Just Like His Father? Is nearly four years old now and my own son is nearly eight. At the time the book was released, scientists were still engaged in the genetics versus environment debate regarding the development of antisocial behavior. That debate is now over and every authority accepts that antisocial behavior and antisocial personality traits develop due to a gene-environment interaction. I am working on revising the book because now some specific genes have been identified.
Thankfully, I have not had to cope with the toxic environment a sociopath/psychopath creates for their offspring. Just Like His Father? doesn’t really grapple with that issue other than to encourage people to consider that the child may be better off with only one parent. At time the book was written, my thinking was based on two false premises. The first falsehood, I was taught in residency, “antisocial individuals abandon their young” has turned out to be perhaps the biggest problem at-risk children face. Antisocial individuals do not necessarily abandon their young, but they do abuse them and use them as pawns to damage other people and they also use them in their cons.
Four years ago, I naively believed that the family courts would naturally dictate that sociopaths/ psychopaths should be kept from harming their children. This second premise has also turned out to be false and is the basis for the nightmare many people I now count as friends are living.
It follows that in addition to teaching the material in the book and workbook, to save at-risk children we also have to take on the system-hopefully by working together. The system is composed of mental health professionals who really do not understand antisocial personality disorder let alone the meaning of psychopathic personality traits to parenting. It is also composed of Judges who want to make the tough decisions easy by giving themselves judicial sound bites to go by. Here is the official mantra of the state of New York Family Court:
“Visitation by a noncustodial parent is presumed to be in the child’s best interest and should be denied only in exceptional situations, such as where substantial evidence reveals that visitation would be detrimental to the welfare of the child.”
The important words there are “substantial evidence.” Just what constitutes substantial evidence? I am working on researching the answer to that question and have access to an extensive online law library through the university where I teach.
I am preparing a generic document that people can use as a resource regarding the harmful effects of parenting by antisocial individuals and emotional and verbal abuse on children. Some recent research shows that the developmental damage done by emotional and verbal abuse is as severe as that due to physical and sexual abuse.
But we really have to change the legal mantra. Given what we know of genetic risk, we have to not only protect at-risk children from abuse, we have to provide them with an enriching, nurturing environment to prevent the intergenerational spread of disorder. The new mantra should be:
“In cases where one parent has antisocial personality disorder (psychopathy) the child deserves the best upbringing the least disordered parent can provide.”
AND
“The least disordered parent has a right to live life free of the sociopath/psychopath they were conned by.”
Setting the least disordered parent free facilitates his/her mental health and contributes to the well-being of the child.
Here is what you can do to join this effort:
- If you went through a custody/visitation battle and your children are old enough for you to comment on how the battle and the sociopath affected them please write me. I am especially interested in talking with offspring over 18 about their perspectives.
- If you have an ongoing situation you are willing to share please write. Recently, people from Alabama and New York asked me for help so I compiled the case law for those states. The goal is to compile the case law for every state then make the info available on the web.
- If you want to volunteer to read the case law and help me organize it, I’ll put you to work right away.
- If you are an attorney or legal assistant who wants to help please let me know.
- If you have political connections, we need you.
I am looking to form a committee of workers committed to this cause.
Last but not least, I regret the title of my book because it suggests gender. The title merely reflects my own personal experience. This is NOT about gender or fatherhood versus motherhood. Normal men love and nurture their children and I do not dispute that children need that love and nurturing. This is about a psychiatric disorder for which there is no proven treatment, antisocial personality disorder/ psychopathy.
We are working to save the most vulnerable of all children from abuse, neglect and disorder. We are advocating for those children who carry genetic risk for antisocial personality disorder and who have a mother or father who is not capable of loving and nurturing them.
Contact Dr. Liane Leedom at drleedom@lovefraud.com.
Back. Yes, one_step. I must say it was strange to see spaths and narcs described so perfectly (made me sick to read it) and yet:
“Most batterers and most child sexual offenders show normal results on psychological testing. Mental health evaluations provide very little information about likelihood to reoffend. Both problems can therefore be concluded to have their roots primarily in attitudes and belief systems, reinforced by peers and by cultural messages, and cannot be defined as psychological or sexual illness or “deviance.” ”
See, my dad is described here. He is a batterer and sexual abuser. I thought he was pathological and pretty darn bad … until I met the spath. HE takes that description in the link (manipulation, discrediting, grooming, objectification) to a whole new level.
