One reason why many of us found ourselves victimized by sociopaths is because we did not know that dangerous personality disorders existed.
We may have heard of crazy people, but we assumed that we could spot them because they looked and talked crazy. We may have heard of psychopaths, but we assumed they were serial killers or some other type of obviously hardened criminal.
We did not know that people existed who could convincingly proclaim their love, cry tears of sadness, and make glowing promises for the future, all simply to exploit us. We did not know that these people were called sociopaths and/or psychopaths.
In my opinion, a big reason for the public’s unawareness of, and confusion about, this dangerous personality disorder is the lack of agreement in the mental health profession about naming and defining it. How can you educate the public about these social predators when you can’t even decide what to call them?
Range of names
Research psychologists in major universities use the term “psychopath.” The main reason is that they run their studies using the Psychopathy Checklist Revised (PCL-R), developed by Dr. Robert Hare.
The PCL-R is recognized as the gold standard for evaluating the disorder. The instrument includes a list of 20 characteristics. An individual is rated 0, 1 or 2 on each item, and the points are added up for a total score. A person must score 30 to be diagnosed as a “psychopath.” For more on the PCL-R, read Researchers minimize the psychopathy problem.
Psychiatrists and other clinicians follow the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, now in the 4th edition. At the moment, the official term in the manual for this malady is “antisocial personality disorder.” Psychiatrists use the term “sociopath” for short.
Currently, the DSM-IV recognizes 10 personality disorders, divided into three clusters—A, B and C. Cluster B covers dramatic, emotional or erratic disorders. It includes antisocial, borderline, histrionic and narcissistic personality disorders.
All of this, however, is in the process of change—the 5th edition of the manual is now being written. A year ago, a draft of the new manual was posted on the Internet, and the public was invited to comment. For the most part, the diagnostic criteria were much improved, but Dr. Liane Leedom and I had problems with a few of the descriptive statements. Read our views in Lovefraud’s comment about sociopaths for the DSM-5.
My biggest problem with the revision is that it creates yet another name for this condition, “antisocial/psychopathic type.” Personally, I think this term is ridiculous. I don’t even know how it would be used in a sentence. Do we say that someone is an “antisocial slash psychopathic type”?
Selecting “sociopath”
When I was first developing Lovefraud.com back in 2004, I had to decide which term to use. After some informal market research, I selected “sociopath.”
The main reason was that “psychopath” was just too scary. Hollywood and the media portray psychopaths as deranged serial killers. I worried that people would not believe they had a psychopath in their lives, because he or she had never killed anyone, and would therefore dismiss all of the information about this disorder.
My reasoning was supported by last year’s Lovefraud survey. The survey asked the following questions:
Before your involvement with this disordered individual, what did you understand the term “sociopath” to mean?
- Criminal: 19.2%
- Serial killer: 19.4%
- Someone who was delusional: 6.4%
- Person without empathy or a conscience: 19.7%
- I didn’t know what it meant: 35.3%
Before your involvement with this disordered individual, what did you understand the term “psychopath” to mean?
- Criminal: 15.0%
- Serial killer: 51.2%
- Someone who was delusional: 13.4%
- Person without empathy or a conscience: 8.9%
- I didn’t know what it meant: 11.5%
Fully half of the 1,378 survey respondents believed a psychopath was a serial killer. I think it’s safe to assume that this level of misinformation pervades the general public.
Overlap
So the experts argue over terminology. I’ve even had two college psychology professors contact me to tell me that I’m using the wrong name. Although they didn’t seem to be aware of the disagreement in the field, I am, and I summarize the disparate views on the Lovefraud.com page, Psychopath/sociopath.
In practice, the behaviors and traits exhibited by individuals diagnosed with psychopathy, sociopathy narcissism, and even borderline personality disorders overlap, so it’s hard to tell where one ends and another begins. Many Lovefraud readers simply describe the individual they were involved with as P/S/N, for psychopath/sociopath/narcissist. Others say that the individual has a “cluster B” disorder. Of course, no one knows what that means, but it is less prejudicial and more likely to be believed.
