I write this column (using “he” throughout, for simplicity purposes) to suggest some useful ideas for vetting a prospective provider who does not come recommended through a reliable source (or through Donna Anderson’s growing new LoveFraud referral base).
How can you begin to assess a relatively unknown provider for his competence to address your experiences with a suspected sociopath specifically, exploiter in general, or otherwise personality-disturbed individual?
Let me start by suggesting that a provider who claims to be educated about sociopathy really isn’t if he lacks an equally fluent understanding of narcissistic and borderline personality disorder.
The reason I say this is that, under certain circumstances, all three disorders can look very much alike; but more importantly, if you are involved with someone who has any one of these disorders, you are at heightened risk of being personally violated and abused.
So, while they are distinct from each other (although common elements of narcissism and sociopathy remain intriguing), I’m suggesting that all three disorders greatly increase the probable, if not certain, occurrence of interpersonal violation.
In the course of this discussion, I’m going to assume that you may be involved with someone (or have been involved with someone) whom you suspect (or know) to be, for instance, sociopathic and/or abusive? Otherwise you wouldn’t be seeking assurances that a particular provider has knowledge and/or expertise of the disorder(s) in question.
I also make the assumption that LoveFraud members or visitors wanting to find a knowledgeable resource on sociopathy (who do not find assistance through Donna’s new referral resource) come with a nice advantage—by virtue of their involvement with LoveFraud, they are already extra knowledgeable on the subject. This equips them to be astute evaluators of a prospective resource.
So let’s get down to business.
You will need, no surprise, to ask questions; questions that can gauge the provider’s competency to appreciate the gravity of a situation in which a sociopathic (or some other exploitative dynamic) is, or has been, present.
And you will want good, expressive answers to your questions, not dismissive ones.
The first, vital task is to assess the provider’s receptivity to your interest in his clinical experience. This point needs emphasis: You are entitled to evaluate the provider’s clinical experience and expertise as it pertains to your circumstances.
I stress: You are completely, utterly entitled to assess the provider’s professional experience, skills, and interest on matters relevant to your personal circumstances and self-interest.
Remember, this is not about protecting the provider; it’s about protecting yourself.
As such, this speaks to a bigger issue: You are setting yourself up if you do not protect yourself, and so you protect yourself by owning your right to a completely respectful, receptive invitation to evaluate the provider’s scope of interest and competence with a given client population, or in a particular clinical area. Anything less than a genuine, undefensive invitation from the provider to proceed with your questions should immediately disqualify him from consideration.
So for instance, you might begin with something like, “You know, it’s very important to me, given my circumstances, to be working with someone I can feel confident has a really good knowledge of _________. Would you mind if I asked you several questions along those lines, for my own personal comfort?” (There are many ways to break the ice, this is just one example.)
Remember: A provider who fails, at this point, to invite you to proceed, undefensively, has disqualified himself. Thus, if he responds impatiently, arrogantly, angrily, curtly, condescendingly, as if offended or put-off, or in any other way inadequately, he is wrong for you. You must move on, because you deserve better.
Assuming you’ve gotten the proper encouragement to proceed, I offer below a list of questions (hardly comprehensive) which, depending on your circumstances, can elicit meaningful information. The idea (quite obviously) isn’t to ask all of these questions, but to pursue several that are most applicable to your situation.
This list is by no means complete; rather, it’s at best a starting point, if only to get your own wheels rolling to come up with even better questions! Note that some of the questions probe for knowledge, others for personal views and biases, and others for experience. The asterisked questions can sometimes elicit responses that will enable you to quickly eliminate potential resources.
· How familiar are you with sociopathy?
· How familiar are you with psychopathy?
· Do you distinguish sociopathy and psychopathy, or are we using these terms to mean the same thing?
· Do you distinguish antisocial personality disorder from sociopathy or psychopathy?
· How many cases have you worked involving sociopathy?