“Batterers and child molesters are perceived as mentally ill individuals from particularly disturbing childhoods; the public is always shocked when a man with a highly positive public image is exposed as a batterer or child molester.”
A highly positive public image … well isn’t that just what a Narc and a Spath polish up with great care? A positive public image is meaningless, we know that. There’s the difference between anti-socials as the public know them (not my spath — the bad boys in jail, the criminal, not bright, etc. Not my dad either) and psychopaths as we now know they often behave: sub-criminally.
My spath is a cyberpath. He uses women he finds on the ‘net for whatever they happen to have that he is interested in. He’s also a sex addict and as I told EB once I wouldn’t be surprised if he is a potential child abuser. His grooming skills have to be seen to be believed and he has said and done some ‘off’ things.
“Both groups are highly resistant to change.” Just like the personality disordered.
Lundy Bancroft is a man and has written Why does he do that? which is supposedly a great read about men’s anger that I’ve seen mentioned on lots of sites for women recovering from the emotional abuse I had. I haven’t read it so don’t know how far, if at all, he gets into personality disorders.
Oh, one_step, I’m not clever. 😉 I’m especially not good at intelligent discussions since the ptsd.
pollyannanomore.
thanks for those links very important. I knew about the documents but did not know the us was not a signer. Coincidentally an old friend of mine is one of the people behind a “Madison Amendment” to the US constitution that would make it easier to amend the constitution. My dream is that children’s rights will be in the constitution in our lifetime.
frontporchtalker.
yes aspd/psychopathy/sociopathy is a disorder that influences choices. I believe it is an addiction to power and hurting others. All addictions are disorders that influence choice. But don’t mood and psychotic disorders also influence choice? That is why a person who is a danger to others/self and/or unable to care for self is able to be hospitalized involuntarily.
The issue of how mental disorders intersect with choice and “free will” is important. But I think it is incorrect to conclude that because you believe they make choices they cannot also be disordered.
Doesn’t the pedophile make a choice to molest? Impulses can exist in the absence of action. But no one would argue it is healthy or normative to be a pedophile.
It would never occur to me to do the things my ex-husband did. So the impulses he had to do those things came from a place that is foreign to me and most other people. They came from a place of disorder. Like a drug addict though, HE CHOSE TO DO THOSE THINGS. So like the drug addict and the pedophile he is responsible.
The fact that sociopaths/psychopaths experience aberrant impulses that influence their choices is reason to deny them access to children.
I am going to go through all of the above comments and the ones that follow on this thread. If you indicated in your post that you want to help, I will be contacting you. We can form a working committee. If I contact you and you prefer not to receive email from me just let me know and accept ahead of time an apology.
My whole problem with testing genetics to deny someone rights is that it denies people based on perception which is kind of how a sociopath works as well. Everyone has impure thought ( impulses), but not everyone acts on them. Seemingly normal people can be driven to kill others when driven to the edge. I hope we don’t go to punishing thought crimes as a society. Who will be in charge of policing that? Psychologists? Politicians? If someone has a history of abuse and violence, then by all means deny them access to ones that they have or could abuse.
I have just finished reading an article about a murderer/rapist/child molester who is in prison for raping and killing a 10 year od girl in 1983. Dr. Kent Kieht, one of the researchers on psychopaths and choice, who is doing brain scans of psychopathic prisoners vs. normal individuals says his research shows that even though a P can “pick out” a photo of a Morally objectionable thing, say like a KKK group lighting a cross, and say that the photo shows morally objectionable behavior, his BRAIN does NOT “light up” with the emotions that a “normal’ person would have seeing the same photo.
Therefore, Dr. Kieht says that the psychopath does not have the “brakes” to his behavior that a “normal” person would have. He also goes on to say that the claim they feel terrible about their crimes (for the parole board) but if you ask them “what do you MEAN BY THAT?” They look at you like “can you give me a hint?” can I “phone a friend?” They just ahve no way of really getting the emotions to go with the “I’m sorry” words.
As Dr. Leedom pointed out, an alcoholic has a problem with his/her BEHAVIOR (drinking) and may be more inclined genetically to drink than I would be if I did not have those same impulses. However, they DO have a CHOICE just as I do on whether to drink or not. They know that (especially in their case) drinking is “wrong” and “harmful” but they choose to do it anyway.
