Editor’s note: Resource Perspectives features articles written by members of Lovefraud’s Professional Resources Guide.
Gary Cundiff is a marriage and family therapist based in San Diego, California
Through deception and mirroring, the sociopath exerts control
By Gary Cundiff, MFT
Gary Cundiff profile in the Lovefraud Professional Resources Guide
Having fallen victim to the very thing I had dedicated my life to protecting others from is my reason for writing. To warn others and feasibly aid some. The inevitable harm from interacting with a sociopath is definitive. For some, years have been spent recovering.
I am a mental health professional with years of experience and education, and yet I still was deceived. This encounter came close to ending my career, my life, my friendships and my marriage. However, God has been faithful in his grace, love and protection. The duration of the encounter was less than a year, from first attack to conclusion. Yet even very limited exposure to the pathological can cause serious damage. I hope to relate what I have learned regarding the sociopath’s and Satan’s schemes and to expose their mode of operation.
Why do some and not others fall prey to these predatory beings? My study of psychology led to a belief that sociopathy and other character disorders were developed primarily from childhood abuse and maltreatment. I do not intend to prove or disprove this theory. My intent is to describe my experience with evil, and how it functioned and found access to my life, the damage it did, and the effort it takes to repair.
Five phases
The sociopathic relationship involves five phases: Deception, dread, dependency, degradation, and discard. These steps might not encompass all the complex dynamics in the pathological encounter, but they serve as a basis for the victim.
The sociopath selects a target based on the victim’s best and most admirable qualities, with an explicit intent to exploit. Understanding that it was my best attributes that left me vulnerable helped enormously in the healing process.
If someone should judge you, you will know it. If someone tempts, criticizes or verbally attacks you, you will know it. But if someone deceives you, you will not know it, because the very nature of deception is to conceal. Many myths and stigmas are attached to being victimized, such as weakness, naïvete, mental dullness, or rebellion. These axioms are not, however, consistent with the census.
Targeting the best qualities
My personal experience in client/therapist relationships with hundreds of victims of the pathological encounters, over a course of 25 years, has shown me that the very qualities that made them vulnerable are the very qualities commonly held with the highest regard. The common characteristics of the victims I have known include: trust, compassion, forgiveness and generosity—the very attributes that Satan hates—making them natural targets for the sociopathic predator. People fall victim to the deceiver not because of weakness, but as a result of their strengths. Compassion is not a weakness; it is strength. The desire to love and to be loved is a natural human drive.
Whatever the precursors of victimization, the damage inflicted is the fault and responsibility of the one doing the deceiving and plundering.
Everyone becomes vulnerable at some moment in life, possibly as a result of sustained losses, or some crisis. There are many scenarios that may lead to vulnerability. Sociopaths do not discriminate regarding their prey: young, old, race, gender, rich or poor, with one possible exception—the hard-hearted, who are much less likely to show compassion or trust. There is no universal profile of a typical victim. There is only one distinction: the more sensitive and conscientious the victim is, the higher the probability of success. The abuser is always at fault; no one chooses to be harmed.
Exerting control
Sociopaths know if they can get you to accept a single lie, they then can exert some measure of control over you. No one lies better than the sociopaths. There was nothing about Satan’s approach that caused Eve to be suspicious or be seriously alarmed. His approach seemed innocuous, “Let’s have a conversation. I am spiritual too. I am like you.” Satan seldom comes as a dark angel. He doesn’t show up as a coiled snake. Temptation is never ugly, painful or bloody. He may very well come and say, “Let’s have a religious discussion, let’s talk theology. I know God too.”
Everything about the sociopath invites us in, says join me—the voice tone, smile, hypnotic stare—making them the most dangerous predator of all. All the posturing is done to create a false belief of interest and concern. The more pathological, the more rapid and intense the bonding.
Building the disguise
The disguise begins with studying you: your values, interests, beliefs, vision, goals, concerns, and any other information they can glean. From the trivial to the most significant, all is stored away for future use—testing and noting what pushes your buttons, what moves or excites you. Sociopaths are ardent students of human behavior, having spent much of their lives investigating the difference between themselves and the rest of the population.
Using each piece of information, they create the disguise—a mask carefully constructed to look like their prospective target. Flawlessly, they weave a canvas picture of their mark, a tapestry precisely reflecting the brightest, most honorable aspects of your personality, sewing in the most desirable and wanted details, literally stealing your persona, mirroring this image back, without the defects of character, flaws and shortcomings.