· Can I ask how you came to work with these individuals?
· What is your treatment philosophy regarding sociopathically disturbed individuals?
· I’m curious how you view sociopathy? I know that many people have different ideas about sociopaths. Can you tell me your view of what characterizes the sociopath?
· How do you distinguish, if at all, the sociopath from the narcissistic personality?
· What’s been your experience working with borderline personality disturbance?
· In your experience, what are similarities and differences between borderline, narcissistic and sociopathically disordered individuals?
· How much experience have you had working with abusive individuals?
· Can you tell me a little about the history of your interest, and experience working, with abusive personalities?
· *How effective and appropriate, in your experience, are anger management referrals for abusive personalities?
· How much interest, and experience, have you had working with victims of abuse?
· What is your view of what constitutes abuse in a relationship?
· What are your goals in working with someone who is in, or has been damaged by, an abusive relationship?
· *Are there circumstances where someone might be driven, legitimately, to abuse someone else?
· Do you mind if I ask you whose work or writings on abusive relationships and abusive personalities has most influenced your views?
· Do you mind if I ask you whose work on the subject of psychopathy (or sociopathy) has most influenced your ideas?
· *Are you familiar with Robert Hare’s work?
· *Have you successfully treated sociopaths?
· My partner, if you meet him, will tell you that I’m a sociopath”¦how will you know which of us, if either, is the sociopath?
· Are you familiar with any psychological instruments that assess for psychopathy, and if so, do you use them?
· *Under what conditions, if any, would you be hesitant to do couples therapy?
· What goals do you have, generally, when working with a borderline personality?
· What goals do you have, generally, when working with a narcissistic personality?
· What is your understanding of the central feature(s) of sociopathy?
· What is your understanding of the central feature(s) of the narcissist?
· Would you be willing to read something I’d give you if I felt it could help you understand the precidament/situation/personality I’m dealing with?
· When you believe you are dealing clinically with a sociopathic individual, what is your clinical goal?
The answers to your questions
As I’ve strongly suggested, the provider’s responses, first of all, should convey interest in, and respect for, your questions. Your first assessment, then, is less of the provider’s expertise and knowledge, than his or her attitude to your questions.
As a matter of fact, a primary purpose of your questions is to assess the attitude of the provider. In other words, if the provider isn’t temperamentally suited to appreciate the complexity of your concerns, he or she can have all the knowledge in the world and be pretty much worthless.
You’ll want honest answers. Genuine answers. Not pretenses to expertise where there isn’t any. You’ll want a provider who is willing to say, “That’s an interesting question. I might even need to think about that a bit more.”
I offer randomly some rough examples (from countless possibilities) of what might be deemed encouraging responses to some of these questions:
“To be honest, no”¦I haven’t worked with what I’d call a high volume of ________; but I do feel comfortable with my understanding of this clinical issue, and I’d like to be of help to you.”
“I consider myself to be clinically literate on this subject, but I’m happy to become even more enlightened and would welcome anything you have to share with me to get me up to speed.”
“I wouldn’t say that I have a particular interest working with _______, but I do like working with and helping those who have been victimized by ________(s).”
“I suppose I’d regard ______as a very central feature of _______. Also ______.”
“I don’t really make a distinction between antisocial personality and the sociopath? As a matter of fact, I wasn’t even aware of such a distinction? But I’m curious about that? Am I missing something?”
“I’ve worked a great deal with victims of abuse and enjoy working with this client population.”
“I’m not familiar with that issue, to be honest” (depending on the circumstances, this doesn’t necessarily have to be a disqualification).
“I can’t say that I’ve had great success working with narcissistic personalities”¦but I’ll work with anyone who voluntarily seeks my help genuinely.”
“I’m not sure if I satisfied you with my response?”
These hypothetical replies have in common a thoughtful, humble, curious quality. The confident provider will feel relaxed, undefensive, and unpressured to produce brilliant, comprehensive answers beyond his or her scope of expertise.
