Researchers search for “successful psychopaths”

I have to be brief – I have about 10 minutes –

Lundy Bancroft writes about control in his book WHY DOES HE DO THAT – and after I read it about two years ago, I found myself again and again and again referring back to it in my mind to help me get through this and eventually get away.

I highly recommend it (Henry, he even talks about gay relationships in it) Please everyone – read that book. It may save you many hours of pain and maybe even your life. It did that for me.

Anyway, I don’t buy the codependent thinking – WE ARE NOT RESPONSIBLE for the abusers behavior in any way shape or form.

As Bancroft says “Abused women are not codependent, it is the abusers – not the victims who have the problem.”

As long as we keep buying into this codependent crap (and I’m sorry, but that is how I think of it) we will continue to think that we can change our behavior in some way that will make an impact on our abuser and eventually lessen the abuse so we will be able to stay with the person we love.

VERY VERY DANGEROUS THINKING.

It was that way of thinking that kept me hooked. If I changed my behavior, that I would somehow be able to stop the abuse.

NEVER EVER WILL HAPPEN.

Keep the focus where it belongs – on the abuser. It is the abusers fault and not ours that we have been abused.

We had no idea when we fell in love that this was an abusive person – why we even saw so much good in them! They were nice to us sometimes. They bought us gifts and cried and held our hands and had passion in bed.

The abusive person can be both, the good parts they show keep us hooked. It is part of the cycle. The honeymoon hooks us – if they came out and stole our money, drove us to suicide or cheated on us in the first few weeks of the relationship – hell! we’d be gone in a flash.

We were deceived. Our minds work perfectly well. We know a bad person when we see one. We don’t invite abuse. We don’t like it.

In fact, we have done everything we can to stop it. The thing we can’t understand – as long as we believe we play a part in it by our CODEPENDENCY – is that it cannot be stopped.

When we can believe in our hearts that the next boyfriend or girlfriend will not find the magic key and open the treasure chest and get what we were promised – we can let go.

It is thinking that there is a way to get through to this person and we just aren’t adept enough to find it is what destroys us.

We are failures then, and we sincerely convince ourselves that someone else will come along and love this abuser “better” and have the life we wanted with him.

Crap. I promise. It is total crap.

Kathy Krajco also taught me a lot about this. Lundy doesn’t post his writings on line so in the interest of time, I’ll copy and paste what Kathy says. I think it is extremely dead on:

From Krajco:

Conventional wisdom says that many ask Must I leave him? because they are “codependent” or “inverted narcissists.” That is a fancy way of saying that they are gluttons for punishment, that they get some masochistic pleasure out of being abused. The line is that they seek out narcissistic mates. In other words, they are mentally ill themselves.

There is such a thing as the “martyr complex.”

But it doesn’t apply to an abusive relationship with a narcissist. A person with a martyr complex isn’t really abused and doesn’t seek real abuse. He or she likes to imagine themselves abused and portray themselves as abused. There’s a big difference between that and seeking real abuse!

Yet the victims of narcissists are relentlessly re-victimized (for the sin of having been victimized) by this irrationale for blaming the victim called “codependence.”

Not only is it unresearched psychobabble masquerading as science, but by now, everyone should know that any explanation that blames the victim should be viewed with healthy skepticism. Why? Because it is anti-logical.

Remember that society used to blame the victim for rape, racism, and every other form of abuse.

Different forms of blaming the victim pass in and out of vogue, but blaming the victim is as old as the Bible (illness or misfortune was punishment for sin) and goes on forever. It starts in the schoolyard and continues in the workplace.

Every time the big guy hits on a little one, everyone agrees that the little guy “asked for it.” Nobody ever asks, “Now why would he do that?”

For, they readily believe that the little guy is so stupid or crazy as to have poked his finger into that big guy’s eye. But if you try to say that the big guy just attacked without being provoked, they never fail to skeptically ask, “Now why would he do that?” See the double standard?

Some things never change: anything to blame the victim. Anything.

