Unfortunately clinicians and researchers often tend to interact with a specific segment of our society and to develop their own ways of describing the problems of the people they work with. For example, there are professionals who work with clients who have “personality disorders”, there are professionals who work with criminals in the justice system and there are professionals who work with perpetrators of domestic abuse/violence.
Each of these three groups of professionals has their own lingo for describing very similar people with very similar patterns of behavior. Each group also has a different “theoretical orientation” or view of the problems of humanity.
Because those who work with family abusers often lack experience with sociopaths in other settings they do not know that family abusers are sociopaths.
Where does that leave you, a victim or family member of a disordered, abusive individual?
To spare you the task of sorting through these three distinct ways of looking at the person who created havoc in your life, with the help of The Abusive Personality, I will present here more on the work of Dr. Dutton a psychologist who understand the personality profile of abusers.
First of all, I can say with confidence that individuals who abuse and victimize lovers, friends and family members are personality disordered. As Dr. Dutton points out on page 8 of The Abusive Personality, “Because IPV (intimate partner violence) occurs in a minority of relationships it cannot be explained by social norms. In fact, normative acceptance of IPV is low in North American populations. .. When people act in a chronically dysfunctional manner that violates the norms of their culture, their behavior is attributable to a personality disorder.”
Dr. Dutton makes a compelling argument that the “abusive personality” stems from what is known as borderline personality organization. According to psychoanalyst Otto Kernberg, adult and adolescent patients with antisocial personality possess an underlying borderline personality organization. Attachment theorists also suggests an association between borderline personality disorder and antisocial behavior or even antisocial personality disorder. Dr. Dutton acknowledges that many perpetrators are violent and antisocial outside the family and many appear to completely lack empathy and remorse. All chronic perpetrators have an extreme inability to empathize with their victims and seem to only express remorse as a means of maintaining the relationship. These emotional deficits are considered to be diagnostic of sociopathy.
According to Dr. Dutton, both male and female abusers experience cyclical changes in personality that relate to abuse perpetration. These cycles, have interfered with understanding the personality of abusers. The cycles happen because abusers experience a great deal of negative emotion and they blame this negative emotion on those closest to them. After they “blow off steam” by abusing loved ones, they experience a temporary relief from these negative emotions. During the time they “feel better” they may seem like model spouses and parents.
In my opinion, there are four other characteristics of men and women who perpetrate partner/family abuse that have interfered with our understanding that these abusers are psychopathic and are truly sociopaths. These are:
1. The degree to which they cling to those whom they abuse.
2. Their high level of anxiety and other negative emotions.
3. Lack of abuse of strangers and non-family members.
4. Lack of criminal arrest for other offenses.
I want to address each of these characteristics by asking then answering the related questions people have asked me over the years.
Question #1 Does the fact that my ______________ keeps calling and doesn’t want to lose me mean that deep down he/she really loves me?
Answer#1 NO! Although sociopaths are not capable of love they are very social and most often want to count themselves in as part of a family, extended family and friendship network. If they are alone how will they be able to do what they do best which is abuse and control people? Also if they are alone, how can they use people to get the other things they want. Especially as sociopaths get older and their ability to charm others declines they tend to want to stick with those they have taken advantage of in the past.
Question #2 My poor _________ is just depressed/anxious/angry about being mistreated and abused as a child. Won’t my love and reassurance help him/her get over it?
Answer #2 NO! If your______ has a long standing pattern of abusing you and/or other family members it means something very important so listen. It means he or she equates abuse with being in a relationship, just like you equate love and caring with being in a relationship. Since that is true, your love will only make the person more abusive.
Question#3 My ___________ only abuses me and no one else so it must be my fault. Right?
Answer #3 NO! Your __________ would abuse others if he/she thought he/she could get away with it and will abuse anyone else he/she feels close ties with. An intimate relationship brings out abusive behavior in people who have a borderline personality organization.
Question#4 My _____________ has never been arrested can he/she still be a sociopath?
Answer #4 YES! Antisocial behavior is behavior that hurts other people. When this hurtful behavior is perpetrated by someone who lacks empathy or remorse it reflects psychopathy/sociopathy.
In summary, I recommend that all mental health professionals who work with the victims and family members of sociopaths read Dr. Dutton’s book The Abusive Personality. I also recommend another of Dr. Dutton’s books, The Batterer a Psychological Profile for victims of domestic violence. Order it through Amazon today with these links:
The Abusive Personality
The Batterer a Psychological Profile
Does anyone want me to try to explain what “borderline personality organization” is?
Is there anyone who still has trouble accepting that partner abusers are sociopaths?
MariaLisa,
It’s very likely a sick family. They often come in bundles of N and N-supply, like my family.
Usually one or both parents can be Ns but sometimes the N influence is external such as a teacher or priest or extended family.
The other possibility is that they were actually spoiled as children. The parents may have treated him as their “golden child”. This fosters a pathological sense of entitlement so that no matter how much you give him, he needs more and he feels injured if he didn’t get more. N-parents will pick one child to treat extra special in order to set up a sibling rivalry for their parental love and attention.
I think that the N-parenting method is passed down to the offspring.