At the same time, you are looking for evidence of expertise that will leave you feeling comfortable that this is someone who can effectively, sensitively advocate for your interests.
Some responses, as noted, can quickly reveal a provider’s serious limitations.
For instance, the response to the question, Have you successfully treated any sociopaths?, “Yes”¦I’ve worked with many sociopaths and treated several very successfully,” is a great time-saver. You just say, “Thanks very much, I’ve really appreciated your time,” and then have a good laugh on your way out.
That’s because true sociopathy, as the LoveFraud community well knows, is a refractory
condition, unamenable to meaningful modification.
Regarding the Hare question: in cases where a provider claims to be experienced with the subject of sociopathy, I might find it dubious (although not necessarily instantly disqualifying) that he or she would have no knowledge of Robert Hare, who is such a notable figure in psychopathy research.
Similarly, the response to the question, Under what conditions would you be hesitant to do couples therapy?, “Umm”¦.I can’t really think of any?,” would suggest a potentially serious defect in the provider’s clinical knowledge and/or judgement. That’s because couples therapy is ill-advised under several circumstances, among them when serious abuse is occuring in a relationship, or when one or both partners is sociopathically oriented. (And naturally, non-genuine motivation to work on the relationship would be another contraindication.)
Further, a provider who suggests that, yes, a referral for anger management is probably the best intervention you can offer an abusive personality betrays a likely ignorance of the dynamics of the abuser, who has much more than merely an anger problem.
And it’s self-evident that a provider who can find a basis to justify abuse under any circumstance is probably confusing abuse with, perhaps, self-defense—a failure of understanding that ought to send you running for the hills.
Bear in mind there is no one right way to answer many of these questions; in many cases, there are multiple good (and good-enough) answers which also allow for differences in clinical approaches and orientations.
I offer below additional examples (also random, hypothetical) of the kinds of responses that might reflect a reassuring level of clinical expertise:
“What do I see as the central feature of sociopathy? I see the sociopath as someone who is extremely, chronically manipulative and deceptive. Someone who lacks empathy in a very gross way for the victims of his or her exploitation.”
“I see what you mean”¦.you can have a borderline personality disorder doing something, say, really vengeful that might look very sociopathic, but the motive for the aggression would be different. The borderline personality might be motivated by rage, panic, or desperation over, say, abandonment issues, whereas the sociopath? He or she may be movitated by”¦the impulse?”¦pure greed”¦or even the fun of it?”
“If I have good reason to believe I’m dealing with a sociopath, my main goal becomes evaluating his or her risk to others”¦depending, of course, on the circumstances of the referral and case.”
“If I’m working with someone with borderline personality, I’m looking to help that individual, among other things, learn how to better regulate his or her emotions, which may be very dysregulated and for that reason a source of much distress.”
“If I’m working with a narcissistic personality disorder, I’m looking, over time, to help that individual, if possible, examine his demands and expectations of others—his inflated sense of entitlement—more thoughtfully; and also examine the ways that he routinely handles, or mishandles, his disappointment in others.”
“When I’m working with abusive individuals my goal is to confront their excuses and rationalizations for their violating behaviors.”
“When I’m working with victims of abuse I may have several goals, including safety concerns; also exploring how the client finds herself in an abusive relationship, and the factors that make it difficult for her (or him) to leave that relationship.”
“How will I know which of you is the sociopath? I think in any clinical situation, you rely on a number of factors in formulating possible diagnoses, including your instincts, your experience of the individuals, the client’s history (as furnished by the client and others), other relevant, available, supporting documentation; and any adjunctive testing and evaluations that can narrow down, if necessary, a suspected diagnosis more accurately? And so there’s no guarantee that I’ll get it right, but I’m pretty confident of my chances.”
