Consider this extract from a piece by Anthony Daniels in The New Criterion: In his essay, The Empire of the Ugly, the great Belgian Sinologist and literary essayist Simon Leys recounts the story of how, writing one day in a café, a small incident gave him an insight into the real nature of philistinism. A radio was playing in the background, a mixture of banal and miscellaneous chatter and equally banal popular music. No one in the café paid any attention to this stream of tepid drivel until suddenly, unexpectedly and inexplicably, the first bars of Mozart's clarinet quintet were played. “Mozart,” Leys says, “took possession of our little space with a serene authority, transforming t …
Sociopaths violate all human values
As part of my day job—writing scripts for web-based training programs—I came across some information developed by the Institute for Global Ethics. Surveys conducted worldwide have consistently identified a group of values that people of all cultures and nationalities recognize as essential. These universal values are: Honesty Responsibility Respect Fairness Compassion Sociopaths violate all of them. Perhaps that's why those of us who are ethical, who care about others, who want to live cooperatively among our neighbors, feel so shaken after a collision with a sociopath. These predators take the qualities that people all over the world consider essential to the social contract and s …
A leading polygraph expert discusses psychopathy and how people lie
Last week I ran across the book, Criminal Interrogation: A Modern Format for Interrogating Criminal Suspects Based on the Intellectual Approach, by Warren D. Holmes. The author spent his early career in law enforcement and now runs a private polygraph company in Miami Florida. He has interviewed many psychopaths including murderers and child molesters. I was anxious to read this book and understand a law enforcement officer's view of psychopaths. I was happy to see that the book is very well written and I would recommend it to Lovefraud readers who want to know how a law enforcement officer approaches interrogation of psychopaths/sociopaths. Many Lovefraud readers have expressed the desire …
A leading polygraph expert discusses psychopathy and how people lieRead More
Fear: The gift sociopaths/psychopaths didn’t get by their third Christmas
If you read the stories of victims of sociopaths, many common themes are apparent. One of these is the victim complains that he/she is riddled with anxiety while the sociopath goes on with life effortlessly. From the point of view of a victim then, it is hard to see fear as a gift. Many say they wish the sociopath suffered some anxiety over the mess of their lives. The worst sociopaths (psychopaths) even go to prison multiple times, only viewing this fate as “an occupational hazard.” Over the past 100 years, clinicians and scientists have written about the lack of fear in sociopaths. Many have speculated that lack of anxiety or fearlessness is one of the causes of sociopathy/psychopathy. I …
Fear: The gift sociopaths/psychopaths didn’t get by their third ChristmasRead More
Do psychopaths/sociopaths make choices?
Hopefully, many of you read this blog because you want to know how a trained psychiatrist deals with the issues you also face. I am not glad to be eternally tied to a psychopath, but since I am, you and I share the same challenges. We can reflect on these challenges together and we will all be better and stronger. This week I received an email from one of my ex-husband's family members, so I will put off the planned discussion of psychopathic anxiety to address the issues raised by the email. The email points to the trivializing of the sociopath's/psychopath's behavior that family members often do. This week give some thought as to how you will deal with others who trivialize a …
Evil – a simple definition
I love my wikipedia. I learn a lot I didn't know and I refine my thinking by finding fault too. (The problem is knowing what is worth learning and what needs unlearning!) Consider the wikipedia definition of evil: Evil is generally defined as any activity which takes advantage of another person for one's own benefit....(In contrast, good is helping others, even sometimes self-sacrificially; see saint, sainthood.) There's something dodgy about the form of this definition and also something very familiar about its implications. For one thing, it fits with the the lable 'anti-social' which refers to behaviour which has ill effects, but good intentions - "well, in his culture that behaviour …
There is no drabber place to be
Why is it that in the popular media super-psychopaths like serial killers are portrayed has having such rich inner lives? (Consider the highly cultured Hannibal Lecter.) That's not right at all. Anthony Lane, film reviewer for the New Yorker, makes the point well: There was a time when, as a God-fearing member of the community, you could commit a single murder, drop a couple of clues, and wait to be unmasked. Now it's all serial slayers, stacking up bodies like air miles. Filmgoers are supposed to find this multiplicity enticing, and we are constantly being invited to enter into the “mind” of the serial killer, but in truth there is no drabber place to be, and the idea that there might be a …
Josef Fritzl – psychopath
By now everyone knows about the astounding case of incest, etc. in Austria. No doubt some are going to excuse Josef Fritzl by suggesting that he must be a mad man. Others (for instance here) will find fault with society. These rationalisations are because for regular people the immensity of the crimes are blinding. But there are enough clues already that what Fritzl is is a psychopath and as such is responsible for his actions. Take one small detail - the alleged role of drugs in the case. Franz Polzer, the Austrian police chief leading the investigation, said Fritzl had given the impression, during protracted interrogations, that after 24 years he now actually believed the web of …
The opposite of love is … what?
Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel is just one person who has said the following: "The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference". In other words, the opposite of love is not hate, as might have been expected. We've all heard this contention and been struck by it. Yes, we've thought, it is terrible to be ignored. (Pretty awful being hated too, of course.) But I'm grateful to Dawn Eden for mentioning another powerful proposition. Eden, promoting her book 'The Thrill of the Chaste', is currently visiting Canadian high schools. The students seemed interested when I told them what Pope John Paul II called "the opposite of love." It's not hate, as some of them guessed when I asked them what …
Is your ___________ “a sociopath”?
This semester I am teaching social psychology and biological psychology at a local university. This week the issue of human affiliation and attachment came up in both courses. Recently a new understanding of human affiliation and attachment has arisen in the scientific literature and I was very pleased to see that the new insight already made it into both of the textbooks. The new understanding really helps us to understand sociopathy so I will discuss it here with the help of one of my students and one of our readers. Human affiliation has two levels to it. The first is our general tendency to avoid being alone and to seek out the company of others. The second is a deeper level that …