This semester I am teaching Psychology of Women at the University of Bridgeport. This is the second time I have taught this course. It is a fun course to teach because everyone likes it. This week we took up the issue of whether overall women’s personalities are different from men’s. A significant percentage of the class believes that men and women are very different in many domains and that this difference is biologic or genetic. The author of our textbook is a feminist from New York so she tends to down play any gender differences found, and she attributes nearly all gender differences to culture.
To balance the views of the textbook, I look for other articles to share with the class. This week I found a great paper, and coincidentally some interesting statistics were also reported in the news. The paper I found is entitled Why Can’t a Man Be More Like a Woman? Sex Differences in Big Five Personality Traits Across 55 Cultures. It was just published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. The results are shocking and a wake up call.
The authors found that there are significant sex differences in personality in the areas of neuroticism, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and extraversion. This means that around the world, women are more anxious/fearful, more agreeable, more conscientious and possess more positive sociability traits than do men. Of course all the sexist people in my class attribute this to an inherent biological difference between the sexes. They also expect me to agree with the biological view. After all I spent five years in a lab at Yale studying the effects of sex steroids on the brain.
In spite of my background I do not accept that these gender differences in personality result from a preprogrammed unfolding of the genetic plan. I believe they are largely culturally determined. My position is supported by the study I am sharing with you. It turns out that gender differences in personality are the LARGEST in Western countries where women have the most opportunity and the greatest equality. Furthermore, gender differences in personality around the world are due to differences in men, not differences in women.
Yes, that means that America and Europe lead the world in producing men who are fearless, disagreeable, lacking in conscientiousness and positive sociality. This is very important to us because these are the very personality traits that are associated with sociopathy (See Are they just evil people?).
The study found that communal, trusting cultures produce men who are more androgynous in their personalities. The men from communal cultures are more fearful, more conscientious, and more prosocial. Fearlessness, is perhaps the most important temperamental trait leading to the development of sociopathy. Furthermore, smoking among women around the world is associated with the largest sex differences in personality. This is interesting because maternal smoking has been linked to sociopathy in offspring (see Maternal smoking linked to sociopathy in Offspring).
So how do we put this all together? I think maleness and the hormone testosterone make boys more sensitive to early environmental experiences. If boys are raised in a loving environment, where social bonds and self-sacrifice for the family are strongly encouraged, then they will grow up more loving and prosocial. If boys are raised to be independent and look out for number one, they are more likely than girls to develop antisocial attitudes. Add to that, the effect environmental toxins have on impulse control and you have an explanation for the high prevalence of sociopathy in our society.
That brings me to the news this week. According to the Pew Center on the States Public Safety Performance Project , 2,319,258 adults were held in American prisons or jails at the beginning of 2008. This means that 1 in 30 men between the ages of 20 and 34 is behind bars. Since 80 percent of those in prison are sociopaths, nearly 3 percent of the young adult male population is a jailed sociopath. In spite of this the crime rate remains stable due to the many who are not in jail. To read more see MSNBC.com. What percentage of the total young adult male sociopaths are in prison anyway? If you guess 30 percent, that means a sizable percentage of young adult males are sociopathic. We just don’t know.
These statistics are a wake-up call for us all. The practices and beliefs of our society are leading to more sociopaths being formed than would otherwise be formed. We need to rethink our values and our child rearing practices. We need to say strongly that it is very important for boys to grow up possessing the capacity for guilt and empathy. We need to stop believing that dominance and competitiveness are the most important personal qualities to possess. We need to stop conditioning boys to be callous by bombarding them with violent entertainment.
Furthermore, we need to provide our children with a safe clean environment. That starts by eliminating smoking in women of child bearing age and telling teen aged girls they have a responsibility not to start smoking. If teen aged girls start smoking, it is unlikely they will quit in time to prevent exposure of the unborn. In some segments of our society, up to 30 per cent of pregnant women smoke.
Women can sit around complaining that there are not enough “good men” to go around. Or, they can do something about these issues so that future generations will not face these largely preventable social problems.
Dear Jules,
I applaud you for seeing the “pattern” in your family’s history. It is I think partly “social training” and what is seen as “Ok” in any group of people, and partly the genetics of the thing.
Many bad choices in drugs/alcohol, etc. also lead to lack of education, lack of opportunity, poverty, poor support networks and other things that in themselves make life difficult.
When the Scots-Irish (an American term for the people of Scots descent who had been in Ireland since approximately 1609) came to America primarily from 1715-1771 they were known for being a very independent group of people, and quite quarrelsome as well as hard drinkers. They were as a group partly responsible for the success of the American revolution as they hated the British to a man, and there were so many in the American army that the Pennsylvania troops were called “The Irish Line.” The descendants of these people migrated to VA, NC, TN, KY, AR, and then into Texas, generally settling in the back woods or the frontier towns which gave them more independence than the settled areas.
