A paper recently published in the Journal of Zoology says that great white sharks hunt in a highly focused fashion, just like serial killers. According to a report on ScienceDaily.com, the researchers used geographic profiling—a criminal investigation tool used to find serial killers based on the locations of their crimes—to examine how the hunting patters of great white sharks off the coast of South Africa. Sharks establish well-defined hunting bases in strategic locations. The researchers noticed that smaller sharks searched further, and had less success, than larger sharks. They surmised that great white sharks refined their search patterns with experience, and concentrated their hun …
A society where everyone is a sociopath
This week I want to reach out to all of you who feel that you can no longer trust people. Imagine a world where your worst fears have come true, a world where everyone over the age of 15 is a sociopath. What would it be like to live in that world? If you only read one book this summer, I strongly urge you to read Chimpanzee Politics: Power and Sex Among Apes by Frans de Waal. I have said before that I think the social-brain of sociopaths is similar to that of chimps. Now having read that book I am even more convinced. Chimpanzee Politics is the true life story of the relationships between individuals of the Arnhem Chimp Colony. Scientists carefully observed, photographed, filmed and …
Boredom and the sociopath
What's the relationship, if any, between boredom and sociopathy? Can we can agree, for starters, that boredom does not cause sociopathy? Otherwise most of us would be sociopaths. Can we also agree that a low tolerance for boredom, alone, does not cause sociopathy. Otherwise again, many of us with low tolerances for boredom (not that I include myself, but God, am I bored) would be sociopaths; and this isn't the case, either. That is, even most of us with low tolerances for boredom aren't sociopaths. However, research suggests that sociopaths may require higher levels of arousal to escape conditions of boredom. So apart from being prone to boredom and finding it extremely oppressive, it …
BOOK REVIEW: The Socially Skilled Child Molester
By Ox Drover I recently read The Socially Skilled Child Molester: Differentiating the Guilty from the Falsely Accused, by Carla van Dam, Ph.D. Carla van Dam, Ph.D., is a clinical and forensic psychologist who has practiced in the U.S. and Canada, and taught in several universities. She is well known in the community of those who focus on primary prevention strategies to help end child sexual abuse. One of her previous books was Identifying Child Molesters: Preventing Child Sexual Abuse by Recognizing the Patterns of Offenders. Several of the reviews of this book pretty well sum up my opinion of this well-written book. “The Socially Skilled Child Molester provides a thorough d …
Is the predator always a sociopath?
Sociopaths, as a group, tend to be predatory personalities. But does the converse always hold? Are predatory personalities, by definition, sociopaths? Is it possible to prey on innocent people, and victimize them, yet not be a sociopath? I think the answer to this question is yes...it is possible to be a predator and not a sociopath, although let me state as strongly as possible that, sociopath or not, the predator's exploitation is no less damaging. How one defines the predatory personality makes a difference. For purposes of this discussion, here's how I'm going to define it: The predatory personality recognizes (if not actively seeks) opportunities for personal gratification, and …
A classic story of sociopathic manipulation
The following letter, written by a young woman who we'll call Chloe, is one of the most complete stories of psychological manipulation that I've ever seen yet. Chloe wrote this letter secretly while the sociopath she is living with was at the gym. I met my boyfriend two years ago. I was 18; he was 33. He's a photographer; we live on an island that is very small. He has lived here forever (10 years) and I had only been here a few months when I met him. Everybody, especially women on the island, adore him, he is THE BIGGEST charmer. He told me that he had moved here with his fiancée, that she had said she was going home for a week, and then never came back. He said she'd gone to therapy b …
Aging out of sociopathy?
Research has suggested that some sociopaths may experience something like “sociopathic burnout,” characterized by a reduction in their antisocial behavioral output as they move through middle and older age. (This is a type of decline in production to be glad for.) What this does not mean is that sociopaths “outgrow” their sociopathic orientation, anymore than a career thief outgrows his thief's mentality. “Sociopathic burn-out,” let me stress, is not to be mistaken for something as chimerical (and unrealistic) as the sociopath's “personal growth.” One might be tempted to regard the aging sociopath's “mellowing” as a signal of his perhaps, finally, “growing up;” of his acquiring perhaps, f …
The philosophy of a sociopath
Lovefraud recently received a letter from a woman who we'll call Valerie. She met her husband, who we'll call Dylan, at age 18, and has been with him for seven years. She thought they were happy together in their wonderful home with their family of pets. Suddenly Dylan started acting erratically. He said he didn't want to be with Valerie any more. He picked fights. She asked Dylan to leave, but made it clear that she was willing to do whatever was necessary to help him. So he left, and wouldn't tell her where he was. Eventually, Valerie's intuition told her to check her husband's Facebook page, where she found Dylan's love letters to another woman. Then Valerie found how Dylan described …
How parasites–like ticks and psychopaths–work
By Ox Drover As an advanced practice nurse, one of the things I did here in the rural area where parasites are common was warn people about the many diseases, several of them potentially fatal, caused by a common parasite, the tick. Here on LoveFraud we often refer to psychopaths as “parasites” because, like a common blood-sucking tick, they feed off of a host, without giving any benefit to the host, or giving any more thought to the damage they do to the host than a common tick does as he burrows into your flesh. In the warmer months of the year, the tick searches for anything that is warm and moves and can actually leap small distances to latch on to the host. They like to burrow i …
Sociopathic priests and abuse of the spirit
The Reverend Charles Newman, former president of Archbishop Ryan High School in Philadelphia, was sentenced on Friday to three to six years in prison for stealing almost $1 million from the school, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer. As if that isn't bad enough, prosecutors say that Newman gave about $54,000 to Arthur Baselice III, once a student at the school, as “hush money” so he would keep quiet about their sexual relationship. Authorities contend that the abuse began when Baselice III was 16-year-old junior at the school. He graduated in 1996. Ten years later, on November 30, 2006, Baselice III died of an overdose in a drug house. During Newman's sentencing, the young man's mot …