Category: Psychopathy

Studying Victims of Psychopaths

4/11/2016

Community Recruitment Announcement

Who we are recruiting
The “Emotion, resilience, and post-traumatic growth in domestic abuse survivors” study investigates the outcome of being in an abusive romantic relationship.

We are looking for participants (aged over 18) who identify as being in a prior heterosexual abusive romantic relationship.

Abusive experiences may include verbal/ emotional abuse (i.e., bullying, manipulation), coercion (i.e., intimidation, threats, control of finances, isolation), lying and deceit (i.e., infidelities), and sexual assault. Particularly we are looking for people who identify as being abused by a romantic a partner who displays psychopathic or narcissistic characteristics. These may include:

Pathological lying (i.e., use of aliases)
Engaging in infidelities
Failure to take responsibility for their actions
Lacks empathy, guilt, and ability to feel deep emotions
Manipulative and exploitative of others

Sense of entitlement, grandiose sense of self-worth, or feelings of superiority
Involvement in criminal activities
Impulsive and irresponsible
Engages in risk taking behaviours (e.g., drug use)
Being superficially charming

What your participation will involve
If you are interested in participating in the study please follow the link www.cuaftermath.com, which is a secure website where you will be asked to make an account with a username and password (no personal or identifying information will be asked, such as your name or address). The study will take approximately 1.5 hours to complete. The website is not compatible with mobile devices or Ipads, please use a computer or laptop device.
On the secure website, you will be asked to complete a few questionnaires, a card game where you will select decks to gain as many points as possible, and a task where you will be presented a series of images of male faces and asked what emotion they are expressing.
The questionnaires will include questions on your experiences of anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress, experiences of positive growth, and perceptions of interactions with other people (i.e., social support). There will also be questions addressing experiences in the abusive relationship (e.g., onset, type, severity, and length of abuse), and traits of the abuser, such as:
Does he or she think it is fun to push people until they get upset?
Has been convicted of a serious crime?
Does he or she think they can get what they want by telling people what they want to hear?

Please do not participate if…

You identify as CURRENTLY in an abusive relationship. For your safety, we recommend that individuals currently in a relationship not participate in the current study. We worry for participants’ safety if they complete this study while in close physical proximity to their abuser.
We ask if you are currently undergoing or have undergone treatment for a gambling problem that you do not participate because the card game is similar to a gambling game.

Some of the questionnaires may address stressful topics. If you wish to withdraw at any time (even skipping a few questions on the questionnaires), you may do so as the study is entirely voluntary and anonymous. There will be no penalization if you decide to withdraw, no matter at what point in the study. You do not have to complete all of the study at one time; you can stop and complete the study at your convenience. There is the possibility that participation in the study may trigger or exacerbate distress.

Incentive
Participation in the current study is strictly voluntary (there will be no incentive or cash given for participation).

This study has been approved by the Carleton University Research Ethics Board-A (CUREB-A) (103670).

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Teenage Psychopaths

12/29/2015

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Psychopaths don't look dangerous. They blend in so they can take advantage of people's ignorance. Photo of extreme tattoos and piercings.

Psychopaths don't look dangerous. They blend in so they can take advantage of your ignorance.

As a parent of two teenage adopted sociopaths and one neurotypical toddler, I will officially say...I really really wish people would quit saying "All kids are psychopaths/ sociopaths." Uh, no. No, they aren't. That is the difference between reading the symptoms and living with it in real life. No parent who has experienced both would ever say such a ridiculous, reductive thing.

Ever heard of CIPA (congenital insensitivity to pain)? As far as I can tell, sociopathy/psychopathy is the emotional version of this disorder, with huge social impacts. It sounds like a cool thing to have...no pain, ever? Awesome! Until you stop and really think about it. You learn from pain...huh, that hurt, you won't do that again. You don't overextend the limits of your body, pain makes you correct your course. Ow, you take your hand off the hot stove, you don't fry your hand right off. You feel when there is something terribly wrong, ugh, you're nauseous and have a fever, and you do something about it. These people tend to have shortened life spans of a result of CIPA, and can die from something as simple as overheating, because they never know to get out of the heat.

