Research into sociopathy/psychopathy has made a great deal of progress over the last 30 years. Even so, there is much that research does not address. For example, sociopaths are described as callous, lacking in empathy and without remorse for their hurtful actions. These sterile descriptors always fall short of really conveying the evil of the disordered. A good 6 months before the Madoff story broke, I began a project to connect with the family members of professional con artists. The purpose of this project is to document the within family behavior of con artists and to link that “profession” to psychopathic personality traits. I have had good success connecting with family members and th …
Over use of the term psychopath/sociopath?
With the release of the Mask of Sanity in the 1940s Dr. Hervey Cleckley began the quest to describe a syndrome called psychopathy, in which affected individuals prey on others without remorse. Since people affected by the syndrome are socially disordered the syndrome has also been called sociopathy. Dr. Robert Hare extended the work of Cleckley and carefully documented the symptoms of the disorder. All this research has lead to two basic conclusions: 1. It is quite remarkable that individuals who choose a lifestyle of remorseless predation of other people are so similar in their behaviors and personality traits. 2. Equally important is the idea that non-disordered people do not “regularly” …
Evaluating An Unknown Provider’s Expertise in Sociopathy
I write this column (using "he" throughout, for simplicity purposes) to suggest some useful ideas for vetting a prospective provider who does not come recommended through a reliable source (or through Donna Anderson's growing new LoveFraud referral base). How can you begin to assess a relatively unknown provider for his competence to address your experiences with a suspected sociopath specifically, exploiter in general, or otherwise personality-disturbed individual? Let me start by suggesting that a provider who claims to be educated about sociopathy really isn't if he lacks an equally fluent understanding of narcissistic and borderline personality disorder. The reason I say this is …
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When it comes to sociopaths, education is the key
Lovefraud spent the weekend at the Battered Mothers Custody Conference in Albany, New York. Quite frankly, it was depressing. This was a conference of worst-case scenarios. I spoke to a woman whose story sounded like the Clark Rockefeller case, only worse. Her ex-husband was an illegal alien from Germany. He was also a doctor who had a hard time getting licensed because of "missing documents," but eventually did get licensed. Once he got his American residency and license, he dumped the woman and got their 5-year-old daughter in an emergency custody hearing—the woman believes he paid off the judge. The woman knows her daughter is being sexually abused—she screams when anyone touches her. B …
A Sociopathic Interaction
I thought I'd depart from a more standard post and offer below some verbatim interactions I recently had with a client whom I've always suspected as having sociopathic tendencies. I share these interactions (with comments) not for their excitement, because their subject matter is in fact extremely mundane; but rather for the sociopathic elements I believe they instructively contain. My client, T, is a 35 year old male, with a “work history” of voyeuristic, sexually aggressive behavior towards females. My role with him is as a “consulting therapist” for a community agency. T is not psychotic, and has no reality testing impairment. He is a verbally quick, superficially engagin …
Radar not for the sociopath, but for the wrong people
Most of the people who will be bad for us are not sociopaths, and so we want our radar to be sharp, not specifically for sociopaths, but for wrong, bad people of every stripe. True, sociopaths will be terrible people with whom to enter relationships; in the end, though, they will represent a small fraction of a much greater majority of very wrong people for us. As I suggested in a prior post, there are two keys to protecting ourselves from Mr. or Mrs. WRONG: The first is developing intelligent radar; the second is acting wisely on that radar. After all, good radar, no less than good CIA intelligence, is useless if it's ignored or devalued. Now, are there cases of sociopaths (and the lot …
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Risk Assessment for Violence, Playing the Odds
By Joyce Alexander, RNP (Retired) I recently bought a book, Violence Risk and Threat Assessment: A Practical Guide for Mental Health and Criminal Justice Professionals, by J. Reid Meloy, Ph.D. I actually bought it to give some “credence” to the statistics I put into my letter to the parole board protesting the release on parole of the Trojan Horse-Psychopath that attacked our family, Of course this book is directed, as the title says, to professionals, and to assess risk of violence. But since we are dealing with psychopaths, it is, I think, a good idea for us to be able also to look at the assessment for possible violence in our own psychopaths when we thwart their desires, or kick the …
The Single Most Powerful Signifier of Sociopathy
What is the single most powerful signifier of sociopathy? How about, lack of empathy? I don't think so. As an isolated factor, I don't think lack of empathy best nails the sociopath. Many millions of people, after all, lack empathy and aren't sociopaths. Also, exactly what constitutes empathy is a subject of some disagreement. Some LoveFraud members, in fact, question whether sociopaths even lack empathy (some asserting, to the contrary, that the sociopaths they've known have used their capacity for empathy to exploit them). But the biggest problem with lack of empathy is its weakeness in explaining the single, truly best signifier of sociopathy—the characterological exploitiveness o …
The Mask of a Sociopath
By Peggywhoever All sociopaths wear a mask. The mask of kindness. The mask of generosity. The mask of romance. The mask of attraction. The mask of intimacy. The mask of seduction. And so on. This is what reels us in. The pretense. The acting. The mask. The mask of perfection. And we, in our infinite loving goodness, reflect that mask back to them. The perfect mirrored reflection of beauty and adoration. And then one day, that mask cracks. You remember the moment.. The moment when you look in their eyes and you KNOW the truth about them. The moment you recognize the pathological lies, the deception, the manipulation, the con. The game is up. And from that moment on, your relationship with …
The psychopathic world of David Mamet’s plays
Hilton Als writes this in a recent New Yorker magazine: Among the many terrible realities to which David Mamet exposes us in his exceptional, calculated work, one theme stands out: suckers will never get a break in this wretched world. In the sixty-year-old playwright's fictional universe, the humane are too soft and dim-witted to survive; their tormentors chew them up with dry relish. Mamet treats the stage as a kind of bloody forum; the gladiators one finds there are skinny con artists, callow film producers, real-estate agents in cheap suits, and ghastly lovers who spar, using the author's hyper-stylized language as both spear and shield. Even to refer to some of Mamet's characters as …