In sum, you’ll want assurances that the provider, at a minimum, can recognize the central aspects of sociopathy (or the disorder in question); he or she should appreciate the futility of pursuing treatment with the sociopath, especially in a private practice setting; but most importantly, the provider should be able to convey a good clinical grasp of, and history of work with, abusive personalities and their victims.
You will know, intuitively, whether the provider’s responses indicate an adequate level of thoughtfulness and knowledge.
And remember, your initial assessment doesn’t end when you choose to begin a working relationship with a particular provider, anymore than you cease evaluating the individual with whom you enter a personal relationship. Your evaluation should be ongoing, and your continued investment in the relationship, whether with a professional resource, or intimate partner, should be based on a continuing evaluation of him or her as worthy of your time and trust.
You can say at any point along the way, This person is not right for me. Just because I sized this person/provider up initially (with necessarily incomplete information) as worth my initial investment, doesn’t mean I can’t modify my assessment of him or her at any time, thanks to my making good use of additional, more complete information!
I hope this offers some guidance for conceptualizing an approach to the evaluation of a relatively unknown prospective provider. I am glad to continue this discussion based on feedback.
(This article is copyrighted (c) 2009 by Steve Becker, LCSW.)
Hi OxDrover
I feel uncomfortable with the genetic stuff, because it robs me of my victory, and absolves him of his guilt.
I have made good and bad choices in my life. On a business level, Ive worked with some pretty pushy people, and never let myself get beaten down. On a personal level, its been different.
To be totally honest, I dont think genes have come into this situation in any way whatsoever.
As an analogy, an astrologer once told me that our birth sign is where we start in our predispositions in this life. To progress in our soul development, we work our way around the astrological circle, becoming well-rounded in the process.
I don’t think a genetic predisposition to something should rob us of our victories. It’s just the hand we were dealt. A good poker player can create a win out of a “nothing” hand, so I hear.
Rune, I think that genes play a role in our tendency to react to stimuli, but environmental factors, such as development of problem-solving, acess to and use of resources, and learnt value systems become more and more significant as we age. At this stage in my life, I feel that things are about 10% nature, 90 % nurture. I am radically different from both of my prents, and my siblings. Just about the only thing I have in common with them is genes. And that isnt much.
OxDrover, do you feel that genes played a role with your sons? From what I can gather, one is a P, and one is a decent human being. Im assuming you raised them pretty much the same. Hope this isnt too personal a question. Please ignore it if you want to.
I always have said that the best and most important thing that happened to me is I was blessed with a mother who didn’t do drugs (including alcohol) while pregnant. Biology can have a HUGE impact on your life. It humbles me if I get too proud of my accomplishments, because I realize I had that big break that many don’t have. Not to mention having the good fortune to be born in the US. I just can’t get too cocky about who I am, I was so lucky.
Rune, this is in response to your earlier post around noon.
For myself, I don’t think it’s the message to never trust anyone and go it alone.
I think that the ultimate reward of learning to take better care of ourselves is that we graduate up from power games to heart games. For me, this process has results — and it wasn’t my early objective — in my emerging understanding of the concept of “loving myself.”
I got to that through a longer path through self-defense, taking responsibility for myself and ultimately realizing that I did truly like, appreciate and trust myself like no one else.
Out of that emergence of a self-loving awareness, I also found the capacity to feel compassion for other people in an entirely new way. It was not tied to expectations that I prove that I’m a good girl by doing something about their issues. It was just plain feeling for them, and being able to grasp the circumstances they were dealing with. My heart became engaged in a way that it never was before, once I got my performance issues out of the way.
This combination of self-loving and compassion is a kind of higher-level umbrella over a lot of the other stuff I’ve been working on. It incorporates self-protection and responsibility for myself, but it opens up my mind to more sensitivity about my environment because my emotional awareness now is kind of neutral. That doesn’t mean I don’t feel pain. I feel a lot more of it now. But it doesn’t mean the same thing to me. There’s a lot of suffering in the world; I’ve gotten to the point where I’m open to it.
