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.
Alohatraveler,
Wow. “Tears and Healing”. I never read the book but I saw it advertised online and I read the description about it. It was that very site that made things finally click for me. I had already gotten the, “have you considered that he might be a sociopath?” question. But I was still trying to figure it all out. That site was the one thing that hands-down made sense of my experience.
I printed out the page and a new co-worker of mine saw it sitting on my desk and she started asking me questions. A few minutes later she asked me if I understood that my ex was a “textbook sociopath” by all that I was sharing with her. I had no idea she had her master’s in forensic psychology and had worked in a prison doing group therapy with Ss. She went home later, called me up and told me that she found my ex online and several aliases and a couple of birth dates linked to him and his addresses. I was praying for some answers about what I had been dealing with. Talk about validating. Again, truth does set us free. The challenge over the following months was to keep my mind on the truth and survive through it!
Yes I’m catching up and posting a lot LOL
Regarding us as healers, that is gift I think we all have knowing what we now know…something that we would never wish anyone else had to experience to fully understand. But the fact that we do and we’re using that to help others is what makes us who we are. It’s disheartening to see others go through what we did. But being here to validate them when they start coming out of the fog is priceless in my book.
I can’t begin to tell you how my experience has impacted my work as a therapist. I believe there are reasons why we experience things in this world. If we pay attention there is so much we can learn about ourselves and others. I know that, hands down, there is a deficiency in our mental health system when it comes to understanding the impact these folks have on others. I had little understanding myself and most certainly a very vague idea of what a sociopath truly is. Now I know the right questions to ask and see it a mile away. I recognize the victims and the perpetrators who walk into my office.
I have struggled with some clients stuck in the web of these relationships. I have asked at what point will they finally have enough? Abuse is abuse is abuse. Love cannot change it. Justifying it will not make it go away. Self-sacrifice will only lead to ultimately absolving of the self. If the abuser will not come in for couple’s therapy that alone speaks volumes. Even under the notion of being there to “support’ the victim. The excuses I hear are absolutey absurd. I think the notion of therapy terrifies them for fear of being found out.
But I make no bones about it when I see it. I just make sure I’m careful as I remember being on the receiving line of people’s negative opinions of my ex while we were together. I pulled away from those people. But I know the questions to ask now. In the middle of “explaining” their abuse there’s some power in saying, “Let me stop you there. I’m going to take a guess and please tell me if I’m wrong. But did he say he did ___ to you because someone did ____ to him?”, “Do you find yourself telling him that he obviously doesn’t know you to think you’d ever do that to him?” “Does he make you feel guilty using pity and refuse to take responsibility for his behavior towards you?” “Do you find yourself trying to make him feel better and make up for things you didn’t do to him?”, etc. It’s questions like these which make their heads whip around to look me in the eye and ask, “how did you know that?” Ah, if only they knew. Then begins the psychoeducation.
Getting my co-workers to “get it” is a whole other story. But I’m trying. Too often victims are assigned too much responsibility for the abuse with these folks. I’ve been on the receiving line of that as well. Ss are not so obvious as we all know. They can “blend” all too well. Trying to explain covert abuse is tough.
There is one redeeming bit of news however. My own therapist went to a conference recently on gaslighting. She said she heard of it through me for the first time. At the conference they explained that it’s becoming an increasingly popular abuse tactic and a real problem. You can say that again!
We are like ripples in the water. We can’t fathom the impact that we have on others when we share what we’ve been through.
Dear TAkingmeback!!!!
HIGH FIVE, GIRLFRIEND!!!! Yes, the “small” amount of money (whatever amount it was) isn’t worth the going to court over and hassling over, and unless she took your diamond tiria, whatever she took isn’t worth it either. It took me a looong time to get that.
The “hired hand” that worked for us at the time of my husband’s death stole my husband’s gold watch off my husband’s arm as he lay dying—-and for a year or more I was FURIOUS. First I didn’t want to believe he did it, then when I realized he HAD done it, I lay awake nights figuring ways to “pay him back” for such a horrible thing! Gosh, was I mad, furious, wrathful, and thinking about some terrible things, but I finally came to the conclusion it is “just stuff” regardless of how much $$ or sentiment is attached, it is JUST STUFF.
I think you handled the situation just great! I think maybe we could all take a page out of your book on that one, me especially! Thanks for sharing! and CONGRATULATIONS!!!!