Proposed name
I propose a solution to the name problem. I propose that “sociopath” become the general term for a social predator, someone who exploits others.
In the general category of “sociopath,” there can be subcategories that reflect the different types of exploiters. “Psychopath” can be defined as someone who scores 30 or more on the PCL-R. “Narcissist” can be someone who uses others, but doesn’t necessarily set out to cause them harm. “Antisocial personality disorder” could describe the people who are worse than a narcissist, but not as bad as a psychopath. Other subcategories can be defined as the experts see fit.
“Sociopath” has the advantage that it is already in the lexicon, but does not carry the cultural baggage of “psychopath.” People are generally aware that the word has something to do with bad behavior. But, as our survey pointed out, the largest number of respondents didn’t really know what “sociopath” meant, so they could be educated.
“Sociopath” could be analogous to the term “cancer.” There are many types of cancer—lung cancer, skin cancer, colon cancer—but we all know that cancer is bad and we take precautions to avoid it. We don’t smoke. We use sunscreen. We eat fiber.
Here’s a key point: For many people, the harm caused by sociopaths is completely avoidable, if we take precautions.
Some of us were unlucky in that we were born to a sociopathic parent, or into a family that contained sociopaths. We were stuck in those situations until we could find a way to get out.
But the rest of us invited the sociopaths into our lives. If we knew that these predators existed, if we knew the warning signs, we never would have done it. We could have avoided the trauma that they caused.
In my view, settling on a clear name and diagnostic criteria for this disorder is a public health issue. People have learned how to protect themselves from cancer. With education, we can learn how to protect ourselves from sociopaths as well.
Agreed – however, a psychopath does exist, and they are as prevalent as sociopaths. The word psychopath sounds yucky, I agree. But, they are more damaged/create more damage often than sociopaths and calling them a sociopath, for me, is just NOT ENOUGH.
There are a ton of women victimized by psychopaths every..single..day – most women never recover from psychopaths. It’s a problem that needs to be addressed for sure.
Not saying one is worse than the other really – both are damaging as hell. But often, a psychopath is a different experience – as well as a sociopath being a different experience.
I agree with the rationale presented here by Donna. In discussions I have had with others post-spath, “psychopath” has consistently elicited comments about the movie “Psycho” and about serial killers.
Interestingly (but in a repugnant way…), not all serial killers are psychopaths/sociopaths – some are psychotic, which is a VERY different thing indeed. To be psychotic is to be mentally deranged and not fully in control of your thought processes. Those of us who have tangled with the spaths, know how very aware they are of what they are doing. We know that their actions are deliberate, their manipulations are cunningly planned and their words are scripted to con, scam, maim and kill.
I caught a movie from the 80’s this week on TV – “A kiss before dying”. The review stated that “a psychotic man kills his pregnant girlfriend and marries her twin sister so that he will inherit their father’s wealth”. It was not my usual fare, but I made myself watch it because the description given sounded more like a spath to me than a mentally deranged “psychotic” individual. I was right. The entire evil plan was thought out in elaborate detail and executed methodically and without emotion. The goal was power and wealth and the lead character did not deviate from his meticulous purpose.
The movie’s review, however, clearly demonstrated the major ignornace and misunderstandings that are out there….
While I agree with much of what Donna has said here in regards to clearer and more specific descriptions of these disorders, I do not agree with that we “invited the sociopaths into our lives”. I feel that this wording may possibly give people who don’t know about, or who have never been involved with a person like this the wrong idea – that WE KNEW what these people were and just ignored it, leading to the possibility that they may believe that it can’t happen to them.
I feel that people need to realize and understand that we did not “invite” these people into our lives – these N/S/P s purposely TARGET the people they desire to use and then CON their way into our lives. They PURPOSELY present a false persona (at least at first) of a wonderful, kindhearted, giving, and loving person so that we will feel comfortable ALLOWING them into our lives, and by the time we realize (if we ever do) what they really are, the damage has already been done.