They brought their customs which persisted well up into the 1950-s and 1960s in some rural parts of the south. They were suspicious of other ethnic groups, and very devoted to their families and extended families.
The women were generally passive, and subservient to their husbands,; male children were valued above female children. Large families were the norm, and were of great value on the subsistence farms to the prosperity of the family in general.
Many cultures, though, not only the Scots-Irish, Scots, and Irish, are heavy drinkers, and the men “rule the roost” in the home. If you put the genetics, the “drugs” (alcohol is a drug) together with customs, you have the recipe for a psychopath.
I am glad for you Jules that you are making better choices for yourself, that is really all any of us can do. Unfortunately none of us had the chance to “pick” our ancestors, we kind of have to do the best we can with what “cards” were dealt to us.
God bless, you are a brave person.
thank you fo rwhat you said it is very interesting to me, i love history. my family must sound awful now. they arent they arre pretty normal really. but i can see the patterns. my fathers family were big and poor. my mothers family were big too but more wealthy. my s paths back ground was russian and i have heard they are very hard tough people. so maybe its in his genes far back as well. thank you again and i do feel brave cause ive been through an awful lot in my life so far. x
Liane wrote: “In spite of my background I do not accept that these gender differences in personality result from a preprogrammed unfolding of the genetic plan. I believe they are largely culturally determined. My position is supported by the study I am sharing with you. It turns out that gender differences in personality are the LARGEST in Western countries where women have the most opportunity and the greatest equality. Furthermore, gender differences in personality around the world are due to differences in men, not differences in women.”
There may be a reason for this that IS related to genetics. The very fact that, in the West, women have “the most opportunity and the greatest equality” could be a clue to the problem.
Linda Mealey of the Department of Psychology at the College of St. Benedict in St. Joseph, Minnesota, proposed certain ideas in her paper: The Sociobiology of Sociopathy: An Integrated Evolutionary Model. These ideas address the increase in psychopathy in American culture by suggesting that in a competitive society – capitalism, for example – psychopathy is adaptive and likely to increase. She writes:
“I have thus far argued that some individuals seem to have a genotype that disposes them to [psychopathy].
“[Psychopathy describes] frequency-dependent, genetically based, individual differences in employment of life strategies. [Psychopaths] always appear in every culture, no matter what the socio-cultural conditions. […]
“Competition increases the use of antisocial and Machiavellian strategies and can counteract pro-social behavior”
“Some cultures encourage competitiveness more than others and these differences in social values vary both temporally and cross-culturally. […] Across both dimensions, high levels of competitiveness are associated with high crime rates and Machiavellianism.
“High populaton density, an indirect form of competition, is also associated with reduced pro-social behavior and increased anti-social behavior. […] [Mealey, op. cit.]”
The conclusion is that the American way of life has optimized the survival of psychopaths with the consequence that it is an adaptive “life strategy” that is extremely successful in American society, and thus has increased in the population in strictly genetic terms. One might also consider that a “free market, dog eat dog” type of economy would attract more psychopathic types from other areas in the world which would add to the increasing numbers of genetic psychopaths. What is more, as a consequence of a society that is adaptive for psychopathy, many individuals who are NOT genetic psychopaths have similarly adapted, becoming “effective” psychopaths, or “secondary sociopaths.”
(Many experts differentiate between primary and secondary sociopaths. The first is a sociopath because they have the “genes” and the second is more or less “created” by their environment of victimization. Other experts refer to these two categories as “psychopaths” for the genetic variety and “sociopaths” for the reactive variety. We prefer this latter distinction.) Mealey writes:
“Of course, because they are not intellectually handicapped, these individuals [psychopaths] will progress normally in terms of cognitive development and will acquire a theory of mind. Their theories, however, will be formulated purely in instrumental terms [what can claiming this or that GET for me?], without access to the empathic understanding that most of us rely on so much of the time.
“They may become excellent predictors of others’ behavior, unhandicapped by the “intrusiveness” of emotion, acting, as do professional gamblers, solely on nomothetic laws and actuarial data rather than on hunches and feelings.
“In determining how to “play” in the social encounters of everyday life, they will use a pure cost-benefit approach based on immediate personal outcomes, with no “accounting” for the emotional reactions of the others with whom they are dealing.
“Without any real love to “commit” them to cooperation, without any anxiety to prevent fear of “defection,” without guilt to inspire repentance, they are free to continually play for the short-term benefit.
