Is sociopathy a perversion? If yes, a perversion of what? And if it is a perversion, does this compel us to revisit the sociopaths’ culpability for his transgressions? After all, perversions imply antisocial, irrepressible impulses. If an impulse is irrepressible, or unsuppressible, how culpable is its expresser?
I think a good case can be made that sociopathy is a perversion—a perversion of personality characterized by the unsuppressible tendency to exploit others.
It’s not so much a question of the sociopath’s sanity: most sociopaths, by criminal standards, are sane. Then again, so are most kleptomaniacs.
When I refer to the sociopath’s unsuppressible tendency to exploit, I mean unsuppressible in a characterological, more than compulsive, sense. The sociopath, that is, appears characterologically to be driven to perpetrate incursions against others’ space and security.
While I think that sociopaths, like most transgressors, can exercise, on a case by case basis, some selective choice in determining when next, and whom, to violate, I do not think that sociopaths, in the bigger picture, can control their exploitive tendencies any more than saints can control their beneficent tendencies.
I regard it as inevitable that the sociopath will violate others and, unless stopped, violate repeatedly.
In my view, many wrongly interpret the sociopath’s capacity for situational self-restraint as suggestive of what ought, therefore, to be the sociopath’s capacity to cease his exploitation more broadly.
But I stress—while it’s true that most sane individuals, including sociopaths, can exercise some suppressive control over the expression, timing and direction of their antisocial tendencies in the short-term, it does not follow that they can maintain their self-regulation in the long-term.
The sociopath’s peculiar and profound self-centeredness, along with his inability to genuinely care about the harm he inflicts on others, explain why his exploitive tendencies, in the long-term at least, will demand expression.
Yet one often hear variations on the theme, “You know, when he’s not being cruel, deceptive and self-centered, he’s really a good guy.”
Or, “When she’s not scamming seniors out of their life savings, she’s got really good instincts.”
Carrying this logic a step further, it’s like saying, “You know, when he’s not raping women, he can be a quite tender, trusting lover.”
I commonly work with clients who see the refractory period separating the antisocial displays of their partners as tantalizing evidence of the latters’ “real personality;” of their “true potential” as partners/parents/friends; of how they’d be “all the time if they could just work through their demons.”
This is “enabling” thinking, steeped in denial and fantasy. It reflects the desperation to want to believe in the underlying goodness of the antisocial mate. One insists that with just a little more time, a little more forgiveness, a little more patience, one’s partner will recognize, finally, what he or she has been jeopardizing, and will finally properly value his or her mate, family and blessings.
Sometimes religious/spiritual individuals, for whom faith and forgiveness are integral to their identity, are especially prone to this self-delusive thinking. Their endurance of countless lies, deceptions and betrayals feels less about self-compromise than the fulfillment of their higher values.
They may harbor the hope, and faith, that their travails, if endured uncomplainingly and for long enough, will result finally in vindication—for instance, this will be the time he really sees the light!
I call this “reform-aholoc” thinking—that is, believing with a kind of blind faith in the antisocial partner’s capacity for reformation.
(This article is copyrighted (c) 2009 by Steve Becker, LCSW.)
Oxy said, “I think the difficulty that many of us have had in breaking free from this at all shows how powerful the tendency to stay in this situation, or to return to it if you do break free from one P, and means that we have to work DOUBLY hard to STAY free, just like an alcoholic MUST TOTALLY STAY AWAY FROM BOOZE, we have to TOTALLY stay away from ABUSE of even the least amount. We can’t “sip” a little abuse without being DRAWN BACK IN.
Look around you at your friends and people you know. How many of you know women or men who get out of ONE dysfunctional relationship and go right back into another one just as bad? I will bet the farm that everyone of us either is one of those people or knows several, or both.”