I am definitely still grieving, and I wonder if I will ever really get over J. On the one hand, I was over him the first time I caught him looking for a date online while we were still in the first flush of “love”. On the other hand, I’ve spent the last year trying to get over wanting him, and it’s not any better than it ever was. Nobody else can make me feel that way, I just have to learn to live with it. It’s so nice not to have to see that stupid look in his eyes anymore, the one that makes me wonder what lies he’s cooking up, but I still miss those eyes.
kat — I just woke up from a bad dream about mike. We will get over them. It is that illusion that we miss. They listened to our dreams and stole them and used them to become everything we always dreamed about, fantasied about. Sweetie they left us or we kicked them out for good reasons. The encounter with a sociopaths leaves us feeling so hopeless. Hang to your convictions, this will pass and you are getting over him. I understand how u feel, but do we want that madness back in our life? i don’t
i have always said this Show me a man with good intentions and interested in me and I run like hell, show me a loser and i will chace him like a dog in heat- go figure, this last loser really kicked me in the ass – time to change…
Kat and Henry,
I totally relate to what Kat is saying. These people have unbelieveable charm and charisma! My ex made me feel like the most loved, beautiful and wanted woman in the world! I was with him nearly 8 years and he showered me with what seemed to be constant love and affection. He told me all throughout the day–every day–how much he loved me and how beautiful I was. And, it seemed that he had to be touching me at all times. Of course, it always led to sex and it was during what should have been lovemaking that I started NOT to feel the love–only the lust. He treated me like and angel outside the bedroom and like a slut in the bedroom.
Now, I’m with a man who is much less affectionate and I keep doubting his love for me although deep inside I know that he would do anything for me and that he’ll be there if I need help–money, sickness, etc. In the back of my mind, I always feared that my ex wouldn’t–even though he declared such great love for me. Maybe it was because that I realized aside from all the mushiness, he seemed to lack what we recognize as true CONCERN for me and my well being. It was truely all about him and his ego. His ability to make me melt gave him power over me.
Isn’t it strange how our intuitions kept telling us that there was just something that wasn’t quite right even though things seemed so perfect? I’ll never ignore my intuition again–sometimes I think it is our guardian angel. Some people claim that we all have one!
Tami – Cat- One thing about my X sociopath. He wasn’t charming, just pitiful and needy. When it came to sex, he had no idea how to make love, to him it was just routine and mechanical. He never made eye contact. I do miss sleeping with him, we cuddled and he didnt snore. But I held him, he never held me. He never bought me flower’s, gift, etc. He would say “I love you” 20 time’s a day but never look me in the eye when he said it. Why do I miss him? Hell if I know…..
oxy dont you just hate it when people tell you about their dream’s? Well sit down I am going to tell you. I seldom dream about him. This is the second time ever I think. { we moved into this sleazy apartment and I worked so hard to get it looking good. We were working at the same job. I came home and he was in bed with his X. Said he was moving back in with the X. The x just laughed at me. They took all my things. I had to move in with my mother and I quit my job. That wasn’t a dream it was a nitemare } just what you needed this morning OXY—no comment necessary—–
Dear Henry,
Nah, I don’t hate it when people tell me their dreams—whether they are “aspiration dreams” or “nightmares.” I think our dreams help us sort out the daytime thoughts and feelings we are having about our Xs and the situations.
For a while I had dreams that had “themes in them” that were representing my own enabling, my mother’s enabling, and my desire to “get across to her” how she was hurting me. When I finally “got themessage” the dreams were trying to convey to me, they stopped.
No one can “interpret” your dreams but YOU, but it seems to me that yours was just reinforcing that “no matter how hard I worked or what I did for him, he would cheat on me and use and leave me. He didn’t love me at all.”
I think sometimes we “see” things with our conscious mind that our sub-conscious can’t “see” but your subconscious I think is telling you that it is “getting the message” now too.
Henry, I am so proud of the progress you have made. I don’t know if there is any point that we will be “fully healed” and no scars left that are sometimes painful, like my arthritis in my joints from old injries sustained in rodeos when I was a kid. They come back to “haunt” me a bit when the weather changes! (Yea, I know, OLD AGE!) BUT OVER ALL, those long ago injuries are healed.
I’ve only been injured (seriously) by ONE animal that did it out of PURE MALICE, not fear or accident, and every time that ankle hurts, even 20+ years later, I think about that rascal. The old aches and pains I get from injuries that happened by accident (horse fell) or a dog that bit me in the face because she had puppies, they don’t bring back the anger I felt at that horse that bucked and threw me deliberately (He only bucked with women). I should have shot the sucker, but he was worth too much money and I didn’t. I still regret not killing him. But, I did LEARN A LESSON from that, and ANY animal here on the farm that DELIBEERATELY will hurt another animal or a person GOES, one way or another.