LoveFraud reader buzzibee raises some important issues in a recent comment.
How does a tested and proven psychopath usually respond to being told “You have a mental disorder. You are characteristically a psychopath”?
Are [they] so arrogant to dispute a medical diagnosis that they have a mental disorder? Do they display any desire to learn more about the disorder and at any point admit to it?
In order to be diagnosed as a psychopath, a person needs a score of 30 out of a possible 40 on the Psychotherapy Checklist-Revised test (PCL-R). This is a very time-consuming test which only trained personnel can administer, so by and large only prisoners and research subjects are likely to have it.
Psychopaths don’t see themselves as having a problem and so wouldn’t present themselves for testing anyway. Unless they thought they might benefit from the diagnosis in some way. So that’s point number one: psychopaths are unlikely to receive the diagnosis unless they are incarcerated, and probably not even then.
Point number two is that those who do get the diagnosis respond like psychopaths; in other words they use it as yet another tool to manipulate others. Here’s a quote from a December, 13 ‘Nature’ article on research scanning the brains of psychopaths in order to better understand empathy:
All the subjects seem to find the experiment to be nonsense. “It was stupid, boring,” says inmate Willem Boerema (not his real name), who claims to have taken part only because he likes Meffert [the young female researcher]. Then, contradicting himself, he adds that “if they say the study can help people then it’s good”.
Boerema, smart, articulate and multilingual, has a PCL-R rating of 35 and a big problem with the term ‘psychopath’. He views it as a fashionable label abused by the judicial system to keep people like himself from being released. “The courts look at your PCL-R rating and add two years to your sentence, then another two years, and then another.”
When he entered the prison five years ago, Boerema says, ‘borderline personality’ was the fashionable term, and his designated pigeon-hole. “The psychopathy label is more damaging though it prompts everyone to see you as a potential serial killer, which I could never be.” (Note, in reporting this article it was agreed that inmates’ crimes would be neither asked about nor reported on.) But Boerema also wears the score as a badge of honour: “I think my high psychopath score is a talent, not a sickness I can make good strong decisions, and it’s good to have some distance with people.”
I’m reminded of Freud’s comments on the following “piece of sophistry”:
A. borrowed a copper kettle from B. and after he had returned it was sued by B. because the kettle now had a big hole in it which made it unusable. His defence was: “First, I never borrowed a kettle from B. at all; secondly, the kettle had a hole in it already when I got it from him; and thirdly, I gave him back the kettle undamaged”….We might…say: “A. has put an ‘and’ where only “either-or” is possible.”
‘Boerema’s litany is classic. It’s ‘nonsense’, ‘stupid’, ‘boring’. I’m going along because I like the doctor, I want to help people. It’s ‘fashionable’, ‘damaging’, labeling, used as an excuse to keep him in prison. It’s a badge of honour, a talent. It’s not a sickness… In short, there is no such thing as psychopathy, but to the extent that it’s true, it’s a good thing.
Just two other uses to which the diagnosis might be put are: as a threat, and to elicit pity.
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There’s never anything wrong with the psychopath. This is perhaps the main reason why therapy doesn’t work with them – they have no motivation to change. But that’s a topic for another day!
Laughing at you? No. Learning? Of course, but also about myself. Naturally my wife doesn’t know about my blog… that would be a hard one to explain.
“Honey, I read last night you’re trying to figure out a way to dump me. Wanna talk about that?”
Talk about an awkward silence.
Hi, Mr. Green.
SecretMonster
First, Im not your honey!!! LOL
No, seriously, you think I can? I wrote a comment on your site under one of my “other names”. Read and comment..Please. I would prefer to discuss the other side of me there.
What are you learning about yourself? How to perfect the conquest through our expressing our weaknesses. Do you really need too…all your canidates have the same common denominator- nothing in that regard changes. So, what could you possibly learn?
Secret Monster wasnt calling you Honey. He was saying a quote from his wife, in the circumstance that she discovered his writing.
Wouldnt it be ironic if SecretMonsters wife is actually on here, reading and writing about her two-sided husband. Well, I suppose he would recognize her tales of his antics but I have a feeling she might not be as “happy” as he thinks. Who could be. Women’s intuition can be very effective.
Curious about intuition… did all of you have as many intuitive moments about your S as you did facts? Did the intuition make you question yourself more, or question him more?
Oh, silly me! I of course was thinking in terms of my socio! Because I had mentioned in another blog about getting him back and then dumping him. Just got excited I guess.
Curiosity was not what it was it was more pit in the stomach. And I really never had real hard facts. Just the fact of his madness making me insane. And still is –obviously.
I had loads of facts and loads of intuition. And all it did was make me question myself more – whether I was realistic in my expectations and all that.
