Editor’s note: The American Psychiatric Association is in the process of updating its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition, which is the main reference book used by mental health professionals. Back in February, Lovefraud invited you, our readers, to complete a survey on issues related to the new DSM-5.
We will be preparing a full scientific paper on the results of the survey. In the meantime, following is Lovefraud’s comment to the DSM-5 committee, which includes the basic survey results.
To read the revised definition of antisocial personality disorder in the draft of the DSM-5, click the following link. (The working group has recommended changing the name of the disorder to “Antisocial/Psychopathic Type” personality disorder.) Also, feel free to submit your own comments to the committee. The deadline for comments is April 20, 2010.
COMMENT ON THE PROPOSED DSM-5 DEFINITION OF ANTISOCIAL PERSONALITY DISORDER CONTRIBUTED BY LOVEFRAUD.COM
Lovefraud.com is a website that teaches people how to recognize and recover from people with antisocial personality disorder — we use the term “sociopaths.” Lovefraud was launched in 2005 and now averages 3,000 visits per day. Our writers include a journalist, a psychiatrist and a marriage and family counselor. Readers are also invited to tell us their stories of entanglements with sociopaths. We have collected nearly 1,900 cases related to sociopaths in the community, only a small minority of whom have extensive criminal records. Most of our readers were victimized by “professional” con artists who use “love” to prey on victims and who have evaded prosecution.
Lovefraud readers have all learned about sociopaths the hard way—through being deceived and destroyed by them. Many of our readers believe that knowledge of antisocial personality disorder and the existence of people who are “without conscience” could have helped prevent their victimization. The biggest reason our readers fell into the relationships is ignorance of the personality disorder and its symptoms. Therefore, Lovefraud’s primary goal is public education.
The proposed DSM-5 definition for antisocial personality disorder is, in our view, a vast improvement over the language in DSM-IV. However, we have three concerns with the new definition. They are:
1. Although the traits described in the first paragraph—arrogance, entitlement, manipulation, superficial charm, etc.—are accurate, these traits are frequently not apparent upon meeting a sociopathic individual or early in a relationship. In a community setting, the only way a clinician would find out about the traits is through interviewing the people around the sociopath. Many of our readers tell us that sociopaths successfully con mental health professionals and the legal system.
2. The second paragraph of the definition includes the following sentence: “Their emotional expression is mostly limited to irritability, anger, and hostility; acknowledgement and articulation of other emotions, such as love and anxiety, are rare.” This is incorrect. The vast majority of Lovefraud readers have experienced sociopaths professing their love and devotion, quite convincingly. We’ve seen them cry at the thought of losing us. It is only when the sociopaths have drained us of everything they could and discarded us, that we learned it was all an act.
3. The public is extremely confused about the name and definition of this disorder. The suggested name, “Antisocial/Psychopathic Type,” only muddies the water further. From a communications perspective, it is unsuitable for educating the public about this disorder. And education is the only way of preventing more people from falling victim to these individuals.
Lovefraud conducted an online survey of our readers in order to provide evidence and documentation for our point of view. We received 1,378 responses. Readers were questioned regarding their observations of the abusive individual—78% of them identified the individual as a romantic partner or spouse. Respondents were also asked questions related to the emotional expression issue, and their understanding of the terms used to describe this personality disorder.
We are writing a scientific research paper to describe the complete survey results, which we will send to the DSM-5 committee when it is finished. However, for the purposes of this comment, we include the following highlights.
WERE OUR RESPONDENTS INVOLVED WITH INDIVIDUALS WHO FIT THE SOCIOPATHIC PROFILE?
