(This article is copyrighted (c) 2012 by Steve Becker, LCSW. The use of male gender pronouns is strictly for convenience’s sake and not to suggest that females aren’t capable of the behaviors and attitudes discussed.)
“Loyalty” and “the sociopath” are incompatible terms. We’ve discussed many traits of the exploitive personality, but let’s not minimize a very vital one: deficient loyalty. Clearly, deficient loyalty is a sociopathic characteristic.
A deficiency of loyalty can be disguised very well by clever, self-serving rationalizations. But you will not find the case of a true sociopath about whom you will ever be able to say: he (or she) was really, through and through, truly loyal.
Loyal? What does “loyal” mean? It’s actually pretty simple to define: when you are loyal, you “have the backs” of those who’ve “had your back.”
You “have their backs” because you want to “have their backs.” You are glad, if not grateful, for the chance to “have the backs” of those who’ve had yours. This is loyalty. It’s application feels good, and it feels consonant with the loyal individual’s “value system.”
Now, in some cases “loyalty” can lead to corruption. For instance, look at law enforcement: cops, corrections officers, will often “have each others’ backs—”they will often “go down” protecting their own even in scandals where, intellectually, they are well aware that laws were broken (by colleagues and friends), and the public’s trust violated. But they “have each others’ backs,” sometimes stubbornly and illegally. Their loyalty to each other may, in a rather complex way, sometimes contravenes other “values” they may have, such as ethical ones.
In a person of conscience, this may produce real conflict and stress. In someone with a weaker conscience, this may not be the case.
In some cases, the “whistle-blower,” who might “look” more honest and courageous than his seemingly more ethically-challenged colleagues, might be more sociopathic than his “corrupt” counterparts who, in snubbing authority and the law, maintain “the backs” of those who had his (or hers).
I am not judging this phenomenon in any way at all, just pointing out its sometimes complexity.
So “loyalty—”its demonstrations (and abdications)—can encompass serious moral complexity.
This is a case where, of course, not all evidence of disloyalty is a hot red flag of sociopathy, but “disloyalty” is absolutely a feature of the sociopathic personality.
And this is especially true: when “loyalty” becomes inconvenient, now we have something to evaluate. When it’s “inconvenient” to be loyal, watch the disloyal individual (and sociopaths) shed their capacity to “seem” loyal with a variety of disturbing rationalizations, and sometimes without even the need to explain. Watch them, in any case, emerge in their truer colors.
If there is a single quality, in fact—a single, true trait—whose presence alone virtually “rules out” sociopathy, it is arguably “loyalty.”
You simply cannot be “loyal” to those in your life who have been loyal to you—that is, be truly loyal to them even when it’s no longer expedient to be so—and be truly sociopathic.
As I said, true loyalty and true sociopathy are simply incompatible concepts, and will never describe the same individual.
skylar
Kim,
Dr. Peck discusses his friendship with Father Malachi Martin, an exorcist, in the book, People of the Lie. They did exorcisms together.
Father Malachi was also on a late night AM radio show with Art Bell. Spath loved to sit up at night in his car, listening to Father Malachi. If Father Malachi was going to be on, spath was out in his car all night. He was obsessed with him.
I know spath thought he was possessed. His evil so completely encompassed him that he actually only lives to do evil. Taking money and helicopters and other things are only side benefits for him. He understands this about himself. It’s very sad.
20years
Kim,
I was fairly young, too, when I read People of the Lie — I think I was about 24. I met my spath when I was 27. Even by the time I divorced him (3 kids later, age 36-ish), I didn’t know about sociopathy.
Sleeping With the Enemy only makes sense to me NOW. It didn’t, when I saw it — parts of it seemed too extreme. The parts where she arranges the cans of food and the towels “just so” made sense to me, because that was part of my life, but his single-minded pursuit and torture of her didn’t make sense to me…. until after I’d left my spath. As bad as it was when I was married to him, I did not truly know fear until I left him and he started acting that way. It was also a tremendous shock to have THAT mask dropped, after having been married to him for so long with only “mild” violence. Not the out of control “am I going to die? R U kidding me?!?” kind of stuff that you “only see in movies.” Haha. Yeah, right. Well, I hadn’t LIVED it, so I didn’t KNOW. I didn’t BELIEVE.