The pathological relationship is a one-dimensional interaction. You fall in love with yourself as presented by this reflecting object. The attraction is irresistible. People are attracted to those who are similar to themselves. By transforming themselves into a reflection of their prospective prey, the sociopath becomes the most alluring figure imaginable, and the propensity to trust that person becomes compelling, promising to meet whatever need or want may exist: friend, advisor, mentor, brother, mother, father. This personification is deception at its most radical level. It is interesting to remember that Eve was deceived before she ever sinned.
Empty shells
Sociopathy is one of the most extreme of the pathological disorders. They are empty shells, possessing nothing of value, no guiding principles, no shame, and no righteous principles. Therefore, this emulation of others for sustained periods of time is effortless: no conflict with their own beliefs or interests. They haven’t any, apart from their ruthless, selfish desire for domination.
This one-dimensional mirroring blurs and confuses the boundaries. You lose touch with where you end and where they should begin, creating an enmeshment that quickly suppresses any sign of personal autonomy. However, it is nothing more than an illusion. You experience a sense of oneness like none other. At the emotional center of this connection is intensity never felt before, making the appeal and apprehension addictive. My sociopath bragged of the capacity to leave people feeling extremely loved, describing her energy as a warm blanket of water flowing around them embracing and holding, while locating deep wounds and hurts for future reference, having a clear awareness of what she was doing.
Behind the mirage
The sociopath uses deliberate and premeditated deception. Since Satan himself appears as an angel of light, is it any less imaginable that his emissaries who serve him would be capable of resembling their master? Imitation is the purest form of flattery and the sociopath is an expert. The effects are intoxicating, like finding an oasis in a dry land—the nurturing and understanding you have longed for. You wish to believe, you succumb, and you give in. What could be more seductive than having all of your best attributes reflected back and praised?
But what exists behind this illusion is a savage, a brute beast, the incubus. They hide behind the mirage, assessing and evaluating your every weakness and strength. The sociopath who possesses the blackest heart may appear to be a person of eminent goodness, but one never bothered by shame, full of greed and deceit.
Jeremiah 6:15 refers to God’s punishment of such people. “They dress the wounds of people as though it were not serious. Peace, peace they say when there is no peace. Are they ashamed of their loathsome conduct? No, they have no shame at all: they do not even know how to blush. So they will fall among the fallen. They will be brought down when I punish them, says the Lord.” This passage is self-explanatory.
I loved this article. NEMO, your point is understandable and valid but each victim rationalizes differently. I thought at least all of us victims thought sociopaths were evil! The definition of evil is the intention or effect of causing harm or destruction, usually specificlly from the perception of deliberatly violating some moral code. This absolutely describes each and every sociopath and coincidently can be used to describe the devil. We have always heard to stay away from these people because they can not be helped and they will only cause the victim more harm. Fortunately, not everyone in the world falls victim to the sociopaths among us. Most victims simply failed to self protect! But I hoped we could at least recognize them as the soul-less or evil people they are.
Dear Sk,
Good for you! I am glad that you are feeling better.
I agree with you, Shojo!
Shojo,
That is an excellent description of evil, which is also used in most online dictionaries that I’ve seen.
Nemo, obviously the author’s perspective is from a Christian viewpoint. Even so, there are MANY survivors of spaths who are NOT religiously affiliated who label the sociopaths as “evil”.
Everyone has a “moral” code, even those that do NOT associate with Christianity, right? Sociopaths violate all moral codes, thus the emphasis, again, on EVIL.
How else would you describe the spaths sole function in that they destroy and harm others with intent?
I really don’t see any other way to label it quite as accurately as evil does
LL
Not only individuals or religious groups have CODES OF CONDUCT if you will, but cultures, societies, and countries. These are usually communicated either verbally and by modeling from parent to child and/or in a written form by laws.
Sanctions for disobeying or ignoring the LEGAL codes is punishment by government or law….if you rob a bank you will be tried and imprisoned if found guilty in this country. In some countries, you don’t get a trial, or you may have your hand or your head chopped off for robbing a bank.
In some countries you may be caned for breaking a law that may be BOTH the RELIGIOUS law AND the LEGAL law of the country.
In some countries the accepted legal and moral codes can be violated at will if you are rich, but are strictly enforced if you are poor.
What is “moral” and what is “legal” varies from society to society and culture to culture and religion to religion.
We say that a psychopath has no moral compass, that s/he has no conscience.