We know from the many narrative stories we receive that our readers have been involved with highly antisocial individuals who enter relationships with the aim of predation. Respondents were asked to rate how closely the individual they were involved with matched the scale in the new DSM-5 criteria for antisocial personality disorder. Here are the results:
1. Antagonism: Callousness
Very little or mildly like that: 3.7%
Moderately like that: 14.5%
Extremely like that: 81.9%
2. Antagonism: Aggression
Very little or mildly like that: 18.1%
Moderately like that: 24.7%
Extremely like that: 57.3%
3. Antagonism: Manipulativeness
Very little or mildly like that: 2.2%
Moderately like that: 8.7%
Extremely like that: 89.0%
4. Antagonism: Hostility
Very little or mildly like that: 18.4%
Moderately like that: 24.0%
Extremely like that: 57.6%
5. Antagonism: Deceitfulness
Very little or mildly like that: 2.5%
Moderately like that: 11.0%
Extremely like that: 86.5%
6. Antagonism: Narcissism
Very little or mildly like that: 8.4%
Moderately like that: 17.4%
Extremely like that: 74.3%
7. Disinhibition: Irresponsibility
Very little or mildly like that: 15.0%
Moderately like that: 18.0%
Extremely like that: 67.0%
8. Disinhibition: Recklessness
Very little or mildly like that: 21.2%
Moderately like that: 23.5%
Extremely like that: 55.3%
9. Disinhibition: Impulsivity
Very little or mildly like that: 17.2%
Moderately like that: 22.7%
Extremely like that: 60.1%
Respondents were asked when they first noticed each of the above traits in the individual. The choices were: right away, within the first month, within the first six months, within the first year and after one year. For every single trait above, the timeframe selected most often was “after one year.”
Conclusion: Lovefraud readers were indeed involved with individuals who seem to possess the characteristics of the antisocial/psychopathic type. However, these individuals were almost always able to keep their true natures disguised until the relationship was well-established.
WAS THE ARTICULATION OF EMOTIONS SUCH AS LOVE AND ANXIETY RARE?
Following are survey questions related to the issue of love and anxiety, and the answers.
Did the individual you were involved with verbally express love or caring for you?
Yes: 85.1%
No: 11.9%
If the person verbally expressed love or caring to you, how often?
Daily: 44.1%
Weekly: 14.7%
From time to time: 24.9%
Rarely: 16.3%
After a period of time, was the person’s emotional expression mostly limited to irritability, anger and hostility, and acknowledgement and articulation of other emotions, such as love or anxiety, became rare?
Yes: 72.0%
No: 21.1%
Did the person you were involved with display charm and concern in public, but hostility and anger in private?
Yes: 84.8%
No: 12.8%
Did the person you were involved with express fear or anxiety?
Yes: 47.9%
No: 50.7%
Conclusion: Antisocial individuals do indeed express love, although they are acting. Unfortunately, it is an extremely convincing act. When asked to describe how the person expressed love, comments from the survey included:
“He used expressions of loving and caring to lure me into a relationship with him and to keep me from leaving the relationship. Therefore, he did express love and/or caring throughout the relationship, although in hindsight I know that these were calculated performances designed to fit my own needs.”
“It was the greatest game for him totally adoring, expressing love in every way imaginable until he had ”˜conquered’ and was sure of me which took some time to get me into the trap completely, but once that happened, he changed and as I became more aware of his lies, his imagination, he then found another.”
“A convincing way of expressing love, such that I was 100% sure she experienced it.”
“He would say, ”˜I only do and say these things because I love you.’ I became confused about what love really means.”
Recent news stories have included con artists like “Clark Rockefeller” who was evaluated by a psychiatrist, found to be antisocial and yet claimed to “love” his family. The judge in this case acknowledged the defendant’s “love for” his daughter, whom he kidnapped. It is our concern that if this statement remains in the DSM, the presence of professed love will be interpreted as “ruling out” this personality type.
Lovefraud recommends that the sentence, “Their emotional expression is mostly limited to irritability, anger, and hostility; acknowledgement and articulation of other emotions, such as love and anxiety, are rare,” be ELIMINATED FROM THE DEFINITION. We are concerned that if it remains, a clinician, hearing a sociopath talk about his/her love for partner or family, or his/her fear and anxieties, will fail to diagnose the personality disorder when, in fact, this diagnosis is appropriate.
In fact, people with this disorder negatively, and often tragically, affect their spouses, romantic partners and other family members. Perhaps this fact should be included in the description of the disorder.
WHAT SHOULD THIS DISORDER BE CALLED?