“At the same time, because changes in gene frequencies in the population would not be able to keep pace with the fast-changing parameters of social interactions, an additional fluctuating proportion of sociopathy should result because, in a society of [psychopathy], the environmental circumstances make an antisocial strategy of life more profitable than a pro-social one. [Mealey]
In other words, in a world of psychopaths, those who are not genetic psychopaths, are induced to behave like psychopaths simply to survive. When the rules are set up to make a society “adaptive” to psychopathy, it makes psychopaths of everyone.
Psychopathic behavior seems to be on the rise because of the very nature of American capitalistic society. The great hustlers, charmers, and self-promoters in the sales fields are perfect examples of where the psychopath can thrive. The entertainment industry, the sports industry, the corporate world in a Capitalistic system, are all areas where psychopaths naturally rise to the top. Some observers believe that there is a psychological continuum between psychopaths (who tend to be professionally unsuccessful) and narcissistic entrepreneurs (who are successful), because these two groups share the highly developed skill of manipulating others for their own gain. It is now being thought that they are actually the “same” but that the “unsuccessful” psychopath is merely flawed in their calculating abilities. They are unable to recalculate based on new actuarial data. Successful Narcissists seem to be perfectly able to add to their actuarial database and “recalculate” and shift course and develop new subroutines based on ongoing input.
In general, the successful psychopath “computes” how much they can get away with in a cost-benefit ratio of the alternatives. Among the factors that they consider as most important are money, power, and gratification of negative desires. They are not motivated by such social reinforcement as praise or future benefits. Studies have been done that show locking up a psychopath has absolutely no effect on them in terms of modifying their life strategies. In fact, in is shown to make them worse. Effectively, when locked up, psychopaths just simply learn how to be better psychopaths.
Since the psychopath bases their activities designed to get what they want on their particular “theory of mind,” it is instructive to have a look at this issue. Having a “theory of mind” allows an individual to impute mental states (thoughts, perceptions, and feelings) not only to oneself, but also to other individuals. It is, in effect, a tool that helps us predict the behavior of others. The most successful individuals are those who most accurately predict what another person will do given a certain set of circumstances. In the present day, we have Game Theory which is being used to model many social problems including psychopathy.
When two individuals interact with each other, each must decide what to do without knowledge of what the other is doing. Imagine that the two players are the government and the public. In the following model, each of the players faces only a binary choice: to behave ethically either in making laws or in obeying them.
The assumption is that both players are informed about everything except the level of ethical behavior of the other. They know what it means to act ethically, and they know the consequences of being exposed as unethical.
There are three elements to the game. 1) The players, 2) the strategies available to either of them, and 3) the payoff each player receives for each possible combination of strategies.
In a legal regime, one party is obliged to compensate the other for damages under certain conditions but not under others. We are going to imagine a regime wherein the government is never liable for losses suffered by the public because of its unethical behavior – instead, the public has to pay for the damages inflicted by the government due to unethical behavior.
The way the payoffs are represented is generally in terms of money. That is, how much investment does each player have to make in ethical behavior and how much payoff does each player receive for his investment.
In this model, behaving ethically, according to standards of social values that are considered the “norm,” costs each player $10.00. When law detrimental to the public is passed, it costs the public $100.00. We take it as a given that such laws will be passed unless both players behave ethically.
Next, we assume that the likelihood of a detrimental law being passed in the event that both the public and the government are behaving ethically is a one-in-ten chance.
In a legal regime in which the government is never held responsible for its unethical behavior, and if neither the government nor the public behave ethically, the government enjoys a payoff of $0. and the public is out $100 when a law detrimental to the public is passed.
If both “invest” in ethical behavior, the government has a payoff of minus $10. (the cost of behaving ethically) and the public is out minus $20. which is the $10. invested in being ethical PLUS the $10. of the one-in-ten chance of a $100. loss incurred if a detrimental law is passed.
If the government behaves ethically and the public does not, resulting in the passing of a law detrimental to the populace, the government is out the $10. invested in being ethical and the public is out $100.
If the government does not behave ethically, and the public does, the government has a payoff of $0. and the public is out $110 which is the “cost of being ethical” added to the losses suffered when the government passes detrimental laws.
(Unfortunately, I can’t insert here a Game theory bi-matrix chart to give a visual representation.) But, in any event, in this game, the government always does better by not being ethical and we can predict the government’s choice of strategy because there is a single strategy – no ethics – that is better for the government no matter what choice the public makes. This is a “strictly dominant strategy,” or a strategy that is the best choice for the player no matter what choices are made by the other player.
What is even worse is the fact that the public is PENALIZED for behaving ethically. Since we know that the government, in the above regime, will never behave ethically because it is the dominant strategy, we find that ethical behavior on the part of the public actually costs MORE than unethical behavior.
