This is a big topic, and I fully intend to flesh it out in future posts. But allow me, here, to consider this question from the perspective of the work I do with couples. It is often surprisingly easy, from a couples therapy perspective, to weed out the narcissists from the non-narcissists; and more importantly, the salvageable from the unsalvageable narcissists. Narcissists, as we know, will struggle to see things from their partners' perspective. But let's be clear: it is the reasons they struggle with this, not that they struggle with it, that signals their narcissism. At the risk of oversimplifying, narcissists struggle to appreciate their partners' perspective fundamentally …
“Beware of Greeks bearing gifts”
By Ox Drover When I was a kid growing up, one of the “old sayings” that was bandied around the family was the one about “Beware of Greeks bearing gifts.” As a small child this didn't make any sense, since there weren't any Greeks that I knew of living anywhere around where we lived in central Arkansas. (The phrase actually refers to the story of the ancient Greeks invading Troy by hiding soldiers in a massive wooden horse that was given to the city as a gift—the Trojan Horse.) This saying could have been paraphrased as “beware of ANYONE that you don't trust bearing gifts.” Many cultures teach their children that if someone does a favor for you, the “law of reciprocity” means you are …
LETTER TO LOVEFRAUD: Marriage, then discovering the lies
Editor's note: Lovefraud received the following letter from a reader who we'll call “Nora.” The names in this letter have been changed. One Saturday, in October 2009, I married someone I thought was the man of my dreams. When this man came into my life last year, I had suffered several losses and was very vulnerable. I thought I had finally met an honorable, loving, understanding, romantic, Christian man. We laughed together, planned our future together, and seemed like the perfect couple. I should have remembered when something seems too good to be true, it probably is. Although I didn't expect everything would always be rosy, soon after we were married, I discovered that everything I tho …
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Empathy among college students declines
A recent study analyzed data about 14,000 college students collected over 30 years. The shocking findings: today's college students are 40 percent lower in empathy than students from 20 or 30 years ago. Read Empathy: College students don't have as much as they used to, on Newswise.com. Link submitted by a Lovefraud reader. …
Even experts on bullying are clueless about sociopaths
The headline of a New York Times article sent to me by a Lovefraud reader last week was, Maybe bullies just want to be loved. Yeah, right, I thought. The article related the findings of two recent studies, one of them about schoolyard bullies. Dutch researchers from the University of Groningen investigated 481 elementary school children. Their findings, according to the Times: Bullies tended to divide their classmates into potential sources of affection and targets for domination. The latter were children who had already been rejected by kids the bullies cared about: They didn't count. Interestingly, bullies cared only about the approval of classmates of the same sex. Boys pick on …
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Sociopaths and Suicide
Although some see sociopaths as too emotionally deficient to experience the despair necessary to suicide, I see suicide as offering a viable option for some sociopaths, and I'm going to explain why. Let me start with a bit of crude, brutal logic: for many sociopaths, as we know, life is very much a game; hence, when game over, life over. No more game, what's left? The answer may be, nothing. And yet it may be less “despair” and “depression” with which the sociopath is left when his act has been shut-down than his preferring no longer to deal with an existence he knows will cease supplying the gratifications to which he's grown accustomed, perhaps addicted and certainly privileg …
Sex crimes and punishment
Stories in the newspaper yesterday were disheartening. After reading them, I had to conclude that full-blown sexual predators are everywhere, and doing something about them will be difficult. The first story I found was about Canadian Col. Russell Williams, an elite pilot who was commander of Canadian Forces Base Trenton, the largest air force base in the country. In 2005 he was photographed with Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Phillip. On February 7, 2010, he was charged with murdering a young woman who had been missing for almost a week. That's not all. Williams, considered a “shining bright star” in the military, has been charged with the murder of two women, sexual assault of two oth …
Violence in sociopaths
Is every violent person a sociopath? Are all sociopaths violent? What is the relationship between violence and sociopathy/psychopathy? These are the questions we will think about here. I welcome your comments and stories. In his book “On Aggression” Nobel Prize winning ethologist Konrad Lorenz expressed deep concern for the human race. He pointed out that other social animals have “releasers;” these are inborn signals that turn off aggression. For example, when wolves fight, if one animal turns over on its back, the fighting generally stops. The purpose of aggression in social species is simply to enforce dominance, so when the victor gets the signal it is dominant, the fighting stops. …
Are we born with a sense of right and wrong?
Researchers at Yale University developed studies to answer the question: Do babies have a sense of right and wrong? What they came up with may surprise you. Read The moral life of babies, on NYTimes.com. Be sure to watch the video. Link submitted by a Lovefraud reader. …
Supreme Court upholds law to keep sex offenders in jail
In 2006, Congress passed the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act, which established a civil commitment procedure to keep dangerous federal sex offenders behind bars after their sentences were complete. Some inmates challenged the law, stating that Congress had exceeded its powers, and it was overturned by a federal appeals court. Now, the Supreme Court has reversed that decision and upheld the law. Read Supreme Court upholds federal sex offender law on the Christian Science Monitor. …
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