Although it has been many years and there is a new relationship, a friend of mine still wishes every day that the sociopath that preyed on her will “drop dead.” Wishing and hoping that some horrible end will come for the sociopath takes up time and energy in my friend’s life; as she searches for evidence that something bad has indeed happened to the sociopath and then is disappointed.
Recently, I discussed the topic of forgiving psychopaths with a psychopathy researcher who is not a clinician. He said he received a letter from someone complaining that friends were pressuring the victim to forgive. It was the psychopathy researcher’s opinion that people should NOT be told they have to forgive a psychopath.
Upon reflecting on this opinion, I believe that this psychopathy researcher may have a special insight that informs his view —that psychopaths should not necessarily be forgiven. Perhaps this insight is: in spite of their brain disorder, psychopaths still have a choice about what they do.
My son is now 7, he and I rough and tumble play every day. It is impossible to wrestle and not have some kind of slight hurt come to one or the both of us. From the time he was very young, perhaps as young as 3, my son has appreciated the idea that mommy didn’t “do it on purpose”. If he pokes me in the eye or lands rough on my stomach he’ll say “Sorry, I didn’t do it on purpose.”
This example illustrates our inborn social contract that says we do not hurt each other on purpose. If hurts happen in the course of life, they are usually unintended side effects of other behaviors and so should be forgiven. Cheating on a spouse could even be forgiven as an unintentional hurt if the person succumbed to temptation in a moment of weakness, realized the wrong committed, then repented. Even murder is not punished as much if it is an accident.
The problem with sociopaths is that their behavior is no accident. They hurt people on purpose, carefully planning, then executing their plans. After 7 years of reading research articles and talking to victims, I believe choice is part of a complete explanation of sociopathy and victimization. If you watch any of the TV shows about sociopaths you too will see that the theme of their choices permeates the media.
Friday night, Gangland on the History Channel told the story of Billy Wadd, a member of the Devil’s Disciples motorcycle gang who gained notoriety when he broke the biker’s code of silence and testified against his nephew who murdered a family during a home invasion. Wadd said he decided to aid the prosecution of his nephew, John Wolfenbarger, instead of “taking care of things the usual way” because “You just don’t kill kids.” It is clear he believed these murders were performed with an intention that not even another sociopath could accept, so even sociopaths believe in their own capacities for choice.
Now let’s reconsider whether victims should be told they have to forgive. It seems there is a natural human instinct that says forgiveness is reserved for accidents, unintended consequences, and perhaps intentional slights that are out of character. How then can you ever forgive a psychopath?
Psychopaths have been compared to predators. I think this analogy is seriously flawed. A predator such as a lion or wolf has to kill in order to survive. Psychopaths don’t hurt for survival. They hurt because they want to, because they like hurting. Their enjoyment of hurting increases the likelihood they will choose to hurt if given the opportunity. They also seek out opportunities to hurt -not for survival but for pleasure.
Since sociopaths, with intention, repeatedly violate our inborn social contract, perhaps they should never be forgiven.
Instead of forgiving, I hope, my friend, you will think about all this and thoroughly digest the reality of the sociopath you shared life with. The reality is terrible— you shared life with a truly evil person, someone who regularly, with malice and forethought, chooses to harm others. Don’t stop hoping to see the day the scourge of this evil person’s existence will be wiped from the Earth, but do not waste any more of your time on him.
IMHO you forgive an ACCIDENT, because they will not do it again. You do not forgive a person that has hurt you intentionally and with malice.
The reason No Contact is important, is because it allows us to go on with our lives without being repeatedly dragged down into their evil.
I think you can “forgive” the lion that attacked you (the predator) but you have learned NOT TO TRUST the predator in the future. Ps are like that lion, they camouflage themselves in their environment until they are ready to strike when you are not suspecting, or when you are weak and wounded so they don’t have to work so hard to bring you down.
With predators of the human sort, I think we need to be able to OBSERVE for someone in camouflage and “see through” the mask at what you are really dealing with and then get the heck away from them BEFORE they have a chance to seriously “grab” us.
Human predators, just like animal predators, seem to be able to spot the least weakness in their chosen prey. That doesn’t mean that we are bad or damaged, but each of us has a caring nature, or other part of us that makes us NOT look at their behavior (which at first appears benign) and be cautious.