The public does not understand antisocial personality disorder. This is an extremely dangerous situation. Antisocial individuals are social predators at worst, and parasites at best, who live by exploiting others. We find that once a person becomes entangled with a sociopath, there is virtually no support from institutions such as law enforcement and the courts. Therefore the only way to protect the public from sociopaths in the community is to teach people what this disorder is all about, so that if they start seeing the signs, they can escape before serious damage is done.
The survey asked the following questions:
Before your involvement with this disordered individual, what did you understand the term “sociopath” to mean?
Criminal: 19.2%
Serial killer: 19.4%
Someone who was delusional: 6.4%
Person without empathy or a conscience: 19.7%
I didn’t know what it meant: 35.3%
Before your involvement with this disordered individual, what did you understand the term “psychopath” to mean?
Criminal: 15.0%
Serial killer: 51.2%
Someone who was delusional: 13.4%
Person without empathy or a conscience: 8.9%
I didn’t know what it meant: 11.5%
In your view, what term should be used to describe this disorder?
Antisocial personality disorder: 10.9%
Sociopath: 34.9%
Psychopath: 11.3%
Antisocial/Psychopathic Type personality disorder: 43.0%
Conclusion: If we are going to educate the public about this disorder, we cannot use the term “psychopath.” Probably due to mass media, most people believe that a psychopath is a serial killer. This cultural bias is simply too strong to overcome.
People are confused about the term “antisocial—”people tend to believe it refers to someone who doesn’t want to be around others, like a hermit. This is certainly not the case with the individuals we are discussing—they love being around people, although they view every social interaction as a feeding opportunity.
Although 43% of our survey respondents approved of the term “antisocial/psychopathic type personality disorder,” from a communications perspective, this terminology is a disaster. In order to educate, we need to be able to identify the individual. What do we call this person? An “antisocial slash psychopathic type personality disordered person”? The suggested term obfuscates the definition. We need clarity.
Lovefraud recommends using the second-place term”—sociopath.” The word is already in the lexicon, but it doesn’t have the cultural baggage of “psychopath” and the misunderstanding of “antisocial.” The fact that most people are unsure of what “sociopath” means gives us an opportunity to teach them. “Sociopath” is one word—a word that can be defined. Remember, in 1930, Dr. Partridge made very strong arguments against the use of the term “psychopath.” His arguments remain valid today.
This is perhaps the only disorder in the DSM where the very criteria imply victimization of others. Therefore, the need for victim and public education should be taken into consideration as the disorder is renamed and described. Perhaps professional societies such as the Society for the Scientific Study of Psychopathy should be consulted to arrive at a consensus name for this disorder. Then, once the disorder is officially renamed, issue a press release and actively discourage the use of other terms. Confusion was created when mainstream psychiatry had valid reasons for changing the name of the disorder from psychopathy to sociopathy, but since there was no real consensus, many continued to use the term “psychopath.” The use of multiple terms has thwarted efforts to educate people about this disorder. These many terms also give the false impression that there is more than one categorical disorder, one that is largely genetic and another that is entirely environmental in origin.
If any member of the DSM-5 committee would like to discuss Lovefraud’s findings, the needs of victims and family members, and our recommendations further, we are available.
Donna Andersen, author of Lovefraud.com
Liane J. Leedom, M.D., contributing author to the Lovefraud Blog
How to recognize and recover from the sociopaths – narcissists in your life
https://lovefraud.com/blog/
I want to take the opportunity to say thank you to everyone on this site who has supported me in my recovery process so far. Next weekend is my one year anniversary of getting my heart broken. I am infinitely stronger than I was before I came here and I appreciate that. It is time at this point for me to take a break from this site for awhile. Thanks.
Oxy…by no means do I mean that in an endearing way! They ARE evil…for sure. Monsters. I just use that analogy to describe how I see them…adult bodies…emotionally sick.
My sisters are both socios and I see them as emotionally and mentally 3 yrs old. Its all about THEM and filling THEIR needs and “if you don’t like the way I’m playing..get out of my playpen” mentality. And “if you take my toy away..I will hurt you”.
Yes, for a 3 yr old this is normal. But, not for adults. They never grow up…and this is how I see them.