In short, psychopathic behavior is actually a POSITIVE ADAPTATION in such a regime.
The public, as you see, cannot even minimize their losses by behaving ethically. It costs them $110. to be ethical, and only $100. to not be ethical.
Now, just substitute “psychopath” in the place of the government and non-psychopath in the place of the public, and you begin to understand why the psychopath will always be a psychopath and why such a society actually attracts psychopaths. If the “payoff” is emotional pain of being hurt, or shame for being exposed, in the world of the psychopath, that consequence simply does not exist just as in the legal regime created above, the government is never responsible for unethical behavior. The psychopath lives in a world in which it is like a government that is never held responsible for behavior that is detrimental to others. It’s that simple. And the form game above will tell you why psychopaths in the population, as well as in government, are able to induce the public to accept laws that are detrimental. It simply isn’t worth it to be ethical. If you go along with the psychopath, you lose. If you resist the psychopath, you lose even more.
Game Theory shows us that the psychopath is free to choose to do things that are potentially self-destructive without giving a single indication to another “player” that his or her choice is based entirely on a delusion. Very often, they “win” because of the sheer boldness of their actions which is unrestricted by conscience which is a construct of emotions.
It’s like a poker player who has absolutely nothing in his hand, but because he is so intent on winning, and is so unmoved by the possibility of losing because lying produces absolutely no internal, emotional reaction of fear of being discovered or the potential shame or disaster inherent in such an event, is able to bluff so convincingly that the other players – any of whom might have a winning hand, fold and walk away because they are convinced by the psychopath’s confidence that he must have the winning hand of all time.
Only he doesn’t.
And this means that the psychopath’s strength is also his Achilles heel. Once he has been spotted, identified, understood, he no longer has the power to bluff. Once knowledge enters the game, the psychopath is exposed, and has no more ability to “con” the other players. The sad part is: he also has no ability to learn from this experience anything other than how to make his bluff better and more convincing next time. The psychopath never gets mad because he is caught in a lie; he is only concerned with “damage control” in terms of his ability to continue to con others.
Societies can be considered as “players” in the psychopath’s game model.
The past behavior of a society will be used by the psychopath to predict the future behavior of that society. Like an individual player, a society will have a certain probability of detecting deception and a more or less accurate memory of who has cheated on them in the past, as well as a developed or not developed proclivity to retaliate against a liar and cheater. Since the psychopath is using an actuarial approach to assess the costs and benefits of different behaviors (just how much can he get away with), it is the actual past behavior of the society which will go into his calculations rather than any risk assessments based on any “fears or anxieties” of being caught and punished that empathic people would feel in anticipation of doing something illegal.
Thus, in order to reduce psychopathic behavior in society and in government, a society MUST establish and enforce a reputation for high rates of detection of deception and identification of liars, and a willingness to retaliate. In other words, it must establish a successful strategy of deterrence.
Since the psychopath is particularly unable to make decisions based on future consequences, and is able only to focus attention on immediate gratification – short term goals – it is possible that such individuals can be dealt with by establishing a history of dealing out swift social retaliation. That is, identifying and punishing liars and cheaters must be both immediate and predictable that it will be immediate.
And here we come to the issue: concerning the real-world, human social interactions on a large scale, reducing psychopathy in our leaders depends upon expanding society’s collective memory of individual players’ past behavior.
Any reasonable scan of the news will reveal that lies and cheating are not “covered up” as thoroughly as American apologists would like to think.
Even the less well-informed Americans have some idea that there was certainly something fishy about the investigation into the assassination of JFK. In recent years, the man in charge of the Warren Commission, Gerald Ford, also a former president, admitted to “cheating” on the report.
Then, there was Watergate followed by the Iran-Contra affair, not to mention “Monica-gate.” And here we are just hitting some highlights familiar to all Americans.
What consequences did the cheaters of society suffer?
None to speak of. In fact, in nearly every case, they were rewarded handsomely with those things of value to the psychopath: money and material goods. If anyone thinks they were shamed by public exposure, think again!
But what is of CRUCIAL interest here is the fact that the American people have simply NOT responded to the revelations of lies in government with any outrage that could be considered more than token. At the present time, there isn’t even “token outrage.”
Don’t you find that odd?
But we have already noted the reason: the American way of life has optimized the survival of psychopathy and in a world of psychopaths, those who are not genetic psychopaths, are induced to behave like psychopaths simply to survive. When the rules are set up to make a society “adaptive” to psychopathy, it makes psychopaths of everyone. As a consequence, a very large number of Americans are effective sociopaths. (Here we use “sociopath” as a designation of those individuals who are not genetic psychopaths.)
And so, we have George Bush and his criminal administration (so many of whom have been caught in lies or outright malfeasance that it’s shocking) calculating how much they can get away with by looking at the history of the reactions of the American People to cheating.