Now imagine a lack of emotional pain/feeling and how difficult that would make it for you to navigate human relationships. If you have never experienced certain emotions, how can you have empathy/know how someone else is feeling? I would have to think the world would look like an irrational, confusing place. I believe we have emotional pain to correct ourselves, have empathy, and understand each other, which is rather important with billions of us really needing to get along and not have the world turn into Thunderdome.

Sociopathic children do not have normal boundaries, whether because they aren't picking up on social cues or refuse to pick them up because they don't care. ~ If they are enjoying you, they should just move in with you, because why should that end while they are enjoying themselves? They don't experience shame by being mocked by peers, so behaviors like wetting themselves goes uncorrected. They instead discover that it is a nifty way to really piss people that they don't like off.

A neurotypical child will generally feel and display genuine affection. A sociopathic child will find you acceptable and display certain behaviors that keep you happy, which is of general benefit to them and more pleasant for them to be around. Even with your head buried firmly in the sand, it becomes difficult not to feel manipulated, that there is a calculus to their interactions with you. An honest family that is asked if the child loves them will say "I don't know."

As for the initial question, there was a real potential for violence, particularly in my son. He had violent fantasies, and as he grew physically he began to act more on his impulses. He tried to choke one family member during an argument, beat a smaller child on the bus, and held his sister against a wall and showed her how he wanted to carve her arms up with a kitchen knife. I was never on the receiving end, but that had more to do with me than him. I am relatively tall, reasonably strong, have a strong personality and had never been particularly susceptible even to emotional and mental manipulation (so to children I would have always seem somewhat larger than life). He and I both knew he was never going to be able to get fear or rage from me, and I would have no problem getting his ass hauled off by the cops, so in no way would he get what he wanted out of violence toward me. From day to day living, I had enough instinct to know that if I displayed weakness in any capacity it would be exploited, so I couldn't, which was tiring, tense and unnatural to me. A limping gazelle wouldn't have survived in my house.
They lie. No, not in a "no, Mommy, I didn't break that vase" kind of way that is normal. In a chameleon kind of way. Daughter wails to one person how awful and despicable physical violence is, two hours after bragging to someone else about going to school and kicking someone's ass, wanted to hurt them. "Impressing" people with a nonexistent history of disgusting sexual acts, pregnancies that never happened, children that don't exist. He loves cheeseburgers, tomorrow he hates them with another person. You begin to wonder if there is a real solid person in there, or is there just a bunch of constantly shifting tides.
They do not "learn from their mistakes." They will do the same destructive or disruptive things year after year, because for some reason they get their rocks off doing them.
There is no amount of parental creativity or Dr Phil "finding their currency" that is going to move the needle in behavior.
They will do what they want when they want, because they one-track-mind want it, and everything else is usually irrelevant. Negative or positive reinforcement will rarely influence anything, especially not over time.
Attempts to teach a sociopathic child concern for others is a losing proposition. You will do it anyway, because you want to at least have those ideas out there and available, and to be able to look at yourself in the mirror and know that you tried. But any attempt to explain to the child why it is wrong to steal free lunches provided for poor children at the YMCA or steal donated supplies from the guidance counselor's office will be met with a blank look. Who cares if someone else will starve? They wanted it, and they were proud of themselves for getting away with it.
I usually felt like a shoulder angel (walking, talking external conscience). They knew right from wrong, but only behaved with manners/not stealing/not hitting, etc. if I was there. I was left feeling that I had to be hyper-vigilant and present all the time, or something bad would happen. This was utterly exhausting.
Parental blame: people will look at your children, who they know are "not right," then at you, and decide you did it to them. Most people generally believe that children are cute, blank little slates and are a product of their environment. I used to believe that too, until it was sociopath-ed out of me. Their behavior is generally the opposite of everything I have desperately tried to instill in them. I ended up feeling judged and humiliated and isolated by society, and the kids couldn't care less.
It can destroy relationships between you and other family members/friends. Attempts to tell others what was going on (hey, at times I would have liked some support or empathy) was interpreted as a mother badmouthing her kids, that I blew things out of proportion, that I was too controlling, I ended up sounding like the crazy one. I was told that I didn't love my children. Doesn't lead to warm fuzzies all the way around.