I AM interested in studying them and also educating the general public about them….teaching young teens about people “out there”….sociopaths..and the red flags to avoid them.
I don’t have compassion for them. I do feel sorry for them. I wouldn’t want to go through life so angry and hurt that I have to hurt others.
Dear 2B I wasn’t coming down on you, sweetie, it is just that I don’t in any way “triavilize” anything about them. Sure a 3 year old is selfish, etc, but NOT evil. I think too many people seem to think that underneath all that “pain” and “hurt” and “anger” they feel is something that can be redeemed, and that is just not the case. There is no excuse, their own “hurt” or previous abuse or anything else, that is a “cause” of their unmitigated EVIL.
Educating others about them is definitely something that I think is of paramount importance! That is why I nominate Donna for “sainthood” for starting LF! LOL
Well, I’m about to fall asleep over my keyboard so got to get to bed! have a good night and catch you onn the flip side! (((Hugs)))) G’ nite!
Oxy…didn’t think you were coming down on me at all. I think you misunderstood my post. I do not excuse any of a sociopaths behavior as “immature”. What I mean is that their brains aren’t normal. Their brains function like a three yr olds. Self centered and manipulative to get what they want. This makes them EVIL in an adult world. By NO means should they be excused, just as a murderer or rapist who is “sick” in my opinion, should be excused. They should all be locked up and not able to mingle in society and hurt others…esp since they are “unrehabilitative”, which is what a very wise judge called my Xhusbsocio.
It will never happen. These “sick” people are out there…more out than locked up…and yes, we need to educate people as early as possible to identify con artists to prevent damage.
Normal healthy people don’t live like these predators…off of others. Its nothing trivial…its serious stuff. I am teaching my girls to protect themselves out there….so they have a better life than me.
Oxdrover,
Just a clarification on a lighter note, animal rather than sociopathic behavior. The same misunderstanding that causes people to label mules as stubborn is the very same that causes people to label horses as stupid. But neither animal’s fear factor behavior is a function of intelligence, it’s instinct. As prey animals, horses are fight or flight, mules are freeze or fight, generally speaking, and both behaviors are usually easily overcome with proper training.
On the intelligence scale, mules are regarded higher on the scale than horses, but in reality an animal’s IQ is basically a talking point. Pigs are higher on the list than any other domesticated animal including dogs. But until they are able to converse with me, I don’t give an inexact human measurement used on an animal much weight or thought– I just work with them and love them all as one of God’s greatest gifts to mankind.
Benz
I think the question of compassion comes down to whether or not you can feel compassion and maintain your self-protective instincts at the same time. And I think we can.
Not if we’re still developing our defensive abilities. That’s what the angry time is for, and it’s why we feel a conflict between sympathy/pity/compassion and the need to hold onto our sense of outrage. And that’s a real and necessary part of the path of healing, to be just angry, so that we become better and better at developing the perspectives and skills of successfully managing risk in our lives.
I think that many of us have been trained to acquiesce to bad treatment. To regard it as the cost of love or acceptance. To imagine that suffering makes us good people. Etc.
Suffering does have its uses. As these relationships show us. It provides evidence that we need to learn something new. It gives us reason to learn it. And it ultimately makes us smarter, stronger and more comfortable in the world (because we have less to fear when we understand more of what it takes to survive). This, oddly enough, leads us to be more compassionate, because we can afford to be.
Compassion is a normal state. We are connected with each other and the world. Fear and pain sometimes get in the way of that. And that’s simply a processing state. But eventually we get back to “home,” because we are meant to feel joy and the first element of joy is the feeling of connectedness.
A final thought, there is reason to feel compassion for these people. They are really broken. Their extraordinary gifts — and they do have them — are reactive compensation for being unable to feel and do a great deal of what healthy people take for granted. They can’t love. Can’t trust. Are outsiders for life, no matter how they con people into caring about them. And their pathology makes it virtually impossible for them to process through this, because they don’t trust anything but their own warped perspectives.
So just like we feel sorry for someone with a terrible, contagious disease, we can feel for these people. But that doesn’t mean we get close to them. It does mean that we look for ways to quarantine them in every way possible, from ourselves, the people we care about, from influential positions in our lives. And we live with the terrible dilemmas they create for us, because of the knowledge that we cannot help them, only protect ourselves.
