Editor’s note: This article was submitted by Steve Becker, LCSW, CH.T, who has a private psychotherapy, hypnotherapy, and clinical consulting practice in New Jersey, USA. For more information, visit his website, powercommunicating.com.
Have you ever seen a cat toy with a stunned, cornered mouse? How it will capture the mouse, dangle it in its mouth for a while, release it momentarily, allowing the mouse the pretense of an escape, only to recapture it, dangle it some more from its mouth, perhaps release it again briefly, now to watch the mouse, increasingly frantic, make another escape bid, only to recapture it, now letting the terrorized mouse (and, as if it’s fate) dangle yet some more, in dreadful uncertainty?
If the mouse could think, it might have thoughts like these: “What will this cat do with me? How long will it continue to toy with me? Will it kill me, or let me go? Strangely, this cat seems to be deriving a perverse pleasure in my predicament. My helplessness and suffering seem to be entertaining and amusing this cat. There is something cold and sadistic about this—that this cat could be using, and exploiting, my vulnerability in this way for its personal, shallow gratification?”
The mouse would think, “there is something wrong with this cat.”
In this analogy, the mouse’s imagined experience of the cat captures, I believe, the victim’s experience of the psychopath. Cats, of course, are not psychopaths, and mice, although traumatizable, are unlikely to experience their victimization in quite so thoughtful a way.
But to elaborate the analogy, let us imagine what’s taking place in the cat’s mind. The cat may be thinking, “This is fun. The mouse I’m terrorizing is pathetic. Look how scared and confused it is. It has no idea what’s in store for it. Even I haven’t decided what’s in store for it. I’m enjoying its helplessness, and my total control over it, too much to worry about my plans for this mouse. I find it amusing that its playing dead. Does this mouse think it can fool me? I, and only I, will determine whether the mouse lives or dies. Presently I’m going to release and taunt it again, with the illusion of escape. When I recapture it immediately, it will be trembling with fear, a prisoner to my designs. This is pretty funny. It’s not that I have anything personal against mice. As a matter of fact, they provide me with a great source of recreation.”
The cat in this analogy (and let me stress that I like cats, who don’t really think like this), captures with a chilling fidelity the perspective of psychopaths towards their victims. It is all there: the cat’s utter lack of empathy for the mouse; its view of the mouse as an “object” that exists to be exploited for its benefit; its amusement at having created the mouse’s predicament, now to watch and enjoy the mouse’s futile bids at escape; its contempt for the mouse’s helplessness and desperation, which the cat, of course, has opportunistically established for its own entertainment; its relish in its omnipotence to decide the mouse’s fate, but only when it is good and ready, and no sooner than the cat has mined the mouse’s helplessness for its full recreational value.
In sum, this is the essence of the psychopath: his joy of the hunt, his contempt for his prey, and his intention to take everything he can, and wants, from his victim.
When the psychopath takes you for a ride—that is, when he is victimizing people—it’s really not personal: You’re simply not enough of a person for it to be personal. In the psychopath’s eyes, you are an expedient, nothing more. When he crosses your path, the psychopath is assessing your expediency. He is asking himself, “Is there something this impending-sucker has for me? Is there something I can take from this fool that I want? Something I can take that will make me feel good?”
As part of his assessment, he is evaluating the kind of target you’ll be. If he decides to pass, it won’t be because he likes you, or feels something charitable; it will be because he’s decided that, either you have nothing, after all, worth taking, or that you’ll pose inconveniences and/or risks to his present self-interests that he prefers to avoid.
For the psychopath, you are like a sealed, vulnerable envelope he is constantly espying, with suspected money inside. He isn’t sure how much money, but he’s pretty sure there’s something in it. It might be a little, it might be a lot; it’s possible there’s too little (or nothing) of value worth his bothering with. Surely, though, he is scheming how best to glimpse what’s in the envelope, and how best to lift anything worth taking.
The psychopath is a high, and often imprudent, risk-taker; he’s in it for the catch, not to be caught. You, and all human beings, are mere commodities to him: maybe useful, maybe not. Certainly, once he’s expended your use, to the psychopath you’ll be as useless as a nagging headache.