And at that point, I find it easier to “read” what’s going on. This man you mentioned in your post. I don’t know what the reason is, but he’s clearly driven to have or do more. I don’t know why and probably neither do you. But if I were advising your businessman, I would suggest he sit down with his associate and have a chat about his personal objectives, both inside the company and outside of it.
That person you think is an N may just think that your businessman is a short-sighted idiot, and is trying to do some planning and organizational work for longer-term good results. Or it just may be the normal creative differences in a company that generate breakthrough results. Or this guy may be addicted to some drug that is destroying his thinking processes and values, and he’s too distracted to finish anything. You just don’t know.
One of the inevitable risks of healing from a specific blow in our lives is that we risk getting into the “if all you’ve got is a hammer, everything looks like a nail” syndrome. It’s one of the reasons I introduced the idea of “sociopathic transactions” here, to get our heads into the process, rather than trying to slap names on people.
These processes are defined by their impact on us. It really doesn’t matter what kind of person we’re dealing with. Whether its a pathologically disturbed personality looking to exploit or harm us, or just someone who’s too self-involved at the moment to care about our issues and what we want. The net result is the same for us. We’re not getting our needs met.
At that point, we can challenge the process and say something like “this doesn’t work for me.” And if the other person isn’t open to discussing it or coming to a mutually workable resolution, we have the option of cutting them off in that transaction or permanently. Or maybe we realize that they’re bleeding or running after a child who’s jumped into the street, and we decide to give them a free pass this one time. (But mark it up on our inner “is this person more trouble than s/he’s worth” ledger for future reference.)
There’s no big decision of whether or not we trust anyone in this approach. It just doesn’t work for us. And if we get broken-hearted about the disappointment, it might take us a while to sort it out, but sooner or later we’re going to realize that we had our dreams pinned on that person. Which is our problem, not theirs.
People live their own lives. Each of us does. Sometimes things work and sometimes they don’t. And when we encounter someone who doesn’t know how to collaborate, doesn’t apparently have a capacity to understand or care about the impact of his or her actions, and/or operates on values that make us uncomfortable, it makes sense to not do business with them, after we see they can’t rise to the occasion.
This all sounds very cool and rational, I know. But what you’re hearing is the thinking of someone who’s not particularly interested anymore in giving energy to processes and relationships that don’t meet my needs.
It’s my responsibility to pay attention to my feelings, to notice when a bad feeling suggests that I’ve got an unmet need, and to figure out what that is. It’s hard to negotiate with people or with life if you don’t know what you want.
Being responsible for myself also means I let other people be responsible for themselves. Everyone’s on their own learning path. I don’t have the power to fix anyone but myself. Another thing I’ve learned in this process is that the most healthy thing I can do for myself and for everyone else is to be real about who I am. What I think. How I feel. What I want.
In a mental environment like this, it becomes relatively easy to make decisions without creating global rules that limit my world. It’s okay if I make mistakes. I learn from them and go on. Nothing — and I mean nothing — is more important my living, communicating, sharing, and building from a position of compassion and clarity. That may sound rigid, but it’s actually a much more flexible and creative state, especially for dealing with people who are operating out of emotional upset or damage.
KH: Thank you for your careful and considered response. Shining through your words, I sense your ability to live in your feelings, honoring and acknowledging them, while being able to “release” the hold they might otherwise have on you and your actions. (Perhaps this is what I was trying to articulate earlier. I think we’re using different terms for the same thing, and this is a conversation that is more challenging because of our medium. Over a cup of tea, we’d meet minds more easily, I think!)
I also sense a pacing to your life that you are able to choose. From your position, you can observe and comment, and even effectively coach others of us who are caught in our close-up view of the trauma.
