Two weeks ago I started a series on the treatment of sociopathy/psychopathy. That series was interrupted by the need to discuss the case of the con man who kidnapped his daughter. Now it looks like he also may be implicated in the disappearance of a California couple. The con man, like many in his profession has had a number of different identities. Before I go back to talking about treatment, I want to discuss con artists and the nature of sociopathy/psychopathy again.
Donna and I had the good fortune to speak with Dr. Robert Hare this week. I wanted to talk with him about the fact that there is not much in the scientific literature linking psychopathy to con artistry. In that conversation, he said something very profound that deserves repeating. Since I can’t quote him exactly, I’ll give you the gist of it.
According to Dr. Hare, people saw the movie A Beautiful Mind and they “got it” about schizophrenia. People saw the movie Rain Man and they “got it” about Autism. Thousands of movies have been made about psychopaths/sociopaths and people still don’t “get it.”
We did not go into a detailed analysis of why people don’t “get it” about sociopaths/psychopaths but I will here because until you “get it” about the disorder, you cannot “get it” about treatment for the disorder.
This week I received a letter from a woman who is struggling to “get it.” We receive at least one letter a week that reads like that woman’s so she is not alone. The letter reads something like, “The father of my child is in Jail for assault. He is a pathological liar so I can’t believe anything he says. He also has cheated on me repeatedly. He has conned me out of all my money and now I have to declare bankruptcy. I don’t think he is a sociopath because he has remorse. Is there any hope for him and for us?”
Now if you read these letters as an outsider you get it! But the people who write them are really struggling with what they themselves are saying. They are struggling to make sense out of two conflicting points of view. The first point of view is that there is “good in all people” and that all people need a “family to love.” Just like the many people who say the con man from last week who goes by the alias Rockefeller, “loved” his daughter. People saw him caring for his daughter and assumed love motives. They interacted with him and he was charming and funny. One lady said “He had a lot to offer as a person.” People think that when they interact with someone who is “charming” and “caring” and they then like or feel affection toward the person, the charmer feels likewise. Sadly this is not always the case.
The second point of view is that there are some people who lack love motivation completely or are severely deficient in it. The psychological consequence of not having love motivation is not known by many people. If you understand what happens when love motivation is missing or lacking, you will “get it” about sociopaths/psychopaths. When love motivation is lacking, a person does not stop wanting to be around people! Everyone thinks that just because an individual wants to be around people and seems to enjoy affection, the wanting proves that person is a loving human being. People think that all unloving individuals just want to be alone. That assumption is wrong and is deadly.
In most cases, when love motivation is lacking or missing, the person retains his/her desire for social contact. Since love motivation is not at the root of social desire, something else is. When love motivation is lacking, power or dominance motivation takes its place. Also remember that sexual motivation keeps people social as well.
When con artists take care of people, it is about power motivation. When con artists go to parties and meet people, hob knobbing with the rich and famous, it is about power motivation. When con artists steal $250,000 only to squander the entire sum in 6 months, the theft wasn’t about money it was about the power of the get over.
So, if you look at the situation with the preconceived notion that all people are motivated by the same human motives you can’t possibly “get it.” I challenge you today give up on your preconceived notions about human motivation. Instead come to understand that there are three human social motives, love, power and sex. Thankfully, 90 percent of everybody has a personality organized primarily around love motivation.
The problem is that a sizable percentage of people (perhaps 10-15 per cent) have a personality that is organized around gratifying their need for power rather than their need for love. These people are not loners! They are even more social than loving humans. If you are motivated by the need for love and intimacy, your need can be satisfied by one spouse, other family members and a few friends. If you are motivated primarily by the need for power, then you won’t be satisfied until you rule the world!
Just like the need for love has its associated behaviors, so too does the need for power. Care taking can be part of both motives. The need for power is also accompanied by controlling and aggressive behavior. The degree of control and aggression shown in a relationship is a sign of the amount of power motivation that is behind that relationship.
If you think about it you already know I am right. There is a saying, ”If you love someone set him free. If he comes back to you he’s yours, if not he never was.” A sociopath/psychopath can never set anyone free because he/she can’t love. Sociopaths/psychopaths can only own or possess. Of course a sociopath/psychopath is going to cry when alone or if someone abandons him/her. The sociopath/psychopath just lost all of his/her power. That is very upsetting you know!
Now that I have beat that to death, please understand that love motivation can either be deficient or absent. Therefore power motivation can either be somewhat excessive or the only motivating force in a person’s life. Excessive power motivation makes people emotionally, psychologically, spiritually and physically sick. It also makes them evil.