Gosh, it’s just hard to believe people actually think this way. I mean, I admit at times I have sized up people for what they might be able to provide for me, to use in someway, but I also know that I was much younger then. I think it was a bit more of immaturity than anything. I don’t really do that anymore, and when I did, I never thought about intentionaly hurting them or anything like that. It was an immature, self-serving way about me that I really have overcome. I have way too big a conscience to intentionally hurt someone.
I havent had contact with the S since his mask was uncovered. But I am still weary of him. I still have dreams with him in it. But he’s always at an opposing end. Us looking at each other from a distance. I dreamed I recieved an email from him, and it upset me (in the dream…and while awake). Why cant this experience just be over. It seems it just goes on and on in my mind….like the ‘Rumination’ post…..
Strange that, I bought him a book as a fun present, it was called ‘A cat and mouse love story’! Because that is exactly what it felt like. I knew he was up to something, or pretending to be up to something. It was a matter of catching him out and I tried many times. But like any Narcissist, he must have had a kick out of giving me the evidence on his phone, which he of course planned.
sometimes i wonder if their thinking goes that deep.
for example, when we display compassion, do we work on automatic or do we sit down and analyze what we do?
i think for me, i am automatic. seeing someone in distress, i automatically reach out. if someone falls, i stop to help them up.
i don’t even think about it. not for a second. if there is an accident, i call 911. there is no hesitation, as that is who i am. i act on automatic.
my experience with an S lasted five years. and i think in that time i saw little cracks of windows to his thinking open.
sometimes he would ask ‘why do people think i’m such a dick?’ and if i pointed out examples (that had nothing to do with me) i saw him actually try to rectify the situation. unfortunately, the behavior did not last.
he would end up resenting his actions, and get angry with the person he was making “amends” with.
during our last conversation, he said ‘but i don’t know what to do to show you i love you’ and i think he was being honest. he really doesn’t know what to do.
compassion, empathy, love, all that is not automatic with him. he guesses at how to behave in a relationship, and tries to imitate a human being, but it just isn’t him.
he always asked me again and again, what should i do? how do i show you i love you? how do i stop hurting you?
he has even admitted to manipulating me ‘i told you that to get you to shut up about it!’ ‘i asked you to marry me to get you to answer the phone – i know i told you i had a ring, but i was just trying to get back with you.’
in the end, my last question to him was ‘what can you possibly dangle in front of me, possibly say, promise or offer, that i will believe?’
and he had to agree, there was nothing left. his manipulations were exhausted. but i don’t think he is manipulating me as part of a master plan to use me. i don’t think he sized me up to see what kind of target i was.
he manipulated me because he thinks that’s how it works. he thinks that’s what i do. that’s what you do. that’s what we all do. his experience of life is that manipulation equals love.
when he regrets an abuse of me, i know he doesn’t regret it because it hurt me, he regrets it because it hurts his self-image of a “good guy.”
he has no clue, like the cat, that i might suffer from his abuse. it is not part of him to see my suffering.
but maybe i am naive, and he really has sat and calculated how he could use me for his own pleasure. someone told me yesterday, ‘he was just using you.’ right now, i don’t think that way.
i am thinking that he acts just as the cat does. or the scorpion. they are what they are. they do what they do. it is automatic. when he gets a negative reaction, he is stunned.
cat owners are encouraged to praise their pet when she brings in a dead mouse, because to a cat, that is the way she shows her love. the cat has no idea how we feel about dead mice…
sometimes when i think of him purposely thinking about ways to manipulate me, i end up thinking that he has control over his behavior and can change. if he is hurting me conciously, he can change right?
i don’t think they go that deep. they just find a mouse and kill it, thinking it is what everyone does.
but deep inside, he knows we don’t.
as a final irony to this, i told him that if he loves me, he can show me by not contacting me again. he said to prove his love, he won’t.
maybe the only loving promise he can keep is the one that finally destroys our relationship for good….
lg
Sociopaths do intentionally hurt and they put as much thought into it as is needed. My ex hurt me and intended to hurt me. I didn’t see it until I found out everything and pieced together my life with him. When we were together he treated me well if that’s what he had to do to get what he wanted. If he treated me openly badly he apologized and it ended up being poor him. The rest of the time he made me feel crazy by saying things that I didn’t know how to take and then would either tell me I was too sensitive or he didn’t mean anything by it or made me feel guilty for thinking he could do or say something like that intentionally. He has been cruel at times since he said he was leaving. He planned what day he would tell me to inflict the most pain. He toyed with me telling me on the phone I love you and then saying I just mean it like I care about what you’re going through. Telling me he was going to go to marriage counseling and maybe we could date and see how things go. This was all before he moved out because he had to keep me under his control, but at the same time he was enjoying the cat and mouse game. It made him feel powerful. All this while at the same time manipulating the girlfriend into thinking I was the crazy wife he was strapped with.
