Donna Anderson’s important latest post reminds me that one topic which will never be worn out is that of the psychopath’s lies and their impact on others.
This week I want to very briefly introduce yet another take on this inexhaustible topic. Everyone lies, but there’s something else at stake in the case of the psychopath’s lies.
To illustrate: you might say about any regular (non-psychopathic) person, “Things would be better if s/he was to lie less often. Her/his soul or psyche would be healthier as would her relationships.” That’s true. Now try this on for size and notice how wrong it seems: “Things would be better if the psychopath was to lie less often. His soul or psyche would be healthier as would his relationships.”
Weirdly, this is patently not the case. The psychopath will be just as sick/evil no matter how many or how few lies he tells. It’s not a quantitative but a qualitative matter.
It is commonly said that a defining characteristic of psychopaths is that they are pathological liars. This is right if you mean that they are profoundly dishonest and not to be trusted. It does not mean, though, that psychopaths lie a lot. They do lie a lot and those lies cause havoc. But as I hope my illustration above shows, lying less will not make them better people.
So, how does this work? The thing about psychopaths is that even their truths are lies! Or rather, whether or not they happen to be telling the truth or a lie at any particular moment is not what makes them psychopathic. What makes them psychopathic is that they use and destroy people; truth or lies are for them just so many weapons for pursuing their prey.
M.L. Gallagher said a lot when she wrote this:
He is the lie….
From hello to good-bye. I love you to I hate you. You’re beautiful to you’re ugly.
It was all a lie….When friends or my family ask, but what about this, or what about that, I tell them. It was all a lie. There was no truth in him.
If I spend my time trying to figure out fact from fiction, all I am doing is trying to prove I wasn’t so stupid. See, this was true. That’s why I fell in love with him.
Truth is. I fell in love with him because I believed his lie.
When I discovered the truth, I was so enmeshed in his lie, I couldn’t find the truth in me. And so I sank.
LOL And he said to me he was a normal macho and he was a macho of two sexes and thousands of stolen faces and bodies.
And his only face was an alive skull with red and yellow eyes.
This trait should appear in manuals: they collect pieces of different peoples.
thousands of stolen faces and bodies = now that is SINISTER
Well, i’m exagerating. But i’m sure i few dozen he has stolen. If everytime he has had an affair has kept part of the other he must have a good collection
Hens, my spath had an artistic vein, you see. Theatrical style, ambiguous, eccentric. That was the cover….later one finds the sinister cheesy thing….
Eva,
thousands of stolen faces. Hahaha!
I’m going to send you a picture, gonna look for it, check your email.
Skylar,
LOL so exagerated am i? This is typical andalucian. I had an andalucian boyfriend. It must be because of him. He was no spath but very andalucian hahaha
Skylar,
My psycho would love it! It’s shouting this creature, like him in those horrible series he made and put in his fb during the mundial of football.
And the bodies…I still have one he sent me with my name made of naked female bodies.
So similar are all these creatures?
I’m going to see if i find that one of the naked bodies.
No Eva, I don’t think you’re exagerating at all!
the spath has to put on a new face every time he meets a new person.
My brother is a spath.
When he was young – about 16 or 17 – he thought he was going crazy because he thought that when he looked at other peoples’ faces, his own face would change into theirs!!
That’s what he told me and he went to a therapist and explained it to her. So she held up a mirror for him so that he could check it and see that his face had not changed at all.
Well it didn’t help too much. He still FELT that his face was changing, so he had to wear sunglasses all day and all night.
Weird huh?
Skylar,could be deep down they rather deserve pity?
Maybe it’s not so funny to be in their skin.
But they’re such good actors…these bugs. LOL
DOES LONLINESS AND ISOLATION CAUSE ANXIETY? I want to cry – not having a good day at all..