My parents chose the Nbaby sister to be the golden child. I didn’t have children, but instead have 5 cats. I tend to pick one to treat as extra special. Just like my parents did. It’s like child abuse, it goes down through the generations.
Really, I can’t help it how I feel about my special cat, but I can tell it is my mother’s behavior coming out in me – its THAT obvious. My other cats don’t mind though, they love him too because he is so gentle and respectful to them even though he is twice their size. Plus cats are all narcissists any way so it can’t actually make them any worse right? Except for my special cat, he’s not a narcissist, just a predator. LOL.
hi skylar
thank for your response.
mine was not a narcisisst but a huge sociopath. i dont think he was treated as the golden child…i just really would love to know what the truth was. he was probably a rotten child and therefore got trear
ted as such and then ofocurse felt it was unjustified and therefore feels the whole world should compensate for it. lord knows, theyre so nuts. but it does fascinate me that if he was always this rotten why his sisters would never respond. they couldve just said: yeah we know, we cant deal with this anymore. or something!? right? i think i would have reached out to someone…
my ex loved cats btw. like i said before, theyre were his toys, nothing else. but he stopped at every cat he saw…
poor other cats of you! go hug all of them!! LOL.
Sociopaths ARE narcissists, just in the extreme side of the spectrum. I chose the N word because the connotations of envy, shame and entitlement go with it. The S word has serial killer connotations.
But anyway, my P was given special toys but he hates his mother anyway. I know that by age 12 he was already a con man because he used the pity ploy to escape from juvenile detention with his guitar. He left home for several years after that.
He was a middle child of 6 boys. His father was an absent womanizer and his mother has low standards of decent conduct. She doesn’t admit to anything bad, but I wasn’t there so who knows. She says she loved them all and treated them fairly. But none of them lead exemplary lives, except maybe the eldest. They are all racist hillbillies as far as I can tell.
I’d love to know more about my P and maybe it will oneday be revealed but I think that you should do your interviews in person because P’s run in families and if you don’t see their faces and also cross-check stories, you are bound to run into lies and deception.
Good Morning everybody. Hi Skylar. In one of your blogs you mentioned something about Seattle, and you’ve said you lived on an island for eighteen years. I’m from Washington state, Bremerton, to be exact, though I haven’t lived there for twenty-five years. I was just curious what island it was. Bainbridge? Vashion? Whidby? I live in Florida and really miss the Pacific Northwest sometimes.
skylar
racist hillbilly: yep that was him. my ex. he covered it at first but it was fully layed out at the end. he lives in Cali now ( where we were) but originally he was from a redneck state as he himself is ridiculously proud of. He loves being a racist, unless that person of colour has something he needs. He told me black people instantly make him gag. I thought he must have some trauma from back in his youth, however now I still cant imagine it. HE is sick. And he hides it VERY well. Lots of people admire him ( or walk on eggshells, hard to tell).
MariaLisa,
This really is the million dollar question… What causes people to be this way? I think it is within us (the human condition) to want to understand….To be able to give “reason” to behavior that is so UNREASONABLE.
Nurture-Nature, this has been discussed here many times before. Many studies have been done and even the experts can disagree on this one.
Personally I believe that there are TWO reasons that the experts DO disagree. First reason is pretty simple. Most of the “experts” are looking at this from a scientific perspective and they have not LIVED with this disorder. They just “study” it. AND as anyone here knows that living with this kind of person gives a total different perspective at how unbelievable and complex this condition can really be.
And the second reason that they disagree I belive is pretty simple as well. I think it can be EITHER or BOTH. Nurture, nature, or a combanation of the two. I don’t think it can be rock solidly defined. Just as there is a huge spectum of the disorder itself. Very possibly it isn’t like other disorders that have been studied.
Autism, Mentally challenged, AdHD, alcoholism and so many more…..Alot wasn’t known about these things….Until more recently.
If you ask a S/P naturally they are going to lie and put blame somewhere (besides themselves)…..Isn’t that what they do?
Isn’t that what convicts in prison do as well? (aren’t prisons full of “innocent” people, NOT!)
So studies of their background & childhood would have to include other family members as well. And each member of the family would have their own “recollection” of how things were and they might differ alot by each individuals personal perspective. As siblings usually have different “roles” in the family.
Personally I don’t believe there is ONE concrete answer to this question.
The only study I think that would give more answers to this is to actually do ALOT of ONGOING research on the brain with children at high risk when they are young and give them brain scans from a young age on into puberty, then into adulthood. See how the brain matures and developes that would be “different” than the average child.
And I am sure someone would come back with debate why that couldn’t or shouldn’t be done……But I think it would answer some scientific questions.
hi witsend
thank you for that. well i know wwe havent come that far woth the research, but i would like to know what the percentage is of sociopaths that were severly abused. so say everybody on this site/blog their sociopathic ex had been abused, that must say something. However, its the best excuse they can use too. certainly when their partner has not been abused. mine would always tell me not to have an opinion about things like his former alcoholism, cause i wasnt an alcoholic. so bullshit. like he cant tell me anythign cause he is not a woman. i mean you talk about things, you share, you help eachother, you dont just act like alcoholism is something you got that requires special treatment for the rest of your life.
