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?
Hey guys, I didn’t say redneck, I said hillbillies.
Also, I didn’t say being a hillbilly was bad, only that being a racist hillbilly doesn’t seem to be an exemplary way of life to me. Please re-read my post above, you will see.
I think that perhaps the word hillbilly is a trigger for some people and they automatically interchange it with the word redneck. Not the same at all. Rednecks are all men, hillbillies can be women – simple folk who live in the country.
My own xP is a chameleon. He was born a hillbilly but he became, a street kid in the city at age 12, surviving by playing guitar in the bars with his band and by conning people. For a time he lived in the mountains and clubbed spawning salmon in the streams so that he could eat.
His family is mostly farmers and welders and road workers. Only one graduated high school AFAIK. They all use derogatory terms for people of any color, blacks, browns, native americans, muslims whatever. So does he. But he is not a hillbilly, he is anything that it suits him to be at the moment. In fact, I believe he hates hillbillies too because he speaks of them in deragatory terms as well.
oxy
i think sociopaths do things OFF in every type of society. they dont fit into ANY system in their heads, they only adjust or fake adjustment to the point it benefits them. Right?
I responded to someone who used the term racist redneck. Ofcourse its a stereotype. It just happened to fit him 100%. I have met the most amazingly wonderful social and welcoming people from those states. HE is just so augh!!! so bad. He always boasts about how he loved shooting things when he was young there, that those states are’ lawless’, those are his words. Im from Europe I have never seen a gun in my entire life. Anywho he loved watching dumb people harm themselves. So weird that never dawned on me before, he LOOKED SO harmless, but when you think of it its quite weird to like rednecks cause theyre so lawless and dumb ( in his mind) right. He felt he was ofcourse smarter than anyone else. He called himself a redneck, but a genius one. Literally…
Dear Blogger,
Diabetes Type II (a part of what is now called “metabolilc syndrome”) is the same way—nature (genetics) + environment= metabolic syndrome which, untreated, causes premature death.
Just as training (environment) and/or abuse can change the “temperment” of a dog to some extent, or a cat, or anything else living with a reasonable brain, I think it takes BOTH to mold us (humans) into the forms we take both physically and emotionally/mentally.
Inseresteringly, I read a study done many years ago when iwas in school, that starving a baby before it is born will produce a mentally retarded child. If a female, however, is starved before birth, her offspring will also be retarded for 3 generations, even if she was given adequate nutrition after birth and her babies were also given adequate nutrition.
The male child who was retarded because of lack of nutrition, however, if he is mated with a normal individual will produce normal offspring.
The huge numbers ofg people in the world who do not have adequate prenatal nutrition—and sometimes even in this country due to the eating habits and preferences of the teenaged mothers, themselves little more than children in many cases—I think are problematic for society as a whole.
Sometimes intelligence can overcome psychopathic traits or mental illness enough that the person does not become a violent member of society, but can be “socialized”—they may still be a psychopath or have a mental illness, but combined with the lack of intelligence due to prenatal starvation, low or no education, poverty, etc. their “problems” become worse and their behavior more of a blot on society as a whole.
Intelligence, even superior intelligence, such as my son has, doesn’t mean that the psychopath will “overcome” their traits or disorders or even not become violently criminal. I do believe however, that the more intelligent (generally) a psychopath is, and the more educated, the less likely they are to be “robbing liquor” stores or to live a parasitic lifestyle.
While I know quite a few people I consider psychopaths who are well educated, bright and function in society in a way that their careers as physicians, lawyers, and even educators, does some good for society and keeps them out of the prison system (for the most part) the people I know who I think are psychopaths who are not so bright, not educated well, have few if any job skills, etc. are much more apt to behave in ways that land them in prison that the brighter psychopaths.
For a long time, it seems to me, our society seemed to believe that poverty (alone) caused domestic violence, low motivation, discrimination, etc. but it seems to me that domestic violence, lack of motivation, psychopathy, and so on create the poverty which is then blamed for those people behaving in violent and anti-social ways.
