A Cambridge professor, Simon Baron-Cohen, has written Zero Degrees of Empathy: A new theory of human cruelty. In this review, the author explains the professor’s ideas.
Read Why a lack of empathy is the root of all evil, on Independent.co.uk.
Link supplied by a Lovefraud reader.
Oxy,
So true about duct tape! I was very angry when I first came here. This blog has helped me more than I can ever repay. But, I’ll try. As long as I’m making forward progress, I’m happy with that. Also, the book recomendations are VERY good!
Wow, I can’t wait to get the book by Carrie ten Boom! It sure sounds powerful.
Thanks hens, I hope they lessen too. When I’m busy and traveling away from home I do okay to forget and life seems normal once again. But being back home and having more time to tune in to those shows, I’m trapped for hours even if it’s just providing background noise.
This morning we woke to the news of the woman driving off the pier and into the Hudson River with children aboard and they drown. And my first thought was….oh, her ‘partner’/husband must have driven her to do it.
Sarah 999 –
I am new to this, but I think you have it way wrong if you think your sadistic ‘spath’ feels what his or her victims feel.
Your spath is seeking feeling and there are no feelings there. The closest thing is sexual gratification. And that don’t come easy after a life of lies – pardon the pun. Torment and deviant sex are only part of the process. To my mind, it seemed like that kind of sex was more about the ‘kid caught with his hand in the candy jar’ phenom than actual pain and suffering. In his words, it was more about the concept of ‘being naughty’ than what was actually happening.
Dude got way off on his own anal penetration – not so much the kooky things that most would consider sadistic sexual behavior performed on another.
I also believe he was sexually abused by a baseball coach that now sits in prison for his sexual molestation crimes. This trusted coach assaulted his players when they were children for his 15 year coaching spree. My spath – who was an outstanding ball player, remember was being raised by an absentee father – would have been coached by this madman for roughly six years. And my spath’s dear neighborhood friend was this horrible man’s son.
Now we have a man who was abandoned as a baby, raised by a drug dealer/abusive father, sexually abused by a coach by the time he was 13.
Poor thing had no chance.
But I don’t for one second believe that he feels a thing. Not through his victims, not through the life experiences of his children, nothing. He is numb. And he seeks feeling through physical encounters. That can only last so long.
He is filled with nothing – there is no there there.
Another day I can go off on the mimicking. He mimicked and reflected, no personality, no opinions, no smell. Who doesn’t even have a smell?
missled – when I have the news on and they mention ‘dead man’s body found’ or ‘ man arrested for’ I wait for them to say his name – hasnt happened yet but maybe soon?
Far,
That is how angry I was that he has been able to get away with it (being S). I suffer while he’s off to the next victim somewhere in the world.
It’s criminal to lie that much! If I could show his picture….sometimes I wonder if someone here would know him. He’s a very good charming liar that needs to be stopped.
Onebeliever – OMG your right – he had no smell – only if he was wearing that aweful stetson cologne – but he had no smell…and when he slept he looked like a tortured soul – very alien like….
Missled We have all seen Mr. Charming…I was also obsessed with him just moving on to the new victim, I was so sure he had found his bliss and I was left all alone because I wasnt good enuff – well fast forward three years and he is still bouncing from one victim to the the next – what is their to envy in that?
hens,
yep, I do that all the time. I have Before/After memories I try to recall how I was thinking at the time.
Before month 3, he was so smart, calm, deeply caring, affectionate, easy to be around.
After month 3, opposite everything.
It just leaves you angry and bewildered for the longest time…years later even. I met him 3.5 years ago and I haven’t seen him for over a year. I just don’t understand how I could go on being upset over him.
Thinking he’ll appear as the main subject on a real crime show is….well, probably not that crazy.
One believer,
Not even a small percentage of the children who have been abused BECOME abusers themselves. Being abused as a child can definitely be a negative influence on a child’s adult personality, but more children who were abused become adult victims than adult abusers….
Some of the best people I know where horribly abused as children, and some of the worst people I know were horribly abused as children.
There are some genetic components as well as environmental ones….a piece of clay can become a beautiful cup or a toilet, depending on how it is shaped by the environment…a piece of coal can become a black smudge or a diamond…again, depending on how the environment acts on the basic component. But there is no way a piece of rock can become a diamond, or a piece of coal become a cup.
We have choices and so do they, we can let the ugly things that touch us rub off on us and blacken our souls or we can work at finding the beauty and goodness in ourselves IN SPITE OF THE DARKNESS IN THEM….that’s why this healing journey I think is as much a spiritual awakening as anything else. We have the opportunity to make something beautiful out of something that isn’t pretty—or we can let it crush us into dust.
Before we can heal though, we must ESCAPE from the source of the EVIL, escape the influence of the UGLY that has been in our lives. NO CONTACT as much as possible, and for those that have children with these people, as little contact as legally possible and keep your child(ren) as safe as possible….whatever that entails.