Many people commenting on this blog have expressed the hope that sociopaths/psychopaths will pay in this lifetime for their evil deeds. Well, I am writing to tell you that if this is your wish, statistics are in your favor. You likely just need to wait it out because psychopathy is associated with life failure, as I will explain.
In a recent study, Psychopathic personality traits and life-success, Dr. Simone Ullrich and colleagues examined relationship success and life success in more than 300 men, they have followed for many years, these men are now 48 years old. In their study, psychopathy was not associated with success in any of life’s domains. When they examined symptoms of psychopathy the interpersonal domain (being charming and manipulative) was not related to ”˜”˜status and wealth” or ”˜”˜successful intimate relationships”. Impulsiveness and antisocial behavior reduced ”˜”˜status and wealth.” The authors state “ It is concluded that psychopathic traits do not contribute to a successful life and that the findings cast doubt on the existence of the successful psychopath.”
You may be asking, What about all the “successful psychopaths” we hear about? First of all, I believe that these are a very tiny minority. Remember that the disorder sociopathy or psychopathy is a group of impairments that I relate to an inability to love, poor impulse control and deficient moral reasoning. Confusion arises because some narcissistic individuals have impaired ability to love accompanied by grandiosity, but their impulse control and moral reasoning are not as impaired. These individuals may achieve some life success (Journal of Personality Disorders, Vol 21(6), Dec 2007. pp. 657-663). So if a person is unable to love and grandiose but not excessively impulsive or immoral, that individual may achieve some career success. But still an inability to love prevents any real relationship success.
So now you can move on. Fate and Karma will get that psychopath/sociopath. You can go about your life working as I do, on trying to love more and live better.
new wv –
we’ll be there tomorrow. no need to prepare, we’re easy guests to handle…
we’ll have you up for skiing and sledding in the winter.
fyi on mind control/manipulation from Kathy Krajco:
The way narcissists (and psychopaths) interact with others makes them extremely potent manipulators. How potent? So potent that their powers of manipulation are spooky and seem downright magical.
How does the way they interact with others make them such expert manipulators?
Because practice makes perfect, and they have been practicing the art of manipulation in every interaction since birth.
Indeed, in playing to the mirror of your face, that’s what they’re doing, isn’t it?
Manipulating you. Everything they say and do is entirely for effect, to get the reaction they want from you. That IS manipulation.
They’re regulating, manipulating your reactions. But you aren’t like them. Your reactions come from within.
So, what are they ultimately regulating and manipulating? Your thoughts. Manipulation is mind control.
Manipulation is a subtle thing. So subtle that we are usually unaware of being manipulated, unless the manipulator blows it and breaks the spell.
So, manipulators are putting thoughts into our heads that we think are ours. A very dangerous thing.
Since a narcissist isn’t acting on normal human premises, since all he is doing is playing you for the reaction he wants, truth is irrelevant.
Truth or lies it’s all the same to him. Whichever works. Usually that’s lies.
It would be more correct to say that there is no such thing as truth to a narcissist. Because there is no such thing as truth when playing Pretend.
That’s why narcissists and psychopaths beat lie detector tests. (In fact, so do many people from “shame” cultures where lying to save face of oneself, one’s family, one’s tribe, and one’s religion is considered morally necessary and expected.)
Psychopaths are known to get so good at manipulating people that, by the time they’re teenagers, they routinely fool and manipulate mental healthcare professionals, judges, prison officials, parole boards, and social workers who know they are psychopaths, are on the lookout for attempts to manipulate them, and should be immune to manipulation.
It isn’t a matter of intelligence: it’s a matter of practice, experience.
This is because most of what transpires in interaction happens too quickly to think it through.
In playing to the mirror of your face, the narcissist receives a steady stream of your feedback to the steady stream of words and body language he sends.
He continuously reacts to every nuance of it in “real time,” if you will. A sideways glance from you might make him alter his choice for the next word in the sentence he is saying. Or his facial expression or tone of voice.
Or it might make him take a step closer to you.
So, no matter how cunning a manipulator is, he isn’t consciously analyzing your every slight reaction and fine-tuning his act to it.
I say that because he can’t be. That would be impossible, because no one could think that fast.
He must be relying on a lifetime of experience at this game, reacting habitually in certain ways to certain things he observes in you on the fly.
In other words, this manipulation must be rather like the act of hitting a forehand in tennis.
You cannot consciously think your way through the stroke. Too many things are happening too fast.