Here’s how this codependency “theory” (pseudoscience) goes:

If you have a relationship with a narcissist, your parents abused you as a child and you now subconsciously try to control your narcissist through cunning enabling behaviors to make him or her abuse you, too.

See “The Codependency Idea: When Caring Becomes a Disease,” by Robert Westermeyer, Ph.D.

This popular construct is shunned by research psychologists and behaviorally-oriented clinical psychologists particularly for it’s lack of empirical support.

The allure of codependency is demonstrated by the sales of books on the topic (the only resources on codependency come from self-help sections and fluffy journals).

Millions of codependency books have been sold over the past ten years. …codependent, or co-alcoholic, was originally defined in the late 1970s and early 1980s to help families and spouses of individuals with alcohol and drug problems. …

The idea was that the caring behavior manifested by family members and spouses actually “enabled” the addict to continue using. …Unfortunately, from the mid eighties to the present, the codependency idea has become bastardized, and with each new self-help book the symptoms of codependency mount.

It is literally impossible for anyone walking the planet, with a fourth grade English reading capacity, to finish one of these books and not consider the possibility that he or she is a codependent. …

Not only is all caring manifested by the spouse of an alcoholic deemed pathological, but the very act of compromising one’s needs to aid a loved one is now deemed symptomatic of a progressive disease processes, a relationship addiction.

I’ve read a fair amount of what the popular press has bequeathed upon us regarding the codependency idea.

The three books I scrutinized the most were the most popular. …Below is my understanding of these authors’ conceptualizations:

Codependency is a progressive disease brought about by child abuse, which takes the form of anything “less than nurturing.” Codependency is epidemic (maybe all of us are codependent) and defines a vast array of psychological and physical symptoms.

The caring manifested by codependents is an unconscious effort to keep repressed pain at bay, and the codependent actually contributes to the addictive behavior of their loved ones by enabling.

Enabling keeps the loved one addicted so the codependent can go on caring to gain a sense of self worth. Recovery from codependency requires drastic attitude and lifestyle change (Detachment) and a lifelong commitment to the 12-step regime.

Codependency is a nebulous idea, born not of science but of the gut feelings of counselors and frustrated lay people.

It’s black and white requirements for recovery, though seeming reasonable on the surface, are not in line with empirical research and have dangerous implications with regard to the most human of attributes, caring.

See also: Scott O. Lilienfeld, Ph.D., Scientific Review of Mental Health Practice

The past several decades have seen a virtual explosion in the use of controversial and poorly studied psychiatric labels, such as codependency, sexual addiction, road rage disorder, infanticide syndrome, parental alienation syndrome, premenstrual dysphoric disorder, and Munchausen’s syndrome (factitious disorder) by proxy (see Mart, this issue).

Although some of these labels may ultimately be shown to be predictively useful, many are of undemonstrated validity (McCann, Shindler, & Hammond, in press).

Nevertheless, such labels are commonly invoked by mental health professionals as scientific explanations of problematic behavior and are introduced by them into courts of law with increasing frequency.

In still other cases, there are serious concerns that some psychiatric conditions (e.g., dissociative identity disorder, known formerly as multiple personality disorder) are being substantially overdiagnosed in certain settings.

Saying that a mate reluctant to leave a narcissist is codependent ignores the countless ways that normal people can end up in a crucible, through no fault of their own.

For example, much of what we know about narcissism has come from families in which the poisoned fruit ripened during the last fifteen-to-twenty years.

These families were formed after World War II, when there was a shortage of men, and women alone could not support themselves. Doubtless, many women settled for husbands they would not settle for in today’s world.

Divorce was both financially unfeasible and taboo. Also, if a woman has a narcissistic father, she has no way of knowing that all men are not like that.

She has been raised to view his dissatisfaction with her as her fault and to put up with being treated as inferior. She also has feelings abused from early childhood. Bruised feelings.

So they are more sensitive than most people’s feelings. Narcissists target women like this as easy prey because their self-esteem is easy to puncture.

Narcissists need not be exceptionally intelligent, but they are exceptionally experienced, because they have been playing this game since childhood. So they are diabolical. Therefore, unless a narcissist is manifestly brilliant, he is bound to be underestimated and thought incapable of cunning and duplicity.