As more and more children who are adopted are coming from psychopathic mothers and fathers (most other unwed parents keeping their children) and those children from such back grounds are showing up with a MUCH HIGHER than average rate of “conduct disorder” and eventually psychopathic and criminal behavior, I think the tide of “common sense” is turning somewhat to see that there are some genetic components to the problems that cause anti-social behavior, which behavior, in turn, causes poverty, low intellect and lack of desire for education.
The old phrase “poor white trash” is another stereotypical phrase to describe what is now called “red neck” by many. However, they are not trash because they are poor, but poor because they are “trash.” In my community there were and are many poor people, people without even the ability to read or write enough to sign their name, but these people are NOT trash, not considered trash by the community, but respected for their moral compasses and for their work eithic. There are others here who have quite a bit of money but ARE “trash” because of their behavior, lack of moral compasses, and “trashy” behavior. With the influx of the natural gas drillilng in this area, it is also quite funny at times to see what the “poor white trash” do when they become RICH white trash! LOL
It is also interesting to note the different behavior when the poor people who have little education but good moral compasses do when they start getting significant royalties for the gas under their land. The biggest difference in those good people’s lives in having money and not having money is the different amounts they give to the church, and maybe they buy a new truck, but they don’t start walking around the community with their noses in the air and “bling” on their necks. LOL
“
whats the difference between a redneck or a hillbilly ( he used those two interchangeably btw)?
skylar our ex could very well be the same…
Dear MariaLisa,
Psychopaths usually find some group to “look down on” whether it is “dumb” whites/blacks/browns.
I was raised where hunting was common, and had been forever. I was raised around guns that were TOOLs not just weapons. Your psychopath’s admiration for people who kill and hurt things just for the fun of it or are “lawless” shows that he feels that those things ar e”fun”—it isn’t quite as “lawless” as he might think “out west.” Or as he might wish!
Yes, there are people who use a gun to hurt others, or to rob or kill, but there are people who use poison, knives, or stones to hurt others as well. A gun itself is not a bad thing, it is th eperson holding it that decides whether it is used to hurt for fun, or to secure meat, or to kill or injure, or to protect yourself. Just as a pencil is not responsible for the words it writes, neither is the gun responsible for how it is used or misused.
I did not take offense at your term “racist redneck” because I know that term is often used both here and over seas. Psychopaths are the worst racists because they have to find some group that they can belittle to make themselves seem superior. (((hugs))))
Maria Lisa
redneck is a guy with a rifle and a truck that likes to shoot things, animate or inanimate and thinks his own opinion is all that matters. He is ignorant no matter how much education or money he has. His problem is hidden low self-esteem.
I think the rifle and truck are necessary to be called a redneck because no redneck could possibly continue to live if he didn’t have both.
hillbilly is someone who lives in the country and likes simple thiings. You can choose to live life as a hillbilly. A hillbilly is not pretentious. Hillbillies don’t care about other people’s “high falutin’ ways” (did I spell “falutin” correctly?)
The man you described sounds like a P, more than a redneck.
I hope I didn’t offend any truck drivers/gun owners, I own a truck too. LOL. But I think y’all know what I mean.
Thanks Oxy and I totally agree with you. My ex was just such an indescribable loser. Wat can I say.
Skylar
“I think the rifle and truck are necessary to be called a redneck because no redneck could possibly continue to live if he didn’t have both.”
OMG how that sentence made me burst out laughing!! you have a fine sense of humor. Its quite dry (is that how you call it in American aswell?)
I could actually say some funny things here but Im afraid if anyone who knows him ever comes on here it would just be TOO easy to tell Im talking about him ( I think its already to easy).
Anywho what I wanted to say is I would highly respect people who like the simple things in life, anywhere on this planet. And working in an agricultural business is highly respectful in my opinion aswell. Nature and the countryside are so amazing, so sad some lunatics out there make it unsafe.