In fact, you will botch your stroke and be lucky to even connect with the ball if you try to consciously think your way through with “Watch the ball … bend your knees … keep your arm straight … keep your head still … step into the shot … et ad infinitum.” Well, that’s exaggerating a bit, because there are only about 100 instructions I could list for hitting a forehand 😉
You can’t think that fast. No one can. So, you must practice that stroke enough under varying conditions to program the unconscious centers of the brain to execute it virtually automatically.
When you net your shot or hit it out (provided you note how far off the shot was), your “program” is revised to get the bug out.
This phenomenon is called Natural Learning. It’s how we learn to walk and talk.
That “program” isn’t just a fixed set of muscle commands from the brain. It’s an interactive program like a computer program.
Because no two forehands are the same. Yet the more you practice, the better your forehand program, and the more effectively it faithfully produces a good forehand under widely varying conditions.
You have only to make the major decisions, such as where and how to hit the ball: speed, spin, and placement. But Natural Learning is so powerful that even tactical decisions become virtually automatic in advanced players.
Hence the best players in the world do very little conscious thinking while the ball’s in play.
The power of Natural Learning is also illustrated by comparing experienced drivers with young drivers.
Young drivers have no experience, so they must think their way through problems. Result? Crash. But with the same problem an experienced driver has no problem.
He or she spontaneously makes an intuitive, instinctive move faster than the speed of thought. Result? No crash.
When playing to the mirror of your face, that must be what a narcissist is mostly doing relying on a lifetime of experience that allows him to react instinctively to every bit of feedback he gets from you.
That’s how he fine-tunes your reactions into the feedback he wants. Rather like turning the knobs on a short-wave radio.
This is manipulation. And it’s occurring faster than the speed of thought, because a narcissist has had so much constant practice at drawing the look he wants that most of his “moves” are virtually automatic.
This is why, I think, narcissists seem like machines with their knee-jerk reactions to things.
But those reactions aren’t knee-jerk reflexes: they are learned through experience to the point that they become habitual as second nature.
This is also why, I think, we tend to overestimate the intelligence of narcissists, psychopaths, con artists, and other manipulators like dictators who con their way to power. We think they must be brilliant to be so manipulative.
But even a stupid narcissist I knew was extremely manipulative. Their skill is the fruit of constant practice at manipulation in every human interaction.
But it doesn’t pay to underestimate them, either. That same practice makes them extremely observant and perceptive. Over time that will improve their intelligence, at least some aspects of it.
In fact, they are much more observant and perceptive than they seem. That’s because all they’re interested in is what they can use.
So, though they block out much, what they do choose to see, they see very well. They are interested in your reactions, not you. So, they probably are more aware of how you react to things than you are.
But the only information about you they’re interested in is what that can use to exploit you. The rest they filter out of consciousness = forget.
So, never think that you are too smart to be manipulated by a narcissist, psychopath, or con artist. You aren’t. And you surely can never beat one at his own game.
That’s nothing to be ashamed of. It just means that you are an innocent who hasn’t spent his or her whole life practicing the black art. So, you won’t win that game.
Dear Lilygirl,
Thank you for that post, it is so right on Kathy was definitely pretty sharp, and very intuitive as well. Her descriptions of the Ns and Ps is right on.
The one thing though that gives me HOPE about having dealt with so many Ps in my life time is that ALL of them drop the mask from time to time. There is a red flag that waves, and MY OWN INTITION picks up on these. I had been TRAINED to ignore these “gut feelings” that WARNED me about the predatory intentions of the Ps, but I will NEVER IGNORE MY GUT AGAIN.
I’m like the rabbit that almost got caught by the fox because he ignored his intuition that the birds getting quiet meant there was a predator around. I will be more observant. I will be more in tune with my environment and all the signals that it gives me. I will look for warning signs. I won’t live in terror, but I will not live in ignorant bliss either.
I will not go skipping through the forest thinking that foxes are just a “myth” made up by my family to “scare me” like the boggie man when I was little. Yes, I accept that foxes are real, I accept that foxes can harm me, and yes, I accept that I must be vigilent and observant so the fox doesn’t catch me. And, just because it looks like a rabbit, doesn’t mean it isn’t a fox in disguise, so if it behaves like a fox, I will assume it is a fox and RUN for my life!
I just finished reading When Bad Things Happen to Good People, and throughout it, I thought, Kathy Krajco must have read this at some time in her life.
I highly recommend it to all of us here. It is a true comfort. And it goes right in the face of Karma and bad people get punished.
If we suffer a hardship as devastating as this one we are enduring, doesn’t that then mean that Karma got us, or that we are bad people?
That’s why the beginning of this thread bothered me. If the psychopath gets punshed in the end with a pathetic unfulfilled life, well I gotta tell you, I feel pretty pathetic and unfulfilled right now. Does that mean I’m a psychopath?