Since human predators LOOK SO ‘HUMAN” it is difficult to tell by LOOKING at their form, but we must watch for PREDATORY BEHAVIOR from anyone in our circle and at the first sign, the FIRST sign we must file that away and at any other sign we must RUN like hell. Actually, I no longer give any predatory behavior a second chance. I have a list of “deal breakers” with anyone in my life that is close to me (not store clerks or people I can’t avoid because you still have to go out in the world and you will meet rude people daily if you are around enough people)
My DEAL BREAKERS are:
1. LYING—and/or consistently telling “stories” that contradict each other.
2. Failing to be RESPONSIBLE for things that they should be.
Such as:
a)Not keeping a job, getting frequently fired from jobs,
b)Not maintaining financial responsibility and expecting someone else to support them,
c)not taking care of their children or any other obligation.
d) Addictive behaviors of any illegal drug, overuse of Rx addictive medications or alcohol, gambling, video games,
e) promiscuous sexual behavior, inappropriate behavior toward children or others sexually or addiction to sex.
3) a criminal background worse than jaywalking. NO past DUIs,
4) past cheating on a spouse more than ONE episode EVER and that not long term.
5) comes on “too quickly” upon meeting wanting to push the relationship quickly and intimately. Relationships need time for trust to develop over time, even friendships. This is a big deal breaker for me.
6) wanting to do FAVORS for you that you don’t ask for or really need, many times this is a “dead give away” of an abuser at first.
7) someone trying to tell me how I FEEL (i.e. mind reading)
8) rudeness to anyone who is serving them, waiter, waitress etc. Even for unacceptable behavior on the part of a waiter or waitress, it can be handled in a polite manner.
9) someone to whom the “rules” don’t seem to apply, so any sign of “specialness” in their outlook is a deal breaker for me.
10) someone to whom someone else warns me about. The warner may have an agenda or be spiteful, but on the other hand, they may very well be right. I will wait to make up my mind, but I will keep that warning CLOSELY IN MIND.
Dear Banana,
I think that bitterness and anger, while normal and good emotions in the short run and destructive to us in the LONG run. They increase the negative feelings we have, increase the stress hormones being released and DO have a negative influence on our health.
It is only by resolving these feelings of bitterness, anger, hate and thirst for revenge, I think, that we can truly heal, find peace and move on with our lives. To me, that continual bitterness and anger is like a ball and chain around my heart, keeping me back from peace and healing.
However, I will NEVER again TRUST the abuser, and WILL NC IF AT ALL POSSIBLE.
Oxy,
Great list 🙂 And if I may, I would add one more part to number 2.
f) Blaming everything on others. Never their their “fault”.
Midlifecrisis, an I have an OCD urgings I can’t control and mentally changed your name for something displaying a more positive connotation. Like Lifeaftercrisis. i’m like that character “Monk” somehow. It’s also my OCD and imagination working in overdrive. I look at something and have this need to look at it and adjust it at a better light.
I’ve always been plagued with an overactive imagination since I was a child, in which Dabrowski’s theory really hits home.
But I don’t mind it as Albert Einstein did so explain so eloquently:, “ Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand—
The exploration into this topic was a topic of interest due to my well known overblown imagination. Where I would often drift into ’my own little world’ which got my interest into Dabrowski’s Theory.
Explained in Chapter 20 “Emotional Life and Pschotherapy in the Gifted in Light of Dabrowski’s Theory:
http://positivedisintegration.com/Jackson,%20P.%20S.,%20Moyle,%20V.,%20&%20Piechowski,%20M.%20M.%20(2009)..pdf
“..For the experience to be real to be completely real, vividness of visualization has to be accompanied by the ability to be completely absorbed in the experience. For example to enter into a painting, become one with music, become water, sky, or an animal with all attendant sensations and perceptions is to be totally and realistically merged in the experience. (Piechowski 2006 Tellegan & Atkinson, 1974)
Such depth of absorption is more than flow because it takes place in a self created reality. We are faced with intriguing question of how imagination constructs reality. Since the internal, self created reality cannot be distinguished from the properties of external reality. One has to ask, which is the real “real”? (Piechowski 2006)—
He got many of us on the autistic spectrum that way. My imagination was so real that two of my imaginary playments are real today externally as well. My ’imagination’ is so strong that I’m taking parenting classes for my other two children which will prove to be more difficult to parent than my daughter was to parent.
