One of the good things about the conviction of Jerry Sandusky on almost all counts related to molesting 10 boys was that his lame personality disorder defense did not fly.
Histrionic personality disorder? Huh? That was the prevailing reaction when defense attorneys claimed that the former Penn State assistant football coach wrote those “creepy” letters because he suffers from histrionic personality disorder.
Several experts in personality disorders were quoted in news reports stating that even if Sandusky does have histrionic personality disorder, it would not be an excuse for the molestation.
Why not?
It’s quite simple: Most people with personality disorders are not delusional. Those with antisocial, borderline, narcissistic and yes, histrionic personality disorders are not “hearing voices” or out of touch with reality. (By the way, the American Psychiatric Association is in the process of revising its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Histrionic personality disorder isn’t even included in the new version.)
Over and over, Lovefraud readers tell me about outrageous deceit, manipulation and conscienceless behavior in their own interactions with personality-disordered individuals. Here is the common denominator: Sociopaths know exactly what they are doing. They just feel entitled to do what they want, and do not care who gets hurt in the process.
I was worried about the introduction of “personality disorder” as a defense in a criminal trial. Because it was permitted in the Sandusky case, would it open the door for all the defense attorneys in the country to blame their clients’ crimes on personality disorders? This would be a serious problem, because researchers estimate that 47 percent of male and 21 percent of female prison inmates have antisocial personality disorder.
For the most part, people with personality disorders are quite capable of making choices about their behavior. They know the difference between right and wrong, although they may have no emotional investment in doing what is right. They can follow society’s rules and laws when it suits their purpose.
Jerry Sandusky was convicted. I hope this continues to mean that when these disordered people commit crimes, they won’t be able to get off by claiming the psychological equivalent of, “the devil made me do it.”
darwinsmom,
I have to read your response (about the black cloud) over and over again to think about it, digest it, learning information that I’m not familiar with (about the chakras). LOL! Letters from a spath are flat, trying to convey emotion, but truly lacking actual substance (they’re empty). Our spath’s letters are that way. The letters are word salad (as Oxy pointed out), just a bunch of words that say nothing (just wasting your time reading them).
Word salad…..LMAO!!!!!!!!!
In formal training, actors are required to dig down very deep to find their own Life’s Experiences to draw upon in association with their characters – it’s a grueling process. One friend of mine who is a SAG member refuses to instruct anyone below the age of 21 and has had a recent (4 year, I think) traumatic event. His assertion is that the approach that he was taught requires “adult” intrusion into very painful experiences.
And, spaths are, indeed, actors without substance. They are the Iceburg Lettuce of humanity. A lot of fiber, but no flavor or nutrition.
Pfffffft……
Crazy-making word salad, Truthspeak.
And the sad part is that they actually believe their BS, themselves.
That’s the scarey part.
Especially with a violent psychopath.
Spaths are INDEED actors on a stage.
Everyone and everything about them is prey.
Especially if you don’t want to play their game no more.
It has been quiet for a couple of days now.
No stalking or intrusion. Hmm: (knock on wood).
Maybe the boogey-man has gone away from the door.
Although, I am certainly NOT holding my breath.
Nor am I going to even look through the peep hole.
PFFFFFTTT! Is right…
Dupey
I think the defense attorneys’ argument has been misinterpreted. It looks like the argument was introduced as an explanation of why someone who is NOT a predatory paedophile would write such letters — rather than as an excuse for being a predatory paedophile.
I think anybody trying to convince anybody of anything else is in a sense attempting to manipulate. The letters to me indicate complete desperation — he would get obsessed with or extremely attached to a boy, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he really believed he loved them. The word salad imo comes from a cognitive dissonance: he couldn’t be honest with himself about what he was and he had to resort to euphemistic and, in that sense, manipulative language.
The trait that convinced me that my husband was a charismatic psychopath was his predatory behavior. These people PLAN their deeds. The manipulativeness of their behavior fits into the PLAN. They know EXACTLY what they are doing and enjoy it. Jerry Sandusky PLANNED his rapes of these young boys. He manipulated them into the situations where he could carry out his plan. These predators know exactly what they are doing. They blame the victim to ease any “discomfort” about their choices. Notice, I use the word “idscomfort”. They never feel guilt.
Sandusky choosing The Great Pretender as his mantra sent chills down my spine. About six months after my exspath and I split up (and I really started to deeply understand what exactly he was), he fell in love with the band Stabilo because of the song “Flawed Design” which sums up beautifully what it is to be a spath:
“Cuz I lie
Not because I want to
But I seem to need to
All the time
Yeah, I lie
And I don’t even know it
Maybe this is
All a part of my flawed design
And how can you say those things
Why can’t you just believe?”
To everyone else it seemed he just was a fan of the band but I knew he was thrilled they were singing about what he was really all about and he was, again, pulling the wool over everybody’s eyes about it.
Awe yes…the “personality disorder” or the “criminally not responsible” or the “insanity plea”…
Hmmm
I wrote in over a year ago of the horrible events that I went through over 3 years and special attention to the last few months after trying to rid of my SP. Not unlike anyone else’s cries, we shared eerily similar stories however since that time, I have put him in my past”until recently.
June 2012 ”“ my SP was arrested and initially charged with “murder after the fact”, but as of last week, that was upgraded to “2nd degree murder” of a still missing girl. He too is taking the insanity, mental incapable, not criminally responsible”ect route through our justice system.