I knew he’d behaved horribly, but until I discovered this ‘sociopath’ thing I thought ‘he’s had a bad time and it’s temporarily made him behave like a nutter’, ‘everyone makes mistakes’ and ‘the fact he’s strung three women in the same office along proves what an amateur he is – nobody behaves like that’ (LOL as if – and he actually said this!)
Great learning experience though – it was the third unhappy relationship I’d been in where I was making excuses for the bloke from the start (‘everybody makes mistakes’ – well I don’t, not when it risks losing someone I love) but now I know that this behaviour wasn’t a short-term reaction to unhappiness but the norm for them. Never again!
Thats where I was going in my earlier blogs. Women DO have intuition – a ‘higher, different and more developed intelligence’ than do some men. My next thought was… what if Secretmonster’s partner’s intuition led her to check on his computer, or even the higher intelligence of synchronicity – where events just fall nicely into place to catch the perpetrator out – it does happen – doesnt it!
Intelligence seems to be rated in particular formats, but in my book, comes in many different formats – common sense being one, not just manipulative intelligence.
Some sayings come to mind – ‘the devil makes work for idle hands’..a little knowledge is dangerous’…’ignorance is bliss’. Get the point?
Beverly says:
“Women DO have intuition – a ’higher, different and more developed intelligence’ than do some men.”
When I was younger I use to believe that women had a form of intuition that would allow them to see things that men may not see. This idea was formed before I had any experience with women. I thought all women had “eyes on the back of their head” like my mother did. But this is just something a mother has for her children.
After gaining experience I came to realize women have almost a reverse intuition. They can not see the blindingly obvious. This is by no means meant to offend but simply as how I have come to see it. I am not like most men and it should become clear the moment you meet me if you have any form of intuition at all. Instead I am almost instantly accepted as being “the man I have been waiting for”. If women have any form of intuition beyond that of the rest of the species I have yet to experience it.
It may be a danger to believe this going into a relationship thinking you will pick up on things if the guy is a “weirdo”. In reality a sociopath has had a lifetime of experience in hiding his true nature, that is why there are so many women at this website.
I have to cut my explanation short. My girl friend is soon arriving and I must look my best.
cheers
Mr. Green: On intuition – I think many women have intuition but there are problems with intuition. Women choose not to listen to it because its easier to ignore it sometimes or they do not know how to listen to their intuition.
I think many/most women on here would say going into the relationship/during the relationship with a Sociopath – they knew something inside their gut feeling, wasnt right. Yes, I agree with you that on the surface the guy can look like the catch of a lifetime but we women usually kinda know better than that.
What they chose to do with that intuition or when they chose to act on it varies. Including your girlfriend. My guess is she stands to benefit from you in some way – either your empty promises, money, looks, being taken care of or she has low self esteem and thinks she cant do any better.
Part of being a Sociopath is you “thinking” you are “the man everyone is waiting for”.. but a Sociopath cant see himself as his true self… how you REALLY are to people, or to her. I would love to place a bet on her true happiness and then be able to get inside her gut and intuition – and hear how she feels through her own eyes. Of course she’ll tell You she’s happy – you wouldnt recognize otherwise if it kicked you in the knee.
I can agree that most women ignore their intuition, most to a point that it is like they do not have it. They ignore it far beyond what they should because they seem to not want to believe what their intuitions is saying so they try to over compensate.
Your comment that my girl friend is with me because she has something to gain almost makes her sound as bad as me. Is that how all women think? It is not me saying I am the man she has been waiting for, it is her and all the others. They are no more depressed with low self esteem then any other women. They are all grade A and think they deserve nothing short of the best.
I would not want to “hear how she feels through her own eyes”, that may be a bit confusing but at the moment I will tell you she is feeling pretty bad about herself. She is not happy because she fears I will be breaking up with her shortly and wishes it not to happen. She thinks she is doing something wrong and I’ll admit she hasn’t been making it easy but I have been trying to be as humane as I can be. I want to empower her and allow her to be the one who breaks up with me (a little trick I learned from SecretMonster) but it isn’t working so smoothly, I’ll admit I am not as experienced as SM.
Doesn’t work for everyone. Depends on the personality of the girl. Trick is knowing what they DON’T want in a relationship, and by that I mean, ignoring what they say they want, because none of them really want what they say they want. Oh they may believe it, but in reality, they respond to the opposite. I think they WANT to want these things they say, because they feel that’s the proper stuff to want, but at the end of the day, they are human and they are flawed, just like the rest of us.
Regarding women’s intuiting – I find it a bit paranoid. Women have a bad feeling about everything. When they fear something and it turns out to be nothing, then they just discount it, and when it actually turns out to be something, they get to run around and proclaim how intuitive they are.
When I was younger, I would tell my friends who were about to go on a trip “Don’t go, I have a bad feeling”, just so when something bad did actually happen, I could run around saying how in tune with the universe I am. I find women do that too, but on a MUCH larger scale.
God, it must be difficult being a woman.
SecretMonster