It is amazing how little suspicion he arouses as he goes to great lengths weaving a web that traps a mate by isolating her from other people and making her financially, socially, and emotionally dependent on him. Then suddenly the honeymoon is over.

Plus, there is such a thing as the cycle of abuse.

MORE FROM KRAJCO:

THE CYCLE OF ABUSE

In my own little slice of the world, this is what I have observed and learned from other victims: there is a cycle of abuse that does manipulate the victim into behaving in ways that seem strange to outside observers as if they are “asking for it.”

And since people love to blame the victim (it’s a kind of “whistling in the dark” to assure themselves that no abuser will ever sic on a strong person like themselves), they leap to the conclusion that this is so, that the victim is “asking for it.” But in the cases I know of, it never was.

In fact, this behavior is the reaction of normal people to abuse. Many perfectly normal people get trapped in the cycle of abuse. The victims of narcissists behave exactly the way the victims of all torture and brainwashing do, exactly the way all hostages do.

We see it in the Stockholm Syndrome, named from an incident in which hostages took the side of their captors and clung to them! All hostages exhibit symptoms of the Stockholm syndrome. Since the Middle Ages, inquisitors and torturers (executioners) have known and capitalized on this bizarre phenomenon in the hapless victims at their mercy.

All the tortured cling to the torturer for dear life. Who else can they appeal to? Before you know it, the victim is offering him- or her-self to abuse in an effort to appease the tormentor! Yes!

It’s like throwing an attack dog a bone to save your leg = a desperate effort to offer the abuser anything anything he wants in hopes of reaching his cold, cold heart.

The Abominable Inquisition understood this phenomenon and deliberately exploited it to break the victim’s back with the unbearable shame the victim feels at being reduced to doing such a self-degrading thing.

But the KGB proved that you needn’t even lay a hand on the victim to reduce him or her to such an abject state of submission. It’s famed method of mentally breaking people deliberately accomplished the same thing (in about one month) to establish mind control.

Why do normal people do this under duress? What else can they do? You’re taking right-side-up people and putting them in a pervert’s upside-down world. You’re taking people acting on normal human premises and having those reactions play right into pervert’s perverted premises.

The abuser always makes the victim totally dependant on him before he starts abusing. So, what is the victim going to do? She has no choice but to try to soften a stone-cold heart. This is nothing but appeasement. The helpless have no other option.

We see this happening on a massive scale today in the bizarre efforts to appease the Islamofascist mobs and terrorists the world over.

“Don’t make them mad! Don’t think badly of them for what they do. Apologize for making them abuse us by making them mad at us. Blame ourselves for everything they do to us. Bend over for it with a smile. Suck up. Then maybe they will soften and like us and stop abusing us.”

Pass me the puke bucket, please.

The West has no excuse for such cowardly appeasement, because the West isn’t helpless. The western nations are just unwilling to stop squabbling among themselves, get real, and unite against a common enemy (a problem the West has had since the Fall of the Roman Empire).

But the victims of narcissists often are helpless.

And even when they aren’t, when they can and do try to fight back, some holier-than-thou comes along and says it’s a sin. Then the whole world gangs up and jumps on the victim’s back saying, “Yes, stop it. Stop fighting because that’s a sin.”

Who has a strong enough backbone to stand up under that? This merciless suppression of any effort at self-defense breaks the victim’s back. Then these same holier-than-thous turn around and say, “See? She just takes it. So, she likes it. She’s asking for it. She’s codependent.”

Perhaps they are the ones who need their heads examined, not the victim they thus play Catch-22 with.

How is she to take being “IT” in this game of “being damned if you do and damned if you don’t?” How does one wrap a sound mind around it? Is there anything more her spouse and society could gang up and do to drive her crazy? It is no wonder that this universal oppression depresses her.

Then we blame the victim for that too. Because God made women to smile all the time.

It is not natural for a person to take abuse. Our instincts prompt us to fight or flee. By “flee” I mean abandon the abuser, which usually means divorcing him. By “fight” I mean strike back to hurt the abuser so he has some reason not to abuse you again fear that you will bite back.