There aren’t any because the system is adaptive to psychopathy. In other words, Americans support Bush and his agenda because most of them are LIKE him.
But that is not because they are ALL born that way. It is because psychopathy is almost required to survive in Competitive, Capitalistic America.
And it is the same types of individuals – psychopaths as arbiters of right and wrong in religious garb – who help to increase psychopathy. Consider the “moral majority’s” war on women’s rights including the right to abortion on demand. How many psychopaths have raped women, producing more genetic psychopaths because the woman was either too ashamed, or unable to legally obtain an abortion? Think about the “moral” control as well as the legal controls on that issue. Does that really demonstrate that women have more rights and freedoms in America? Even if, at certain periods, abortions are available, there is the ever-present moral condemnation that gets a lot of media attention. The result? Probably more genetic psychopaths on the Western front, so to say.
As a society gets larger and more competitive, individuals become more anonymous and more Machiavellian. Social stratification and segregation leads to feelings of inferiority, pessimism and depression among the have-nots, and this promotes the use of “cheating strategies” in life which then makes the environment more adaptive for psychopathy in general.
Psychopathic behavior among non-genetic psychopaths could be viewed as a functional method of obtaining desirable resources, increasing an individual’s status in a local group, and even a means of providing stimulation that socially and financially successful people find in acceptable physical and intellectual challenges. In other words, the psychopath is a bored and frustrated sensation-seeker who “does not have the intellectual capacitiy to amuse and occupy himself” internally. Such individuals may begin their lives in the lower socio-economic levels, but they often rise to the top.
In America, a great many households are affected by the fact that work, divorce, or both, have removed one or both parents from interaction with their children for much of the day. This is a consequence of Capitalistic economics.
When the parents are absent, or even when one is present but not in possession of sufficient knowledge or information, children are left to the mercies of their peers, a culture shaped by the media. Armed with joysticks and TV remotes, children are guided from South Park and Jerry Springer to Mortal Kombat on Nintendo. Normal kids become desensitized to violence. More-susceptible kids – children with a genetic inheritance of psychopathy – are pushed toward a dangerous mental precipice. Meanwhile, the government is regularly passing laws, on the demand of parents and the psychological community, designed to avoid imposing consequences on junior’s violent behavior.
As for media violence, few researchers continue to try to dispute that bloodshed on TV and in the movies has an effect on the kids who witness it. Added to the mix now are video games structured around models of hunting and killing. Engaged by graphics, children learn to associate spurts of “blood” with the primal gratification of scoring a “win.”
Again, economics controls the reality.
Aside from the fact that television has been conjectured to be extremely detrimental to children and that it is now thought that most of the deteriorating aspects of society can be attributed to the decaying values portrayed on television, there is a deeper and more insidious effect upon the human psyche. As quoted, it is a planned and deliberate manipulation to spread acquiescence and conformity and to hypnotize the masses to submit to the authority of the masters of economics through their false prophet, the television.
A picture is forming of a deliberately contrived society of televised conformity, literate and creative inadequacy, and social unrest and decadence. It is apparent that the media is in charge of propagating these conditions, and the media is controlled by what?
Capitalistic, competitive Economics.
It would seem that the motivation masters would, in the interests of their industrial clients, plan programming to bring about beneficial societal conditions – which they could, in fact, do. It is apparent that the final authority on televised programming is in the hands of the advertisers, backed by the industries whose products are being sold. With all the psychological input to which they have access, it would seem that they utilize programming to correct societal conditions which cost them money. Over 25 billion dollars a year is spent to teach workers to read and write, after graduating from the combined effects of a public school system and the television. It is accepted that the burgeoning crime rate, which also costs these industrial giants vast sums of money, is mostly attributable to the frustrations and dissatisfactions engendered by the false view of reality presented over the television.
Why don’t they use their financial resources to back the motivation masters to figure out how to present programming which could effect positive changes?
Can it be that the conditions of society, including the programed response to “minimal signs of authority” are planned? Would anyone care to suggest that the figures and studies relating to the detrimental influence of programming is not available to them and that they don’t realize that it is costing them money? If that is the case, then they are too stupid to be arbiters of our values and we should disregard them entirely in any event. If it is not the case, then we must assume that there is an object to this manipulation: psychopaths seeking more power over society.
Laura, thank you for that wonderful and insightful post…you said much more clearly what I was trying to say…I too believe that a person of “normal” genes can be “created” by certain harsh conditions in which they must assume that “mind set” in order to survive or prosper.