I’ve been conflicted with feeling sorry for him because he has obvious PDs. (although not so obvious to me while in the marriage or I’m sure not so obvious to the gf now) But I refuse to ever again feel sorry for someone who plans and manipulates and plays games with peoples lives including his child. He knows right from wrong. He doesn’t care. He does what he feels like doing because he feels like doing it. Screw everybody else. And if by chance he doesn’t screw you it’s because it fits into how he’s going to get what he wants. Even now a part of me feels like a bad person for not wanting to look at him like he’s sick and can’t help it, the person I loved for so long. This is the difference between me and him.
trying to recover, i understand exactly how you feel. for a long time, i thought he was sadistically torturing me. but i think my perception of things is different.
i know my S was cruel. i know he knew he was hurting me, and admitted to it. but what i believe is that his cruelty is not about me. what i doubt now is whether or not it was all part of a master plan to hurt ME.
was it a part of a master plan to give him a rush? yes.
was it part of a master plan to feel powerful? yes
was it part of a master plan to win? yes
was it part of a master plan to avoid feeling any
pain himself? yes….
but was it designed to hurt me? i don’t think i mattered that much in the grand master plan…i know for a fact he did this to women before me and he will do it to them after me.
i heard yesterday that someone overheard my S maybe having a phone conversation with another woman. yes, it hurts to know he is just switching partners instead of reflecting on how he hurt me.
but after a few minutes of pain, a thought hit me. my S does not like to think of himself as a bad guy. yes, he knows he crushed me so many times, but he can’t sit with that thought. he can’t sit with guilt. he can’t sit with feeling bad, he needs immediate relief.
i now am a living testament to what a cruel disgusting person he is. he sees that now when he looks at me.
a lack of conscience combined with a need for immediate relief and satisfaction combined with an impulsiveness that cannot consider the consequences of what he does makes for someone who can be intensely cruel and can replace partners at a whim.
but it is not about me. it is and has always been, all about him.
so instead of reflecting on his behavior the way those of us with a conscience do, he moves for immediate relief. another woman, who is flush with the “newness of his pursuit.” i remember well what it felt like for those first few weeks.
i even remember saying, ‘controlling? you are not controlling, how could a woman say that about you?’
it isn’t about hurting me, it is about providing himself immediate relief from any uncomfortable feelings he may have. he cannot deal with them. they must be destroyed.
having a new woman who doesn’t yet know his dark side is the best way to destroy any chance of him having to look at himself in the mirror.
for years, having me by his side allowed him to project all the bad feelings that he did not want to deal with onto me.
have you experienced your S accusing you of the things he does? of course he wants you to feel crazy, then he does not have to look at how insane he is. it isn’t you – you are just carrying around his backpack of craziness for him.
and you carry it because you have the wonderful healthy ability to reflect on yourself. when he looks in the mirror and sees a dirty face, then he blames you for not washing the mirror.
“have you experienced your S accusing you of the things he does? of course he wants you to feel crazy, then he does not have to look at how insane he is. it isn’t you – you are just carrying around his backpack of craziness for him”
yes, BUT he said those things…such as I AM the sociopath ( I had never even mentioned this to him or knew anything about psychopathy at the time) to HURT me. Yes, I agree he’d hurt anyone in my place, BUT he did it to get-off on pain. Mine loved to inflict pain, he read about killers, talked about killing exwives and used to write stories about torture. What a guy.
It’s not incidental, the game is fun for them.