I think you’re right. I think “something” can predispose us to be “willing” to put up with the abuse as much as to dish it out. And like some people can be groomed to be “bad” I think some of us are more susceptible to being taught to put up with “bad.” I don’t know if I have broken the cycle for myself- I am busy raising my children and enjoying a drama/chaos-free lifestyle by not entertaining any sort of romantic life. But I didn’t jump out of one frying pan into another ::whew:: So maybe I am learning! It’s been 2.5yrs since I cast him out; he’s been in prison a year this month and I still don’t have an interest in dating. My kids and I are safe- I am loathe to jeopardize that. If I want dinner and a movie- I get it for myself 😉
I have a gf who has jumped and jumped from frying pan to frying pan to fire and back in the frying pan! She recently got sucked back into a relationship with a dirty cop whose M.O. reeks of sociopath. She came to me after another rocky patch (he threw her out) and it sounded like she was ready to get some counseling and that she thought she realized she had issues that drew her to those types of relationships (beaters, abusers, alcoholics- she’s been engaged 2 or 3 times, I lose count. They’ve all been losers.) I hear from her once or twice a day- then NOTHING. Not a peep for days. I leave her a msg, nothing. All of a sudden she’s posting “I’m feeling loved” moods on myspace and put all his pictures back up. This was a guy who threw her out and told her to watch her back because he was going to have his dirty cop friends follow her around and ticket her for every move she made- and even moves she hadn’t made! I’m so worried for her….but I know all too well that nothing I say will make a difference. I sent her a note that I would be there for her if she needed me. I haven’t heard back from her.
Her sister, on the other hand, was the one that trashed her marriage and her husband had to run screaming- then she annihilated him in court. I have my, um, thoughts on their parents, but I don’t know for sure….but one has to wonder, was one predisposed or groomed to be bad and one to take it? The treatment was presumably the same, but the result differed based on their own makeup?
Regarding how “non-victims” view the S
Who knows of accurately portrayed successful sociopaths in the movies? Hollywood seems to have done the female variety well enough. In Disclosure there was Meredith Johnson, in Body Heat Matty Walker, in Black Widow Catherine Petersen. They were convincingly, charming at the surface but evil at the core.
But Hollywood seems to have trouble with male sociopaths. Norman Bates and Hannibal Lechter are obviously crazy dangerous from the get go. But even Wall Street’s Gordon Gecko, Fifth Element’s Zorg, and Contact’s Dr. Drumlin, are presented as fairly obvious megalomaniacal assholes. The Talented Mr Ripley and Darth Vader are given human qualities which are inconsistent with their behaviors (fear leads to the dark side, WTF?)
I guess I’m looking for popular male characters who best exemplify the Lovefraud sociopath.
My egg donor has a saying that remember from early in my life, but it is quite true. “The same sun that hardens the clay, melts the wax.”
I.e. the SAME CONDITIONS will result in different effects, depending on the composition of the item in those conditions.
I think the same enviroment will effect each of us a little differently, or maybe a LOT differently, depending on our genetic make up. Each of us is unique (except for identical twins, triplets etc) and of course no two environments are 100% identical, even in the same family. The later born child has an older sib which the first born doesnt, and there is some research on how children born in different orders react differently to the family dynamics. Then, of course, there are the different ways that male and female chidlren are treated in some (all?) families. Males and females were treated distinctly different in my family, and in a way, because I was an ONLY child and an ONLY grandchild, I was treated differently than I would have been had there been a male sibling. In some ways, I was socialized more by my paternal grandfather as a male than as a traditional female. I was (at least until puberty and me appearing decidedly “female”) allowed to do things that would not have been allowed if I had had a male sib for him to dote on.
I have noticed in other women who were socialized more by a male figure than by their female figures, that those women tend to be more outspoken, more assertive, and more risk taking than women who were socialized by being given “Barbie Dolls” instead of horses and dogs. LOL I was the “golden grandchild” and in many ways the child of my grandparent’s old age. I realize too, NOW, that my egg donor resented my “favorite status” and I think, looking back, that our “conflicts” in many ways resulted from her resentment of my status with her father, and her mother as well. I think she also resented the fact that I had bonded to them more than to her because we lived with them from the time I was an infant and my GM and my GF were my primary caretakers. While I have MANY memories of my life with my grandparents when I was quite small, I have only ONE memory of my mother before I was probably 4-5 years old. I have no memories of her doing nurturing things (like me sitting on her lap) and I have many memories of her criticisms. That doesn’t mean she did no nurturing or that I never sat on her lap,, but I just don’t remember them if she did. So I don’t know if that “accounts” for some of the way I grew up, I think probably it has had some influence on it.
