Isn’t it strange how the mind works? I read with approval Dr Leedom’s latest post. In it she manages to be at once hard-nosed, realistic, and still keep positve. There are very real differences in the brains of those with psychopathic traits, she writes, but the brain is plastic and therein lies just a sliver of hope.
For some reason the opening lines of Martin Amis‘ novel House of Meetings came back to me. It is set in the Soviet Union:
Dear Venus
If what they say is true, and my country is dying, then I think I may be able to tell them why. You see, kid, the conscience is a vital organ, and not an extra like the tonsils or the adenoids.
Amis has also written a stunning nonfiction book about Stalinism, Koba the Dread, which has its own staggering opening:
Here is the second sentence in Robert Conquest‘s The Harvest of Sorrow: Collectivization and the Terror-Famine:
We may perhaps put this in perspective in the present case by saying that in the actions here recorded about twenty human lives were lost for, not every word, but every letter of this book.
That sentence represents 3,020 lives. The book is 411 pages long.
And then I remembered that Amis’ cousin Lucy Partington was murdered by the infamous serial killer Fred West! How could I have forgotten? Amis wrote wrenchingly about it in Experience:
My family cannot understand the extraordinary collision that allowed him to touch our lives, and I have no wish to prolong that contact. But he is here now, in my head; I want him excised. And Frederick West is uncontrollable: he is uncontrollable. For now he will get from me a one-sentence verdict…. West was a sordid inadequate who was trained by his childhood to addict himself to the moment when impotence became prepotence.
Amis clearly knows a thing or two about psychopathy. Consider his compact ‘verdict’:
a sordid inadequate
-
- – this suggests ignoble actions and motives arousing moral distaste and contempt combined with a biological lack
trained by his childhood – dysfunctional modelling and upbringing by his family and surroundings
addict himself – this both highlights the central, pleasurable place wickedness played in his life and emphasises the crucial place of will (he didn’t become addicted he addicted himself)
to the moment when impotence became prepotence – here is the defining characteristic of the psychopath: he lives for the moments when his power or influence over others occur. Deep beneath this is a secret fear/knowledge of his utter unimportance/worthlessness.
Amis, through the imaginative power of the artist, has captured remarkably well the heart of the matter.
He is not an easy read, but it now occurs to me that in a way our theme has been one of his central themes. For example, Lovefraud readers have recently written worried letters about the perpetuation of psychopathy among the young via antisocial social environments and psychopathic genes. Time magazine’s recent cover story is about the phenomenon of youth delinquency in Britain. Amis was ahead of the curve when he wrote about it in his novel Yellow Dog.
His forthcoming book is a collection of essays on 9/11 called The Second Plane. (You can read one essay, ‘The Age of Horrorism’ , here.) The collection has received a lot of negative comment: Amis is a racist, etc. Well I’ve read a lot of Amis’ work and and can’t square with that judgement. (What he says is that Islamofascism produces awful racist feelings in him and he doesn’t know what to do with them.) I wonder whether some of the objections to his book are due to what we at Lovefraud encounter all the time: regular folks’ refusal to believe in human evil. These are the fortunate people who have not fully encountered evil – hope their luck holds out.
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Back to Dr. Leedom’s article – she makes it clear that the small candle of hope she holds out is not for the full-blown psychopaths Amis writes about, but for those with psychopathic traits.
Ox Drover
DearSilvermoon,
Your courage humbles me! Your wisdom humbles me. Your above post is very good. Thank you.
Even I sound sane once in a while, but sometimes it all makes me feel so CRAZY! I read some on that link EB put up on the story of Dr. Phil show today, the one that ordered the visitation of Katie’s baby that was murdered. I had to quit reading quickly because I became so ENRAGED at what I was reading I started to feel like I would explode! I know we must at least SOUND sane, but when I observe such GROSS injustice and such GROSS stupidity!….well, I bet you know how I feel! LOL Anyway, thanks for your very sane post! (((Hugs)))
silvermoon
Aw shucks Ox,
I didn’t come here with it. Its a virus… I caught at LF.
If memory serves, you are one of themost contagious members.
In all humility and with love, thanks you and everyone who has BEEN HERE for me.