If a pedophile sees a child and has a sexual urge or desire for that child, they have the CHOICE to engage or not. If a man walks down the street and sees a beautiful woman and gets a sexual urge, he may get an erection but a normal man doesn’t follow and overpower and rape the woman, he goes on about his business and the urge for that woman goes away. He has chosen to NOT engage in behavior he knows is wrong.
Brian Dugan was sentenced to death for the murder and rape of 10-year old Jeanine Nicarico in 1983, to which he confessed.
“He also goes on to say that the claim they feel terrible about their crimes (for the parole board) but if you ask them “what do you MEAN BY THAT?” They look at you like “can you give me a hint?” can I “phone a friend?” They just ahve no way of really getting the emotions to go with the “I’m sorry” words.”
That is very familiar. When I wasn’t thinking, “You are a twisted and evil man,” I was thinking, “You just don’t get it, do you?” Sometimes he seemed to really need to have it explained just WHY I was so upset. He got a sort of a bemused half smile on his face. A kind of ‘village idiot’ effect.
I hate him, but I still don’t really know how much to blame him. His brain wasn’t working right, that I know. Sometimes I believed he was taking pleasure in my pain and at others I thought that the pain he caused me was just a side-effect of him doing what he felt compelled to do. Him ‘feeling compelled’ didn’t strike me as good enough reason for him to do it though, not when it nearly killed me.
verity – i am ‘feeling’ everything you write today; thank you for that gift.
your description of being with a person without connection to language/ feelings/ conscience in the above post is spot on.
oxy – a freind sent these to me the other day. thought you would like some of them:
I was thinking about how a status symbol of today is those cell phones that everyone has clipped onto their belt or purse. I can’t afford one. So, I’m wearing my garage door opener.
I also made a cover for my hearing aid and now I have what they call blue teeth, I think.
I thought about making a fitness movie for folks my age, and call it “Pumping Rust”.
I’ve gotten that dreaded furniture disease. That’s when your chest is falling into your drawers!
When people see a cat’s litter box, they always say, “Oh, have you got a cat?” Just once I want to say, “No, it’s for company!”
Remember when employment application blanks always ask who is to be notified in case of an emergency. I think we should have wrote – “A Good Doctor”!
I was thinking about how people seem to read the Bible a whole lot more as they get older. Then, it dawned on me. They were cramming for their finals.
Dear Verity,
I think it was BOTH—sometimes they actually seem to get pleasure out of our pain, and sometimes they really just don’t get it that we should be so upset—they just did what they wanted to do.
They are not “sick” or “incapable of making a choice”—sick implies they are unable to make different choices, like a person who is mentally retarded may not be able to make “adult or responsible choices”—they CAN make choices, they just choose to do whatever their impulses want to do REGARDLESS of who it hurts, sometimes, even themselves.
They refuse to accept blame for the consequences.
There may be “different types” from mooches to serial killers, but I think it is basically the SAME TYPE—control, control CONTROL!
They won’t change themselves, because they see no need. We can’t change them. We can only change our response to them.
The only response that works is GET AWAY from them.
Then, afterward, we must heal the wounds we received while we were still close to them.
If you go out walking and a mountain lion stalks and jumps on you, and you are injured….but manage to get away…it isn’t any help in healing your injuries to know everything there is to know about a mountain lion….or to try to figure out why the mountain lion didn’t realize or care that he was hurting you.
You’re on the road to healing verity, and you will accomplish that goal. In fact, I think in the process we become BETTER than we ever were before. We heal the deeper and older wounds as well, and we learn to love and care for ourselves. Keep up HOPE and care for YOU! (((Hugs))))
Dear One_step,
I laughed in spite of the fact that i had heard those before, which to me is a good sign that they are TRUE!!!! LOL
“Pumping rust” was one I hadn’t heard though and SO TRUE! LOL
I love MAXINE, the cranky old biddy cartoon/comic! I AM Maxine or at least trying to become her. Actually she looks like my step dad’s mother who was a cranky old biddy that few could stand. He was so patient though, he went to see her every other week for an hour or so—his duty visit! LOL
Thanks for the laughs!
I understand that psychopaths have different brain functioning and impulses than ” normal” people, but you can’t deny someone rights because they may do something. They also may not. That is like jailing all rap music listeners who listen to songs about cop killing because they may kill a cop. Blacks and Hispanics are more likely to commit crimes than the normal Anglo. Should we test them genetically to see if this is the case? The point is any person can overcome their predisposed genetics and environment to become a normal educated person whatever that is.