Part of my challenge is that I’m so close to the bone in my living circumstances that each decision carries a life-or-death element. The man I mentioned deliberately delayed a process that resulted in another person being evicted with all belongings in the street. He wore a veneer of concern, but he demanded a meeting “of all of us” and forced a delay of 6 days while he visited a spa and dealt with “other issues.” I arranged for a benefactor by campaigning for the evictee. Mr. Veneer allocated the money, took a “commission” from the evictee, and ensured that laborers, moving truck, and storage locker were paid. But not me. If I disconnect from this, the nearest source I see for other work, then I’m starting over on Craigslist or the Yellow Pages, or whatever. Mr. Veneer has only recently revealed this much dysfunction, and he is adept at spinning his account of events so that he is elevated and others are invisible.
So, acknowledging that for each of us, our every decision affects our own lives, I see that I didn’t even get compensated for my gas or excess phone charges. And I have no income. There are many things that I know and deeply understand, but I’m on the battlefield right now. And, again, I thought I was with comrades in arms, but no . . .
I too am uncomfortable with the inclination to link sociopathy to genetics.
One reason is that I have those genetics. Temperamentally I’m more like my father than my mother, but I can track my coming out of that family with a lot of victim-perpetuation coping skills to environmental factors.
Another reason is that I think the “predisposition” to sociopathy is also a temperament type with predisposition to a lot of other things. Where that predisposition turns to high risk is when the temperament is “nurtured” by pathologically dysfunctional parents. That may be sociopathic or BPD or something else. Things that challenge or destroy personal resources, like poverty, hunger, racism, pathologically authoritarian structures, add to the risk. The same basic ingredients that create perpetual victims create power addicts.
I think that genetics is a red herring that keeps us from looking at things we can change. Like building systems that help families survive with dignity. Like funding our educational system to teach children thinking, communications and mental health skills. Like re-thinking our entire social welfare system in terms of compassion.
The wimpy and aggressive dogs makes a great story. But it doesn’t discuss what kind of nurture those dogs had individually, and whether their strengths were channeled through good training.
Forgive the rant. This one’s a sore spot with me.
KH
I agree with what you say, especially about being responible for regulating my own level of emotional involvement. However, when dealing with the sort of people we have here, I think that deceit was involved. I know that I would never have become attached to mine had I known what he was really like. He knew this too. So he lied, and manipulated, and once he felt I was hooked, he crucified me. And this is where my resentment stems from. I was ripped off.
I think you hit the nail on the head with the clarity issue. This is how I was tricked. He picked up on my lack of clarity, and played on all the grey areas. He implied, he suggested, he insinuated, and alluded to. So yes, absolute clarity is, as you say, the way to go.
I also feel that complete unwillingness to invest energy in something that is heading in the ‘wrong’ direction. I love the way you put that !!!! Its exactly where Im at. Its the absolute essence of this terribly painful lesson
Dealing with deceit is one of those failure things that we learn and move on from.
I don’t know if anyone else feels the same way, but when I look back now at the beginning of my relationship, this guy was sweating trouble from every pore. I just got involved with my own idea of who I wanted him to be for me (a friend it was at first), and “overlooked” what made me uncomfortable.
This is another of those failure things we learn from and move on.
What I learned in this particular piece of the relationship puzzle is not to overlook some things that are important, in my willingness to be tolerant of other people’s styles.
If someone has values that I think are childish or despicable, the more time and attention I give this relationship the closer comes the day when I get the repercussions for inviting those values into my life.
There’s a difference between doing an anthropological study of the natives and marrying one. That may sound snotty, but I don’t care. This guy was not my equal in so many ways, and I got involved in supporting his ego and supporting my own by being Lady Bountiful and then before I knew it was sleeping with him and maneuvered into a corner I didn’t know how to get out of. Because he was more than my equal in ruthlessless backing up those crappy values.
This is really simple stuff. Again it doesn’t take into account the difficulty of recognizing a player committed to a long con. Who understands what you want and has his act down perfectly.
