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.
notquitebroken –
wow, were we with the same guy?
mine would talk at length about how broken he is, and at times i believe he is tormented by it.
but at the same time, he expects to just be accepted. that i should honestly just stand there and let him beat the crap out of me. he cannot, to save his life, see my suffering.
he doesn’t see a reason to change. i think he believes that when he finds the ‘right woman’ she will cure him of all his ills.
anyway, i am celebrating a monumental 10 days of nc today, and geez, the phone is quiet. the email is quiet. he was a caller too, especially when he is idealizing me (which, is now).
he was begging me back for the millionth time, and i told him, if he loves me, he will show me by letting me go. stopping the calls. stopping the manipulations.
and they have stopped. the silence is extremely loud….
that’s why i keep coming here. just to know someone is out there….
and today, we had 6 inches of snow. one of the only things he ever did for me was send a man who works for him to plow my driveway.
the man still came today and plowed it. i am sure it is just that he comes automatically and my S didn’t think to tell him to stay away.
but still, i stood in the backyard with my dog, snow falling around me, and cried my eyes out.
lilygirl
Lilygirl,
I agree with so many of your insights. I myself initially ruminated on the sociopath in my life. Then I got mad and began reading everything I could get my hands on: books on stalking, books on sociopathism, emotional intelligence, etc. I admit that I have formed a lot of insights and my insights are along the lines of yours. I finally got educated enough and knew that s.p well enough that I was able to almost completely prevent her from stalking my family. Understanding saved us.
I also agree with the experts that sociopathism is extremely perplexing. More precisely the experts say that our minds do not work at all like a sp’s…so our attempts to fully comprehend them and their motivations are perhaps doomed to failure. Our very basic goodness, rationally, compassion, and EMPATHY invariably push us onto the incorrect path. It is just so difficult to us, in our humanness, to believe that VAMPIRES do exist……
And I find that even those closest to us, in the end, could not bring themselves to admit that the s.p. existed. So, we had to break some family ties as well….because they kept ‘helping’ the sociopath, showing her pity, and then condemning us…after all, we were told, “there is good in everybody.” And so we were condemned for not embracing our stalker, the sociopath.
Thanks for your postings.
CassieJWJ
Bookworm, get an attorney. Fight for your money, if you can produce the trail of records. Actually, there are some helpful laws about this sort of de-frauding.
One piece of experienced advice: you may have to meet with MANY, many attorneys before you find the right one. Many attorneys prefer to just blame the victim–these types will tell you there is nothing to be done.
We met with three attorneys while trying to stop the stalking (which was done by email, phone, fax, and notes taped on our house and car; rather than traditional physical stalking) and most of the attorneys seemed unfamiliar with the laws against this. Most attorneys find a comfortable spot in which they have knowledge. Instead, you want one that is willing to do some research and be open minded.
CassieJWJ
Bookworm, he will NEVER WILLINGLY REPAY THE LOAN, unless you have legal recorses that you can take, my advice is to “give it up” and chalk it down to the “price of tuition” in the “school of hard knocks.”
That is what they do. Been there, done that, got 2 tee shirts. I am not making light of your plight, but they are con-men, scam artists, etc. he never had any intention of repaying you. He used you for a sucker. That is a hard pill to swallow, and if you have to swallow 60,000 of them you will need more than one glass of water to get them down.
If you have anything signed, or he has a job, or you think you can collect it that way, I say get an attorney and go for it. If he got the money by “deception” you MIGHT be able to get him prosecuted for fraud. It probably won’t get your money back but might give you some satisfraction.
My late husband’s company was literally STOLEN and RAPED by psychopathic corporate raiders…successfully. He did get the empty shells back but all assets were gone. he was not able to prosecute them but eventually at least one of them was prosecuted and convicted and sent to prison for 4 years. Just like the Enron guys and their fraud, but it didn’t get the money back for the investors. Good luck.
Lilygirl, the “something inside us” that I think is what makes us victims is that we WANT to think the best of people, and sometimes that wanting lets us “overlook” faults to a fault, and also victims many times are “enabling” which is simply that we do for others what they have the responsibility to do for themselves, it is not the same as “helping” someone.
It is loaning them money to bail them out of jail, it is being their servant, putting up with little abuses that then grow into bigger abuses. It is believing their lies that are obviously lies, it is trusting too much when our “guts” tell us not to.
I know that I was “programed” in childhood that “forgiving” someone a “mistake” was to “pretend it never happened” and that I had to suffer the consequences of some one else’s bad behavior rather than “hold a grudge” (hold them accountable) for their behavior. That I had to “forgive” (pretend it didn’t happen OVER AND OVER with no sign of repentence or regret on their part.
Now I realize that forgiveness means getting the bitterness out of my own heart for what they ahve done, but it does not mean that they do not have to bear the consequences of their behavior EVEN IF THEY DO REPENT which a psychopath will never do though they may mouth the platitudes of it. They don’t feel it. They won’t change their behavior in the long haul.