Because of the constant and never ending emotional abuse, manipulation, pathological lies, and brainwashing/gaslighting that “my” spath used on me in order to keep my eyes closed, it took 12 years and a serious crisis before I was able to get my eyes open enough to see that the problem was NOT ME (like he always insisted it was), and another 7 or 8 months of hit and miss web research before I came to understand what the problem was.
I have come (due in a large part from reading articles here) a very long way from the woman who wanted so badly to end the pain that she considered suicide, but I still don’t fully understand what happened. I really don’t think I ever will because no matter how hard I try, I just cannot wrap my mind around anyone being able to live as such a conscienceless and heartless entity as the spath is. It is almost impossible for me to believe that anyone could really desire total and complete emotional destruction of another human being, but that is what mine wanted. He still does, and is still trying, the only difference now is that he has to use other people (even some of my own family) and the court system because I have been “N/C” since last summer, and even with NC, I feel sometimes like I am just barely holding on to what I know in my heart.
I know that for the most part, I am probably posting to the already experienced here, but if I can shed light for just one person that is lost in this darkness like I am, please understand that these people are EXTREMELY dangerous and destructive. They will stop at NOTHING to get what they want, and REALLY do not care who gets hurt in the process. Some of them (like mine) even thrive and get joy out of knowing how much pain they can cause to others.
Please, please don’t allow yourself to be fooled – these individuals will target ANYONE, and they are not stupid, as a matter of fact, they are extremely intelligent when it comes to knowing what buttons to push and what words to use to get you to lower your defenses and allow them to get inside your emotions, so much so that it is not a case of “if” they can it’s only a matter of “when”.
This is a good argument, Donna, for the term “sociopath” and I agree with you in many many ways. The IGNORANCE of the general public, the media, and even some professionals is HUGE. It is not something that will be tackled or fixed any time soon.
In order to “diagnose” any disease in medicine there has to be some agreement on a NAME FOR IT. DUH! I mean, come on.
The “many” variations of the “disease” with multiple names that psychology has given to the “personality disorders” is outrageous (at best!) It is like “left handed individuals that lie a lot and are self centered are ASPDs” but RIGHT handed individuals who lie a lot, are self centered and over 6 ft are histrionic.” DUH! Come on folks! GET REAL! “anti-social personality disorder” sounds like a HERMIT who doesn’t like cocktail parties.
Unfortunately, I think the psychology professionals are trying to “rule by CONSENSUS” which ends up being a HORSE DESIGNED BY A COMMITTEE= A CAMEL. Everyone has to put their own hump on it.
I’m going to disagree with Donna (and am hopeful to not get banished for it!)
I think many of the victims descriptions I read about here on LoveFraud sound like narcissists, not sociopaths. To say a narcissist doesn’t intend to do harm is like saying an alcoholic doesn’t intend to get drunk when he has a drink. There is NO such thing as a non harming narcissist; INTEND? He doesn’t care ifharm is the outcome and would not alter his behavior to avoid harming others if it conflicted with his goal. But that doesn’t makehim a sociopath.
But Oxy has made an excellent observation, (somewhere in one of these posts), that a person doesn’t have to meet the criteria of spath, psychopath, or narcissist in order to be someone’s worst nightmare. And I think that’s the education people need, how to know when that line is crossed…
For ex: lots of little betrayals happened that were hurtful but not severe enough to end my marriage; however those betrayals were indicators of a contempt that eventually revealed that my entire marriage was a fraud and a waste. With that knowledge I would have made different decisions rather than waiting to leave when the murder attempt failed (the obvious indicator!). Because I was unaware of the meaning of the little betrayal indicators, I remained trying to fix my marriage.
I’ll bite and play devils advocate tonight. I disagree, in part, because of what seems to me to be a basic misunderstanding. The diagnosis (and the DSM) is not being written for, nor is it meant to be used by lay persons.
One of the reasons this all gets so murky is that this seems to be forgotten by some of the professionals actually putting these things together.
