Lovefraud invites you to complete a survey about your experience with a sociopath/psychopath/narcissist in order to help professionals diagnose this disorder properly.
Two days ago, the American Psychiatric Association released a draft of the fifth edition its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM 5). This book is the standard classification of mental disorders used by mental health and other professionals. The revision has been underway for a decade.
A work group of 11 doctors and psychologists focused on the section about personality and personality disorders. They have recommended significant changes to the description of antisocial personality disorder, which is also referred to as sociopathy and psychopathy. In fact, one of the suggestions is to change the name of the personality disorder to “antisocial/psychopathic type.”
The new description of the disorder is much closer to what most of us at Lovefraud have experienced. You can read the description here:
Antisocial/Psychopathic Type
The American Psychiatric Association has invited public comment on the draft of DSM 5, and Lovefraud is taking the doctors up on their invitation. We thought the best way to do it would be to survey our readers, asking you how well the proposed description of antisocial/psychopathic type matches your experience with one (or more) of these individuals.
Please take the survey. This is serious, so be thoughtful and accurate in your responses. It will probably take you about 15 minutes, so please start it when you are sure you have time to complete it.
The survey will be open until March 3, 2010. After that, we will tabulate and analyze the data. We will prepare a report of the findings for the American Psychiatric Association. The results will also be published on Lovefraud.
Go to the survey:
BloggerT7165
I think if you click on the link http://www.dsm5.org/ProposedRevisions/Pages/proposedrevision.aspx?rid=16 and read the description of the propsed disorder you will see that it does have a criteria in it that covers narcissism as well as covering the fact that they don’t have to be criminals to meet the criteria also. And they have both the trait and type being added.
pollyannanomore
Thankyou Donna for organising this – this is a fantastic idea and I was delighted to contribute to it – is there anything else we can do? Do they want some testimonies from individual victims? I would have liked to see some questions on the effects it had on us both during the relationship and after. Do these people realise the harm these characters cause to real people in real life?? Or do they think psychos are isolated people who live in a vaccuum and don’t do too much damage?
I actually think they should just call it Antisocial Psychopath Disorder – rather than including the word ‘type’ – it gets too long and that was the problem with Anti-social disorder. I am glad to see some consideration being given to retaining the term ‘psychopath’ though – I think this clearly delineates the seriousness of the disorder and the danger of engaging with one of these individuals.
Many thanks again 🙂
Donna Andersen
Midlife crisis –
Anyone can comment on the new definition for the disorder. There’s a box on the upper right corner of the page to register.
http://www.dsm5.org/ProposedRevisions/Pages/proposedrevision.aspx?rid=16
pollyannanomore
Thanks very much Donna – I am a bit put off by those ‘consultation type’ documents so thanks for giving me the link – I will have a look at it tomorrow and put some thoughts together.
teacher123
Sarah 999,
Maybe we should call it the NSPCA. Do you think that is where Michael Vick fits in? Just joking of course. I think the term antisocial makes people think that these people want to avoid human contact when in fact that is their preyground. No wonder though it is so hard to officially diagnose someone with this. Disorder we know, but it could manifest in multiple ways like different heads of Cerberus or any one of Sybil’s personalities.
blueskies
Wow. I have been so wrapped up – I didnt see this. Thanks for doing this Donna. I am going to take a look at it now.
I agree with sarah about the term antisocial and it giving the picture that they avoid human contact.
apologies – its teacher I agree with… but now I look down and I find I also agree with sarah:)x
Sarah999
Teacher123,
I have also found, there is a lot of confusion among laymen (& even some professionals) about these 4 terms.
They WRONGLY think:
Narcissist . . is just somebody who likes to admire themselves in the mirror.
Psycopathy . . is the same as psychotic . . where people are not in contact with reality.
Anti-Social . . . is someone who is not friendly (social)
Sociopath . . is a serial killer.
These errors in definition are embedded into the brains of so many people, and cause confusion. When in fact, we are describing the same thing.
Which is a person with:
1) an extreme sense of entitlement
2) lack of empathy (or compassion)
3) inappropriate rage outbursts
4) blaming (projective identification)
5) bullying, manipulative, charming
6) lying & gas-lighting
7) exploitative
8) sadism(can someone tell me how to get rid of the smily face?- I don’t mean for it to be here!)
9) aggressive/dominating/predatory behavior
10) not taking responsibility
11) no remorse
12) “EVIL” – my addition: I think if someone is N/P/S/A (has the above characteristics) He/she is EVIL. (That’s just me!)
I think this cluster of behaviors needs a “new label” so that everybody understands what is meant. N/P/S/A has worked well here . . why not continue with that?
teacher123
That clears it up for me. Thanks for the post. It would help if there would be one diagnosis/label instead of a cluster of things.
Sarah999
N/P/S/A’s cause confusion where ever they go. It’s their MO!
(resulting from all their above behaviors).
Why am I NOT surprised, that even their definition is wrought with confusion?
Kathleen Hawk
I posted a comment on the new definition. It’s easy to register.
The request I made, and if anyone thinks it’s worthwhile, I wish you’d mention it on your comments, is that they also consider as a “symptom” their history of damaging other people’s lives.
All personality disorders reflect dysfunctional or delusional reactions to life experiences. But the antisocial’s behavior is characteristically predatory. The means that there are victims with losses.
In diagnosing these people, there may not always be evidence of victims. But often there will be. And the typical damage to those victims goes well beyond the physical or financial, because part of the predatory strategy is to break through the victims’ normal self-defensive instincts and behaviors, and then break down their will through attacking their beliefs, values and self-esteem.
I know that all we have suffered could be identified by other models, such as PSTD, Stockholm Syndrome, etc. But our reality is that there is such a thing as post-psychopath syndrome. I argue that it is part of the diagnostic definition of a psychopath. It is what they do. And even if there may be propensities or vulnerabilities on our side to get involved with these people, what happened to us is not something we did to ourselves. We were not only targeted, but we were deliberated manipulated in a way that reflects the psychopath’s psychology.
I think the diagnostic criteria would be improved by reference to the victims and their experience. And it would give us, who hope to change laws and general awareness, validation and credibility.
Kathy