By Joyce Alexander, RNP (retired)
Psychopaths do a great deal of damage to their victims. The fact that there are people who are aware of what they are doing and choose to “look the other way” or to “sit on the fence and do nothing” enables the psychopaths to continue to abuse their victims. If the bystanders would stand up and assist the victims, even acknowledge that they are being victimized, the psychopaths might not be quite so successful.
One of the most famous of these enablers who chose to look the other way was a man named Pontius Pilate, the Roman prefect in Jerusalem in AD 33. When Jesus was brought before him by the Jewish leaders, Pilate stated that he found “no fault” in Jesus, yet he gave Jesus over to the mob to be crucified.
To signify that he had no responsibility for the death of Jesus, Pilate had water and a basin brought and he literally “washed his hands” of what the mob intended to do. Yet, he did nothing to stop it.
The dictionary defines the word “minion” as “a servile follower or subordinate of a person in power.” These people also enable the psychopath to continue to victimize their prey by either helping the psychopath, or by simply “looking the other way” as Pilate did. Minions can also be very active participants with the psychopath in the victimization of the prey.
Examples of doing nothing
A famous case of people knowing a horrible crime was being committed and doing nothing was the murder of Kitty Genovese outside her Queens, NY, home in March, 1964. There were 38 witnesses who did nothing—not even call the cops when they heard her scream for nearly a half hour as she was repeatedly stabbed on that fateful night.
A more recent example of people doing nothing is the Penn State case of Jerry Sandusky’s pedophilia. The head coach and the president of the university knew what Sandusky was doing and chose to do nothing, which allowed Sandusky to continue to abuse young boys sexually for more several years.
Of course not all “enabling” of psychopaths are as “serious” as the crucifixion of Christ, the molestation of dozens of young boys, or the brutal murder of a young woman. But the help and support offered by others does enable psychopaths to “get away with” much more than they would otherwise.
Tattling and telling
We teach our kids not to be “tattle tales” and kids learn not to “snitch” on each other. When my kids were little, I tried to teach them the difference between “tattling” and “telling.” “Tattling” was saying “Johnny called me a doo doo,” but that “telling” was saying, “Johnny is playing with matches and setting fire to the curtains.”
I don’t support gossip or tattling in any way, but we must be aware that when we keep our mouths shut and allow evil to flourish, we are contributing to that evil.
My guess is that most of the people reading this on Lovefraud have experienced people being enablers (either actively or passively) to the psychopath that abused them. People either knew the truth and turned their backs, or actively participated in helping the psychopath accomplish their abuse.
Blame the victim
Psychopaths are also usually very good at the “smear campaign.” When the victim is finally trying to break free, they smear the name, sanity and reputation of the victim to everyone who will listen. Unfortunately, too many times the victim is blamed for their own victimization, or labeled crazy or vindictive for trying to protect themselves. “Yeah he hit her, but she was so mouthy, what can you expect?” Or “well if she’d been a better wife, he wouldn’t have needed to cheat.”
The hurt for the victim becomes double or treble when the enabler or fence sitter is someone the victim counted on for support, such as friend, neighbor, co-worker, relative or even the police and the courts. When someone you have counted on to believe you and validate you, instead turns their back on you, in addition to the trauma from the psychopath, the pain may be simply overwhelming, leaving the victim feeling totally abandoned.
No help
I can’t even imagine the horror that Kitty Genovese must have felt that night as she cried out in terror for someone to save her. Yet, I know that many victims of psychopaths have cried out to people that they expected would help them, would support them, only to find a total lack of concern.
The news reports today are filled with stories of people who “knew” and yet did nothing, or worse, helped the abusers. Whistle blowers are still persecuted relentlessly. Those are facts of life.
For what it is worth, though, even if no one else believes us, it doesn’t change the truth or the facts. While we would appreciate support and validation from others, we don’t always get it, even from those we hold most dear. Learning to validate our own knowledge of the truth may be the closest we come to receiving support.
In my own situation, essentially my entire family, immediate and extended, have either actively assisted my psychopathic son Patrick, stood by silently while he tried to harm me, or washed their hands and didn’t even bother to listen. It hurts when those we have depended on fail us, but it is not the end of the world. In most cases, and we can move on. We can learn to validate ourselves and what we know is the truth.
Fortunately, there is Lovefraud, and the many bloggers here who do support and validate us in our healing journey. I hope that each person here will feel free to reach out to others for support when you need it, and that you will reach out to extend validation and support to others who need your support. That’s what it is all about.
God bless.
Skylar.