When is the last time you heard anyone complaining that they did not like the wording used in subarachnoid hemorrhage? Do I want a group of neurosurgeons to get together and seek out public input when they come up with new diagnosis? No. I would expect public input about how it effects them, their lives, family, ect.
But again the DSM is not meant nor deisgned for lay persons. I would expect the clinician to explain what X diagnosis is in terms people can understand much like they would explain what a subarachnoid hemorrhage is/means.
Another thing is that the term itself, psychopath(y), (I would include sociopath with that as well) is a very perjorative term with real life consequences. Give someone that label that should not have it and there is real harm being caused. Just look at some of the comments on here about the terms, i.e. evil, untreatable, etc.
Not to mention there is still a good deal of controversy around the whole issue of psychopathy as well as the PCL-R.
For many people, the harm caused by sociopaths is completely avoidable, if we take precautions.
I think that statement is both true and false at the same time. There is no 100% in this no matter how much we know or how many precautions we take. This is what makes this very scary/uncomfortable for some people, the knowing that there is no certainty here. You can reduce the odds of this occurring but you can never, ever get to a point where it is completely avoidable.
Which leads me to this comment:
But the rest of us invited the sociopaths into our lives. If we knew that these predators existed, if we knew the warning signs, we never would have done it. We could have avoided the trauma that they caused.
Again both true and false at the same time. There is never any 100% protection and thinking there is 100% protection is itself a vulnerability that could be exploited. Anyone can be conned.
Many, maybe most even, people who were preyed upon were not stupid or ignorant or any number of things. What they often were was vulnerable in some way for a brief windown and during that window the predator found them and took advantage of that vulnerability.
Often times that vulnerability does not or did not seem like one at the time because it was a persons strengths that the predator targeted rather than a weakness because many people are aware of their own weak areas and get a twinge when someone goes there. So the predator, at least the really skilled ones, go after the vulnerabilities that come from a persons strong points.
It is not like a predatory person gets every person they go after. It is more like door to door sales in a way. If you try enough people you will eventually find someone who is vulnerable at the right time and place (or wrong time and place for the soon to be victim) for them to con. Many many intelligent people who should know better have bet got for this very reason.
I would also argue that many people “know” that using drugs or smoking or any number of things is bad for them, they know the warning signs and yet do these things anyway. So simply “knowing” is not enough and not the key. It is one piece in a very complex puzzle that is human relationships.
I personally think that we need to be the other way for the public and focus on harm/abuse. if you are being abused/harmed it does not matter what it is labeled, what matters is that it stops. By placing so much importance on a label we get harm occuring in 2 directions. 1) is the harm occuring when someone who really is a psycho/socio/whatever but is not labeled as such can be seen as not being as bad as they really are. 2) is the reverse when someone who is not a psycho/socio/whatever but is labeled as such is seen as being worse than they are. Both 1 and 2 have possible drastic consequences in real life for the public.
Is being abused by someone with a psycho/socio/whatever label somehow more traumatic than being abused by someone who does not have that label? The correct answer can be both yes and no.
So why focus on just this one piece for the public end rather than focusing on ending abuse period. Because the kicker in many situations is that there is almost no way to know for sure in the begining if the abuse if being done by someone who is a psycho/socio/whatever or someone who is not. And for those people whose strength is a resolve/committment to making relationships work this can be a killer while they mentally spin trying to determine if the person is or isn’t (fairness being another strength that applies here) all the while allowing the abuse to deepen and stretch on.
Finally I would say that the whole we can avoid it by knowledge thing is a two edged sword. It is and can be helpful but it can also provide a false sense of security. If we reach a point where we tell ourselves something like “I know all this information about psycho/socio/whatever and so I can’t be harmed/conned by one again” then we need to kick ourselves for the lie we have just told ourselves. Many many people like simple black and white answers to these kind of issues but the truth is that these things are extremely complex.
Now I think I am gonna go complain about my doctor using the term cephalgia 🙂
Katy,
if I may, I’d like to restate your post more succinctly:
How damaged do you want to be?
Hows that?
