How to recognize and recover from everyday sociopaths - narcissists

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Eliot Spitzer and unrestricted sociosexual orientation

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Knowing that I study human motivation, this week a friend of mine asked me to explain the motivations of Eliot Spitzer. To those of you who have avoided TV, and have not read Donna Andersen's blog, Eliot Spitzer is Governor of the State of New York, but he is set to leave office on Monday. He was forced to resign after he was caught hiring prostitutes from a firm likely linked to organized crime. CNN reported that he may have spent $80,000 on prostitutes, but this is not a large sum if you consider that one encounter costs about $5,000. Now back to my friend, he stated, “I don't get Spitzer, his wife is an attractive woman.” No matter how you cut it, Spitzer's wife is a victim of love f …

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Signs of a sociopath in Eliot Spitzer

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In 2002, Time Magazine named Eliot Spitzer, when he was New York State Attorney General, "Crusader of the Year," due to his relentless pursuit of corporate crime. He went after the giants of Wall Street, extracting large fines for illegal and unethical behavior. That's why his very public downfall has drawn so much interest. And that's why, now he's resigned as governor of New York in disgrace, the stories of his aggressiveness, his bullying, and his apparent belief that the rules did not apply to him, are so widespread. When I first heard that Spitzer was implicated in a prostitution ring, I figured that if anyone had the dirt, it would be the New York Post. How right I was. Frederic …

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I’m sorry, but that’s no apology

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Gov. Eliot Spitzer, a beacon of probity, has been caught allegedly hiring a prostitute. He has appeared on TV to apologise - see it here. And what an inadequate job he did. I was reminded of a previous apology he made in the New York Times last July for his administration's involvement in ordering the State Police to record the whereabouts of State Senate majority leader Joseph L. Bruno - read it here. In neither case does he even do the first thing that any apology worth anything should do - he does not state what he did. If you'd missed news broadcasts you'd have no idea what he was apologising for. According to Perfect Apology the key steps in any good apology are: 1. a detailed …

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New Jersey’s bogus Internet Dating Safety law

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The Internet Dating Safety Act became law in the state of New Jersey, the home of Lovefraud, on January 13, 2008. It is supposed to take effect next month. The law applies only to New Jersey, USA, residents. It mandates that any Internet dating site must disclose to New Jersey members, clearly and conspicuously, whether it conducts criminal background checks. "The disclosure shall be provided when an electronic mail message is sent or received by a New Jersey member, on the profile describing a member to a New Jersey member, and on the website pages of the Internet dating service used when a New Jersey member signs up," the law states. "A disclosure shall be in bold, capital letters in at …

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It is not about gender, it is about sociopathy

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I have spent the last 3 months very focused on finishing Women Who Love Psychopaths with Sandra L.Brown, M.A. this book is admitedly sexist in that it is for women who have had relationships with male sociopaths, psychopaths and pathological narcissists. The book has been tough for me to work on as I have had to relive many aspects of the short 17 months I spent with a sociopath. I am anxious to move on and produce a similar work for men, because I dislike the over emphasis on male sociopaths. I also have come to appreciate loving empathetic men, and believe we need to give these "real men" more recognition and visibility. Three events with the above theme have touched me recently. First, …

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It’s not that the psychopath’s beliefs are awry (they are); it’s that his desires are too perverse and too uninhibited

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I was recently reading a 2003 paper in the journal Nature called Forensic psychology: Violence viewed by psychopathic murderers which is both interesting and frustrating. Interesting because it demonstrates that, even amongst murderers, psychopathic murderers are different. Frustrating because the authors extrapolate their finding in a way that is ultimately misleading being so narrow as to completely miss the point. I pick this particular study only because it is rather typical of scientific studies in the field: 1. it neglects to consider what the psychopath gets out of behaving the way he does, and 2. it let's the psychopath off the hook. The study 13 psychopathic murderers, 17 …

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Bad vibes from a workplace psychopath

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Lovefraud recently received an e-mail from a reader. Her company had hired a new guy and she was tasked with helping him learn his job. The guy immediately made her feel extremely uncomfortable. Here's what she wrote: I can't look him in the eye or even stand to talk with him. He is very "nice" and has never shown any angry tendencies. I can't explain my feelings but my intuition tells me to be wary and afraid of him. He exhibits self-important behavior and is glib and overly polite. Just the thought of him makes me shudder. He's never given me any concrete reason to dislike him. However when I very first met him, he was too familiar and presumptuous, calling me by my nickname on the …

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Why are there so many sociopaths in America?

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This semester I am teaching Psychology of Women at the University of Bridgeport. This is the second time I have taught this course. It is a fun course to teach because everyone likes it. This week we took up the issue of whether overall women's personalities are different from men's. A significant percentage of the class believes that men and women are very different in many domains and that this difference is biologic or genetic. The author of our textbook is a feminist from New York so she tends to down play any gender differences found, and she attributes nearly all gender differences to culture. To balance the views of the textbook, I look for other articles to share with the class. …

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Sociopaths are filled with empty promises that never turn into healing action.

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Recently, I ended up in the hospital twice over a short period of time. (Which accounts for why I have not posted here in awhile.) The first stay was to have surgery to remove my gallbladder. The second was a week later when they had to perform an additional procedure to remove the stones that were left behind. The man in my life was there. He supported me. Held my hand when I was in pain, rubbed my back. He drove me to hospital. He spoke with the doctors. Involved himself in my health care when I was too sick to care to ask the questions I needed to ask. He ensured I was well cared for, ensured I had what I needed to recover. He came to visit me in hospital. Sometimes I'd awaken and …

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Q: Can writing improve your health?

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There is a form of writing which has been shown to have remarkable effects on research subjects' well-being, social functioning, and cognitive abilities. The best-known of the scientists who study 'expressive writing' is James W. Pennebaker, chair of the Department of Psychology at the University of Texas. Pennebaker and several others around the world have found that a short series brief exercises of this particular form of writing about emotional upheavals can improve physical and mental health. An early study   In his accessible book Opening Up: The Healing Power of Expressing Emotions (free chapter here) Pennebaker describes an early experiment. Fifty students were asked to …

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