Aren’t you getting sick of hearing about all these politicians and other powerful people who can’t control themselves? Are you wondering if they are all just sociopaths? Are all sex addicts also sociopaths?
In the wake of my own dismay at the sheer number of sex crazed politicians, I wanted to share some thoughts with you.
First of all, one of the psychopathy researchers I respect the most is Dr. Grant Harris. He has written a seminal paper COERCIVE AND PRECOCIOUS SEXUALITY AS A FUNDAMENTAL ASPECT OF PSYCHOPATHY He says that promiscuous, coercive and precocious sex is central to the psychopathy syndrome. However, if you look at the statistics on the PCL-R the most studied method of assessing psychopathy, the two items related to sex have the lowest item correlations with the total score and do not even seem to be related strongly to Factor 2 of that test which is a measure of impulsivity. So there doesn’t seem to be a particularly strong relationship between psychopathy and sex addiction. By that I mean not every sociopath/psychopath is obviously a sex addict.
In his book The Mask of Sanity, Hervey Cleckley commented that “impersonal sex” is part of the syndrome. He also noted though that psychopaths didn’t seem to like sex all that much. Many victims I have interviewed have mentioned that. Sociopaths seem to view sex as a weapon to be used on another person or withheld from another person to hurt them.
As Donna pointed out earlier in the week, there is a strong link between sex motivation and the perception of power; there is also a link between a person’s drive for power and their drive for sex that may be related to testosterone.
When I think about Arnold, Anthony, Elliott and Bill, what I find most striking is their ability to do what I would call dissociate because I can’t think of another word for it. In the moment they are conceiving, tweeting, meeting in the hotel or messing on a dress, thoughts about their families and all of us seem to be completely gone from their minds.
Another great thinker about psychopathy is Robert Reiber, Ph.D. who I had the good fortune to chat with about this very topic in person several years ago. He thinks that this ability to dissociate is what makes a psychopath. When I asked him what he thought about the idea that psychopaths are “without conscience.” He replied, “Of course they have a conscience.” He thinks though they have an uncanny ability to dissociate from their conscience and their memories.
Neither the ideas of Harris nor Reiber bode well for our politicians. But I have learned a lesson from my dogs that might be useful here.
My daughter and I have three Ibizan Hounds, they are sight hounds who also have this uncanny ability to dissociate. When they are hunting small prey they become so focused on the moment they forget we are there and run off. We have been able to prevent this from happening through the use of training collars. We very much wanted them to be able to run free in the woods, so we had to figure out a safe way to get them to come back. They easily learned to come to us to avoid a mild shock that the collars deliver via a remote that has a one mile range. There is also a vibrate button, so after the dogs were trained, the warning vibration is all that is needed. But I have noticed that when they wear the collars they do not become as engrossed in the hunt and they readily come back to my voice. Without the collars, I can be shouting right next to them and they don’t hear me.
So the answer is simple, politicians should wear the collar, and their spouses can keep the remote!
For more discussion about sociopaths and sex see:
skylar:
Yeah, if you even “allowed” him to have affairs because of your situation and he still was deceitful about it, he’s an X spath. Too bad.
Louise ~ pretty sure it’s a spammer with first initials jm
Do they just try to find out info? What’s the scoop?
Louise – yep. But because they don’t ‘get it’ they stand out.
the name was a link – to a website advertising some medicare thing. not typing the name here, ‘cuz I’m NOT going to promote it. 🙂
I set up all these email “rules” to try to block my spath’s email. Today I stumbled across an email he sent last week….
“I’ve screwed up my life”.
So THIS must be why he he dumped me and remarried a week later?
And I’m even more pissed off at the physical reaction I had to finding and reading his email. Involuntary blood rush.
🙁
SK ~ Oh my… I know that you know this, but he is NOT worth your time. Please try not to let him upset you. He’s a spath, he doesn’t have a CLUE what he is talking about anyway.
Not sure why you wanted to read his e-mail, once you found it, but I hope you don’t do this to yourself again. You can get past this SK, I KNOW you CAN.
h2h
Louise;
I was having a conversation with a friend of mine who is a doctor. He was having issues with a mutual friend and this led to a wide-ranging discussion of mental health issues.
