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.
All of us here have had to retrain our very thoughts, our habits of perception, our minds. I know I had to.
I had to tell myself, over and over and over and over again, that everything I had believed about human nature was wrong. That a smile doesn’t necessarily mean happiness. A frown doesn’t necessarily mean unhappiness. Words are meaningless when it comes to a sociopath. Facial expressions are meaningless. Tone of voice is meaningless. Every indicator that instinct told me to heed could be faked. Great, sobbing rushes of tears could be faked. Out-of-control anger could be faked. Certainly tenderness and concern could be easily faked. Every human interaction can be, and was, faked.
Everything that seems real could be a fraud. We know this. How can someone “get it” who hasn’t been where we’ve been? I guess they really can’t.
Our words can help others understand intellectually. I wouldn’t wish the experience of loving a sociopath on anyone, even my worst enemy.
NWV—
GREAT Analogy!!! Calculus!!! You are so right! It sometimes takes multiple “remedial” classes to get it through the heads of some of us “slow learners”—I kept trying to put square pegs (Ps) into round holes (normal people) and it just didn’t work. I even tried hammers, but that didn’t work either! LOL
lol
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.
Psychopathy is the art of illusion and a clever psychopath can be whatever they need to be at any given time. It isn’t like schizophrenia or autism because the signs of those two conditions are obvious to all.
To be able to see through a P you need to have absolute proof emotionally of their deceit and betrayal which is only something the victim can know. To everyone else, they can wriggle and lie their way out of trouble because society has been programmed to give the benefit of the doubt and judgment of their behaviour is clouded by the emotional baggage/ reaction of the observer.
Swallow
I read this somewhere in another thread about Optical Illusion’s; auto stereograms and Sociopath’s. [ This is the purpose of frequent pity-ploy’s. It is emotionally impossible to simultaneously ‘pity’ yet suspect ‘deceit’. Your mind can only do one or the other.] This is part of the [crazy making] he caused me. He lied through his tear’s………
Kat, Swallow, and Henry, you all three have such valid points.
On the part of “pity” though—they WANT pity, oh, do they want pity, but they will NOT GIVE PITY TO ANYONE. If you try to get them to “pity” you, to quit hurting you, to stop the attack, they have less “respect” for you than if you had stood up for yourself and buck slapped them in the chops!
I think once they have beaten you to the ground, and you are totally conqueored, they then dispise you for being so “weak.”
Kind of like kicking the horse when he has collapsed from fatigue and yelling “get up, get up, you lazy beast!” No matter how heavy the wagon you have pulled, or how long you pulled it while they rode in the seat, cracking the whip, they only want you to DO MORE. They have no pity for the poor “horse” that has broken down trying to pull their wagon without feed or water or kindness at all—you are no good to them any more, so they just kick you and walk off. Most of the time they don’t even have the courtesy to put you out of your misery that THEY created.
Odette,
Maybe one of the steps of healing is letting go of others “getting it.” Lately, I ask myself why I want people to get it? Why do I want to tell my story to people?
I think mainly, I want to be recognized for how much progress I have made. My life doesn’t look like much at the moment and so, perhaps if someone understood what I went through, they would better understand where I am today.
I think it’s my ego that is working.
So, I am letting it go for people to understand. Instead, I hold on to this knowledge and I wait for opportunities to use it. Since there are more Sociopath and pathological people out there than we previously realized, opportunities do present themselves from time to time.
I don’t know if there is a way to educate the masses. It would be nice if we knew about these things before, but we didn’t. Maybe each of us has a angel job to do. I believe we are all angels for someone. Our angel job will come to use when we least expect it but we will have the right things to say.. because we understand and we KNOW.
Maybe. It’s just my theory. And it makes me feel better if my nightmare was not for nothing.
:o)
It’s 2 in the morning so no one can here me anyway. Me and Whitney are having a pity party. That woman can sing!~!! All this talk about why they do this and that and their wiring is messed up and their transmitter’s don’t fire right. Gentic’s or inviroment. I have been thinking and trying to acknowledge his (P) pain. He has to be scared and frightened and confused. We take on their pain, on top of all the other bs they give us to carry. Your right Oxy, he never gave me one ounce of pity. But it sadden’s me that he will alway’s be this way. I don’t see him ever changing. And their was nothing about him to love. So the down side is I loved someone that was unloveable. And I am not sure I was in love. I just didn’t know what he was. It was more like an encounter of the 7th Kind, all of them demon’s in one.
Aloha,
I think you have made a great point.
I seem to have been almost obsessed with wanting people to ‘get it’ and understand what happened to me. Up until I read your last post I’ve never really asked myself why? I suspect that it is to do with ego and dare I say it wanting sympathy. Having never been able to recoup anything else from the relationship I suppose it is what I’ve been clinging to.
I’ll need to sit down and really think about this. Thanks for your insight, it has made me aware of something I haven’t really faced up to before.
Swallow