Even afterwards…. no one believed ME when I told them how he attacked me and they thought *I* was the crazy one for being so scared and locking myself in the house, hypervigilant, for about 3 weeks before I could even go outside to check the mailbox.
To this day, my ex-spath DENIES that he did what he did, lying so smoothly that any therapist doubts my account of it. It is interesting to be an observer and watch my mind “tempted” to go along with the spath’s version. I mean seriously; I like peace and harmony and it would be so convenient to just sweep this under the rug as though it never happened, to just pretend and collude. I find myself *almost* believing, then I snap back — SHOCKED at what my mind will do, how easily hypnotized.
So that is what I try to do NOW. Be on top of my thinking processes. This sort of stuff: how do we KNOW that we “know the things we think we know.” Yeah, it’s enough to drive anyone crazy, but you get better at it with practice. I am striving to retain my open-mindedness, my faith and at the same time my skepticism. It takes vigilance and focus.
Above all, I seek the Truth about things. Knowing that it can only be a quest; I don’t think you ever quite get there and if you think you do, possibly you are having the wool still pulled over your eyes.
Laughter helps. It IS a strange trip.
Linda0906
He estado con un abusivo, manipulador, controlador, violento y estafador. Supo como sacarme el dinero era bastante seductor y manipulador y yo le creà su teatro ya que actuaba muy bien. Jamás habÃa deseado tanto la muerte de alguien, y me siento tan enojada y frustrada porque supo estafarme muy bien y me sedujo bastante bien para caer en su mentira. Ahora me doy cuenta que tan involucrada estaba y me agarró en mi estado de vulnerabilidad. Ahora no se como manejar mi odio, coraje y frustración y más que nada mi odio de verlo salirse con la suya y andar como si nada en el mismo lugar donde trabajamos. No se como hacer para desquitar mi coraje o como trabajo con eso.
behind_blue_eyes
Sociopaths demand loyalty while being disloyal. They demand trust while being untrusting and untrustworthy.
Currently, Lance Armstrong is an excellent example of this behavior. As long as you supported him and his various transgressions, you were part of the inner circle. The moment anyone showed disloyalty, he was out to get them.
Ox Drover
BBE, yep, you are so right!
Louise
BBE:
So very true. They demand all these things, but they don’t want to give them in return. They also want everyone to love them, but they don’t love anybody.
MoonDancer
are you loyalty deficeint? Well take the new wonder vitamin ” LOYALTY BOOSTER ” normally it would cost 99.99 a bottle but if you call in the next ten minute’s I will send you 3 bottles of LOYALTY BOOSTER for the price of one…..win the trust of your partner again and take LOYALTY BOOSTER to rebuild your loyalty deficency….and if you like this deficiency supplement try my MORAL’S BOOSTER or my CONSCIENCE BOOSTER…hurry and get yours while supply’s last….
skylar
😆
If ONLY it were that easy Hens, I’d be whipping out my credit card right now!
Spaths suck. That’s why everything must travel in only one direction. Loyalty, love, money, and everything else must be given to the spath and they suck it up just like a baby sucking at his mother’s breast. The only thing they give back is a dirty diaper. It really is about arrested development!
Back_from_the_edge
ahahaha: WHERE did you get that smiley face???!!!!
HOW did you do that? THAT is amazing!!!! Thanks…
I am not as ‘gifted’…
I guess “I” am loyalty deficient.
I suppose I became that way to “IT”
the day I closed (let me rephrase that…) SLAMMED
the door in “IT’s” face. ahahaha “Loyalty Booster”…
Maybe we could sneak it into the water supply…
Don’t keep this wonder drug a secret, hmmm??? lol
Skylar, you are so completely right:
SPATHS SUCK.
“Arrested” development is right….
only arrested development with a twinge of ugliness…
I got some ‘arrested development’ for “IT”….on tap, if
it doesn’t stay GONE.
(tell me how you did that happy face)
skylar
Dupey,
you cracked me up with your “arrested development on tap”!
To make that laughing face, type
:LOL:
except use lower case letters for the lol.