Eventually it will all catch up with you. They will become old enough or sophisticated enough that you can't keep them out of trouble anymore. And you are left wondering why you tried for so hard for so long, when this is who they are, and always were.

Excerpt from Answer on @Quora by Anonymous to What is like to have psychopath children?

Photo courtesy of The Telegraph

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The Seductress Narcissist

10/16/2015

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Picture of Sabine Mondestin - narcissist?

The seductress type narcissist is very difficult to trace. She is more difficult to inquire into than covert narcissists as there is some hidden amazedness, rakishness, chariness, and ravishness in her looks and body that is very captivating and seductive [and this hypnotizes the observer].

After seeing so many narcissists in life and having purposeful interaction and encounters with them; if any single quality of narcissists, especially female narcissists, that fascinates me deeply, it is their inherent seducing and ravishing behavior. This is very obvious and evident even during your first encounter with a narcissist. The every motion and gesture of her body are seducing and enticing in nature, leading slowly to ravishment of the target. Saying nothing from their tongue, they are sending you messages through [sly] seduction. It is difficult to interpret if they display such gestures purposefully or not. The seductress narcissist may bare her breast unconsciously for your gaze to see her breast pretending as if she is itching there. While sitting with you at a coffee table in a restaurant, she may bump your foot and simultaneously say sorry for that. She may catch hold of your fingers in the pretext of seeing your hand lines and making some future prediction about you. Nowadays palmistry is a common stratagem to attract people. I can recount endless such gestures here, but my aim here is not making a catalog of the gestures, rather, it is studying the process of covert seduction.

Some seductresses have a god-given sweet tongue. None can surpass a seductress in “sweetness and politeness of tongue” as they talk in a very low sweet voice with a tinge of innocence. You are enticed by her majesty and modesty of talking. When such a seductress is talking with you in a maiden meeting her facial expression and movement of her eyes and lips are to be noted. There is some “depth and meaning” in her looks, too. It seems as if her searching looks are finding something in you which you are not aware. She may purposefully or unconsciously suck her lips as if she is chewing something. Her whole body language is sending a secret message to you for decoding. Her body language is simply amazing. Suppose you are successful in reading the language of her secret messages and body language - then there is every possibility that she may thwart your advance. [Playing innocent and hard-to-get - contradicting her easy-to-get subliminal messages.] It is another hysterical trait to attract and seduce more - to the prolonged extreme - until your total submission and surrender.

Kali archetype

Mother earth is the primordial archetype that gets expressed in women in various patterns of maternal behaviors such as: dedication, upbringing of children, a caring and protecting attitude, sympathy and empathy.

There is no place for loving and caring in another archetype of women. The exact opposite of mother earth also exists in women that is of evilness, seduction, and of a woman sucking the blood of her own children and killing them to gratify her eternal hunger. Here she is the model of cruelty, tyranny, wickedness and wildness. This type of archetype is also beautifully expressed in mythology. In Hindu traditions, this archetype of women has been designated as “Maya” and has been allegorized with a female serpent that eats her own offspring.

The word seduction has wide ramifications. In modern times, it has been fixed to or reduced to sexual seduction or exploitation. Seduction is the attitude of the person, or the mental process, in which the subject deliberately or unconsciously tries to entice a person to go astray from duty and rectitude (to corrupt; to persuade or induce you to engage in [loose] sexual behavior). The moral defenses of the victim are shattered while facing such behavior, which is really fascinating and stunning too! The word seduction has been derived from Latin and its literal meaning is “to lead astray”.

By studying and analyzing wiles and stratagem of historical seductresses, we find some commonness in the execution of their Art of Love to ravish their victims. But there is no force or assault in this ravishment. Many subtypes of seductress archetypes may be found. All the prototypes of seductresses display the traits of enticing, alluring, AND elusiveness.