I can relate to your feeling of helplessness with your friend. I’ve seen that same thing in both friends of mine and also in former patients. In fact, there was a time when I felt “superior” to these women because I would NEVER have gone back to a man who beat me….but actually my arrogance was very misplaced, because I “went back to” a SON that did worse than beat me! LOL I excused his behavior the way she excused the behavior of her BF. I hope that your friend will eventually come to a place that she will listen, and I am glad that she has you for a friend when (if) that day comes. Unfortunately, she has to come to that decision on her own, but maybe having you for a friend will be the difference in her succeeding or failing in getting her life turned around.
We all see people come here and stay a while, then BOOM, they are gone, and in many cases it is not because they have healed enough to move on to higher ground, but because they have gone back into the FOG, I think. Some come back from the FOG and tell us where they went, but most that “disappear” from here without a “good bye” just “disappear” and we never know what happened to them. Sometimes that bothers me, I’d like to know they are at least “safe” or that the man (woman) hasn’t killed them, but each of us makes our own choices…..and gets the consequences of those choices. For me, I’m like you, I’m providing for myself and my own safety and emotional support…..and right now, that feels like it is a really comfortable place.
SOS, we posted over each other….to answer your question, in a movie I saw a while back (not a new one, on DVD) Daniel Day Lewis’s character in “There Will be Blood” is a perfect example of a psychopath. He plays it to the hilt too. GREAT example. Of course the word psycho/socio-path is never mentioned but the character is PERFECT. Check this one out.
“The same sun that hardens the clay, melts the wax.”
It’s a shame she hasn’t the same clarity on more topics.
Yes, I will be there for her if/when she decides she wants out…not because I’m smarter, but because I’ve been there and I’ve been HERE. And I wouldn’t dare try to “cure” her myself, but I would really love to see her in therapy and not in a bar with the dude du jour.
“For me, I’m like you, I’m providing for myself and my own safety and emotional support”..and right now, that feels like it is a really comfortable place.”
There are days that I feel small or weak or exhausted and I remind myself of these very things.
Keep on truckin’, Oxy 🙂
DEar Glinda,
Yea, in some ways she is a sharp cookie…but emotionally, she is now totally running her life in delusion and denial. As we approach the end of our lives, we are supposed to look back and reconcile our lives and our thoughts about them and come to some kind of peace. I watched and was part of that process with my step father, and it was truly inspiring to see him go through the “stages” and the letting go of his earthly life in such a peaceful manner. I’m afraid that my egg donor won’t have that kind of “earthly closure” that he had. But there is nothing I can do about that but accept it. I sure don’t want to end up my life like hers is coming to an end (she will be 80 in a few days) and about as “alone” as you can get, except for the letters from my P-son.
He comes up for parole in January of 2011, and I have a feeling she will “hang on” for that long, but if he doesn’t get parole (from my mouth to God’s ears) I think she will very shortly let go and pass away.
I have seen elderly people in HORRIBLE physical shape that precludes another breath hang on for up to 30 days or more for some person to come to their side and then quietly pass away. I had one patient in such terrible shape that at about 5 p.m every night she would get “blue” and go into the agonal respirations that preceed death by a few minutes or hours, and I would stay with her and hold her hand for a couple of hours, then have to go on home, sure that in the morning she would be gone, but she did this for over 30 days until her daughter got to her bedside (she was “unconscious” as well) her daughter was a missionary in Africa and took almost 2 months to get there. It was simply amazing to me that this woman’s will for her daughter to get there was so strong that it kept her totally debilitated body alive for so long. That is a fairly well recognized phenomonan though among medical practitioners. There is a similar one called the “anniversary” syndrome where the surviving spouse will die within a few minutes or hours of the anniversary of the death of the other. My grandmother did that, and lived 3 years (minus 2 hours) from the annivarsery of her husband’s death. There is so much,, so VERY much, that we do NOT understand about the HUMAN SPIRIT. How that SPIRIT can make the body do such amazing things when it looks “scientifically impossible.” I know that my egg donor is totally “attached” and “bonded” to the only living relative she has now (my P-son) and while I think she still has “hope” that my son C and I will finally “come to our senses” and play “let’s pretend that we’re a nice normal family and none of this ever happened” her deepest desires for my P-son to get out of prison and come live with her and us be “one big happy family” isn’t going to happen. If per chance he were to get out and to be allowed to return here to live with her, my sons and I will leave here for parts unknown. Of course, at his next parole hearing my other sons and I will be there (along with, I am sure, the family of his murder victim) begging the parole board to NOT let him out.’