It is unfortunate that the “biggest meanest dog in the pack” gets the most food–in most packs–
Your comments about advertising and television are also very right on—
It is also interesting to me that a child of the projects is smart enough to see that “getting an education” and getting a job at McDonald’s is not nearly as “rewarding” as selling dope on the street.
There is a book written years ago, I can’t remember the author now, “We who are About to Die Salute you” about the economics of the Roman Empire and the downfall of their culture, society, and the diversion of 90% of their GNP to the “games” in order to keep the population quiet and compliant. Every Roman Citizen of that time was on welfare, there were no workers left, cheap foreign labor produced all the goods and services that the citizens used, and the politicians kept the population quiet with the games….until the collapse.
There are so many corelations between their culture, economics, etc. and ours that it is kind of scary. The rise to the top of the psychopathic “leaders” and a culture that is supporting this.
I think in most societies psychopaths have advantages in that they are not hampered in their rise by their ethics—Hitler is a good example—but at the same time his wild and uncontrolled ideas brought down his country and his people. At the end of the “history lessons” aren’t most wars fought for the purpose of either driving out a psychopath, or installing one in office? Or one group trying to steal resources from another?
While I think these cultural psychopaths and manipulators of countries and societies do great harm–on a personal level, the “psychopath next door” is the one I am having to deal with on a daily basis.
I may see what is going on in the world as a whole in terms of socio/psychpathy but I am not able to influence it to any significant degree. Dealing with and recovering from the trauma of the “psychopath next door” is my focus, and avoiding as much psychopathic interaction as I can.
I worked with a psychopath that was destroying a whole hospital, a whole corporation, and not only I but others saw this happening, knew what was going on, but were powerless to stop it–it was extremely frustrating to see what was so good brought down for the malice of one person. I wasn’t the only one who saw what was going on by any means, and we were all incredilous that we couldn’t get “anyone to listen” or to stop the down-hill slide. I feel that way about the world as a while too, when I think I see what is going on but am powerless to stop it.
Unfortunately, I am powerless, and many other people who “think they see” the problems too are powerless as well, but, like I learned about the hospital’s destruction, I also realize that I can only change what I can change, and the things that I can’t change I must accept and deal with on a personal level. Beating myself up over the “destruction of civilization as I know it” is futile. I am only one, I cannot change everything, but I can change what I can change and accept the rest.
In his book, “Man’s Search for Meaning,” Dr. Viktor Frankl who spent years in the Nazi concentration camps Dr. Frankl addresses the psychopathic society/culture, the insanity of the hate, the “normal” people who became capos (prisoners who became guards) the inhumanity of the German guards, and the strength of some of the captives, the internal strengths that helped some people who were physically weak survive…it was a microcosm of the hell on earth that can be created when the psychopaths rule. Yet, Dr. Frankl found healing from his traumas, in which he lost literally everything he held dear, except his own body.
If any man can survive that hell-on-earth at the hands of a society of psychopaths, and come out spiritually intact, it gives me hope that any victim can come out whole and spiritually intact, and find some meaning from the losses and their own survival.
I can’t fix the problems of a psychopathic society, or change the world to one in which the non-psychopath has the culturall and genetic advantage, all I can do is to work on being a survivor like Dr. Frankl, who is spiritually, emotionally, and mentally healthy in SPITE of the advantages the psychopath has.
Laura, your comments are, I think, pretty RIGHT ON, unfortunately, for our world and our species…but Dr. Frankl gives me HOPE, and I have to cling to that hope in order to find “meaning.”
I have come to believe that the lack of a core family-friend base is the most damaging effect of the addiction to the sociopath. In my experience, as a son of a mother who was addicted to her sociopath and father of a daughter who is addicted to hers, that the abandonment of these women is total. Unfortunately this act alone cements the relationship in ways that family and friends did not intend.
It is a major challenge to overcome this need to abandon these women. The frustration, the “impending” failure, is so great that one feels the urgency to run away. I ran away from my mother when she ignored all common sense and stayed with her man. After he had beat my grandmother almost to death, and beat me almost to death at age 5, she still was compelled to stay with him. She saw him through to an early death. Then she spent 30 years recovering. Realizing that she had missed the last years of her mother’s life, and her children and grandchildren’s childhood. Growing old by herself.
People, who are not addicted to these freaks of nature are quick to abandon their closest family ties. Making the victim a double victim. Society looks at it as “they” have chosen to ruin their lives, I’m not going to be a part of it.
Really, they have become the sociopath’s greatest ally in this game.
I have learned that being a victim advocate is the toughest thing I have ever done. The frustration, the impending failure, is intense. Family and friends tend to think you are nuts for taking this on. You have to draw on your successes as a parent.Love, respect,and walking on water is the prerequisite for doing this. I call it starting over as the parent raising an adult. The greatest asset you have is your ears. Listen, allow the victim to come forth with their story. Give advice when helpful. Only when wanted. Avoid the I told you so. Avoid the long winded sermons. Do introduce them to other victims. This may seem to backfire, but they will eventually draw from the experience.
