Isn't it strange how the mind works? I read with approval Dr Leedom's latest post. In it she manages to be at once hard-nosed, realistic, and still keep positve. There are very real differences in the brains of those with psychopathic traits, she writes, but the brain is plastic and therein lies just a sliver of hope. For some reason the opening lines of Martin Amis' novel House of Meetings came back to me. It is set in the Soviet Union: Dear Venus If what they say is true, and my country is dying, then I think I may be able to tell them why. You see, kid, the conscience is a vital organ, and not an extra like the tonsils or the adenoids. Amis has also written a stunning nonfiction …
The Moral Brain
Scientists are actively working on solving the mystery of what is different about the brains of people who have traits of sociopathy/psychopathy. Notice that I say “traits” because virtually none of the studies only include subjects who score above 30 on the PCL-R. These studies then by definition are about sociopathic traits and not psychopathy (see my post from last week). When I first realized that I had to understand sociopathic traits in order to properly raise my at-risk son, I studied the traits and organized them according to what I understood about human motivation and the organization of the brain. In my opinion, sociopathic traits form three categories, I call The Inner Triangle. T …
The Borderline Personality as Transient Sociopath
Editor's note: This article was submitted by Steve Becker, LCSW, CH.T, who has a private psychotherapy, hypnotherapy, and clinical consulting practice in New Jersey, USA. For more information, visit his website, powercommunicating.com. It is not unusual in my clinical experience to see, sometimes, some quite chilling sociopathic activity from my “borderline personality-disordered” clients. When someone has a “borderline personality,” it's quite likely, among other things, that he or she will present with a history of emotional instability; a pattern of chaotic interpersonal relationships; and poor coping skills under stress, reflected in self-destructive/ destructive acting-out and a tendenc …
“He is the lie, from hello to good-bye”
Donna Anderson's important latest post reminds me that one topic which will never be worn out is that of the psychopath's lies and their impact on others. This week I want to very briefly introduce yet another take on this inexhaustible topic. Everyone lies, but there's something else at stake in the case of the psychopath's lies. To illustrate: you might say about any regular (non-psychopathic) person, "Things would be better if s/he was to lie less often. Her/his soul or psyche would be healthier as would her relationships." That's true. Now try this on for size and notice how wrong it seems: "Things would be better if the psychopath was to lie less often. His soul or psyche would be …
Psychopathy versus sociopathy again…
I plan to review for you a very recent paper: Psychopathy as a disorder of the moral brain. Dr. Robert Hare is one of the authors. But, before I can get to explaining the moral brain part, I have to get past the first paragraph, so the moral brain will be have to be discussed more next week. As I sat down to translate this paper into plain English, I got stuck at the fourth sentence: “Antisocial behavior by itself is a nonspecific symptom common to many conditions, so psychopathy and antisocial personality disorder (ASPD, American Psychiatric Association, 1994) are not analogous constructs while most cases of ASPD (sociopathy) do not fulfill the interpersonal and affective criteria for p …
Discrimination and sociopaths
"Discrimination" has come to be a dirty word. It brings to mind unfair treatment of individuals because of race, religion, gender, national origin, physical disability, sexual orientation or some other broad categorization. People have been killed, beaten, denied jobs, denied housing, prosecuted, persecuted and denigrated because of some demographic category to which they belonged. All of this applies to one meaning of the word "discrimination." But there is another meaning that is vitally important when it comes to sociopaths. Here are the two meanings according to the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language: Discrimination Treatment or consideration based on class or …
New Jersey’s bogus Internet Dating Safety law
The Internet Dating Safety Act became law in the state of New Jersey, the home of Lovefraud, on January 13, 2008. It is supposed to take effect next month. The law applies only to New Jersey, USA, residents. It mandates that any Internet dating site must disclose to New Jersey members, clearly and conspicuously, whether it conducts criminal background checks. "The disclosure shall be provided when an electronic mail message is sent or received by a New Jersey member, on the profile describing a member to a New Jersey member, and on the website pages of the Internet dating service used when a New Jersey member signs up," the law states. "A disclosure shall be in bold, capital letters in at …
It is not about gender, it is about sociopathy
I have spent the last 3 months very focused on finishing Women Who Love Psychopaths with Sandra L.Brown, M.A. this book is admitedly sexist in that it is for women who have had relationships with male sociopaths, psychopaths and pathological narcissists. The book has been tough for me to work on as I have had to relive many aspects of the short 17 months I spent with a sociopath. I am anxious to move on and produce a similar work for men, because I dislike the over emphasis on male sociopaths. I also have come to appreciate loving empathetic men, and believe we need to give these "real men" more recognition and visibility. Three events with the above theme have touched me recently. First, …
It’s not that the psychopath’s beliefs are awry (they are); it’s that his desires are too perverse and too uninhibited
I was recently reading a 2003 paper in the journal Nature called Forensic psychology: Violence viewed by psychopathic murderers which is both interesting and frustrating. Interesting because it demonstrates that, even amongst murderers, psychopathic murderers are different. Frustrating because the authors extrapolate their finding in a way that is ultimately misleading being so narrow as to completely miss the point. I pick this particular study only because it is rather typical of scientific studies in the field: 1. it neglects to consider what the psychopath gets out of behaving the way he does, and 2. it let's the psychopath off the hook. The study 13 psychopathic murderers, 17 …
Why are there so many sociopaths in America?
This semester I am teaching Psychology of Women at the University of Bridgeport. This is the second time I have taught this course. It is a fun course to teach because everyone likes it. This week we took up the issue of whether overall women's personalities are different from men's. A significant percentage of the class believes that men and women are very different in many domains and that this difference is biologic or genetic. The author of our textbook is a feminist from New York so she tends to down play any gender differences found, and she attributes nearly all gender differences to culture. To balance the views of the textbook, I look for other articles to share with the class. …