The sad story about sociopaths is only temporarily about us. Until we learn what we have to learn from our encounters with them, and successfully develop the perspectives and skills of self-protection. Then we can go on to pursue the things that are meaningful to us – respectful, loving relationships and social collaboration to build a better world.
However, knowing about them, we also live with the problem of what to do about them. Institutionalize them. Banish them. Burn them at the stake. It’s been a long-term problem in human society, and we’ve tried many approaches to justifying treating them as less than human. Which, in many ways, they are, but more importantly they are destructive.
My own interest is in working to reduce the causative factors that create antisocial tendencies in children. Poverty, abuse, neglect, lack of emotional and material resources. There is a lot we can do to support the health and safety of children, and though this does not solve the problem of psyches that are already ruined, it may create a more compassionate and safer society in the future.
Namaste.
Kathy
Kathleen:
BINGO!
🙂
Until we can reach the new generations and effect changes for the long term…..
At this point…..I say….Burn em at the stake!
(I’m in the angry stage still) 🙂
It’s always nice to have your ‘Hawk’s eye view’ with clear understanding, concise and to the point reading.
THANKS!!!
Dear Benz,
Yea, I agree with you, about the horses, however, a horse will run blindly away from what he sees as a threat (and therefore run through fences or off cliffs) but a donkey or a mule will bolt only a little way, then stop and reassess the situation to see WHICH direction they need to run, or even if they need to run. Also if a donkey is tangled up he will not panic and break his leg, but will try to figure out a way to get free where a horse will panic and break his own leg trying to get free. Even though both horses and donkeys are prey animals the horses don’t seem to have the same instincts to “freeze” when confined—in the wild this might have a benefit but in captivity and domestication it doesn’t necessarily have a benefit.
Interesting creatures both, and I enjoy both, but the donk’s sense of self preservation and NEVER trusting their own safety with someone else’s judgment where a horse will trust the human to keep it safe, I think I’d rather be like the donk, as they don’t fully trust evem me, and Blindly trusting anyone 100% with our own safety in a world with psychopaths I think is a counterproductive thing to do! Illl be the ASS, the Assertive Survivor of a Socio-path! LOL
As far as feeing compassion and sorry for “Psychopaths” I think we should “feel sorry” for rattle snakes, they don’t makie good pets because of their venom and how much happier they would be if you could domesticate them like a puppy and love on them and feed them and care for them. NOT! I don’t feel sorry for a rattle snake because it can’t accept “love” and I don’t feel sorry for a P either…they just ARE WHAT THEY ARE! I think anything that says “sick” (like they might be cured) or “pitiful” (deserving of compassion for their brokeness) in any way makes compassionate and empathetic people try to be “kind to” them. JUST MY OPINION, AND IT IS ALL SEMANTICS, BUT WORDS HAVE CONSEQUENCES IN HOW WE BEHAVE and THINK. So for rattle snakes and psychopaths I will just feel FEAR and Use AVOIDANCE, if that makes any sense.
Erin, thanks for the kind words.
I’m not sure if I’d classify you so much in the angry stage as in the alert and engaged phase. You’re not done with your interaction yet. And as long as you’re engaged with a sociopath, you need to be a warrior. Which means, recognizing the enemy as the enemy and dealing with that destructive influence in your environment.
For some of us, that goes on for a long time. Or the situation returns intermittently to be dealt with. Or we can anticipate it returning, so we have to organize our lives for a known danger.
I have an old Japanese woodcut of a couple of samurai in their downtime. The sun was going down. They had dropped their shields. One of them was looking across the beautiful landscape. The other one was resting at the foot of a tree. They hadn’t been in battle. They were just traveling from one engagement to the next.
Even warriors need to commune with the larger truths. It’s necessary to keep the spirit from tightening up into a hard little ball. Being a warrior is a set of tasks and skills, but it’s not who we are. It’s what we do under certain circumstances to protect ourselves, to earn our livings, to help shape the world. But the truest things that drive us are love, a big word that incorporates a lot of things like gratitude, appreciation, openness and pursuit of higher goals.