There are four people that I know of just waiting on me to die. It’s is an investment for them, a gamble I guess..life insurance..yep even the xspath bf has a policy on me. And the xwife ( but she deserves it ) . I dont think anyone has plans to murder me, but my mother would if she could ( she even tried once ! ) but she is at deaths door in a nursing home, I hope she isnt suffering..yes I am worth more dead than alive to a few greedy bastards….
Wow, what an envigorated discussion.
Athena, it’s good to “see” you.
Sunflower, serious hugs to you, my dear. What your mother did was horrific and a pivotal part of how you perceived yourself throughout your lifetime. To threaten a child with suicide if they don’t comply is the in line with the same type of damage that molestation creates. The “GUILT” is deliberately incorporated in an effort to control from the very beginning.
The “guilt” that you feel has no basis-in-fact, Sunflower. It’s a false perception that was put in place by a very, very bad person, delibately. Do we feel “gulty” if our neighbor’s prize dahlia is eaten by a random deer? Of course not! How absurd is that? Wouild we feel “guilty” if that same deer wandered into our own garden to eat our roses and we chased it off? Of course not! We might feel badly for the deer, but we don’t feel “guilty” for protecting something that we prize.
Our emotional health is directly related to our physical health. Why do we allow ourselves to feel “guilty” for constructing and maintaining boundaries that protect and defend our emotional health? Seriously – this isn’t a rhetorical question. In my situation, I believe that I was taught to feel responsible for everyone else’s “happiness” and well-being and took that false responsibility into my adulthood. I HAD to allow abuse and intolerable behaviors because, if I made a fuss or walked away, I would be ignored, abandoned, dismissed, and invalidated. I never learned that I had the power to see to my own needs, emotionally and financially.
As a strict aside, I wasn’t raised to be independent by my parents. They came from an era when it was vital to “marry well.” That’s how I was raised. Sure, go to college, but don’t go to become anything because that’s where I’ll meet someone and “marry well” within a specific socio-economic class.
In part, my way of rebelling against my parents’ wishes was to choose poorly – to NOT “marry well.”
My whole view on why I was so easily targeted was altered from THEM to ME when I learned about “inner child.” That one exploration gave me more understanding and insight into my own dysfunctional thinking than any other “epiphany” that I had previously experienced, bar none. It remains a pivotal moment in my personal recovery to this day.
I’m NOT responsible for anyone else. I cannot control anyone else’s actions, choices, or decisions. Darwinsmom wrote the most profound thing that I intend to apply to myself, every second of the day: “It doesn’t make you an awful person at all to try to teach them to stop. But there is a lesson for you to realize you can’t make them stop. You can only stop them from doing it TO YOU, by not having them in your life.”
Holy MACKEREL, THAT is what NC boils down to, and if those words don’t pinpoint it, no other combination of words will.
Brightest blessings!!!
Anam cara…..cog/diss being one’s “protector” and “attacker” makes sense to me. My counselor explained it as a psychological phenomenon of self-protection. I would not be likely to do horrible things to people that I care about, so people that I care about wouldn’t ever do horrible things to me, consequently.
My cog/diss was an attempt to fit someone else’s behaviors into MY system of beliefs because the facts and truth were beyond my comprehension
Hens, as for people wanting me to die, I really don’t care if they do or don’t. I’m fairly certain that, had I never discovered what the exspath was, I would have met an untimely demise – it’s MUCH cheaper, in the long run, for a spouse to die than to pay for a divorce, right? And, he is a very, very patient predator. Do I have evidence that he was planning this? Nope. And, I don’t care, really.
Brightest blessings
A present example in the media of enablers and minions.
A 14-year old girl was raped by her older boyfriend (19) when she visited his place. She went to police the same day. He’s convicted for 2 years for rape of a minor. Meanwhile the village started up a gossip campaign of her asking for it.
The girl then made a video where she explains what happened to her written on white papers she showed for the camera. She put this on facebook, originally intended solely for her friends, but in a matter of days it was shared and got 30000 likes.
Here’s an English subtitled version of it on YouTUbe
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-MAG54BeVjw&feature=player_embedded
Darwinsmom, awful. Just awful. And, 2 years for such a crime? Criminy crissmass….
Thanks for the link
Basically he got convicted for statuary rape. Also crime sentences in Scandinavian countries tend to be short in general.
Sick is the fact that people comment nasty stuff about her make-up and cleavage in the video.