What IS A CONSCIENCE? How is it developed?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscience
Wiki defines conscience thus:
Conscience is an aptitude, faculty, intuition, or judgment of the intellect that distinguishes right from wrong. Moral evaluations of this type may reference values or norms (principles and rules). In psychological terms conscience is often described as leading to feelings of remorse when a human commits actions that go against his/her moral values, and to feelings of rectitude or integrity when actions conform to such norms.[1] The extent to which conscience informs moral judgment before an action and whether such moral judgments are, or should be, based wholly in reason has occasioned debate through much of the history of Western philosophy.[2]
About NON-religious views of conscience, Wiki says:
Thus, conscience can be viewed as an outcome of those biological drives that prompt humans to avoid provoking fear or contempt in others; being experienced as guilt and shame in differing ways from society to society, and person to person.[67] A requirement of conscience, under this approach, is the capacity to see ourselves from the point of view of another person.[68] Persons unable to do this (psychopaths, sociopaths, narcissists) therefore often act in ways which are “evil.”[69] A central requirement of this view of conscience is that humans consider some “other” as being in a social relationship.
Even the other great apes on the planet have developed a general set of “rules” by which to live and how to treat each other, though I am not sure if they have a “conscience” or not.
It’s funny but my dog seems to have a “conscience” because when he has “been bad” (as defined by my rules that he is aware of) he seems to show signs of remorse (fear?) and guilt.
What is “evil” or What is “good” varies from culture to culture, society, to society, and eon to eon. Each society, country or culture “validates” their set of “rules’ by various traditions, religions and laws as well as the customs passed from generation to generation.
A very religious Muslim man can WITH A CLEAR CONSCIENCE because it is accepted in his society and his religion, go to a woman and make her his “temporary wife” and have sex with her, and he has NOT violated the legal or moral rules of his society.
If a Man who was a Very Sincere Christian man did the same thing, his CONSCIENCE would NOT be “clear” because his religion and his society and his moral compass say that doing so is WRONG.
Both men did the same thing, yet one has a clear and clean conscience because his conscience does not find what he did “evil” but the other man (assuming he is a sincere believer) should have a conscience that makes him feel guilty for violating his moral compass and doing “evil.
Which man is right? Which man is wrong? Are either one of them evil? If so, why?”
OX,
OMG! Laughing out loud at work! Your quote is hysterical!
“MY *DOG” SEEMS TO HAVE A CONSCIENCE”
A dog is better than a spath!
SK
excellent discussion. so much to think about.
The aztecs felt compelled to sacrifice millions of people to the sun god, so they created a “moral code” that made this an honorable death. Some of the sacrificial victims walked up and willingly gave their lives, believing it was for the good of their society. Not much different from the way men volunteer for combat today – thinking their sacrifice is for a greater good. If the “morality programming” doesn’t stick in some individuals, then they are not likely to volunteer. Maybe that’s the one function that sociopaths serve in humanity, since they cannot be programmed, if the programming/memes in society ever goes haywire, like it did with the aztecs, the sociopaths will escape to keep the genes alive.
Just a rambling thought.
Hi all,
As I said, I did not mean to impugn the author’s views on religion nor their Christian values. I guess my main idea in writing was to get across the idea that by assigning a sociopath’s actions to a supernatural agency, i.e. Satan, and so, actively state that it was really Satan’s work, we risk absolving ourselves of any positive feedback from our experiences. We risk not healing because we are saying that “hey, it was Satan that influenced me”.
That is not to say that such a mindset could not work to heal but I would argue that by divesting ourselves of any moral imperative to “fix” issues in our lives that may have made us more susceptible to the sociopath, we risk not being fully healed. I use “fix” above, not in the “something broken” sense of the word but rather in the sense of to change, to make stronger, to adapt to changing conditions.
Perhaps, my article revealed more about one of the fundamental issues I have with any religion that purports to give moralistic and paternalistic values from a higher agency. There is, I have found, a potential for the person, so influenced, to negate responsibility for their own actions (both positive and negative) and assign them to a higher authority. In essence, abdicating responsibility for their own actions and thus, potentially escaping any serious retrospection and self investigation that would allow for genuine personal growth.
I think of it as the Father/Protector syndrome, and much like a young child who, perhaps does not have a sufficiently developed moral compass, they turn to a higher authority, in the child’s case, their father or chief protector, to make them feel more secure and to give them the direction that they, as young people, are too immature to have. This is a vital and necessary part of growing up but, as adults we must take responsibility for our own part in the choices that life gives us. If we do not, then we cannot grow.