Keep your sanity, you need outlets. This blog is excellent. Try to involve your family in helping you to cope. Don’t drive them away by wearing them out.
Look for friendship of other people who have gone through this. You will be amazed at the number of people that can help. Most of them gave up. They tend to be sorry for doing that. In the end, this is the same old story of the person who arrives to find that their loved one is dying and cannot reconcile their estranged relationship before death. Spending the rest of their life in wonderment of “what if?”.
More family members need to be involved in this forum.
Dr. Goat, I hear you, loud and clear, unfortunately, my own mother is “addicted” to her psychopaths to the point that she does NOT want to abandon enabling them. She is so angry at me for “abandoning” the psychopaths that she cannot remove the rage from her heart. I had no choice but to go NO CONTACT with her as well.
The story in the Bible in the Book of Samuel, which talks about King David’s son Absalom and DAvid’s enabling of this young man, even telling his generals when they went out to fight for the life of the country against this man, to “deall gently with the young man.” Upon hearing of the success of his troops against his son, and the death of his son, David went into screaming, clothes tearing mourning for his son. Having NO appreciation for anyone’s loss but his own, and his general came to him and said, “I perceive that if the young man had lived and ALL OF US had died, that you would have BEEN WELL PLEASED”
David, a man who had many faults, but always received rebuke well and changed his attitude, saw that what his general said to him was true. He immediately washed his face, put on clean clothes, and thanked his people for their sacrifices.
Unfortunately, my own mother would have been “well pleased if I had died, even at the hands of my own son, if he had gotten out of prison before she died.” When I realized that even my own death at my son’s hands would not have made my mother turn her back, or abandon her grandson, I had no choice but to go No Contact with my mother as well.
My mother is now growing old by herself, (I am her only child) and it is a shame that it had to be so, but I am not able to change anyone but myself. I cannot help her because she does not want my help. The only person in the world that has any value to her is the “golden child” (my P-son) and since I am opposed to his release from prison (he is a murderer and would kill again if given half a chance) then she sees me only as the “enemy” of her GC.
Yes, I am very sorry that the situation is what it is, but it is not one I can change by any action. I can only change myself, I cannot change others. Continued interaction with her is toxic to my own healing, and at this point in my life, I am done with jousting at windmills and trying to “fix” the unfixable.
If and when my mother is willing to accept reality, to see what is REAL and not what she imagines is real, I will be there to help her, but I do not expect that to ever happen.
DR. G-
Even the Bible says to walk away from those who will not see.
We cannot sacrifice ourselves for the unrepentant- I have learned from experice the ONLY action that reaches addicts, narcissists and psychopaths is NO CONTACT.
They hear nothing else, that includes those who choose to stay close to them. Our presence gives them a semblance of normalcy, which does not help them recognize the psychopth in their life.
And we also have to remember spouses who allow their family members to be put in harms way are culpable. They are so self-absorbed they sacrifice tehir children for some attention from a psycho.
You all have articulated what I have been wanting to say.
Holywatersalt, I too have learned the hard way that no contact is often the only way to deal with a sociopath.
I dated a sociopath I met at church. After trying to reason and bargain, I finally conceded not to respond to him in any way.
Ox drover, I symphathise, its very tough to have NC when its a family member, especially your mother. You’re right at the end of the day you cant change others. Many of us have spent years wrestling over our obligations to family members, the very people who we hope would support us, but we have to take a long hard look and weigh up what is in our best interests.
Beverly,
I appreciate your support and understanding, though I realized that I HAD to go NC with my P son, admitting that my mother was TOXIC in her enabling, and going NC with her was a very difficult step for me.
It was the LAST GREAT HURDLE for me to go over. Being an only child, and having been raised to “respect your elders” (if not them personally, then their “position”) and also with a very deeply religious back ground, of “honor thy father and thy mother”—though this was a passage that had been, in my family at least, that should have read in it’s twisted interpretation “put up with anything your parents dish out to you, and take it lying down, or you will burn in hell”—so I had some conditioninng to over come as far as religon was concerned as well.
I realize that the way we can “honor” our parents is to become the kind of people that would BRING HONOR to any parent. It does not mean that you have to put up with abuse or insanity just because someone gave birth to you, any more than you have to put up with abuse and insanity because you gave birth to someone.
Through the months before I finally went NC with my mother I studied the Bible and worked with some very immentent Bible scholars in coming to a final “interpretation” of what the Bible says about how we “honor” our parents, and how our parents should “provoke not your children to wrath” etc.