This book talks about how random life is. And how God isn’t up there keeping score. I don’t even think he keeps score for heaven and hell.
The book reminded me of the God I used to know. A loving, helpful God. Through this hell I’ve been in, I was pretty pissed at him, for ignoring how “good” I am and how “bad” the creep is.
Long ago I lived not knowing about foxes in disguise, and trusting that if I was good then I was safe from disaster. I believed that if I was good and obedient I would get the prize (something the creep relied on to control me).
Disaster after disaster has hit me.
But that isn’t how it works at all. There are foxes in disguise, and the world is not this orderly place that is controlled by the fair hand of God.
The only thing God is doing for me these days is helping me find the strength –
by guiding me here to you,
by providing people who are coming into my life with support,
by giving my son and I new things to experience,
by sending in my sweet dog to lie at my feet
and for giving me the gift of resilence –
to know I can get through this.
I am teaching my son lessons that my parents didn’t teach me. I have learned not to do to him what they did to me.
I am teaching him lessons about his gut and that God has provided a way for him to always know what to do – and that his gut is with him always, even when his mom isn’t there to help.
I never had enough faith in my gut. I do now. I hope he will follow my example and believe in his gut. That will be a good thing happening to a good person.
oh – and one more thing, the author Kushner says:
Instead of asking ‘Why did this happen to me?’ begin asking
yourself
‘Now that I know this has happened to me, what am
I going to do about it?’
We don’t need to love or live better than we already are to deserve good things in our lives. It just doesn’t work that way.
Who we are right now is good enough. We did nothing to deserve this, to bring this on, we didn’t fall short, we didn’t love too little or too much or live bad or live good.
We got hurt because a predator hurt us. It is the predator’s doing, not ours. The predator will not suffer because he hurt us, just like a lion is not punished with bad luck for eating a gazelle.
We just have to learn to listen to OxD’s birds and get away when there is no happy chirping…and we must never let a predator seperate us from our herd.
so lily in that book, is there justice regarding these evil creatures…since life is so random from the authors view
Dear Lilygirl,
I’ll tell you a little “story” I heard once about God’s helping us. A woman was very poor during the depression and she didn’t have any food iin the house and she went to the preacher and he didn’t have any either so he told her to just go home and Pray and hopefully God would help her find food. So a few days later the preacher asked her if she had prayed and what happened.
She said, Oh, yes, I prayed and prayed.
The minister asked her if God provided her food and answered her prayers, and she said “OH, NO, He didn’t answer my prayers, if the neighbors hadn’t brought in food we would have STARVED!”
Sometimes God helps us in the guise of the “neighbors” and Jesus said “if you give a cup of water in my name, it is giving it to ME” (paraphrased)
There are lots of God’s Angels walking this earth, in the bodies of your neighbors and your friends, and others you don’t even know. There are also lots of “Satan’s Angels” on this earth as well, doing Satan’s bidding–in the guise of psychopoaths—we just need to appreciate the Angels of God and to AVOID and recognize the “angels of the devil” (psychopaths) and AVOID them. Just as Satan is the “father of all liars” and we already know that ALL psychopaths are liars, then it follows that they too are like their “daddy”—
There are lots of ways that the rabbit or the other helpless animals know that there is a predator around, and their instincts help them survive. We, because we no longer have to be watchful for animal predators or other tribes sneaking through the forest to take away our food or our lives or capture us for slaves have let our instincts lie dormant or we have brushed them aside when they warn us that “something is not right in this situation”—but now WE KNOW the signs of the predator, he may “look human” but we know it is only a disguise and that he will hide behind his MASK but still there is some indication, few if any are 100% perfect in their disguises. The more we learn, the more confidence we get, the more confident we are and the more experience we have we become better able to detect the pseudo-human behind the mask.
The Bible tells us that the rain falls on both the “just and the unjust” however, I do believe that “all things work together for good to those that Love the Lord.” So there is some GOOD in all of this pain, if nothing more than a lesson we needed to learn to keep us safe from future predators. I admit that my “lessons” in the school of hard knocks have been very painful, but you know, I think I wont have to repeat this grade again, I THINK I HAVE GOTTEN IT THIS TIME! LOL
great post oxy!!!!
Rats, I just wrote a long post and the power flickered and it’s gone…maybe it is God keeping me from posting this ;o)
Seriously folks, remember a few days ago I was feeling all bristly? With my porcupine coat? I don’t think I need it today.
Here’s why I think that happened.
As long as I was hell bent on revenge on this horrible creep who nearly drove me to suicide, he still had his hold on me.
What was making me so snappy was that he had not only projected his hatred, his evil and his quest for revenge on the world onto me – he put it INTO ME.