My sociopath intentionally hurt me as I recall. Several years ago, when I got pregnant, he said I was a sort of psycho to have this baby and asked me to have an abortion. Well, I miscarried the baby. He never comforted me for the loss. He stood me up many Christmas holidays to be with the other woman (I did not know this real reason until recently). He said all crazy things like why he cannot spend the holiday with me, his student committed suicide (well, he is a university professor), his car broke down, he is working for the government for a secret mission. On the last Christmas day, he was not with me again. I finally suspected he could be a cheater and sent him an e-mail to ask if he was married or not. He replied to me with an e-Christmas card simply saying one sentence “Sorry, you deserve much better…” A few weeks ago, he sent me a Birthday card saying, I am sorry that I am such a BIG ***! Hopefully, you enjoyed your day! Isn’t that so cruel? I think he expected to see me hurt and miserable, because this way he can feel power over me. But this time, it did not happen. I hired a private investigator to finally reveal his double life. Since I exposed him, he has been silent. I guess that’s a game over to him. But not for me. I am so angry.
i hear you guys…and i am wondering….
does the cat know he is batting the mouse around? does he know he is eviscerating it? does he cause pain to the mouse?
of course.
but in my opinion, the only one who sees him as a predator is the mouse.
that cat? well, he just likes the taste of mouse.
i know you are angry. i know there is a hole in your chest that is so heavy that you can’t breathe.
i know the anger is protecting you right now. it protected me for a long time, but i also know it kept me ruminating and tied up in knots and still connected to him.
i still have flashbacks that make me spit on his memory. i literally spit when i think of what he did to me.
but maybe i am evolving in my process, from anger to a stage of acceptance, and from there i can move on.
for me, believing he did any of this “on purpose” keeps me hopeful that he will magically see the error of his ways and make it up to me. that if he can be bad on purpose, he can also be good on purpose.
i don’t think he has the capacity to understand that he is not human. he is not like me, and if i keep viewing him from my window, i will never see that. i need to look at him through a window i never knew existed.
once i see his limitations and accept him for who he is, i can let him go.
i do know that over the past months, i feel peace in my life again.
Cats, like most predators, assess their possible prey to see which is the weakest, the least likely to actually hurt them, and cats, unlike other predators, do seem to “enjoy” playing with their prey. This is also the way that they train their babies to kill.
Years ago when I worked with African wildlife, we actually trained some captive raised large cats to kill, by simulating the methods used by housecats. We brought purposely injured, nearly dead animals to the cats, and as the cats learned to kill and eat, we eventually brought them unhurt animals to persue andkill before the cats were released into the wild.
One of the things I noticed when we started doing this is the the prey animals somehow self-calm, and thought they are not dead, somehow the seem to not feel the pain. It is a kind of shock that sets in when they know they are trapped and cannot get away. This same self calming techniques are now used with both domestic cattle and with handling wild life that is captive raised. When they are securely held they will stop the struggle.
I think in many ways, we as victims of the predators (psychopaths) also stop struggling to get away. Somehow they have a “hold” on us so that we can’t imagine trying to escape, or if we do we come back into their clutches.
Just as we can’t “fault” a cat (even a well fed domestic one) from chasing and playing with a captured mouse (the instinct is there) he is “just being what he is” a predator. We cna’t fault the Psychopath for being a psychopath and picking out victims and “playing with” them. After all, to them, we are just another prey species and they are the predators and do what predators have done since the beginning of time.
We as potential or actual victims (survivors) need to learn from our experiences of being in the clutches of the predator, learn what the signs of a predator are, how to spot them (they do after all appear to be a sub-species of humans) and to differentiate them from “real humans” with real emotions and real feelings.
the diffrence between animals and these s path s is that animals dont pretend to be anything they are not and spaths pretend to be normal to ge twhat they want. eventually they sometimes forgett to pretend or they accidently let their gaurd down and we all go what the hell was that. we get a glimpse of the real craziness of the s path which makes us start to question, what they do. we just see little bits here and there of the weirdness he lets slips thru and you know something is not natural in that behaviour sometimes its so subtle we dont believe our eyes or ears but its there. its not natural like animal or cats or any other human being. besides cats kill to feed to survive. spaths can survive without it but they behave this way wether its planned or instinctual i dont know but i think their brain makes them behave this way and i think part of this is the brain making them plan to do these things. does that make sense cause ive been trying to work it out ever since i met the s path. feel free to coment.