Character Disturbance—The Phenomenon of Our Age, the new book by George K. Simon, Ph.D., does two things really well: It paints a no-nonsense picture of how people with personality disorders, including sociopaths, behave. And it explains why traditional psychotherapy, in attempting to understand these individuals, gets it so wrong. The basic problem, Simon explains, is that classic concepts in psychotherapy, like those advanced by Sigmund Freud, propose that people develop defensive strategies against a cruel, heartless world in order to protect their deep, authentic selves. This results in "neurosis," defined in Wikipedia as "a variety of mental disorders in which emotional distress or u …
Overcoming the hype to educate people about sociopaths
Lovefraud recently received the following email from a reader whom we'll call “Eleanor.” Thank you for your wonderful site Lovefraud! It has helped me tremendously. I am still with my sociopath husband, but am quietly and surely planning on leaving. We have a few children so it really makes it more complicated. He has now gone up to the next stage in what I've read sociopaths love to do. I'm so thankful that I read about it before he did it and know how to react and what to expect! He's started to call up my family, giving them a sob story about how broken he is and how I won't get any help (we've gone through a few counselors, with no obvious results as they've all been taken in by his a …
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BOOK REVIEW: The Psychopath Test (redux)
Back in May and June, the media blitz for The Psychopath Test, by Jon Ronson, was in full swing. I finally got around to reading the book. Ronson is a British journalist who apparently specializes in writing about nut cases. He wrote The Men Who Stare at Goats, which was made into a movie starring George Clooney and Jeff Bridges. He has a BBC radio show that, according to the New York Times book review, is considered comedy. But he's famous, and people like him. I guess I wish that he'd used his clout and notoriety to do some good with this book. Its full title is The Psychopath Test—A journey through the madness industry. The title is accurate. The book is essentially a history of how …
BOOK REVIEW: The Science of Evil
Reviewed by Joyce Alexander, RNP (Retired) Simon Baron-Cohen, author of The Science of Evil: On Empathy and the Origins of Cruelty, is a professor of Developmental Psychology in the department of Experimental psychology and psychiatry at the University of Cambridge. He is director of the University's Autism Research Center and has endless awards for his research and writing. If you only read one book about empathy, this book should be it! Baron-Cohen explores the definition of empathy, or the lack of it, in humans, to answer his own questions about the Nazi atrocities in Germany before and during World War II. He also, as a scientist, wanted to explore why some people treat other as …
Book Review: The Psychopath Test
Reviewed by Joyce Alexander, RNP (Retired) I bought The Psychopath Test—A Journey Through the Madness Industry, by John Ronson, based mainly on the title. Jon Ronson is a journalist and author of two previous books that were widely accepted. A movie was made about one of them, The Men Who Stare at Goats, starring George Clooney. The first couple of chapters of this book weren't all that interesting to me, but before long I was hooked into the story he was writing. Mr. Ronson looks at the “madness industry” from an outsider's point of view. He actually took training from Dr. Robert “Bob” Hare in how to use the Psychopathic Check List-Revised to spot a psychopath. Ronson went a few steps …
Introducing a new Lovefraud author, Mel Carnegie
“There are thousands if not millions of people out there who have been targeted by sociopaths and I intend to do all I can to help them!” That's what Mel (short for Melanie) Carnegie wrote when she first contacted me not long ago. She, like many of us, had unknowingly married a sociopath back in 1998. It's a classic sociopathic seduction story they met, he swept her off her feet, they exchanged vows six days later. “I had never felt so loved, so safe, so special,” she wrote. “Of course, I now know it was all a sham.” Mel and her husband started a business coaching company in the United Kingdom that's where she's from and attracted many blue chip clients. They prospered, with a beautiful …
Book Review: Evil Genes
Reviewed by Joyce Alexander, RNP (Retired) Dr. Barbara Oakley is the author of Evil Genes—Why Rome Fell, Hitler Rose, Enron Failed, and My Sister Stole My Mother's Boyfriend. Oakley's resume reads like something out of a spy novel: She worked as a translator on Russian fishing trawlers during the Cold War, went from a private to an officer in the military, met her husband while working as a radio operator at the South Pole, and is now a professor of bio-engineering. About this book, Gavin DeBecker writes, “Whatever you might believe about the role of genetics versus environment, Evil Genes will take you somewhere you haven't been. Barbara Oakley brilliantly reveals the falseness of one …
BOOK REVIEW: Cold-Blooded Kindness
Reviewed by Joyce Alexander, RNP (retired) Cold-Blooded Kindness: Neuroquirks of a Codependent Killer, or Just Give Me a Shot at Loving You, Dear, and Other Reflections on Helping That Hurts is the tongue-in-cheek title of this book by Barbara Oakley, with a foreword by David Sloan Wilson. It belies the serious research and investigation done by this remarkable, highly educated and acclaimed woman. Oakley is associate professor of engineering at Oakland University in Michigan, and her work focuses mainly on the complex relationship between neurocircuitry and social behavior. The list of her varied experiences reads like fiction ”¦ she worked for several years as a Russian language tr …
Letters to God, by Jane Pinney
BOOK REVIEWS: Looking at love and fraud from both sides
By Ox Drover I just finished reading the dueling autobiographies of the disgraced former governor of New Jersey, James E. McGreevey, and his ex-wife, Dino Matos McGreevey. His book is called The Confession and hers is called Silent Partner. Former Governor McGreevey, as you may remember, publicly announced in 2004 that he was resigning as governor of New Jersey because he was being blackmailed by a former homosexual lover. As he pronounced to the world that he was a “gay American,” as he styled himself, his then-wife, Dina Matos McGreevey, stood beside him with a stricken deer-in-the-head-lights look. Many times we get a book from one or the other of two aggrieved parties that sur …
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