The fact that they are not physically here yet is of no consequence because I was talking about my wife and daughter years before I knew one of them or before the other one actually existed. That somewhere across the world I was also my wife’s imaginary friend has something to say about what many perceive to simply be ‘imaginary’. but i think Quantum physics comes into play here about how we are all made up of subatomic particles that don’t behave in the four dimensional way we are all used to seeing the world. because getting into our smallest particles we are not even physical matter at all, we just appear to be… but this will get into another of my obsessive monologues about theoretical physics…
What exactly is real or not? I’ve got paintings of my child today that I painted when I was 11 years old. There is no difference between the two. The dark haired girl I painted as a child is my Dolphin today.
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/9.12/aspergers.html
The Geek Syndrome: Autism – and its milder cousin Asperger’s syndrome – is surging among the children of Silicon Valley. Are math-and-tech genes to blame?
“”Nick is building a universe on his computer. He’s already mapped out his first planet: an anvil-shaped world called Denthaim that is home to gnomes and gods, along with a three-gendered race known as kiman. As he tells me about his universe, Nick looks up at the ceiling, humming fragments of a melody over and over. “I’m thinking of making magic a form of quantum physics, but I haven’t decided yet, actually,” he explains. The music of his speech is pitched high, alternately poetic and pedantic – as if the soul of an Oxford don has been awkwardly reincarnated in the body of a chubby, rosy-cheeked boy from Silicon Valley. Nick is 11 years old—
but enough of our ’imagination” and those of us on the autistic spectrum, here are other quotes that hits me and many of us on the spectrum dead on”:
Crises challenge our status quo and cause us to review our self, ideas, values, thoughts, ideals, etc. If development continues, one goes on to develop an individualized, conscious and critically evaluated hierarchical value structure (called positive adjustment). This hierarchy of values acts as a benchmark by which all things are now seen, and the higher values in our internal hierarchy come to direct our behavior (no longer based on external social mores). These higher, individual values characterize an eventual second integration reflecting individual autonomy and for DÄ…browski, mark the arrival of true human personality. At this level, each person develops his or her own vision of how life ought to be and lives it. This higher level is associated with strong individual approaches to problem solving and creativity.
One’s talents and creativity are applied in the service of these higher individual values and visions of how life could be – how the world ought to be. The person expresses his or her “new” autonomous personality energetically through action, art, social change and so on—
And this sounds just like our autistic experience:
“”The most evident aspect of developmental potential is overexcitability (OE), a heightened physiological experience of stimuli resulting from increased neuronal sensitivities. The greater the OE, the more intense are the day-to-day experiences of life. DÄ…browski outlined five forms of OE: psychomotor, sensual, imaginational, intellectual and emotional. These overexcitabilities, especially the latter three, often cause a person to experience daily life more intensely and to feel the extremes of the joys and sorrows of life profoundly. DÄ…browski studied human exemplars and found that heightened overexcitability was a key part of their developmental and life experience. These people are steered and driven by their value “rudder”, their sense of emotional OE. Combined with imaginational and intellectual OE, these people have a powerful perception of the world. “I can hear the grass screaming when my dad cuts the lawn! I shout at him to STOP and he (again) just shakes his head. I can’t bear to watch.”—
continuing on:
“”The third factor
The third aspect of developmental potential, the third factor, is a drive toward individual growth and autonomy. The third factor is critical as it applies one’s talents and creativity toward autonomous expression, and second, it provides motivation to strive for more and to try to imagine and achieve goals currently beyond one’s grasp. (DÄ…browski was clear to differentiate third factor from free will. He felt that free will did not go far enough in capturing the motivating aspects that he attributed to third factor. For example, an individual can exercise free will and show little motivation to grow or change as an individual. Third factor specifically describes a motivation—a motivation to become one’s self. This motivation is often so strong that in some situations we can observe that one needs to develop oneself and that in so doing, it places one at great peril. This feeling of “I’ve gotta be me” especially when it is “at any cost” and especially when it is expressed as a strong motivator for self-growth is beyond the usual conceptualization ascribed to free will.