I feel strongly that we have an obligation to our fellow man, and to our family, and friends and neighbors, but I don’t find any where in the Bible that it says we need to tattoo “door mat” on our backs and in fact, the Bible encourages us to speak with people, if that doesn’t work, to take witnesses and speak with them, if that doesn’t work to “treat your brother” (fellow christian) as a heathern, i.e. do not associate with him, do not eat with him, etc. If that is not the Bible advising NC I can’t say what it is doing. To me at least it seems clear.
Since that is my belief, then I can NC with a clear conscience. Someone who did not share my beliefs might not be able to do that, but I think we have to examine OUR OWN INDIVIDUAL consciences and to make our behavior fit our conscience, so that we are not torn about “what is right” and what is not.
Our parents, our culture, our schools, our peers, etc. instill various moral constructs in us as we are growing up. Some of these constructs may be “faulty” but we accept them as “truth” because they come from our early years when our parents and other adults are “gods” to kids 3 ft. tall.
In examinging these constructs and precepts we may find that some of them are FAR OUT OF SYNC with reality.
I was raised with the notion that certain people were not “OK” and for a long time I thought that was so, but upon examining this precept, I realized that it was a generalization and that “certain people” encompassed groups of people thatj some of whom were ok, and some of whom were not. I realized that what I had been taught was not entirely true.
These constructs covered a great deal of ground from intellectual levels, to racial, ethnic, etc. I began to realize that the things I had been taught growing up needed to be reexamined for validity in light of my maturity. Now I try to see people as individuals within a group.
I do see some “stereotypical” things about some groups, and those stereotypes are there because there are some things that “stick out” in some groups, but for the most part, people are INDIVIDUALS not just “red-necks” or “ignorant” or “poor white trash” etc. I don’t ignore stereotypes completely, if I did I would be a fool–but at the same time, I understand why young black men would be offended if I hurried down a dark street clutching my purse if they were behind me, dressed in baggy pants and wearing a bandana—I don’t know that young man personally and can’t know that he is a PhD student at Yale, I have to presume that he might be after my purse. At the same time, when I get to know him, I am not going to “judge” him by his race or his dress ONLY.
Some of my closest people are “off the wall” folks, not what they may appear at first glance. If you met me you might “judge me” to be an ignorant old hillbilly woman with an 8th grade education, but if you got to know me, you would find I am something else.
But if I encounter someone who exhibits the “stereotypical” behavior of a psychopath, I am not likely to get to know them much better, but to flee from them as quicly as possible. That is “prejudice” somewhat, but at the same time, it is survival instinct, better safe than sorry. If that person is offened, and isn’t a psychopath, well I may have missed a chance at a good friendship with that person, but that’s the chance I take. We can’t get to know everyone on an intimate level.
My family is filled with Ps and enablers, and I have finally recognized that face…it is a sad fact, but one in which I have realized that I only have X amount of energy, and if I expend it on them, I have none left for myself. I am not willing to give my life away to someone so disordered that they suck your soul right out of your heart. I would love to have all loving and caring children, and a loving mother. I was fortunate to have had a great step father (who kept my mother somewhat in check during his life) but after his death, her disfunction had free reign. I chose not to deal with that in the only way that I can handle it. I can’t change it. I can’t fix it, I have to distance myself from it.
I actually had expected my biological son to object to my NC of my mother, but was completely surprised when he actually encouraged it. He is “dealing with” her completely, and though he no longer trusts her at all, he thinks that she needs to be “watched” so that she does not send money to my P-son which would enable him to further endanger us. I am glad to turn this task over to him and am glad that he has the strength of mind and character to accomplish this, by telling her that if she does cross that line that he also will go NC with her, move and leave her no forwarding address. His attitude totally surprised me about this, and I am so thankful for it.
My adoptive son is also supportive of this. Even my first cousin, who is now my mother’s power of attorney, at first did not support my NC with her, but even he now supports my NC and realizes why and that it is my only choice. Since that is my entire family, I am very glad that these important people are supportive of me in this. Many people hwo have gone NC with their parents or sibs have other family members trying desperately to undermine this, and it is very painful for them.
I was prepared to do what I “had” to do, even if NO one agreed with me, but I am grateful that I have the family support I do, especially with such a small family.
I have an email friend I met on another forum who is 70+ years old, in very poor health, and who is NC from her X-P husband of 47 years, in terrible poverty, and whose daughters are NC with her because they “side with” her abusive X-husband because she kept the abuse secret from her children during her marriage. Yet, this courageous woman still hangs on to her NC because she knows it is the only way for her to survive.
When I see and hear of other’s problems I realize just how many blessings I have and that I am NOT alone, and I give thanks for those blessings.