The archetype of “trickster” is embedded and intermingled with the seductress archetype. It is the trickster archetype hidden in their psyche that makes their behavior maneuvering and manipulative. Some cases of seductresses constitute high intellectual faculties. These women are of high caliber and high profile, occupying highly lucrative posts. They inherently know how to twist the course of events in their favor. Sexiness, youthfulness, beauty, and charm are the main wiles used by them to seduce for sex [or power].

Another stratagem used by all seductresses is a dissolution of their ego temporarily. It is this that makes them seem more attracting and seducing in nature. (In various web pages) “grandiosity and ego inflation” has been depicted as a hallmark of a narcissist woman. In Punjabi culture, there is a popular colloquial word for seduction that is “momo tthagni”. Its meaning is: to ravish or plunder someone by becoming wax. The solid wax of their inner candle - the candle of Ego - starts melting on seizing upon their target. I see it as another cunningness hidden in their behavior. It is, in fact, her preparation to further ambush your person. It is the process of the melting of her ego, together with her love making art, that compels the victim to come more and more near, and begin to have emotional togetherness and connectedness.

Once this togetherness or connectedness is established, the true colors of the seductive narcissist starts coming out. What was perceived as most charming and beautiful is turned into cruelty, tyranny and ugliness in subsequent encounters. This elusiveness of [congruous] behavior is the secret of their seduction. They are “mirage women” for their victims. Now all their exaggerated emotionality and sensuousness turns into “sourness and bitterness”. This sourness and bitterness was always inside of them, but was hidden from your purview.

Actually, what we call casting of spells is nothing but stupefaction of our senses, and stupidity and ignorance of our minds temporarily under the spell of our own selfishness. For a moment, we become so overwhelmed by our sex drive that our nervous system and thinking system is shut off temporarily and is paralyzed [for easy conquest by the seductress].

Adapted for comprehension and American English from "The Eternal Seductress narcissist?" by @anandbliss ajmersingh mann April 2014

Photo courtesy flickr sabinemondestin

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What Do You Do If You Meet a Psychopath?

8/27/2015

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Join us as we explore what to do if you meet a psychopath with Dr. Kent Kiehl. Dr. Kiehl is an author and neuroscientist who specializes in the use of clinical brain imaging techniques to understand major mental illnesses, with special focus on criminal psychopathy, psychotic disorders (i.e., schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, affective disorders), traumatic brain injury, substance abuse and paraphilias.

Also, he has designed the one-of-a-kind Mind Mobile MRI System to conduct research and treatment studies with forensic populations. To date his laboratory has deployed the Mind Mobile MRI System to collect brain imaging data from over 3000 offenders at eight different facilities in two states. This represents the world’s largest forensic neuroscience repository.

Source: TherapyCable.com

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how to detect a psychopath as easily as we see who is drug impaired. .

Share with others: "What is a Psychopath/Sociopath?"
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ABOUT ME:

I was married to Harlan Taylor, who meets the psychopath criteria. Beware his illusion of nice guy. Now, I'm spreading awareness of neuroscience fMRI testing to identify psychopaths - those without a conscience. They are incapable of basic truth, and live by their own rules.

Trying to ascertain if someone is a psychopath should not depend on a list of behaviors.
(Contrary to hollywood's fascination with the violent ones, the majority of psychopaths do not exhibit physical violence.)

Too many people are silently being emotionally destroyed because they awaken to the narcissistic abuse, and then utilize the psychopath test *after* the damage is done.. To help stop further victimization, fill out the form to Name Your Abuser.

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Studying Victims of Psychopaths

Teenage Psychopaths

The Seductress Narcissist

What Do You Do If You Meet a Psychopath?

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Studying Victims of Psychopaths﻿

Teenage Psychopaths

The Seductress Narcissist

What Do You Do If You Meet a Psychopath?

ABOUT ME:

Archives

Categories

Studying Victims of Psychopaths