Medical and mental health professionals have differing views and opinions about the personality disorders that are the topic of Lovefraud—sociopathy, psychopathy and antisocial personality disorder. You could also include narcissism and borderline personality disorder.
There is disagreement among professionals about how the disorders should be defined, what causes them, and what can be done about them. As an example, take a look at a recent post along with the comments: ASK DR. LEEDOM: Is there a gender bias against men in the diagnosis of sociopathy?
No matter what discussions are raging in the professional world, here is what the rest of us need to know: There are evil people among us.
“I never knew such evil existed”
Lovefraud receives plenty of e-mail from people who have been deceived, manipulated, bankrupted, assaulted and deserted by sociopaths/psychopaths/antisocials. One comment that I frequently hear is, “I never knew such evil existed.”
Yes, it does. This is what evil people look like:
- They are charming and say all the right things
- They are supremely confident in their own greatness
- They are highly sexual
- They crave excitement and are easily bored
- They are impulsive, risk-taking and irresponsible
- They are pathological liars, telling falsehoods large and small
- They feel no guilt or remorse; nothing is their fault
- They use you and then spit you out
- They do not play by the rules
- Once they are adults, they cannot be rehabilitated
M. Scott Peck, M.D., in his book People of the Lie, says: “Evil is that force, residing either inside or outside of human beings, that seeks to kill life or liveliness.” In other words, evil people seek to kill the life force of their victims. Sometimes this means turning victims into broken shells of what they used to be. Sometimes it means murder.
Three points for professionals
It is extremely difficult to fight evil. Therefore, the best thing we can do is avoid it. We need to accept that evil exists and learn to recognize the key symptoms so that we can keep evil people out of our lives.
So what does this mean for the professionals? In many cases, these are the people who are making recommendations and decisions that affect the lives of both the evil and the victims.
In my opinion, professionals—and this includes legal professionals, especially court judges—need to learn three things:
- How to distinguish the evil people, who cannot be helped, from those who have succumbed to terrible life circumstances, such as poverty, crime and bad parenting, and may possibly be helped.
- How to save the offspring of evil people from growing up to be evil.
- How to help victims recover.
There are people in the world who feel that everyone has good within them, that with enough love and understanding, anyone can be helped. As much as I would like this to be true, it is not. Evil exists. We’ve experienced it.
As far as the subject goes, I would have to agree with Oxy D. I don’t believe for one second that the woman who so generously informed us on her experiences was being completely honest. Though I would not agree that sociopaths are evil, they do tend to hurt people. They play with them, and they use them. They know it, and they have no shame in it. There are times they do the pity play thing, and this is another form of manipulation. For the most part it works.
Let’s go with the suggestion that she was in fact falsely diagnosed. That I can believe, I was wrongfully diagnosed myself with schizotypal. Her diagnosis all falls down to to two simple questions. Sabrina, if you are reading any of these comments I ask you this:
Do you have a conscience?
Do you lack empathy for others?
Sociopathy really burns down to that. They have emotions, though very diluted, and even though they don’t always go out to destroy, the idea to is always present. No one is safe.
I get the feeling these people harassing me want me to do something. I’ve given up thinking they want me dead because they had plenty of chances already. Maybe being able to wreak havoc in my life is enough for them. I don’t know who I can trust anymore. They’ve hacked my e-mail accounts and phone.
Hey, Seer:
They do work in packs, and they do this because there is a form of leader. The leader takes their position by being the first to set one up. It is usually established because of the ego of the person who decdes to initiate the harm. Others follow because they just find it amusing. It’s like watching a baby animal being eaten by the master, the other females watch, and the other males take part. They do it because it is fun, and when there is a group, they don’t stop until the subject at hand is destroyed.
Ways to avoid this, well first you have to be absolutely sure you know who the culprits are. Once you know who they are, you have to try and beat them at their own game. I can’t be too much further aide until I know just how aware you are of what is taking place.
Seer,
I am so sorry for what you are going through. I want to help you and promise that I will answer your questions but right now I have to run because there are grey rocks all over here that keep getting in the way and I gotta take care of that right now.
I would suggest that before you post, you really, really spend some time reading here, I don’t know if you’ve done that.
First and foremost, I believe that the people you speak of, are aware that you are posting here. They do stuff like that.
Dear Hollowaters, welcome aboard.
Sometimes victims can be just ordinary dysfunctional people who get caught in the trap of a psychopath and in their pain they STRIKE OUT at the psychopath in a way that itself seems psychopathic….sort of like if your dog were to get caught in a leg hold trap and you went to reach down to free it, in its pain, it would very likely reach out and bite you, the very hand that reached down to rescue it.