Sky, I don’t know how you should feel about so many people wanting you dead, but if it were me, may feel a little scared, but it’s not my situation. The fact that you are not offended does not sound like splitting to me. Splitting is when you view someone as either all good or all bad. And you can view someone as all good one day, but the next day they do some small thing that offends you (like look at their watch during a conversation) and then suddenly you go into a rage and see them as a terrible person, evil, or even possessed. I’ve been on the receiving end a few times of borderline splitting, and it was very clear that the person was projecting on me.
I remember a woman I used to know years ago. She was an artist but seemed troubled and unbalanced. She gave me a drawing she did, and I was supposed to repay her with food. We were both very poor at the time, and I think I offered to give her some of my food stamps. She became very upset because I didn’t offer to cook her a meal instead and invite her over. She took it as a rejection and flew into a rage and proceeded to tell me all of my flaws. This is after she had idealized me in the beginning.
I knew another guy once who was known to be mentally unstable, but he was a friend of a good friend. The good friend wanted me to meet him and thought we’d get along because I’d been through a lot myself and was very compassionate. I invited the guy over and we were having a nice conversation. I had just begun my part-time career as a stripper, and I was sharing with the guy what this was like – the good, the bad, and the ugly of it. (Probably not a conversation I should have had with an unbalanced person in retrospect). In the middle of the conversation, he flew into a rage and called me a “Jewish bitch”. I have no idea what triggered it. But later, I was discussing it with the mutual friend. I think what happened is that the guy was attracted to me. His way of dealing with his feelings (and the perceived rejection from me) was to put me down and make me a bad person.
Borderline splitting always involves some sense that the person is being abandoned by the other in some way. They can perceive any tiny action as a huge abandonment. I read about a therapy group with a borderline in it. When the therapist would look up at the clock, the borderline got up and walked out of the room. She perceived the therapist looking up at the clock as a rejection/abandonment and then acted it out by abandoning the group. The borderline feels abandonment very intensely because they were intermittently abandoned from an early age. They never learned object constancy. They experienced a loving parent at times, alternating with an abandoning parent. So this is how they internalized that parent – and this is what they project on others. The person is either all loving or totally evil. I can honestly say I did a bit of this myself in my younger years. When I was 20 and had my first real boyfriend, I remember flying into a rage because he got up early and went to work one morning (!). I destroyed his room, throwing his books around everywhere. I think I attracted a lot of borderlines in my 20’s and 30’s because I was trying to heal this split in myself. It CAN be healed, but it requires a lot of diligence and awareness and a very strong mind. When a borderline person heals their split, they can become extremely compassionate and a very strong healer. I know a few who have done it. You have to face your early abandonment and the feelings involved and clear out the pain. It CAN be done. The borderline has a much better prognosis than a sociopath, whose disorder appears to have no cure.
You say you are not offended by the people who want you dead. People who split are constantly being offended and by the tiniest of things.
Sky: I also wanted to add that there are no “shoulds” about how people respond to certain situations. One person could have the same experience as another and perceive it completely differently. I know a few women who were raped and it ruined their lives. I know another woman who is a longtime Buddhist meditator. She was raped when she was in her 30’s and regarded it as just another life experience. It was honestly not a huge deal to her. So, having people you know who want to kill you does not necessarily mean you should feel rage. You may feel fear, anger, pity, or nothing at all, depending on how you perceive the situation and what MEANING you give to the situation. If you realize that these people envy you and this is the way they are, you are not taking it personally. If you don’t take things personally, there is nothing to feel angry about.
Star,
thank you for your thoughtful post. It does help to hear your viewpoint and experience.
I’m coming to the conclusion that my attitude depends on how I’m looking at it in that moment. It’s like that famous drawing of the old woman/young woman.
http://www.moillusions.com/2006/05/young-lady-or-old-hag.html
The reality is that it is neither an old woman or a young woman, it is actually a series of squiggles on a paper or screen, which remind us of either a young or old woman. But it’s not even 3 dimensional. As you said, it’s all about what meaning you assign to the illusion at that moments.
I do realize this BUT I’m concerned because our emotions are supposed to be there to protect us. My lack of feeling offended could have ended up in my death. It is the reason why I stayed through the emotional abuse and it is also the reason why many women go back to physical abuse. They are simply not offended enough.
When I left him, I did leave because of a gut instinct that my life was in danger. It was when I realized that I had been feeling that feeling for 25 years and didn’t know what it was.
Oftentimes, we admire our intellect for informing us of so much, but the truth is that our “guts” or emotions have wisdom beyond our intellect. It’s just hard to know sometimes, which one to listen to if they aren’t in agreement.
hmm.. the edit comment isn’t working.
I just wanted to add that maybe that is what wisdom is: when our guts and our intellect finally agree and we don’t have to question or subvert either one. No more cog/diss.