I don’t disagree with Donna, about differentiating between the degrees of narcissism. But at the same time I agree with you. How much damage is acceptable to you? All N’s are toxic. Even knowing what they are doesn’t save you. If you must deal with them, you have to acknowledge that you will be damaged and you have to be certain that you will gain more than you lose in that contact.
Here’s the bad news: I think they are more than 50% of the human race. Most not so bad as others, but all have damaging potential.
Thank you BloggerT, those are some interesting points. I also think, though not likely to happen any point in the foreseeable future, that spaths will have to become sneakier, stealthier, more manipulative if “victims” become smarter. You know, the way antibiotics became so effective that bacteria had to become resistant to it, and started growing in new and more virulent strains ie “superbugs”. One of the lessons learned from the early days of HIV/AIDS was that if behaviors are stigmatized, they don’t go away, but instead are driven underground, and when they resurface, are even more malignant.
It can be hard to find the right balance between “creating awareness” and “pointing fingers”.
You are so right, it is complex!
Blogger,
your post was very insightful. I was ready to argue each point and could not.
There is only one thing I could add. You said, “I would also argue that many people “know” that using drugs or smoking or any number of things is bad for them, they know the warning signs and yet do these things anyway. So simply “knowing” is not enough and not the key. It is one piece in a very complex puzzle that is human relationships.”
What you described is narcissism. It is someone thinking that they can “handle” the drug or habit. I’m guilty as charged on some of those and also innocent with regard to coffee and spaths because I didn’t know they were drugs!
Narcissism is the problem AND the key. The P’s and S’s prey on our OWN narcissim.(thinking we can handle anything) They know it so well because it is their own life. Teaching people about narcissists, why it’s dangerous and how it can ruin you, is the key. It’s also very complicated. How do we teach children whose parents are potentially narcissists, to stop adoring their parents? The kids would run for the hills! Then Dept of Social and Health Services would be overwhelmed. (in many states, that agency is overrun with socios too!)
Seems hopeless. I guess it’s one person at a time.
Well Skylar a problem is that a small degree of narcissism can be and often is a healthy thing (no I am not saying healthy narcissist). You are right though in what your saying but language so often gets in the way. You could also call it self delusion, hubris, or various other things. Self-deception is something that 100% of the people on the planet do to various degrees throughout their lives and is a healthy thing. One problem is when the balance is not maintained and we go to far one way (vanity, hubris, etc) or to far the other way (feeling worthless, hopeless, etc).
But again semantics get involved and people argue over words and sometimes lose track of the real issue.
Some predatory people prey on other’s narcissism. Other’s prey on people’s feelings of worthlessness. Still other’s prey upon people’s good intentions and kindness.
Even humble people can be targets of a predator. That is one of the many reasons why this really is very complex. There is no formula that says A+B+C=Safe! Having worked with, and still working with, a good number of predatory people and their victims one of the things I see most is what I mentioned above, people being preyed upon through their strengths. Though I would give a nod to you and your comment and say I also have seen a good number of people victimized due to their own narcissism as you call it, or a lack of critical thinking skills.
It can be easy to mistake self-confidence for something else. I know a woman who is very self-confident, very smart, great employee, kind, charitable, great with her family, etc. But some people see her as being “uppity” or acting above them, or various other names. Is she really? Well to those people she is and to others she is not. So the answer could be both yes and no. In reality I think she is not she just lacks a little in the social skill piece towards relating with others that are very different than her.
In some jobs if you are not a cocky somewhat overly self-confident think, think you are the best of the best, you will do horrible or possibly die. Fighter pilots for example are one group that is allegedly known to be like this. Does it mean they are narcissists? Nope. Though when they are doing their job it would be easy to think they are. But of course a small percentage will be so that will reinforce the notion that they all are to those that want to think that.
Also some abusers are extremely insecure and not narcissistic at all but they put on a front that looks like it though.
So in my ranting here I guess I would sum up and say that much of life is about balance and maintaining it and learning how and when to adjust that balance in different ways at different times in ones life. To much arrogance/pride leads to disaster as surely as not enough self-confidence and self-worth will.