When I first found your site over a year ago, I logged in religiously, and it helped OH SO MUCH! With (emotional) hard work, I distanced myself from the drama, convinced myself it wasn’t me blah blah blah. But here I am again, reading all these posts once again, I hurt but this time for reasons I have zero control over and ones that I predicted a year ago. How can I overcome the guilt I have growing inside of me that to my horror became real.
My words a year ago “from what he learnt from our relationship and from what he learnt from the last long term relationship”the next one”he will kill” I KNOW deep down I couldn’t’ have stopped this, I could not have alerted any authority with my (feeling), but it still haunts me. It’s in my dreams or rather nightmares. He speaks to me nearly every night and I haven’t had this happen for well over a year and truth be told, my dreams while going through all that hell, were not nightmares. They were more geared towards dreams of what I wished my life was with him”my little get-a-ways- from the realities of the actual world. NOW? They have turned into complete nightmares! I can feel, smell & taste him right here. He stares and I feel. Dreams of unbuilt houses surrounding me while fires, tornados, floods or mudslides wreck them. Ones where I’m searching for people. Ones where there are many people in one room and we are all just standing there looking at each other, like cattle right before their slaughter ”“ that fear, that wait. I dream of him being nice, gentle and I’m so scared because I know if I step out of line”
So”now again I start the process of detaching from him one more time but this time? It will be a longer process while it is splashed across our newspapers. Also ”“ because people know we had a history together they volunteer more information that I can handle.
The worst? He turned into something he never was with me. Perhaps a double life, even mention of homosexuality”HOW DO I HANDLE THAT?!?! How do I handle this when my children who once called him a step-father hear of this???Cause he was NEVER that with us”
In a once twisted world of a so called relationship it now has a warped meaning now. And here we go again”
Donna? Your reading materials you suggested got me through this. Your book, The Betrayal Bond, The Sociopath Next Door, Snakes in Suits , the Joey Buttafuoco story, were stepping stones into my healing but I feel as if I now need more (and I hate it). Please”if you can suggest any other books, perhaps geared into schizophrenia or multiple personalities, or bipolar, I would appreciate it.
Lost yet one more time”
Skylar,
Great observations about his use of the word “care!” Their language misuse is subtle, but it’s an indicator to watch for. When I received a supposedly loving card from my ex, I sensed even then that there was something “off” about his words. He created this analogy between his position in our relationship and a ship lost in the fog at sea, where “the hollow drone of the fog horn and the flash of the lighthouse are strangely comforting.” Odd images/sounds to describe falling in love, no? But I chose to see it as if I were a beacon for him. Silly me. Then he wrote some blubbering gibberish: “Where is this going, the question seems to be… The present is knowable and known, the future is unknowable and unknown…and your guess is as good as mine. The only thing about which I am completely sure is that every time we have parted, shortly thereafter, it has seemed to me like too soon.” Then he draws another analogy to explain what he means by the assertion that he finds me compelling. “It is rather complicated I think, like the medley of instruments that contribute to the perfectly harmonious cacophony of an orchestra. And every time I get to know you a bit better, the din seems to grow.” Again, he’s extremely educated and verbally articulate and so knows the meanings of the words he’s using and their connotations. It seems that “din” and “cacophony” again are odd diction choices to describe being in love with another.
This was all written at a time when we were supposedly at the height of falling in love. He was talking marriage and children. Of course it was only a week later that he launched himself fully into his double life with another woman…
His parting words in that card also remind me of Sandusky’s use of “care.” He writes, “So, in friendship and with much love and affection–” I remember reading that line over again because it struck me as odd that in a card proclaiming his love, the word love was sandwiched between friendship and affection.
I wish now that he’d written more to me so that I had more to analyze. I’m wondering if any of you out there have other examples you’d share of the phrasing your spaths used when writing to you. Perhaps if we notice and share the oddities that appear (and that they always eerily seem to share), we’ll be able to better weed them out next time!
Whirlwind71, oh……my…….gawd, I am SO sorry for your experiences! I’m virtually “speechless” and I need to process what you wrote.
I can only offer you my brightest protective blessings, for now.
Whirlwind,
That’s horrible! The nightmares you describe make me think that on the one hand you are triggered into him being back in your mind, and this time there’s no mask anymore for you. You can only see the menacing evilness now that he has done what you feared would happen – he killed a woman.
The same seems to be happening in your waking life with peope volunteering info now that they hadn’t before. You express the sentiment of not wanting to know more about his evilness, exactly because such knowlege is triggering and adds new betrayals and traumas on a past you’ve tried to heal from.
You can ask people not to talk about him to you, you can purposely avoid news in papers and television about it. But you probably won’t be able to shield yourself totally from it.
On the other hand I observe that you seem to want to preserve some part of the mask for yourself and your children about him. And I’m not sure that is helpful in the long run. Yes, further demasking is horrifying because it once again opens pandora’s box on the evil man you lived and loved for so long. It forces you to revisit the whole cognitive dissonance experience. I think that is what you are experiencing all over again. But maybe there are also traumas still within you that need to be taken on and healed, and weren’t until now, exactly because you preserved a part of the mask.
At this point I would suggest you visit a therapist foremostly to guide you through the cognitive dissonance re-experiene and who can hand you tools to cope with anything you hear about him.