I had bile in my heart. Black, putrid bile. I wanted revenge, like Captain Ahab, I was consumed. I couldn’t let go.
While he is off dancing in the moonlight and I am here grumbling, complaining, snapping at all who comes near. No one then, comes near. I am alone.
Hey – wait a minute! That used to be me dancing in the moonlight and he was the growling one. What happened??
What happened is that he convinced me that my way of living was the reason my life was going so bad.
Hey – if I just did it HIS way, the way HE said, I could be living the great, charmed life too.
If I am to think that psychopaths are eventually punished with a pathetic and unfulfilled life, then when I look at my life, it feels pretty pathetic and unfulfilled – does that mean I am a psychopath who is getting what I deserve?
If a bad thing happens to me, does it mean that God is getting me back for stealing a pack of gum in high school?
If my child gets sick and dies, is it punishment from God for having premarital sex? For being divorced? For not going to church?
Reading this book reminded me that planes don’t crash full of only bad people. Good people die on them too. People who had unfinished business. Who didn’t deserve it.
Brain tumors don’t only grow on bad people. They grow on the brains of little children.
That God is not up there keeping score on his computer – who dies today as punishment for their sins and who lives today because of their goodness?
What comfort is that to the parents who have just learned their child will die a horribly painful death over years and years?
Can we tell these parents that if they had just lived better, loved better, that this wouldn’t have happened to their child?
I couldn’t.
What those parents need is to know they will not be abandoned in their hour of need. That their suffering and the suffering of their child – while no one can prevent it – will not be in vain.
That God did not impose this suffering on them, but He is with them as they endure it, and will provide the strength they need to survive it.
The child too, needs to pray and know that God is with him, even at night in the hospital when his parents aren’t there.
That he is not alone.
The book reinforces that notion. The author says he remembers when the death of God theology was a fad. He said he remembers bumper stickers that said “My God is not dead. Sorry about yours.”
He said he wishes he had a bumper sticker that said “My God is not cruel. Sorry about yours.”
Here is a little story from the book:
“The flood that devasttes a town is not an ‘act of God’ even if the insurance companies find it useful to call it that.
But the efforts people make to save lives, risking their own lives for a person who might be a total stranger to them, and the determination to rebuild their community after te flood waters have receded, do qualify as acts of God.”
It is not what happens to us, it is how we handle what happens to us, and God helps us with that.
Once I let go of my rageful demand for revenge, the bile in my heart has drained.
I will meet this challenge by reaching out to people in very small ways, and lending a small hand up in their lives.
I refuse to let this creep destroy me and my goodness. I will not dedicate my life to a quest for revenge on him. That keeps me focused exactly where he wants me = on him.
How on earth can someone move on then? Exactly. They can’t. He still has control and power.
Until we give up that notion that God is up there keeping score and wasting our prayers on the creeps of the world, we will not know peace.
A long time ago, if a woman was raped, no one took her seriously. They put the crime on her, maybe she was dressed wrong, or sent the wrong signals…maybe she wanted it…
Remember that thinking?
Like she had some control over a violation of her body. The FIRST place people looked was at her. If she made an accusation, she was publicly humiliated as her entire private life was put on trial.
If she didn’t press charges, well then she probably liked it – Right?
Wrong.
Same thing here. We did nothing to provoke this attack on us, this violation of our lives, of our thinking, of our souls and hearts. We have been raped.
We didn’t ask for it. We didn’t give off the wrong signals. We didn’t protect ourselves because we were unaware that we were under attack until the crime was in full progress.
Even then, no one believed us. We told people we were being “raped” but really, who believed us? Our friends would twist up their faces like we were speaking a foreign language.
We had no part in this crime against us. And I sincerely believe that for me, understanding that has been crucial to my survival.
But again – and I will repeat the questions from the book –
We should not ask why this happened to us, but we should ask ourselves now that we know it happened to us, what will we do now?
Stop looking over at the creeps and wondering if they are suffering. What if they never, ever do? How much time will you lose from your life focused on them.
I sincerely believe that God has better things to do with his time than to deal with wastes of human flesh as these monsters. He is too busy cleaning up the messes they’ve made of good people like us.
And one more thing – are we really to believe that if some horrible thing did befall the creep –
–that we would hear nothing about it?
Nope. The news would travel to us like wildfire. We don’t need to be standing, waiting to hear it as though we would miss it.
But my wish for all of us is that when we do hear of the creep’s tragedy, we meet it with a shrug of our shoulders and a ‘Oh? That’s too bad.’
And without batting an eyelash, we go on chatting with a good friend over a non-fat latte.
Now that’s what I call revenge.