Im drifting of. What I found interesting in the books Ive read now is the physical findings. My ex had really bad blood circulation and his father died at 48 from a hard attack ( his father the one that was an alcoholic aswell and beat him every day so he said). Now arent that some of the physical signs? he truly is the entire ‘ package’.
(For some weird intuitive reason I just dont think he was beaten in the way he says. I think he got some beating cause of his outrageous behavior, but I think he is so full of shit he just makes it seems like he has been through more than he has ( or didnt deserve) cause I see that is a pattern in him.)
Dear Wits,
There have been studies done on what you suggested. Unfortunately there is not a concerete difference that can be detected (as far as I know) that a “scan” can pick up–Dr. Leedom may shed some more light on this…
The best one done that I know of is the “identical twins, raised apart) which has 100% of the same genetics in each of the two people, who are raised in different environments with different adoptive parents, and guess what? I think it is 80% of the time if one child is a P so is the other, so right there puts a HIGH GENETIC component to the disorder. Of course, not EVERY twin of a P comes out a P, but it also makes me wonder if those “non-P” twins don’t ALSO have a “High” rate of P-traits. Maybe nto the full blown Psychopathic score, but at least HIGHER on the score.
I do believe that they (Ps) have choices. But there is a GROWING body of EVIDENCe that children whose parents were Ps, even if that child is riased in a loving home (usually adoptive) have a much higher incidence of psychopathic traits and behaviors and personality disorders (BY FAR) over “normal” children whose parents are NOT psychopathic.
It was (for a while) assumed by medical people and psychologists that childrenw ere blank slates on which environment wrote and parents were “blamed” for all kinds of things that we NOW know are almost 100% heritable and genetic.
I saw a show last night on television about a young man who was in Jullilard’s school of music, from a “good” black family, but who developed Schizophrenia when he was early college age. A book and a movie have been made a bout this man’s life on the street as a homeless man and musician and his unusual friendship with a journalist who befriended him. the years long friendship between them has been in the words of his mentor “the best friendship I’ve ever had” yet this man is still gravely mentally ill, refuses medications and is homeless because of his illness. His sister was interviewed and told about his early life before his genetic potential for mental illness was expressed in his paranoia, distorted thinking and so on. He was however, left with his love for and ability to play music in such a fashion that one can only wonder what would have been his life if he had not had this terrible genetic “defect” that stole his reason and thinking.
I look at my own P-son who is also very very gifted intellectually and talented and I wonder what he could have been if his mind and heart had not been stolen by the genetics he received. While a psychopath has more of a CHOICE, I think, because they DO know right from wrong, where a person with other mental illnesses that distort REALITY and in which they may see and hear things that are NOT REAL, have less independent choices, I think, about their behavior.
None the less, mentally ill people who are not in touch with reality CAN BE DANGEROUS to others as well as to themselves. The law (in theory at least) does not hold these people accountable for their behavior, such as murder which is deemed “not guilty by reason of mental defect.” It does not mean they didn’t do it, but that they were not aware wht they were doing was necessarily wrong.
Plus, a person can have psychopathy AND mental diseases as well.
The psychopath, however, does KNOW right from wrong, at least legally, but they don’t care if what they are doing is wrong. The law holds them accountable for their bad deeds.
Many people, even WITH consciences, have such “different” views of what is right or wrong (like some people from other cultures, though living in this culture and society still believe it is GOOD to “circumcise” female children.) Our society disagrees and criminalizes this as “child abuse” so some people come up against the LAW when their conscience is “clear” because they BELIEVE waht they are doing is right.
I believe the people responsible for 9/11 thoguht what they were doing was “right”—that doesn’t make it “right” in our eyes though. That doesn’t mean some of the people responsible might not have been psychopaths, but I am speaking of the ones who drove the planes into the twin towers.
When we “catagorize” people though by the actions of a few, stereotypes are born. Someone (can’t remember who) called their X-P a “racist red-neck” which is a STEREOTYPE. Well, I am a RED NECK and not ashamed of it at all, but I am NOT a racist. Not ALL rednecks are racist. Not all racists are rednecks.
In general a “red neck” or a “hill billy” is a stereo ltype for people with little smarts and/or education who are prejudiced against others—and that DOES describe SOME red necks or hill billies, but it doesn’t describe us all by any stretch of the imagination any more than the N-word describes all people who are black. Not all Jewish people are tightwads, or all Italians mafiaoso, or all Islamic people terrorists.
There are good people and bad people (psychopaths) in every group of people in the world. there are even some cultures that we might consider psychopathic by OUR standards, because they have different definiitions of “right” and “wrong.”
The thing about a psychopath though, is that no matter what their beliefs about right or wrong, they will DO AS THEY PLEASE to violate the rights of others, and in many cases, actually ENJOY doing so.
Oxdrover,
You are correct about the scans. Also more and more evidence is piling up that the whole nature vs nurture thing is in reality nature and nurture (genetics and environmental influences) influencing one another.
As an aside about the redneck – sad how that went from being a term that people were proud to be called to what it has become now – http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/19831
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