Or, any number of other situations where a person who was or had been victimized was in so much pain that they were literally “insane with the pain”—physical or emotional–and can strike out. It happens. There are other choices, but some soemtimes when a person or animal is in such pain that it literally can’t focus on the reality of what is going on.
The psychopaths try to keep their victims off balance.
There is also the “self calming” tendency in some prey animals when they are “trapped” to just give up and quit struggling at all. Just lie there and be eaten alive without any resistence. I think it is a sort of “shock” that over takes them and they literally can’t feel what is going on. I have observed this in wild animals caught by predators who weren’t really injured or hurt, but just gave up.
Dr. Temple Grandin used this in designing the squeeze chutes for handling cattle (prey animals) so that when they are firmly HELD and can’t move, they calm down and quiet down, and are thus less likely to injure themselves or their handlers for routine immunizations or vet care, etc. I own one of these squeeze chutes myself and it is invaluable in handling cattle safely.
Sometimes I think some people who are victims just “lie down” and take it, the Stockholm syndrome is an example of the abused giving in. I think it is in some ways evolutionary and helps us survive being taken captive by another tribe, or being sold as a slave, or a woman owned by a male—because if we didn’t “calm down” and “quiet down” and learn to survive in our position of subservience we would be weeded out of the gene pool quickly by the stronger and more powerful husband/slave master/owner/war lord. This tendency to cow down in order to survive I think is as much genetic as it is for some groups of people to be genetically programmed to resist or counqueor (such as the psychopaths who tend to be more aggressive or sneaky in their rebellion rather than cow down.)
It’s all pretty interesting intellectually but living it can be pretty problematic at times.
Oxy,
I’ve got problems with those rocks, can you come over and help me move them? They are HUGE, bring help.
Yea, I’m not sure which ones are buried deeply in the ground and we will need a crowbar to unseat them–I told Donna we might need some help. I think if we can’t handle them, Donna will help, so for now we will just do the best we can and try not to mash a finger while we see what is going on! LOL
I’m making stew with the scraps of meat and pot liquor from my tenderloin roasts I cooked a couple of days ago. I have enough left of the meat for another day’s meals but though the stew would be nice with some corn bread. So much sodium in the corn bread though I can only eat ONE SMALL piece but I guess I shouldn’t whine too badly!
I tried eating two small pieces of the corn bread and I can calorie-wise but not sodium wise….doggone it! Corn bread is the STAFF OF LIFE!!! Hard to live without it! At least for me.
Are you feeling better about this deal with your parents? I know it hurts to get through all that. I can’t remember who had said it a month or so ago here on LF about “learning to function in my dysfunction” and that is exactly what I did with my egg donor. I learned to function in the DYS-function. I even “forgot” or put aside the many times I had gone NC with her, but never PERMANENTLY NC, just didn’t talk to her for a while but knew it wouldn’t be forever—it was a passive aggressive thing on her part and on mine too—and I realized how much of that kind of carp I had engaged in with her, learned at her knee how to DYS-FUNCTION IN THE DYS-FUNCTION. And, how she would punish me if I didn’t go along with her program.
I’m starting to look back and see the REALITY of how she treated me, but also see the reality of how I DID NOT LEARN FROM IT, BUT STARTED TO COPY HER DYS-FUNCTION. How I JUSTIFIED my own dys-functional behavior. How I participated in it all. Sure, I was “programmed” to do so, but I didn’t recognize what was happening even when I had a change to, but persisted in the dys-function. NOW, and only now, am I starting to comprehend my full part in it.
BUT I am not beating myself up for that part–no sense in self beating over it, it is done and past, and I am learning now. I’m still not perfect, I’m still making mistakes, but I am GROWING now where before I just kept making the same ones over and over. At least I am making DIFFERENT MISTAKES NOW!!!!
Skylar, you’re right. I have no doubt they know I’m posting. Heck, for all I know they could be posting here also. I went to a therapist a year ago, turns out she was either recording and reporting what was said in my sessions or they were listening from an adjacent office. I joined a group that was said to not be affiliated with my tormentors but they lied too. This will be my last post here. I’m totally aware of them. Not because I’m smarter than anyone else but because they always try to use the same key phrases to try to trigger a reaction from me (personal info I’ve shared with them over the years). It’s almost as though they want to make me aware of them. Do these people ever stop to think that someone they see as cattle might lash out? I guess not.
Oh yeah, the stuff about the HUGE rocks seems loaded.
A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I,J,k,l,m,n,o,p,q,r,s,t,u,v,w,x,y,z…….
Why do men wear mustaches?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hyrQzhU08w
I give up? to strain their soup? I can’t watch the video, not enough megabites on the air card! ha ha