But society blocks this common sense in our genes by infesting our brains with a virus the stupid idea that divorce or fighting back is wrong. Especially when her abuser goes around putting on an Academy Award act of how hurt he is, and all the bystanders buy it to deck themselves out in their nicey-nice act.

Of course he’s hurting: the poor big baby doesn’t want to lose his combination punching bag and Mamma.

Yes, society is getting involved and on the wrong side. What choice does society leave the victim? She must choose whether to (a) be a bad person or (b) bend over for it.

Every person’s most precious possession is her self-concept the picture of herself she carries inside, the image of herself as a good person. People will do anything to preserve it. They would rather die than lose it or have it taken from them. So, she usually chooses to go against nature and be a good girl = put up with the abuse = keep turning the other cheek.

But it’s a Catch-22, for then we say she is a bad person anyway for thus “asking for it.” Now we say she’s codependent and has a martyr complex.

But I see no self-masochism in this victim, do you? I just see a normal human being in Catch-22.

What is Catch-22? It’s the English translation of the Italian phrase for the 22nd “malbowge” (“evil pouch/pocket”) of Nether Hell in Dante’s Inferno.

That’s the lowest pit of hell, the place where the treacherous, the traitors, get to experience their sin on the receiving end. It’s where Dante put Judas priests, the likes of people who invite a family to dinner and then lock them in a tower to starve to death, as well as Julius Caesar’s “friend” Brutus, and of course Judas Iscariot.

I think it was the prophet Ezekiel who got really sarcastic in rebuking those “from whom there is no peace” for thus pursuing her in this never-ending attack “crying, ‘Peace! Peace!'” So, her abuser tramples her and then the bystanders pile on. First by society’s taboos against fighting back and then by blaming the victim for docilely submitting to abuse.

When everyone gangs up on her like this, how can she not be overwhelmed by that tidal wave? What is she to do?

We know the answer. Instead of curing her by eliminating the cause, oppression, we drug her with Prozac.

And so the cycle of abuse rolls on. Like a steamroller. Over her most precious possession, her concept of herself as a good person.

The victim will feel shame for bending over for it, to the extent that he or she failed to resist as much as possible. So, the victim must never be condemned for fighting back.

But, come on, knuckling under to abuse isn’t the same as liking it and wanting it. Normal people may knuckle under. But only sick-in-the-head people could like it and ask for it. So, my hunch is that cases of codependence in narcissism are either rare or never occur.

But by mobbing the victim like everyone around her does:
· jumping on her for fighting back or wanting to leave him

· then jumping on her for just taking the abuse instead

· then jumping on her for being depressed

· jumping on her for complaining

· jumping on her for saying anything about it

· jumping on her for anything that doesn’t amount to acting like it ain’t happening

· by thus PERSECUTING her…

…the “nice” people around her often do what the narcissist couldn’t = break her back. I mean that morally. They demoralize her, making her what they say she is, mentally ill.

For that, their future home is Malbowge 22. (It’s very cold there. Very, very cold.)

And so, both the deliberate abuse of her mate and the ambient abuse of the phony bystanders often do mental damage. The resulting mental disorder is described by the Medieval legal and theological term “reduction to a state of victimhood,” because it was actually a judicial sentence executed so as to bring it about.

It was the ultimate punishment of an age that laid awake nights thinking of ways to make punishments worse.

But remember that a mental disorder is not a personality disorder. In fact, both individuals and society wound us all, and most people suffer from some mental disorder at some time in their lives. For the most part, those who do not make matters worse by abusing their minds with lies, live normal lives. They get over it or manage it on their own. Not so with personality disorders.

Since we don’t blame veterans for suffering post-traumatic stress, we shouldn’t blame the abused for suffering reduction to a state of victimhood.

PART 3 FROM KRAJCO:

Bad Reasons

There are also some bad reasons for sticking with a narcissist. Maybe he’s rich and she likes the lifestyle. There are mothers who, to keep their trophy mate, selfishly betray their children to abuse by him. More of them should go to jail for “failure to protect.”