I haven’t been on LF in months. I just read through all this so my writing is to one of the older comments
1. kat_o_nine_tales says:
I think one of the reasons we grieve so hard and rage so mightily is because over time, we enter into a kind of non-verbal contract with the S. We forgive so much, we try so hard, we invest so much of ourselves into loving this (at times) barely lovable person. It’s very crushing to find out that all of our giving didn’t endear us to them one bit, and that they have no gratitude for it. And the fact that they will end up alone at the end of their miserable lives doesn’t sway them at all. They take our hearts, our lives, our money, our days, and years and decades, and make them as nothing. Somehow, they INVALIDATE us.
Monday, 11 August 2008 @....... 6:51pm
Wow”.”aint this the truth”.
How many post separation conversations have “we” had with our x’s pointing out to them the wonderful things we’ve done for them? The sacrifices we’ve made for them? The slights we’ve endured silently for them? Services performed, money spent? And we, as HUMAN creatures expect them to “see the light”. We expect appreciation, gratitude, even just acknowledgement would do; since after years of marriage we’d discovered lies, cheating, even sexual devience. Then, how many times have we come crashing down as the conversation from those inhuman mouths begins with, “Well, I’m sorry I’m just a big piece of “sh*T” and did nothing for you and you did it all”..blah, blah, and I don’t know how you’d expect me to do all that when I’m”.(insert here favorite hobby turned façade of “business,” that was the “answer to all the family’s financial woes”, or “volunteer work” that actually only serves their gratification, glorification, power, etc). ”..blah, blah,
And once again, we have failed to make our point and hear what we wanted to hear. Did we really expect them to have an epiphany and suddenly blurt out, “Oh my darling, I am so sorry. I’ve wronged you. It’s all my fault. Please forgive me. Can you find it in your heart to take me back? I’ve been so selfish. I’ll make it all up to you.—..?
Sadly, yes. Because we were basing our expectations on what we know of Human to Human contact, relationships, conscience. It is only when you realize and admit to your innermost self that dogs CAN ONLY act like dogs, snakes like snakes and spiders like spiders that you stop expecting them to act like real people. The best description I ever heard of these people was on “LoveFraud.com—..EMOTIONAL INSECTS.
In essence, a parasitic, self serving existence, ever feeding on and extracting its needs from the environment around them. And “we” are just a part of the environment to them”.completely invalidated. Insects see only ways to meet their needs and procreate. They CAN’T recognize anything else. Notice, I didn’t say WON’T. I said CAN’T. Of course they (P’s, S’s, N’s) don’t see us and treat us as HUMAN. They don’t know what that is. They have no basis for understanding. Just as we have no basis for understanding for their behavior”..We just don’t get it”.until we learn WHAT they are. They, on the other hand, will never learn what we are beyond the ability to exploit us. They have no desire to. We are just part of the environment—feed on it, manipulate it, move on to where there is more.”
So, of course your family, friends, or aquaintences just don’t seem to “get it.” They see the world and other people’s actions and motivation through a “filter” colored with their own human emotions and compassions.
They will keep saying things like “can’t you just tell him the Kid’s need”(insert whatever),” or “If you do (this or that) he’ll stop doing (this or that).” Or “Why would he do that to get back at you? That hurts the kids in the process.”
They will keep looking at you with that “you must not be handling him right or saying the right thing” look in their eyes. They really can’t help it. They are human”.it’s all they know and in that narrow definition they attach to walking on 2 legs, speaking, etc. they naturally assume the P, S, or N’s thought processes and actions go through the same “filter”. We as former victims have lost or removed our filter by virtue of pain (an excellent motivator), and subsequent education. Most of those other people, even the ones who love us most can’t remove the filter on their own and, and honestly, it does keep them blissfully ignorant so why would they anyway?
Dear Escaped, I did one of those little quizzes ‘What insect is your boyfriend’? It came back that he was a praying mantis – a bad boy.
Dear EScaped,
A wonderful, insightful post. I am sure you gained that wisdom THE HARD WAY TOO—it didn’t come cheap. Thank you for sharing.
My s/p would call himself … laughingly … Lucifer.
I left him after five years because I got pregnant and he didn’t want the baby. I moved far away and stayed away from him for 8 years, although we spoke several times a year. During that time he had a baby with one girl, two years later another baby with another girl and then a second baby with female #1. A few years later, he called and asked me to come back ‘home’ because he knew I was truly the one for him. Never did get him out from under my skin, but I kept saying ‘no.’
