Today’s New York Times Magazine has an excellent article on the signs of psychopathy in children. It presents a heartbreaking story of parents trying to cope with a “callous-unemotional” 9-year-old, and covers much of the current research on the disorder in children. Very well done.
Read Can a 9-year-old be a psychopath? on NYTimes.com.
Story suggested by a Lovefraud reader.
Skylar,
Yes that would certainly be yet another problem for the professionals to determine.
Although many in the field and and do throw the parents under the bus and automatically blame the parents there is also that flip side of the coin.
The P/S/N’s parent who would charm their way past on an unsuspecting professional where the child was actually in a terrible situation. And their focus would be lead on the wrong track. Looking at the child instead of the parent.
When they get it WRONG they get it wrong. But an innocent child would pay the price for THIS mistake. That’s huge.
And happens way to often when it comes to kids that are in the system.
And look at how often marriage counselors get it wrong? And for many marriage counselors that is all they do all day long. Counsel people on marriage.
There are certainly no easy answers here…..This is a very complicated subject matter.
Good point, Skylar. WE know they lie, and it is horrible to be scapegoated. But they really can be very convincing liars, so maybe my anger at the therapists is misplaced for their not recognizing that scapegoating was going on.
Witty, as always the voice of reason. I don’t trust the “professionals” frankly, because they are trying to go by the “there is good in everyone rule” and we know that psychopaths can charm their way past even a smart professional.
who was it said that the way he told a psychopath ini the institution he worked in was the one that GOT money from him. BOB HARE! He said all the inmates tried to borrow money but the psychopaths were the ones who convinced him to give it to them. LOL so if Bob Hare can’t not be fooled…..need I say more.
It is frustrating though that a concensus of REALITY can’t come how be achieved.
Oxy,
It is just so FRUSTRATING that you just can’t have that blind faith in the professionals!
I swear that it is the victims, parents, spouses, significant others, co-workers, siblings etc that have more to offer as far as good solid advice & EDUCATED (by experince) than the professionals often have.
Witty,
I don’t “do” arrogance well either.
I had a therapist who didn’t believe some of what I went through with my P sister. She reported me to a fellow therapist, right in front of me, that I was a pathological liar.
Why? Because she had never heard of anyone going through what I had gone through and couldn’t believe that people would do that to another person.
I never went back to her after observing her say that to her fellow therapist. And he believed her. That was very obvious. He had been nice towards me, had reached out, and as soon as she caught his attention and whispered that in his ear, he couldn’t back away from me fast enough. I would have reported her, but I had too much other stuff going on at the time. She was a battle I wasn’t interested in fighting.
Part of the problem, unfortunately, is that we empower them with this behavior.
I guess it’s understandable how that came about. Psychology hasn’t been around for that long (a little over 100 years) and for a very long time, it’s been dealing with the worst of the worst. It was all rather mysterious, actually.
It wasn’t just mysterious. It was entertainment. It became a game trying to figure out the crazy person. The general public wasn’t crazy. Us having “issues” hadn’t come into vogue yet so we thought, incorrectly, that we weren’t touched by this field.
By the field expanded. More and more people got pulled in. Self-supervision wasn’t really going on. They had their degrees and could hold themselves above everybody else. The system was set up to make them omnipotent.
But nowadays, that veil has fallen. The incompetence, self-serviving statements, do-goodism, and a pot of less than ideal/professional behaviors are there, but whose looking it and challenging what these people are getting away with?
I don’t think we’re going to have much success changing things on a one-by-one or piecemeal basis. The field is inherently subjective.
I forget the name of the movie, but I believe it had William Hurt in it. It was about a TV news program. At some point, somebody flips out and has the audience yelling, “I’m sick and tired of it and I’m not going to take it anymore,” while throwing their TVs out their windows.
I suspect that’s what we need to do with these therapists and the psychology field. Tell them that they don’t get to impact our lives with obsolete and secretive methods. They need to do their homework and absolutely, deal with your issues first.
They don’t get to play Freud and make errors with our lives.
And to throw another wrench in the works, there are the therapists who are spaths themselves.
When a spath sees a victim, it’s like a shark smelling blood in the water.
I experienced this first hand with my spath brother. I’ll describe what he did:
I didn’t know he was a spath. I moved in to my parents house, running from my ex-spath and spath bro was living there already. He was SO loving and compassionate. He was ready to lend an ear and a shoulder, so I told him the whole story. First he said he didn’t believe it. That wasn’t so surprising because WHO WOULD BELIEVE IT?
BUT, the truth is A SPATH WILL BELIEVE IT. They know perfectly well that it’s true because it’s how they think.
So my spath brother, first negates my story and then JOINS in the attack. He began calling my spath BIL and spath-sis (who hated him BTW) trying to join forces with them. He tried calling my ex-spath (I saw all the phone numbers he had dialed on the phone) but he didn’t have his phone number, he was dialing our old home phone.
THEN, he sets me up, attacks me physically and calls the cops on me for a DV after he scratched himself.