Since her deepest desire is for him to come home, I think when that desire is thwarted and he gets another 4-5 year set off before his next parole hearing, I think she will “give up” and pass away. I am not wishing for her death, but yet, in a way, it will be a relief for me to know that she isn’t able to send him more support. If she leaves him a significant amount of money in her will (which would be a danger to me if he had it) My sons and I will fight that in court, which will give me time to “leave here for parts unknown” even if we can’t get her will reversed as prepared under “undue influence” of my P-son for his own benefit. My other sons and I know that any money she would leave him, she had intended to leave to a particular charity that was in her previous will. So, we are NOT trying to get any money she left to him for ourselves, but for the charity that she had previously intended it to go to. Will just have to face that bridge when we get there, but at least we do have a “plan” in place.
I too feel weak and exhausted some days, but those days are quite few now, and my reserves of strength are returning and I am more like my “uppity woman” self than I have been in a long time.
The ONLY two people who DO have the 100% same genes are identical twins. In the “identical twins raised apart” studies, about 80% of the twins, if one was a P so was the other”.so my guess is that 50-80% of the P-ness is genetic.
Works for me.
Of course, my question (unanswered) in those twin studies is, if one is a P, is the other a normal loving person or an “almost Psychopathic” person?
Good question.
my take is that if a child is abused by a natural parent, the natural parent is a psychopath or other genetic anomaly and has passed the genes on.
’Abuse genes’ may directly or indirectly create combative circumstances in close relationships, which becomes interpreted by observers as abuse.
Is the fact that we submitted to the abuse genetic as well as the Ps’ abusiveness? Or is our submission partly environmental and partly genetic?
As a kid I liked to please, entertain or bond with others. During my SS experiences I was compelled to negotiate with or avoid the SS. Today, I have to watch out for my temper getting the best of me. My humor is less self-effacing and more ’smart ass’, and I don’t tolerate crap.
One thing I must note, is that all three of my SS’s have demonstrated a desire to keep tabs on me, while keeping their distance. They either sensed that I was capable of vengeance, or were afraid that they’d awakened something in me which could be dangerous for them. I think a full blown P would have targeted, used, smeared, then moved on with no worries.
DEar SOS,
Some Ps do seem to target, use, smear and then move on, but others STALK their former victims and can’t seem to let go of the need for either ownership and/or vengence.
Sometimes it depends on whether they are the dump-er or the dump-ee as well. If they dump you, they move on, but if you dump them before they dump you, there is an injury they have to settle so they want to keep tabs on you, or find some way to punish you.
I’ve dealt with several of each kind. Personally, I like the “move on” variety best, but we don’t always get to pick which one we deal with. LOL
I know that most of the like to go out with a “win” and feel superior to you, if they don’t get that, they may end up seeking revenge. My X-BF P was a “win or else” kind of guy, and he wanted to remain “friends” (with benefits of course) with all his female flings, but because his last one before me kicked him to the curb, he burned her house. I had no doubt he would have done the same or worse to me because I kicked him to the curb as well, but I too had him scared to death of what retaliation my sons would make on him if I even slipped and fell in the bathtub, so I didn’t get my house burned, though he did a fair job with his smear campaign, or at least tried to.