In regards to evil, to borrow from a Christian perspective where god is used to indicate a non-christian god or gods and God (upper case “G”) is used to indicate the Christian God, I suppose I should have defined it more clearly, Evil is the bad that Christians assign to Satan and that has a supernatural origin and evil is all about the bad that humankind does, i.e. Evil => Supernatural origin, evil => human origin.
Officially Thomas Aquinas has given the Catholic Church its version of evil, “the absence of good” or “The scarcity of good”. But this, the absense of good”, is a vague term, the absence of something, apart from certain states, does not automatically indicate the presence of something else. So while the absence of light, does imply darkness, the absence of laughter does not imply unhappiness.
However, we now go into the arena of active and passive evil (lower case “e”), the absence of a willingness to help does not imply the willingness to cause harm but it does imply an apathetic response that would allow evil to go unchallenged. Therefore, we can say that an unwillingness to help allows and perhaps even fosters an environment where evil can grow, thus an absence to help can be seen as a passive evil. Although, when I say help here, I am talking about a “change” for good, and the implication is that by helping, you would be doing something positive.
The word “help” implies growth, action and a force that changes things, what it does not imply is stagnation. My issue with a doctrine that is followed without question is exactly that, where is the growth, where is the change, the movement to a higher order, the introspection that allows positive change?
As someone has already said, what is considered as evil in some societies may not be considered so in others, indeed, it may even be considered virtuous. To that extent, there is a clear distinction between what is fundamentally evil and what is considered evil by any given society. Thus, most, if not all societies condemn murder without any higher purpose, thus the Aztecs sacrificing victims was not evil, for the Aztecs because they were not “murdering” their victims but sacrificing them to their god. Similarly, soldiers killing their enemy so that others may live in peace, is, in today’s society, considered at worst, a necessary evil. Which is itself an interesting term.
Someone who follows another belief system blindly, without question, is at risk of being passively evil simply because the system that they follow allows no introspection, no change, no growth. One has only to look at the phrase “to take something religiously”, to see the way society unconsciously views religion, something that is fixed, not debatable, not to be questioned. Indeed, the very idea of “faith” is blind trust, a trust that is not to be questioned, indeed that is anathema to question.
Please note, I am not saying that such people are passively evil, nor am I saying that such a belief system is evil. I am saying that such a belief system may allow evil to grow simply because, as their belief system is an accepted doctrine subject to little change and little introspection, it can be potentially abused and may result in evil.
The recent clerical abuse cases within the Christian Church is, I believe, a symptom of this.
To put this allegorically, I can build a pond in my back garden. Dig the hole, make sure it is water proof, ensure I use only the cleanest of materials, put in the purest of pure water, in short, ensure that I have a pristine pond.
If, however, I leave it like that, on the assumption that, because it was built with only the purest of materials, it will remain pure, then I am surely mistaken. Why?, because without any way of ensuring that there is a continual renewal of pure water, without ensuring that there is a mechanism in place that will ensure that my pond will remain pure, it will eventually stagnate and become corrupted.
Belief, followed blindly as dogma, without the will and the mechanism for renewal, allows for this stagnation and eventual corruption. Such corruption, for me, is a human evil and not a supernatural Evil.
I could go on to natural events, by their definition, not being evil, or indeed Evil and the theory that sociopaths are a part of the human evolutionary process and therefore can be regarded as evil in as much as a hurricane is evil, something which I don’t fully subscribe to (in relation to sociopaths, not hurricanes), but I think I have written enough for now….
I would welcome peoples comments on what I have written.
A small addendum :
Walter Scott-Peck, in his book “People of the Lie” tells us he was trying to come up with a good explanation for the word evil. He asked his young daughter, who replied that evil is “live” spelled backwards, therefore evil is against life.
What is life, if not growth, movement , change? Therefore, by this logic, anything that does not grow, change, adapt, is evil….
For those who think this is a good explanation, I would suggest looking up Anton LaVey, who was the founder of the Church of Satan, and who also used a similar argument though with a much different slant…
The moral of the story, never take anything at face value, always question.
Nemo
An the last addendum, promise :
Using my definition of evil versus Evil, above.
To clarify about sociopaths and evil, I agree that what sociopaths do is evil and, to the extent that they can be judged by their actions, we can also describe sociopaths themselves as evil but I do not believe that either their actions or they themselves are Evil.
Nemo
Nemo – I think I may have missed something as I do not read every day. May I ask if you have ever lived with/experienced a spath?