This is another reason we have to be careful who we tell. The spaths will often get “excited” when they see a victim. They can’t resist the drama and they join in the victimization.
Just because someone is a spath doesn’t mean they can’t be a therapist. And maybe they aren’t a 30 on the PCL-R but they have that drama addiction that makes them need to join in when they smell drama.
These are things I NEVER would have imagined. It is beyond my capacity to imagine people like that. But I HAVE experienced it, so I know it’s true.
G1S,
You know that is the thing….By the time I took my son to this therapist we had to wait for awhile before he actually got in.
I was as my name implies pretty much at my wits end….No DOUBT about it. I had up to this point tried everything I knew how to do.
I went into this knowing that the “story” I had to share with this therapist he might not believe some of it. Specifically that my son was really a good kid without any problems to report until he reached puberty.
And seemingly overnight he became a stranger to me. I couldn’t believe it myself?
And of course I shared with him the trauma of my sons fathers suicide thinking somehow this very well could be connected…Because I was still of the “hopeful” mind set then, that this was a “this to shall pass” my sons just going through a really rough time… Not a permanent thing…Just a defiant stage.
Yet even with that hopeful mind set I was still an emotional wreck by the time we finally got into see this therapist….. My son however was a cool as a cucumber. I’m not a rocket scientist, but I could see that I initially could appear to be the unstable one.
I couldn’t help but show emotion, it was so on the surface at this point in time…And my son is cool, calm and collected? Showing no emotion.
I figured the therapist would figure it out with time. Boy was I wrong.
I also figured out towards the end that this therapist took to much of my much needed energy. He was a battle that I had no energy to fight.
When my son first started to see the p-doc I could actually for the first time see a glimmer of hope. This guy was “getting it” and I didn’t have to say anything to him. He just saw through his lies right off the bat. The problem is that my son also recognised that his guy wan’t someone that he could manipulate like he did the therapist. Once he saw that he was done going.
Skylar, interesting idea….
so you are saying (?) that people with the best spathdar are spaths themselves OR people who have been victims of spaths?
Maybe we should be relieved if our therapists don’t believe us, LOL.
I’m not really making light of this. It is just a very interesting idea.
But I’m still baffled why therapists would NOT catch on, especially over time. It seems so obvious to me that if one person is in distress and, as you say witsend, the other is cool as a cucumber, isn’t that a red flag?
And… as a twist on “gray rock,” I am having a thought about what is (currently) seeming to be working with the spathwife of my spath-ex-husband… I need to continue to see them socially from time to time because of the kids…
in that CPS-mandated therapy, towards the end I got “gray rock” and it really threw her off balance. But what I think did it even more (guessing…) than simply being bland and boring, was a couple times I let my own “gray rock” mask slip (unintentionally, but I had a hard time keeping the gray rock mask ON) and I think she caught a flash or two of me “getting her” but without fear and without coming out and saying so, in so many words.
I’m wondering if this helps… if they wonder that you finally have their number, but you have not chosen to expose them…
This is hard to express. I’m not intending to tangle with spaths, but if they wonder if I see through their lies, but I haven’t come out and admitted any such thing, maybe they will not see me as a potential victim/target any more?
20years,
that’s sort of what I’m saying.
I know that spaths do believe us. But then they might pretend they don’t. To throw you off or to negate you.
And then there is the “cool as a cucumber” act that they do… sometimes they don’t: Instead they act hysterical. But the key is, they are always watching for response and ready to switch or tweak.
In my life, I never imagined having a conversation like this, about people faking emotions and how many degrees of faking they’ll do. Is it 180 degrees today? or will they do a 360?
I’m not saying you can’t win. I do think you can, IF you know who is the spath. And for those of us who KNOW because we’ve experienced it, it’s not that hard. Just like in the movie “Doubt”. She didn’t doubt. She knew. So in respect to a therapist, I think you can see the red flags. Are they shallow? narcissistic? very concerned with appearance? Do they tell the truth with a random lie thrown in, just to see if you will swallow the whole wad?
Spaths will TEST boundaries, they can’t help themselves. They all do it. Watch for that.
As far as “having their number”, yes, it does make them back off. They try extra hard to show their “human side” (bwahahahaha). But in the end, they will simply become more stealthy, try harder to fake you out, etc… Then it can get confusing because their act gets better. Personally, I think it’s better not to let them know. That said, I usually can’t resist…lol!
😉
Skylar,
I am glad that 20 years asked more about this because your reply has some important information for me….
One of the things that always confused me about my son and lying is that he could fall into both ends of the spectrum.
He is often a very GOOD liar. Very convincing, and as I say cool as a cucumber in the deliverance.
On the flip side sometimes he isn’t what I would call hysterical but he is definately over the top and he “over does it” and his lies will be also way over the top and totally unbelievable.
I often wondered how he could be such a good liar and also such a bad liar? But it is really all about the state that he is in when he is telling them.
You just gave me an ah-hah moment 🙂