefraud reader "Presseject." This is part one of his story. Part two will be posted tomorrow. By Presseject A little over three months ago I had my heart ripped out from me. It happened suddenly and there are few words I can use to describe the pain I felt as dreams, hopes and even what I thought was my own sanity seemed to disappear quickly in a crushing instant that reverberated with off-the-scale emotional aftershocks for weeks into months afterwards. I suffered nearly two months of an awful nerve-wracking traumatic stress reaction, a hypervigilence that has finally recently lessened its grip on me. The Internet, along with my own …

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