Someone saying I “made a mistake” and “I’m sorry” doesnt’ cut it. A mistake is when you add 2 and 2 and put 5 in the check book, a DELIBERATE is seeing another woman for two months. It is NOT a mistake. Ps commit “deliberates” and then try to pass them off as “mistakes” which were UN intentional…
Even if you do accidently make a mistake you are still responsible for the consequences, if you add your bank balance wrong by accident and over draw you still have to pay the bank. Telling them “I’m sorry” won’t cut it. You still have to pay.
Robbing a bank (a deliberate) won’t cut it when the cops haul you in and you say “I am really sorry, it was all just a mistake. so I will just go on home now and I promise not to do it again.” You are still going to have to do the time and the consequences.
Yet we (victims) “forgive” them time and time again for deliberates and hope that they will change without consequences.
Unfortunately, with Ps even consequences do not make them change their behavior. They rationalize that getting caught was not their fault, and that next time they will be smarter and not get caught…My own P son has been incarcerateed multiple times and he still has not caught on that it was HIS fault that he went to prison in the first place.
In an effort to keep him from totally ruining his life, I turned my son in to the police when I caught him stealing and robbing, and to this day he is convinced that it is MY fault that after he got out of prison the 3rd time and then killed a bgirl that if I had not turned him into the police when he was 17, he would not be in prison today. DUH—
My take on it is that if he had learned that there were consequences to grand theft when he went to jail for 2 days when he was 17, he might not have killed that girl when he was 20.
He decided at about age 15 that NO one would “control” him, and that whatever the consequences were he would rebel. He has succeeded in part, but the prison system thank God keeps him inside, and I hope will til he dies of old age. If not, he will kill again. He hates me so much that even if he knew he would be executed, he would get out and come after me. It would be worth it to him to “show me” that I couldn’t control him.
Thank you very much! I truly appreciate the support.
To OxDrover:
I am so glad to hear from another parent of a psychopath. I went through 30 years of hell with my only child, thinking I was a bad parent, putting him through counseling and rehab, bailing him out of jail, etc., etc.
He was very intelligent and handsome which opened a lot of doors for him, but he kept ruining his life and hurting the ones who loved him the most. He broke his back in an illegal car race, shot himself in the head during a “Russian Roulette” game, stole cars, overdosed on drugs, etc. before he was even 18!
When he got out of prison a couple of years ago, he met the sweetest, most loving nurse, and married her. She knew about his past, but as a caregiver, she felt she could help him turn his life around. I prayed everyday for their success. Instead, he drained her financially, emotionally, caused her to loose her RN license, pushed her to attempt suicide, then left her for another woman, all within 6 months!
Her and I became good friends and neither of us have had contact with my son for a year and a half and hopefully never will again.
I didn’t realize what my son was until I found the Lovefraud site. I don’t know if anything can be done to change him, but I can’t let him ruin my life anymore no matter how much I love him.
Thanks for your help.
Sadmom
I find it funny how you use cats as your predator for this example. I often time see myself relating to cats. I also seem to be a magnet for cats. They instantly have a liking towards me, even the cats that are supposedly shy have no problems with me. Maybe they recognize a bit of them selfs in me.
Cheers,
When I was with my ex N, I used to tell friends that he is like a cat. When he approaches and you put your hand down to feed him, he backs off, then comes near again and the same thing and it is very frustrating and then when you ignore him, he is there. My intuition was firing on all cylinders at that time.
Mr. Green, I could imagine you as a big green furry tabby cat!
Dear Sadmom,
I know the paiin of admitting that our sons are monsters without normal “human souls”–aliens from another planet without the things that make us “human.” They only LOOK human, and from time to time SOUND human.
I also feel great sorrow for his x-wife and I am glad that you two have each other to support each other for healing.
The thing I have found about the MANY full blown sociopaths in my life is that it doesn’t matter if it is my biological father (a full blown monster) my mother’s brother (another man who shoujld have spent life without parole for his criminally violent physical and emotional abuse of all 3 of his children and his x-wife) or my narcissistic enabling mother who protected the males in the family from the consequences of their actions no matter how horrible.
I don’t know what your religious beliefs are, but read the story of King David and his son Absalom in the Bible, in the book of Samuel. David’s son Absalom was a psychopath and narcissist, and David was an enabler who grieved for this young man even after the younger man (who was no teenager at the time) went to war against David and tried to take the kingdom away from david. Absalom lost the war and died in the process, but David went into a terrible grief and mourning about his son’s death. David’s geneal came to him as he mourneed in sack cloth and ashes, screaming his grief aloud, and said “I perceive that if the young man had lived and we (the entire country) had died that you would have been well pleased.” David immediately saw the truth of this and stopped his grieving (at least publicly) and went and thanked the people who had fought for him, and sacrificed their own sons to his army to defeat Absalom. Even if you are not a Christian, this story is such a good example of how the Ps manipulate us and our hearts and our love and how we have enabled them in the vain and malignant hope that we can change them.