A mixed blessing?
DÄ…browski called OE “a tragic gift” to reflect that the road of the person with strong OE is not a smooth or easy one. Potentials to experience great highs are also potentials to experience great lows. Similarly, potentials to express great creativity hold the likelihood of experiencing a great deal of personal conflict and stress. This stress both drives development and is a result of developmental conflicts, both intrapsychic and social. Suicide is a significant risk in the acute phases of this stress. The isolation often experienced by these people heightens the risk of self-harm.
Dabrowski believed that the authentic individual would choose the higher path as the clear and obvious one to follow (erasing the ambivalences and ambitendencies of unilevel conflicts). IF the person’s actual behavior subsequently falls short of the ideal, internal disharmony and a drive to review and reconstruct one’s life often follow. Multilevelness thus represents a new and powerful type of conflict, a conflict that is developmental in Dabrowski’s approach.
Given their genuine (authentic) prosocial outlook, people achieving higher development also raise the level of their society. Prosocial here is not just support of the existing social order. If the social order is lower and you are adjusted to it, then you also reflect the lower (negative adjustment in Dabrowski’s terms, a Level I feature). Here, prosocial is a genuine cultivation of social interactions based on higher values. These positions often conflict with the status quo of a lower society (positive maladjustment). In other words, to be maladjusted to a low-level society is a positive feature—
My tragedy at this point is that i can so fully imagine such a better world. the way it ought to be. where i feel it should have been already by now. i can see it. i can smell it. i envision it to such an extent it is so real. i dream awake. but these characters (psychopaths) are the only weeds getting in the way of it’s realization. (sigh) i truly need to have a cup of tea with Confuscious and Socrates later… (he he..)
Mike
Done … thankyou for your thoughtful response. The traits (OEs) that you identify with are listed also in Sandra Brown’s book Women who love Psychopaths – just in different words – will have a look tonight and post the wording of the corresponding traits. It’s exactly that combo that gets us stuck and keeps us hoping for a brighter tomorrow.
Oxy LOVE that list – wow it is comprehensive. Think you should write a book around it and publish as a dating manual 😛
I love your list too Oxy D. REALY trusting and believing in your own moral boundaries, knowing what is and isnt okay for you, and that its okay to have them and believe in yourself and your instinct is powerful ( like duh?!) But its not an easy place to get to from where most of us have begun this journey from.x
Oxdrover’s post is one of the best things I (really needed to)
read for a while.
The Ninth International Congress of the Institute for Positive Disintegration in Human Development,
Dates: Thursday – Saturday July 22-24, 2010, St. Charles, IL
http://www.hoagiesgifted.com/whats_new.htm
Living With Intensity: Understanding the Sensitivity, Excitability, and the Emotional Development of Gifted Children, Adolescents, and Adults
http://www.amazon.com/Living-Intensity-Understanding-Sensitivity-Excitability/dp/0910707898/ref=sr_1_1?ie=utf8mb4&s=books&qid=1264628473&sr=1-1
I drive people nuts with my obsessions usually but in my defense this time i didn’t bring Dabrowski up. just let me know when i’m going too ‘out there” and i readily tone myself down…
Mike
Post Scriptum: Asperger’s theory does about-face: Rather than ignoring others, researchers think spectrum sufferers care too much by Maia Szalavitz
http://www.thestar.com/article/633688
A groundbreaking study suggests people with autism-spectrum disorders such as Asperger’s do not lack empathy ”“ rather, they feel others’ emotions too intensely to cope. People with Asperger’s syndrome, a high functioning form of autism, are often stereotyped as distant loners or robotic geeks. But what if what looks like coldness to the outside world is a response to being overwhelmed by emotion ”“ an excess of empathy, not a lack of it? For the full research study, read The intense world syndrome – an alternative hypothesis for autism by Henry Markram , Tania Rinaldi and Kamila Markram
Done, I missed your reply:( apologies! Thankyou.x and yes don’t we all wish for a fast forward button!? What you said is really helpful. and true.
My G.P said to me the other day, the only thing that is reliable in this world is change, and things will change they wont always be like this. i know she’s right but when I feel like this crap is never ending, and there is no button, I am glad LF ( you guys) is here.x