Then there is the woman who sticks with a narcissist under the illusion that she can win his stupid game. Let’s call her the Game Player. (You can read about The Games People Play in the book of that title.)

This is how the game starts: She naturally reacts to the narcissist’s Wild Act by trying to put the brakes on him. She does this by drawing two red lines: one at adultery and one at physically beating her or the children. Her abuser comes to a screeching halt at them both. Oooh, power. She gets this power rush because she thinks she is controlling him. She likes it. It is a pain-killer for her battered ego. She wants more, because she has a score to settle. So, there’s something in it for her too. She tries to beat this control freak at his own game.

To justify playing the game for her own ego gratification, she doesn’t dare know that she has a serious problem. No Problem becomes her middle name. So she doesn’t dare be aware that his behavior is downright bizarre. Then she needn’t reveal to her parents, siblings, and friends that her husband is cracked. For, they would be abhorred at what goes on privately in that house and think she was a bad mother for not getting her kids out of there. They would not let her unsee the psychological scars he leaves on them.

The game’s the thing. She doesn’t take it seriously. He will not say he loves the children, will not show any affection for them, will not take any interest in them, and will not pay any attention (except negative attention) to them at all. Unless he is the type of narcissist who lives vicariously through a child he makes a tennis star of, he treats his children as though they don’t exist. In any case, they never achieve the status of persons with him. If they try to hijack his attention, he lashes out at them viciously for it.

Yet she expects them to grow up normal! She will even say, “Must I leave him? I want my children to grow up in a home with two parents!”

Well, lady, they are not now living in a home with two parents.

Her two red lines discourage him from doing anything that would leave evidence that could be discovered by the outside world. She rationalizes them as fulfilling her responsibility.

That’s absurd. Her red lines only ensure that what a monster he is will never be discovered by the outside world.

So, he gets to psychologically abuse everyone to his heart’s content. Narcissists prefer this more deeply wounding kind of abuse anyway. It destroys self-esteem more effectively than physical abuse. They usually are tempted to physical violence only when frustrated in their attempts to land moral blows…and when throwing a terror tantrum just to scare anyone standing up to them. So a narcissist is quite content in a crucible with a game player.

The poor kids have to take it, but Mother can play. And so she and her narcissistic mate manipulate each other like wrestlers locked in mortal combat for the rest of their lives. They hold another round of the same fight every day. He keeps pushing her button to start it. He does it in a Drive By. Then he leaves her to stew and to imagine himself the victim. She plays right into his hands by punishing him with the silent treatment, never learning why it doesn’t make her feel like the winner.

Everything is a power play. Like a narcissist, the more she loses, the more determined to win she gets. She never learns that one must be twisted to beat the twisted in the twisted game they play. No wonder she becomes narcissistic herself (though she does not suffer from NPD). No wonder she fails her kids.

If she asked the adult child of a narcissist for advice, he would urge her to get her children away from her husband. Not only are one or more them likely to suffer from NPD, but those who grow up normal will grow up sorely lacking in self-esteem and plagued by self doubt. Not something any responsible parent allows to happen to her children.

So, there are some of the reasons why intelligent, informed people ask, “Must I leave him?” Some of these reasons are quite understandable, and some are deplorable.

OxD,

When I look at you, I see you far up ahead on this road, waving to us all to catch up, cheering us on when we are beaten down and beaten up.

You are truly an inspiration.

Sometimes I feel powerful like you. Othertimes I feel like a piece of crap. I read what you write and feel deficient, inadequate if I am not able to be as strong as you.

For me it is not as easy for me to just decide to make stronger boundaries. To not tolerate it. If the abuser was just malicious to me, no problem.

But mine could be tender at times. Open and seemingly willing to heal. He sought therapy, it didn’t last, but he did take that step. He was honest with me about his maliciousness, and told me he wanted most of all in the world to change.

There was also another side to him, the dark one. We all know it.

I think the most different aspect between a family member as an abuser and a romantic relationship with an abuser is that in the romantic relationship we don’t have a long history to draw from.