My son is 37 years old in March 2008, had has been in prison for all but about 12 months since he was 17. He is currently serving “life” for a cold blooded murder of whihc he is quite PROUD that it was a crime “more horrible than the cops even know” (he told me this, and I also have it in a letter he wrote to someone else.) His latest attackk was to try to have me murdered, and possibly other members of our family, because I had cut him out of my will and he knew that if my mom died before I did that I would inherit (I am her only chld and he and his brother her only grandsons) from her and cut him out completely from her property as well.
Fortunately, I wasn’t born yesterday and managed to find out what his plan was because his partner in this crime made some big boo-boos and ended up back in prison (at least for a while longer) This Trojan Horse Psychopath is professionally diagnosed as a psychopath and is also a sex offender, who molested a 9 yr old, an 11 yr old, and a 14 yr old—totally without remorse. He was a felon in possession of a fire arm and arrested for this crime and put in prison this past august. (He tried to kill my other son, the P’s brother) when he couldn’t get to me (I had literally gone into hiding when Iknew I was in danger–so I can definitely relate to King David’s plight with having to hide out from his P son.)
I am now totally NC with my mother and her enabling of my P-son (even after the murder plot was revealed and the Trojan HOrse P was in prison, she continued to send money to my P son in prison because I was “persecuting” him) DUH!
The Ps all seem to have their enablers that try to “fix” them or to “comfort” them, and those people seem to be pretty hard core as well. My mother was so enraged with me for “persecuting” her P-grandson (the GOLDEN CHILD) that I think if she could have killed me and gotten away with it she would have.
My other biiological son C has told her that if she lies again and/or sends money to the P son, that he will also go NC with her for life and since I am her only child and am NC, and my two biological sons are her only other lilving relatives, she is in a pickle. Neither I nor my son C trust her any further than we can throw her. (And it has been a very diffiicult healing process to realize that my own mother would have been “well pleased” if I was dead even byhis hand or plan, but my P son got out of prison before she died)
We all want the best for our children and want to think the best for them. To give them “another chance” to “go straight”–and God knows that my son has had more than his share of chances, but I realize that all I have done for him has been noting more than ENABLING him over and over again, out of my own malignant hope for him. He is bright and charming if he wants to be but totally without conscience.
Looking back it is almost impossible to understand why I did what I did to help him, to give him another chance, to allow my mother to enable him as well, and to fail to see how WRONG we were to do that….but at the same time, I have had to forgive myself for these actions, however bad they were or however horrible the consequences that they eventually had.
I have been NC with P son since January 2007, and at first it was so difficult because I was so angry with him and with myself, that I wanted to “tell him off but good” and I realized I couldn’t. Now I no longer have any desire to tell him off or to “get him to see” because he won’t see, maybe can’t see.
I will be at his every parole hearing, even if I am dead, I will go by DVD to ask them to NEVER LET HIM OUT OF PRISON again. He is in prison in Texas and I think that my appearance (dead or alive) will keep him in prison. If he does get out and I am alive, or his brothrs are alive, we will have to go into hiding, because he would jump parole and come after us, without a doubt. He is so raged filled at us for “spoiling” his life. It has never occured to him that HE spoiled his life by crime and murder. Laws and rules don’t apply to him. He thinks that by virtue of the fact that I gave birth to him that he is entitled to everything I have worked for my entire life. If I don’t willingly give it to him, then he is entitled to take it from me by murdering me. Talk about entitlement!
My mother’s idea of “forgiveness’ is to “pretend that none of this happened.” then go back to the status quo. I have done this for too many years and will not reengage with any of it. I am committed to living a drama free life, a crisis free life. To root out any of the Ps that I encounter who ever they are, and their “troops” of enablers as well. Since we have a very small family and I have no siblings, this limits me to my son C and my adopted son D, and one first cousin. But if it ended up I was by myself alone, it would be worth it to live in PEACE without the Ps in my life—on a “desert island” if that was the only safe and happy place to live.
Taking responsibility for the part I played in this by not setting appropriate boundaries was difficult–“I was only trying to help”—but it was cultural and aslo the “way I was raised” by my enabling mother. But it was my actions, my responsibility, and I have borne the consequences of those actions or failures to act.
“Losing a child” to death or separtion is difficult, but at the same time, I almost fee that my “real son” died at about age 12 or so, and the MAN who is inside his body (like a sci-fi alien who assumes the idenity and likeness of a human) is NOT my “son” that Iloved. I finally closed the casket lid on my grief for the loss of such a promising child, who no longer is alive. The stalking monster that resembles him is not someone I love, or want contact with. Or rent “space in my head” to.
Physical NC has finally led to EMOTIONAL NC as well. There will always be a sadness about it, but it is not the FOCUS of my life any more. The chaos and pain are gone, replaced by acceptence and peace. My heart goes out to you and his x wife, and my prayers are for the healing and peace of every person who has been a victim of one of these predators. God bless you.