I have one question just for general knowledge. Georgia is a redneck state (or southern state), but what about texas or say west virginia. I mean texas is southern and cowboyish ofcourse yet not poor at all. West Virginia is poor yet not southern…
We all know or some of us do how un reliable are the folks who want to diagnose folks are before we pass judgement on a fellow human being remember that we all are guilty of the same behaviors, it is just a mater of extanint and how we choose to view the world!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_R9vq-32xk&feature=channel_page
Skylar,
LOL–I beg your pardon, while there are some who define “red neck” and “hill billy” as two different things, as you do, I am proud to be a red neck, I own 4 trucks and a bunch of guns! I am not ignorant, though I do have an education, and I don’t kill things for fun—I do live a “simple” life, by choice, but I do have indoor plumbing, electric lights, a computer and a toothbrush! LOL
The point is, though, that like Easy says, we all have our prejudices and we DO “profile” people by many things, age, race, sex, dress, cleanliness, speech patterns, and location.
I doubt if there are any of us who walkign along at midnight in a “down town” neighborhood in any large city would not profile a group of young black men dressed in bandanas with their pants hanging nearly to their knees who were following us chanting rap music as “dangerous” even though these young men might have been to a play rehearsal.
Profiling predators, or sizing up someone as ‘dangerous or not dangerous” is how humans have survived for eons! It is a natural instinct, I think.
People from different “tribes” dressed differently, cut their hair differently, had different facial features and different skin colors and I think we are programmed to be suspicious of anyone who is “different” than we are in any manner of dress, facilal features, skin color, language etc. Noting these differences and having an “us” (our tribe) vs. “them” (anyone else) mentality was what kept people safer than if they had opened up too quickly to strangers whose intentions they did not know.
While in order for a group to live together fairly peacefully, there had to be rules within the tribe that were enforced of how to treat others. However, people who were not “our tribe” that we did not know, were not treated the same as “us” (our tribe) so it made it “okay” to steal from them, kill them and take their food/land etc. because “all of ‘them”” were “not as good as us” maybe we even thought them not human so it was OK to treat them like animals.
This catagorizing of all people with X characteristic as bad made it easier than having to make a decision about a single person, we could just “lump” them with the other people who had x characteristic and we “knew” that they were all bad, so therefore we didn’t have to make a decision (therefore we didn’t have anxiety about making a wrong decision) but could just lump “them all together.”
Part of our problem I think today with US (those that have been victimized by psychopaths) is that we have gotten TOO far away from “catagorizing” people, TOO open hearted, too non-discriminatory….we many times no longer look at a person’s outward appearance and draw any conclusions from it. No job? Well, he is black so he can’t get one, it’s not his fault. No car, no home? Well, his parents were abusive of him., it’s not his fault. Gets mad and hurts people, well, that;’s not his fault either, because it is what he learned at home. Does drugs and lies? Well, that’s not his fault either, it is society’s fault, it is our culture.
But instead of profiling GROUPS, we need to PROFILE INDIVIDUAL BEHAVIOR, and hold people accountable for their actions.
well, Oxy, if you insist…!
that was just my definition of RN vs. Hillbilly, obviously there isn’t just one. To me a RN is a man not a woman because there has to be lots of testosterone involved. I would categorize you as a Country Gal, if I may be permitted.
Not being a RN or Hillbilly (by my own definition) I have to have my own way of analyzing, categorizing, verbalizing what I mean.
You are exactly right about passing judgement – I don’t do that enough.
Everyone on LF might think that I’m doing just that when I categorize people, but really I’m just describing. The fact is I’m WAY TOO accepting of everyone and everyone’s behavior even the bad stuff.
When my xp’s REDNECK brother came up and made non-stop racist comments, I never said a word. I just thought, “well, he doesn’t mean it in a bad way. I also categorize people but still respect everyone and therefore, I’m sure he does too. I’m sure he is a nice person. Look how nice his wife and kids are…etc…” Those were my thoughts.
Perhaps its because I find every type of person interesting and amusing. I WAS the glue in my N family, I get along with everyone. Never criticizing always accepting. If you’ve read my posts, you know I just make excuses for everyone’s bad behavior. They don’t even need to make their own for me. LOL.
So anyway, we need to put people in groups so that we can think about them, describe them, but we all belong to more than just one group. Like you said, the only group you don’t want to belong to is the P group! And we all know that P’s are only good for one thing:
AS AN EXAMPLE OF HOW NOT TO BE.
🙂