We haven’t lived the past with that person. We kinda have to take their word for what happened for a while. He says he was burned by a former girlfriend and is now afraid to get close, commit. He is a master at weaving things to twist your mind.

And you want to believe him. In the beginning of the relationship, you are so in love, he is your dream come true. If he says that his past girlfriend didn’t appreciate him, well, you appreciate him.

If he says his last girlfriend only wanted him for his money, well, then you pay for dinner.

If he says he wants to change, well, you give him a chance.

These are normal, supportive actions that anyone would do for someone they love. We just don’t kick people to the curb when they seem to be hurting.

The malice part isn’t so evident in the beginning.

Bancroft says that an abused woman will leave her abuser multiple times before she finally is able to stay away for good. He never criticizes her for returning.

He stays supportive, and believes that eventually the woman will see for herself that it is time to leave permanently.

He urges people who want to support her to continue to say that you don’t like the way she is being treated, and be there for her but to never impose your way of doing something on her because that is exactly what her abuser is doing to her.

She then, never, ever feels correct in her actions. Right or wrong, they are her actions, and she needs to feel supported in her decisions for her self-esteem to grow strong enough to finally set those boundaries.

In a romantic relationship, it is a process, in my opinion. Only by going through the abuse cycle numerous times do things finally become clear.

When they do, we set our boundaries. The problem then, though, is that we have been so weakened by the abuse cycles, our thinking is not as clear as it should be.

We have been brainwashed, and the times he is kind to us intertwined with the episodes of abuse have actually bonded us to him – a process called traumatic bonding, or also, the stockholm syndrome.

Bancroft’s analogy is that when we are dying of thirst and someone offers us a drink of water, we are grateful to them.

The problem is, in a pathological relationship, the person depriving us of water and giving us a drink is the same person.

Krajco says when they are trained to receive a reward for a positive behavior – rats will keep trying to get the reward even though the reward has been replaced with a punishment.

We are programmed in life to seek pleasure and avoid pain. In nature, the same thing never does both.

Only in a relationship with an abuser does it happen – when something is sick and twisted. We get pleasure and pain from the very same source.

That is why, Kathy says, the rats keep trying. They keep pressing the lever, expecting a treat, but instead are shocked with electricity.

Still, they keep pressing the lever. Their brains have been conditioned to expect the reward, and although it’s all changed now, their brain will take time to process that the thing that rewarded them now punishes them.

They may never process it.

It has taken me a long time to understand myself and not come down on myself so hard for being so weak, and so stupid and so ‘codependent.’

I used to think I was worthless because I kept going back to him. I am still not sure I will be strong enough. I am afraid for myself. If I go back, I will feel sick and disgusted at myself just like if I went back and did heroin after four clean months.

What the hell is wrong with me? That’s what I used to ask. But now I understand that there are accepted mental processes that have happened to me that can be reversed, but have a logical explanation. Whew. Relief.

What has given me the strength to get away and stop trying is the pure understanding that the kind of person I am is just fine. I don’t need to change at all. I was and always will be who I am.

What happened to me could happen to anyone, I just happened to go into a cage with a tiger who pretended to be a kitten. I didn’t know until he almost ripped my throat open.

But for a while he may still look like a kitten to me.

Beverly –

Thanks for the sisterhood. I doubted myself SO much right up until I spoke with the cop and found out about the cat.

…What is wrong with me? Why can’t I get along with my neighbors? How could I call the police on kids? They’re just being kids? What on earth will the police think of me? Am I a bitter woman with nothing better to do but call the police on her neighbors? Get a life girl!

But seeing their “backwards reaction” (Kathy Krajco’s red flag) to my requests to stop hurting the rabbits triggered my radar. I couldn’t deny it.

So I called. And turns out I did the right thing. But geez, trusting my gut is so tough now, since the creep twisted my thinking.

Is black white or is white black? I don’t know anymore. I used to be so sure of myself – that is the quality he robbed from me.

But I took a baby step in support of my gut last night. It will probably get me an egged house, but I can’t be any other way.

I am what I am.

…the woman who stands up against psychopaths and has smashed eggs on her house. Could be worse I guess…