Here's the headline for the cover story in the September/October issue of Scientific American Mind magazine: Inside the mind of a psychopath Neuroscientists are discovering that some of the most cold-blooded killers aren't bad. They suffer from a brain abnormality that sets them adrift in an emotionless world. The authors of the article are Kent A. Kiehl and Joshua W. Buckholtz. Dr. Kiehl is the researcher who examines the brains of psychopaths in prison using fMRI technology. Lovefraud wrote about him before in Psychopaths, crime and choice. This latest article, Inside the mind of a psychopath, is an excellent overview of the personality disorder. It summarizes the characteristics …
Sociopaths explain their own words
Perhaps the hardest thing for those of us targeted by sociopaths to grasp is the extent of their inhumanity. Sociopaths have no empathy. They do not feel connections to other human beings. We are mere pawns in their games. They view the world as predators and prey—they are the predators, everyone else is prey. We ask, “How can this be?” We object, “He said he loved me!” (“She said she loved me!”) We argue, “I said I was leaving and he cried! He begged me to stay! He said he couldn't live without me!” (The female sociopath did too.) Well, let's take a look at what their words really mean. A Lovefraud reader visited Sociopathworld.com. “They had a discussion going on things they …
When Bad People Do Good Things
Even bad people can sometimes behave well. That seems a strange twist on the idea of “good people behaving badly.” But it's true. Even the skeeviest personality isn't usually spending all day long exploiting everyone who enters his path. Now this doesn't mitigate his skeeviness one wit. But it's also true that sociopaths aren't always exploiting and mistreating others, all day long. They will be taking some time off, in different contexts, from their more unseemly behaviors. And so sometimes, sociopaths can be nice, even very nice; sometimes they may extend themselves to others. Now we can question what motivates them when they are behaving well; probably, very often, their prosocial be …
Donna Andersen to appear in Princeton, NJ
If you live near Princeton, New Jersey (USA), please come by Borders Bookstore this Saturday, October 30, from 1 to 3 p.m. I'll be discussing my new book Love Fraud: How marriage to a sociopath fulfilled my spiritual plan. Several Lovefraud readers were in the audience this past Friday at the Borders Bookstore in Philadelphia. We had a wide-ranging, freewheeling discussion about sociopaths, and how to heal after sociopathic manipulation. I answered a lot of questions. Borders in Princeton is located at 601 Nassau Park Boulevard. Here's a link to the store's website. …
Cyberlife and the sociopathic experience
Two recent news items about life in today's digital age caught my attention: News item #1 The evolution of dating: Match.com and Chadwick Martin Bailey Behavioral Studies uncover a fundamental shift Recent studies of more than 11,000 people revealed that one in six marriages are now between people who met through an online dating site — more than twice the number of people meeting at bars, at clubs and other social events combined Additionally, the studies show that one in five new committed relationships, including marriages, are between people who met on an online dating site. News item #2 Facbook fueling divorce, research claims Divorce lawyers claim the explosion in the p …
Cutting Ourselves Some Slack
Forgiving oneself for making bad choices is never easy, and I know there are authors and posters on LF who are true experts in the area of self-forgiveness. But let me come at this from an angle slightly different than my usual Lovefraud fare. It's often just plain hard to bust a flat-out liar and deceiver. And it's often suprisingly easy to effectively flat-out lie and deceive. Let me say this again: it's pretty easy to live a life of deception, making it no big accomplishment to deceive the brightest, most astute, most sensitive people. Lying and deceiving, and doing them well, even over long, extended periods of time, duping anyone and everyone in the process—again, my point is th …
Jobs for Hard Times: Becoming a Dysfunctional Blogger for Fun and Profit!
By The Front Porch Talker From my newest series, “Jobs for Hard Times,” which is yet another of my unfinished series in my unending series of Front Porch Talker items. HOME PAGE: Welcome to my blog, “NE'ER-DO-WELLS” (WWW.NEERDOWELLS.COM) MOTTO: “Let the Mocking Begin!” ABOUT US: Here, we celebrate a ”˜DIVERSE CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE”˜ with a POLITICALLY- CORRECT HANDLE ON THINGS: For ”˜folks with Personality Disorders': Narcissists, Sociopaths, and other Psychopaths, Shape-Shifters and Flexible Identities Among Us! Dear fans and devotees, and other undecided Libertarians of faiths and fan clubs, and “Dexter,” I feel like saying it, so I will: “Let the mocking begin! It's a …
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Psychopaths as “snake oil salesmen”
By Ox Drover The other night my son and I went to a rodeo with a a couple who are our friends to watch another friend ride in the rodeo roping contest. My friend is currently somewhat “down in her back” and will be going to a neurosurgeon for treatment this coming week. When we got up to go to the concession stand she asked me to go over and talk to this man who was selling some “pain relief patches.” She wondered if they would help. We walked toward the man's stand, where he had a sophisticated electronic display up and pamphlets to hand out. He immediately started his spiel and he started with the bouncing four-month old border collie pup I was holding on the end of a leash. “Do y …
Reconsidering the Essence of Sociopathy
When I think sociopath, I think this: as a pattern, he is willing, with awareness (hence, with intellect intact) to hurt people, or leave them feeling violated, in order to pursue his gratifications and interests which, for him, are always more important than the pain his pursuit of them inflicts on others. Malice (as I've written about elsewhere) may or may not be a motive or factor. It's true that for some sociopaths the gratifications they seek are predatory-based; for these sociopaths, the process of exploiting others becomes central in their violating behavior. But this isn't true for all sociopaths, many of whom are not driven, primarily, by a malicious or sadistic …
When history is a predictor of future behavior
When is history predictive of future behavior? Who can change? Who will change? Can sociopaths change? What is meaningful versus unmeaningful change? I would argue that history is most predictive of future behavior when the mindset of the individual—especially the motivational mindset of the individual—remains static. By this I mean that short of a radicalized mindset, one can assume that the individual's historical behaviors and attitudes will not change, at least not meaningfully. So motivation goes directly to the question who is likely, or unlikely, to make changes in historical behavior patterns. One must ask, what is the individual's motivation to change previous beha …