All of us have these feelings at our deepest core. Encounters with sociopaths are challenges, obstacles we meet, that teach us about the world and ourselves. One of the images I keep in my mind as a guide is the memory of a book I read about a British explorer in Africa who survived many terrifying and life-threatening experiences, and then came home to London. Until he got there, he didn’t know how changed he was. But when he returned, he listened to other people talk and realized they had no idea of what they were capable of and, in the lack of real challenges, they made drama out of silly gossip and social machinations. So he went off to find new challenges in the city, building a great company and involving himself in charitable work.
I read an article recently about responses to trauma. The author pointed out that trauma isn’t about what happens to us, but how we respond to it. And that, surprisingly, the majority of people are resilient to even the greatest losses. They go through all the painful feelings, but they do it relatively quickly and get back to life. I found this very interesting, because I suspect that the people who don’t get involved with sociopaths, who shake them off at the early signs of incongruency or danger, are people who deal with loss quickly. It’s not that they don’t feel attachment, but that they are confident about breaking it, because they have a strong positive vision of life after the pain of loss.
I believe that our inclination to feel compassion is an expression of who we want to be. But the compassion is not compatible with healing from injury from the object of that compassion. When we’re healing, we need to separate ourselves from the threat, to say that our own wellbeing is more important to us than the threat’s wellbeing. We make it an enemy, and rightly so.
But at another layer of processing, though maybe not on a conscious level while we’re healing or fighting for our lives, I believe we continue to see a bigger picture. What is our enemy is, in a larger sense, part of the great tapestry of life. The existence of the sociopath at all and the fact that the sociopath was/is in our life is about more than our individual issues with them. This is one of the reasons I am so concerned about the wellbeing of children, who are dependent and vulnerable to conditions that could burn out their belief in love or trust.
That is just my perspective. I value my capacity to feel compassion for broken people and to grieve what they might have been and even to feel gratitude for what they teach me. It doesn’t mean I’m going to Africa to invite a lion to attack me, so I can risk dying in order to learn what’s important in life. Or than I will ever view the man who cost me so much as anything other than a threat.
As I said in the beginning, I believe it is possible to feel compassion and exercise self-protection at the same time. There is no moral imperative forcing us to risk our lives to be “kind” to someone who is unkind to us. Unless we’re raving codependents. First we take care of ourselves and our dependents. Then if we have anything to spare, we share it with people who show promise of contributing to our lives or the community.
And if we make a mistake, we cut our losses. We may temporarily feel like fools. But the real losers are the ones who don’t know what they’re missing.
Funny to mention being a “warrior”. When I first got involved with my xbfsocio, he texted me a message..it said….”I am a warrior, however I fear YOU”.
I didn’t get it. I asked him why he “feared” me. He said because he is “always feeling afraid that I will kick him to the curb”
Now THATS sad. He was telling me how insecure he was and afraid of me loving him. He also told me over and over that no woman ever loved him like I do…and that he never loved a woman like he loves me.
The “fear” thing should have been a red flag. At age 52, he was telling me that he is afraid of rejection. I guess thats why he had to keep his profile up on a few dating sites…needed a back up.
This is why I think its really sad that these sociopaths live their lives seeing the world as the “enemy”. He had a TERRIBLE childhood…mother had 9 kids with 9 different men and then abandoned them all. Her mother had to raise a few of them, him being one. He once asked me..”how would you feel if you don’t even know your own father’s name..or who he is?” …and he said it with such anger. He also said to me..”you don’t really know me…I could have major issues”.
The entire time we were involved, I knew that he was messed up from his awful upbringing..(the grandmother used to beat them and they lived in fear). I felt sorry for him and I thought that he did pretty well for himself…considering his awful upbringing. He became a cop and was in the air force and had a college degree…and……… two failed marriages…
I thought the first one was because he was young…and dumb. and the second one…I don’t know much about.
Anyway…I gave the “warrior” the benefit of the doubt and ignored the OBVIOUS red flags…
I was vulnerable at the time…but I am SO much stronger now, and educated about people…and wiser.
Thank God.