I am grateful to the community and even though it is a sad reason we come together, once here, there are few that I have ever known for which I have a deeper and more abiding respect.
Thank YOU
ErinBrock
Silver:
Let’s go getem girl!
Your numb place is a place I found very helpful. My body numb….and sometimes my mind at first….BUT THEN….I got to a place of intense planning and thinking….about WHO I could contact and WHAT i could do. In my numb state…..
One successful phone call and It catapulted me into action again…..
So don’t think numb is non productive….it’s NOT!!!
I remember being in a place of shut doors…..and I didn’t allow the frustration to keep me out…..I stood up and KICKED THE FRIGGEN doors down!!! MYSELF!!!
Agency after agency…..non profit after non profit, judge after judge, attorney after attorney…..
I found the same battle with my healthcare…..you have to fight…..research, learn and fight!!!!
My goal at the time was purely selfish…..and I took notes for others along the way!
I spoke to judge after judge who was running for re election and attorneys and DA’s about CLuster B’s….I got a great response….although I wasn’t even sure I knew what I WANTED!
I knew I wanted to get the ‘word’ out- educated. SO I did it the only way I could figure out in the short time before the elections…..
I’ve since kept in touch with a few of the judges…..and had some very good conversations….
I’ve spoken with the DA who is prosecuting the Brianna Dennison case in Reno….and gave him Cluster B pushes……
I would think it would be much easier to prosecute cases if you KNEW what type of personality you were dealing with…..kinda like dealing with my spath…..once I figured out his behaviors and made some sort of ‘sense’ of them….at least how HE thought they made sense…..I could aim my cannons and fire.
Otherwise I was firing into a dark lonely quiet night. AND NO ONE would hear the shots.
I learned as I went…..
Numb, restless, frustrated and all……
silvermoon
Ok, EB. You are ON.
What would it take to reach ALL the judges?
Lets not screw around.
What would it take to have a letter to the editor in every major metro area paper every month?
What would it take to reach every social service agency at the Regional Dierctor level?
What does it take to eat an elephant? We have the technology.
Thoughts?
Buttons
Witsend, I do, indeed, suffer PSTD. I’m getting better at managing it, but the triggers are still lurking.
I guess it’s the association of a child developing into a monster that just gets me deep down. I told my counselor that I just couldn’t reconcile that beautiful infant with the Thing that my son had become. Yeah, it’s still a trigger, but I’m getting better.
And, I think that the anger is part of the healing process – we should be angry, for crissakes! Our society seems to breed more and more spaths and the very dangerous ones aren’t held accountable until they’ve Done Something.
ErinBrock
A big appetite!
I’m hungry…..
Educating the Bar, state, federal and county.
Once there is validation…..we are off and running….
Educating the DV offices…..the STATE DV offices….
But so much lies in the hands of the bench…..
silvermoon
Then lets get an email list of all the District Court Judges in all the states and educate them!
Lets tell the story over and over.
Lets risk pissing them off by telling the truth.
I’m starving…..
Buttons
Silvermoon, count me in. I’m in. There can be no satisfaction in saying, “I told you so,” when other people are damaged or worse.
tink3010
If people are able to make a choice not to have a conscience at some time in early life does it come from nature or nurture? I like to belive this ability was never there.
Buttons
Tink3010, debate still rages as to whether or not sociopathy is genetic or learned. Given that the ex spath was spath, his father was spath, and we produced a spath son, this might lead researchers to find that genetics is the basis. Then, in consideration of the whole withold/reward/gaslighting/manipulating experiences that ex spath and spath son experienced at the hands of their respective abusers, this could also point to learned behaviors.
KNOWING the cause doesn’t alter the fact that a spath does not have a conscience. It doesn’t alter the fact that they feel no remorse or pity. Attempting to figure out THEIR issues can become a lifelong goose chase. Who cares how or why they became sociopaths? The fact is that they ARE and that even a mother has to turn away from her own child if he’s a sociopath and has inflicted deliberate harm without remorse.
Things will become clearer to you, in due time. Getting firmly onto your own healing path takes courage and support – you’ve got both in your favor. Time is just a perception: “how long” until it all makes sense is a question that nobody can answer. So, don’t be hard on yourself unless you start looking back with longing for a fantasy that never existed.
Brightest blessings.