Sometimes it pays to make them afraid of you, sometimes it doesn’t. I am careful what I say and do because “terroristic threatening” is a crime, and any “terrorizing” you do must be very subtle to not cross that line of becoming CRIMINAL BEHAVIOR. I won’t say I have never WANTED to cross that line, but my conscience won’t let me, besides the fact, I do not ever want to do anything that would run the risk of putting me in jail. Heck, I don’t even drive over the speed limit. I pay my honest taxes, and do my best to be a law abiding citizen.
I think too, that many of the Ps are at heart cowards (even though other have no even realistic fear) and I think my X BF is one of those that doesn’t have the guts to do anything except a sneaky type attack because he wants to protect his “image” as an upstanding man, which of course, he is anything except one. Some Ps don’t give a rat’s behind about “image” so they are probably less easy to scare off the trail. Say the Charlie Manson type vs the Ted Bundy type. There’s no doubt that they are both Ps, but one could have cared less about his public image and the other was careful to protect his.
Machiavellians usually have normal anxiety, but they also can’t love and like to cheat. The published Robert Greene stuff seems geared around them. My SS’s were mostly that – morally insane yet not entirely reckless. OT, but, it’s good to see reviews by regular guys about Greene’s stuff where they say the info is good to know, but also a great way to gain a rep as the village scumbag if you try it yourself.
Back on track, a close or captive relationship with a hardcore P would be a nightmare indeed. Run away and they stalk you, chase them away (by mirroring them?) and you risk bodily conflict. I’d start a P extermination business but the FBI might not like that.
I’ll be sure to check out the “There Will Be Blood” movie sometime. Maybe I’ll nominate it the next time they have a Best Movie Sociopath contest around here.
I agree with you, Oxy. My ex-S was the dump-ee and stalked me for several months, but at the same time he was careful about his public image since he was more Ted Bundy than Charles Manson. He started an immediate smear campaign with my friends which worked at first since I was upset and didn’t want to talk to anyone. I closed up, he cried on every one of my friends’ shoulders. Luckily, once I told them all of the terrible things he had done they believed me. He tried to continue isolating me with the guys at the bar we both DJ’d at, it was oh so subtle, he made them think he didn’t know me very well but wanted to date me so by the Code of Men they all backed off and gave him dibs. That backfired on him though when one of the guys thought he was doing the S a favor and tried to get me to ask the S out. After I stopped choking on my drink I told the guy about how the S was my ex, I didn’t get into a lot of detail, but just enough that all the guys at the bar then saw the S as a creepy stalker instead of lovestruck. Then of course came his suicide threat. That night I didn’t think he would hurt me, but I worried afterwards about retribution for calling the police on him. The police couldn’t find his gun in the apartment.
I ran into him twice after I went NC. The first time I was hanging out at the other popular bar downtown waiting for my boyfriend (now husband) who was working as bouncer, it was after hours and they were closing up, but the bartender let the S stay for awhile. My husband knew I didn’t want to be in the same room as the S so I went to the backroom to hang out til he left. The S was drunk, insulted my husband, my husband just blew him off, so he left in a huff. The second time I ran into the S I was working at a pet store when he came in to buy dog food. He made sure to get in my line to check out and proceeded to tell me he had moved in with his new girlfriend, she had two dogs so he was getting food for them. He asked me how my dog was doing and asked if he could call me sometime for lunch. I told him, “don’t call me, I’ll call you,” and happily haven’t seen or spoken to him since.
Something else that was just plain weird about the S, he often tried to use my love of animals to bribe me into doing things his way. When I adopted this poor old beagle that was on his way to the pound, the S let me keep him at his apartment on the condition that I came over several times every day to walk the dog, feed him, etc. I thought that was very nice of him at the time, but as time went on I realized he could care less about the dog, he just wanted that much more control over me. He wouldn’t feed him, or walk him, or tend to him at all. After we broke up he tried to get me to keep Bagel at his apartment so I’d have to keep coming there every day, my dad was like, “hell no” and took in my puppy. The S said he viewed Bagel as our child… yet again, creepy. Also, I had talked about how I wanted a cat one day and when I broke up with the S he revealed that he was going to surpise me with a kitten, and he had already signed adoption papers but since I didn’t want to be with him he would just have to give the kitten to someone else.