THEN, one night he called and said, ”our relationship is SO spiritual, that I know god wants us together.” As a very spiritual person, that did it for me. I thought he understood who I was, and that he wanted what I wanted. I moved back ‘home’ and now, six years later, he has another girl (half my age) pregnant. It’s almost as if he KNEW that the way to get me back was to go the ”spiritual” route, since he knew my life was all about meditation, taiji, and other spiritual/internal arts.
But, it was just MORE talkin’ sh#t.!!!
What insect is MY boyfriend — X-BOYFRIEND! — ? A leech!!!
Dear Lost,
They can FAKE anything, and the having children with first one woman then another, then back to the first, then back to the third, etc. is so TYPICAL of how they operate. Each child a notch on the bedpost it seems. It’s like they want a harem.
I’m so sorry you and your child have gone through this again, but hopefully you will heal and gain wisdom from this lastest encounter. It is never a pleasant experience, but it can be a postive experience in the end, when we realize our own potentials even more so than we would have without this horrible expreience. I have grown so much in so many ways as a result of my own traumas with the multiple Ps in my life, that I think in some ways, they did me a favor (though Iwouldn’t wish this on anyone) I do think there has been some gain for me in the end. I am now living a P-FREE life.
Insect? Mine was a big, fat stinkbug.
When I read some of your stories, I just thank God I only stayed with my S for 2-1/2 months. It was hard to walk away because my heart was totally captured by him. But my head won out. If not for this forum, I probably would have contacted him again by now, and we would have started up again.
my ex used to tell me straight out that he wanted a harem. I thought he was joking at the time. The one thing I have learned through all of this is that although sociopaths may lie, they never joke.
I had an interesting conversation with son D tonight while my just in from a long trip, Son C, was napping—I think his nap will last ALL night. LOL
Apparently there was a camp counselor at the Boy Scout Camp where son D works in the summers. He knows most of the other counselors there from years and years ago, and they are mostly college age or just graduated college grads, and as a whole a GREAT group of young people. Anyway this guy, I’ll call him “Bud” that’s not his real name, but Bud had worked at camp for a couple of years and son D had found out that he had verbally abused a camper, and then denied it when the camper had complained to his mother and the mother had shown up at camp. It was a “he said/he said” situation and the P won that round.
Bud was confronted by other staff members about his behavior toward campers and other staff members for the first couple of weeks of camp, and finally Son D, who is one of the veteran staff there and highly respected, and one other veteran staff member confronted Bud, who had not been completing his paper work, etc. After that week and that confrontation, Bud “resigned.”
A couple of weeks ago Son D was discussing Bud with several other college students and college grads that are veteran camp staff and son D had asserted that he thought Bud was a P. No one of course believed he was “that”–after all he wasn’t a serial killer! He wasn’t even “violent” just sort of “passive aggressive.” Son D discussed the “signs of PPD” with the group and one by one, they seemed to come around to agreeing with him, and getting a concept of what a P is besides being “a serial killer.” NO CONSCIENCE. USING PEOPLE. LYING WHEN THE TRUTH WOULD FIT BETTER, etc.
What was interesting to me about all this is the my Son D is in a position to educate young adults, intelligent young adults who may not completely get it about Ps, but they will remember these “lessons” that they have received from someone that they respect (and most of them know our “story”) and hopefully, this information will be useful to them in their lives. At least make them think if a “red flag” pops up–at work, or in a romance, etc.
I know that lots of people don’t “get it” but information IS SPREADING, and it gives me hope that it will be more broadly spread in our society. That more people will hold P politicians, and P policemen, etc. accountable, for their behavior, and realize that they (Ps) don’t have to be serial killers to qualify as a Psychopath. Hooray for all the people who have written books about psychopathic behavior, hooray for LF and all the other sites on the internet—and hooray for US!
Bird, I just assumed all men secretly wished for a harem…….!
When I feel strong enough (it may take many months) I will return to my reptile site and post a long post about what happened to me with the S there. I have to be careful not to use his name or too much identifying information, or it will get deleted. I hope to warn and educate the community about sociopaths. I’m sure there are new people there he is playing. I did trust 4 of my friends there to tell them the story. I sent them links to info on sociopaths, and some of them experienced him lying directly. One of them, though, didn’t get it. She posted a thread about people not dragging their “break-ups” back to the site. I believe she was talking about me, because I did expose him on his “visit with Stargazer” thread. Though I did get plenty of support from my friends, no one can really know what it’s like to be played by an S unless you’ve been there, you know?
Right now my prime motivation is very selfish. I just want him off that site, so I can feel comfortable going back.