But most con jobs don’t snap shut like a bear trap. They require steps on our part. And in my experience, every one of those steps requires us to overcome our own values, normal risk-management rules and feelings of anxiety. And we overcome them because the con artist is holding out a big gold ring.
I really feel for those of us who feel like it was a bear-trap situation. The ones who had the perfect marriage or relationship before it suddenly went bad 15 years into it. But in my experience, it never happened like that. I had plenty of warning. I was just too hungry for my own happy ending to pay attention.
And if we lose some time, energy or money before we figure it out, it’s the cost of living. Sometimes our investments in the gold ring pay off, sometimes they don’t.
Rune suggested that I am in a position where I feel like I’m in control of my life. Right now I can’t pay my mortgage this month. I’ve got more than $20,000 in medical bills from a couple of visits to the hospital this autumn without medical insurance, because my kidneys are in trouble. I live with an adult son with Aspergers. And I could go on, but none of it matters.
The fact is that I am in a position to observe and manage my feelings, to choose what comes into my life, and to care about what I think is worth caring about, because I just spent almost five years getting here. This is who I want to be.
I do understand the stresses of financial and health issues. I have waves of anxiety that just flatten me. And they’re important messages from my body that I need to attend to something, if not right now, then soon. But they are part of the physical and emotional structure I work with.
They are not me. Nor was anything I lost me. Nor are my son’s challenges me. Nor are the computer disks that hold all my years of writing me.
If all of it went up and smoke, I’m still here. If I lost my arms and legs and went blind, I’m still here. I can (and would) get involved in grieving the changes. But ultimately I would reconnect with the part of me that does not change. That not only has the choice to find joy in what’s left, but that also has the opportunity to act on what I care about. Even if it’s my brain floating in a bottle. Even if it’s spending eternity having a conversation with God about the possibility of peace on earth.
And Grant, you say you are resentful for all the things he did. In my experience, I found that underneath this kind of other-focused resentment is anger at myself for not being smarter or more responsible, and under that, fear for my future because I didn’t do better in protecting myself.
These are the normal emotions of recovery. I think you’re still processing, or you’re having another round with these issues while you put some other little piece of it to bed.
He’s a weenie, a major incompetent who gets along by parasiting on other people’s competencies, a sad case. If you met him today for the first time, you would see that and feel sorry for him, and never be tempted to get involved, because he’s a lifelong loser and you’re not.
I know that about you. Maybe you aren’t quite certain about that yet.
Or that’s what I think anyway.
KH: You said “[T]he “predisposition” to sociopathy . . . turns to high risk . . . when the temperament is “nurtured” by pathologically dysfunctional parents . . . [and] . . . Things that challenge or destroy personal resources, like poverty, hunger, racism, pathologically authoritarian structures, add to the risk. The same basic ingredients that create perpetual victims create power addicts.
“[G]enetics is a red herring that keeps us from looking at things we can change. Like building systems that help families survive with dignity. Like funding our educational system to teach children thinking, communications and mental health skills. Like re-thinking our entire social welfare system in terms of compassion.”
I am right on board with you. As we witness the wreckage of our previously assumed social system, we can take heart that we have an opportunity to rebuild and create something that nurtures the values that help protect against predatory behavior. Values that uphold the compassionate ones who have been viewed as “weak” in our old paradigm. Values that make it more clear that predatory actions tear down the community and are not to be tolerated in our society. Values that make it possible for people to survive without, like “Jean Valjean” stealing a loaf of bread to feed the family, and suffering a lifetime of criminalization as a result.
I don’t mean in any way to trivialize your own survival issues, and I’m sorry to hear of the immediate pressures on you. In the society that I envision, we would have basic shelter, food, and decent medical care without question, because those sorts of resources and services allow us to exist without being tempted to resort to uncivilized behavior.
I also want to note your generosity to this community in sharing your hard-earned wisdom. If we can carry this imprint of a new kind of community back out into the world, what an amazing change we would see!