Take someone who is mentally ill/unhinged, add rage, and paranoia, then weaponize this individual, and you've got a murderer/mass murderer on your hands. The “rage + paranoia” is a highly incendiary combination. In these mass murders it strikes me that "paranoia" is almost surely present and necessary—the murderous individual believes that it's “him against a world” that has "screwed him over," the world (and everyone in it) becoming a global, generalized “object” and "target" of his violent contempt and rage. His is a worldview in which he is the “outsider” and everyone else is "on the inside;” in his paranoia, immaturity and narcissism, he has divided the world into these rigid categori …
What was Adam Lanza’s motive?
By Mary Ann Glynn, LCSW If we have recovered enough from past mass killings and felt safe once more, here we are again. An even more heinous massacre, families and a community destroyed for years, even generations to come. Sweet innocent children shot down in a bloody horror, and the adults who tried to protect them. Families who may never recover fully from the devastation of trauma and loss. Generations in Newtown to come that will resonate with it. A community that will perhaps never experience the magic of Christmas again. The children left who now have gone from a safe secure existence to a reality in which terrifying things are not in a distant fairy tale, they are real in whose …
Mother of a mentally ill son describes what she faces every day
Perhaps, in the aftermath of the terrible tragedy in Connecticut, people will finally start talking seriously about how to cope with the mentally disturbed. Liza Long, mother of 13-year-old boy who sometimes rages out of control, tells her story. 'I am Adam Lanza's mother': A mom's perspective on the mental illness conversation in America, on HuffingtonPost.com. Dr. Liane Leedom recommended this story for Lovefraud readers. …
Mother of a mentally ill son describes what she faces every dayRead More
Answers to questions about sociopaths
I recently heard from yet another Lovefraud reader who realizes that she's been in a relationship with a sociopath. She's in the phase of trying to wrap her brain around about what these people are, and sent me the following email: What happens to these people? These sociopaths? How do they end up in life? Do they just go from victim to victim? Have any of them ever realized the affliction of which they suffer? Do they ever realize they are not capable of love? If they are not capable of love, they will never be happy, right? So...you could present “Red Flags of Love Fraud” to a sociopath and they would not see themselves in it, correct? Do they ever see the error of their ways? The …
The high price of destruction
While preparing for the holiday season, my children and I like to play Christmas movies as we add our decorative touches throughout the house. This year, I caught a portion of the television movie Snow as we worked. Although I was not paying close attention, the premise is that Santa goes to California to rescue one of his reindeer that somehow ends up in a local zoo. This particular reindeer, Buddy, was not expected to ever be able to fly. Of course, as the movie's climax began, I stopped arranging the garland and candles on the fireplace and sat to watch. Naturally, I hoped that Buddy the reindeer would triumph. As Christmas movies go, he learned to fly just in time to escape the "b …
Getting the sociopath out of your head
I once heard from a woman whom we'll call "Rochelle." She related her story of reconnecting with a long lost love, which turned out to be a fake love. As it is for many Lovefraud readers, the hardest part of breaking away was getting the sociopath out of her head. When Rochelle was in her 50s, through a high school reunion, she reconnected with the first boy she ever loved. Rochelle had a crush on him when she was 14. They dated for almost five years, although he always seemed to have an eye out for other girls. When they broke up, Rochelle was heartbroken, but she moved on, married, divorced, and life was reasonably good—until that first love came back into her life. He poured on the c …
Psychopathy is a disorder, not an adaptation
According to Merriam Webster online a pet peeve is something that annoys or bothers a person very much. One of my pet peeves is people of all sorts who say that psychopathy is "fascinating" or worse even assert that it is "beneficial". There is nothing fascinating or beneficial about a disorder that is linked to child rape and murder of innocent victims and countless ruined lives. It also bothers me that professionals who talk about psychopathy in this way are sought after by the press. Several months ago a lovefraud reader forwarded me an article I had not seen. Nepotistic patterns of violent psychopathy: evidence for adaptation? Linda and I wrote a comment on this paper and that comment …
BOOK REVIEW: The No Asshole Rule
Here at Lovefraud, most of the conversation is about the sociopaths we've encountered in romantic relationships. But sociopaths are equal opportunity exploiters, and are often abusive in some way to almost everyone in their lives. Therefore, we can encounter sociopaths anywhere—especially in the workplace. I recently read a book that's helpful for avoiding, or surviving, abuse on the job: The No Asshole Rule Building a civilized workplace and surviving one that isn't. The book is written by Robert I. Sutton, Ph.D., a professor of management science and engineering at Stanford University. Yes, there is a mild obscenity in the title, and the A-word appears throughout the book. Still, I'd d …
Religion, spirituality and sociopaths
Editor's note: This article was written by the Lovefraud reader "Adelade." It refers to spiritual concepts. Please read Lovefraud's statement on Spiritual Recovery. Religious and spiritual beliefs are of extreme importance to people. More than their beliefs of themselves, people adhere to religious and spiritual doctrines because they give them a strong sense of continuity, comfort, and meaning. Teachings and rituals often fill in the gaps of what we cannot provide to ourselves or process as a result of living, dying, and the random events in Life that cause us to question, "Why did this happen?" The first thing that an invading culture or nation does is to take away or abolish the re …
Reminder of the brazen lies
I live four miles from where Hurricane Sandy made landfall in New Jersey. The bay, dramatically swollen by rain, wind and storm surge, left three feet of water in the ground floor of my home. We're slowly cleaning up the mess. On several occasions, government and agency officials have been on our street to see how we're making out. City officials were walking around the day after we were allowed to return home. A week later, a man from FEMA (the Federal Emergency Management Agency) knocked on our door and gave us a flier for disaster assistance. A week after that a woman from the Red Cross stopped by, checking to see if anyone needed services. Yesterday, we had another visitor. A man …