He read an article stating that emotional responses to events tend to reinforce the memory of the event. The more emotional the response, the more reinforced the memory. Extrapolating this to an experience with a sociopath, its easy to understand why forgetting a sociopath might be particularly difficult.
Conversely, since sociopaths have blunted emotional responses, one must presume they cannot only not empathize with the pain they inflict, their entire experience with a “victim” is easily forgotten by them.
In my own experience, my x-spath left my head spinning with many unanswered questions. Thus, my finding out about his online “life” was a double edge sword. Without that trail, I might still be thinking he was my lost soulmate and I would probably have contacted him last year when I was facing my open-heart surgery.
But finding out about him and more important, the real him also provided more questions that seem to be particularly reinforced and hard to forget probably due to the emotional state I was in at the time.
Number one on the list of course is regarding him being HIV+. I don’t know this for sure, but everything points in that direction. Then of course why did he not tell me when I was being honest about that myself.
Thankfully, it turned out I was not HIV+ but when the doctors suspected I might be, I was completely honest with him.
Certainly having too much free time allowed me to ruminate when I otherwise would not. Thankfully now that my new business is off and well, I have far less time to think about questions that will probably not be answered unless he either contacts me or I accidentally run into him, which is unlikely since we live 3000 miles apart.
The Internet is a mixed blessing in that it offers wonderful resources such as Lovefraud but since everyone has some Internet presence virtual contact is only a click away and while it has been easy for me to maintain direct no contact, I must admit to the occasional cyber-stalking if you want to call it that.
Thankfully, my x-spath does not use Twitter save for one cryptic tweet that guess what, provided more questions than answers. Also thankfully, his Facebook profile contains zero public information. However, for whatever reason, his profile picture is still one taken a few hours before we met.
I can only imagine what “no contact” must be like when the spath is very active on the Internet or trying to contact you.
Lastly, I empathize with issues he is facing. Typical with sociopaths, he provided me with enough personal information and in a way to make me feel he had a special trust in me. Thus, even though he hurt me, I feel sorry for him. I still do, especially since he was never violent or overtly abusive to me.
SuperKid,
that was the classic spath PITY PLOY.
you felt a rush of emotion because you are human and it’s normal to feel.
Remember, it’s a con. It’s what they do.
OK ALL!
I just gotta say that I think Weiner’s wife is OFF HER ROCKER, she was quoted this morning on CNN saying her hubby ought to keep his job. She’s supporting him and he’s clearly not respecting HER. I thought about this all morning and just felt so shitty, how can we as a people support this behavior?
On the other hand, did you see what ELIZABETH EDWARDS did? Wow.
HERE IS A CUT AND PASTE:
ttp://www.nationalenquirer.com/exclusive-john-edwards-condemned-dead-wife-elizabeth-edwards-secret-video-testimony
IN a devastating act of ultimate revenge, a dying Elizabeth EdÂwards recorded a bombshell secret videotape for prosecutors ”“ nailing her cheating husband John as he will stand trial on charges that could land him behind bars for 30 years.
That’s the stunning secret behind the federal indictment brought against the disgraced former presidential candiÂdate on June 3 ”“ following a two-year grand jury investigation into whether he illegally used campaign funds to cover up his affair with his then-pregnant mistress Rielle Hunter.
“Elizabeth wanted to exact revenge against John for destroyÂing their 33-year marriage and family by cheating with Rielle,” source close to the scandal told ENQUIRER.
“It was Elizabeth’s idea to secretÂly record a video and tell what knew of the affair and John’s horrific betrayal.”
Before her death in December 2010 at age 61, Elizabeth got newly engaged daughter Cate, 29, to agree that if anything happened to John, she would take care of the youngsters with the help of relatives and friends.
“It was then ”“ without Cate’s knowledge ”“ that Elizabeth turned the video camera on herself. She passed the video to a close friend and asked that it be sent to prosecutors,” said the source.
“On the secret video, Elizabeth spells out EVERYTHING she knew.
“Elizabeth wanted to haunt John and Rielle ”“ literally from her grave ”“ and she has”.