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    Narcissism, Sociopathy, Psychopathy

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    Last edited by MsD; 20-03-2020, 09:59.

    #2
    News people can use (though one always hopes it isnt necessary, the odds are against one)

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      #3
      Frank Herbert, among others, said something along the lines of "It's not so much that power corrupts, but that power attracts a kind of sociopathic personality type." That rings true.

      Our current crisis bears that out. A lot of people who appear to really know what they are talking about have said "I'm not just saying he's an asshole. Trump really displays all the traits of somebody with narcissistic personality disorder. We're serious."

      And I've heard interviews with a number of people who had terrible narcissistic parents who say Trump resembles them.

      Not sure that contributes anything,

      Comment


        #4
        Welp, this topic hits close to home. I'm happy to share my experiences, if it helps someone else avoid the same fate.

        My ex-husband was a narcissist, a sociopath and a con man. He succeeded in driving a woman to commit suicide, although not intentionally, as far as I am aware. His gaslighting was not so much for his own entertainment--everything he did was about greed. If someone had money, he wanted it, and he really didn't care if he left his victims destitute. He was absolutely shameless and devoid of empathy.

        The "pro tip" I can contribute to this conversation is one that I heard in my head, but chose to ignore. My ex used to lie on a trumpian basis, about everything, but the most curious thing to me was his lies about inconsequential things, both verifiable and not. For example, he would point to a random building in town and say, "my family used to own that building", and he had a story about his parents being killed in a plane crash that I heard him repeat over and over again (they were both alive at the time, although I did not know it until I had been with him for a year or so). I would hear him repeat that story to other people after I knew the truth, but by that time, I was so afraid of him that I did not dare to call him out on it. His anger and rage could be triggered by one misspoken word (if you've been watching Big Little Lies, think about Perry's temper). I walked on eggshells all the time. Oh, and he also used to claim that he had been a helicopter pilot in 'Nam (he never even served and he certainly couldn't fly a helicopter).

        This may seem like a no-brainer, but if you notice that a person is lying about small things that seem like benign exaggerations or "white" lies, run away as fast as you can, because that's like the tiny malignant mole on the surface of the skin that has metastasised throughout the entire person. Don't ignore your conscience early on (like I did)--before you get trapped in a relationship with one of these people. There comes a point when you've let it go too long and getting away from them isn't as easy as it seems.

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          #5
          I'm so sorry that happened to you and glad you survived it.

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            #6
            Thanks, HP.

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              #7
              This is maybe tangential, and I don't want to divert the thread so ignore it by all means.

              On lies. I used to be clear on what a lie was ( ie: a conscious untruth.) But now I'm not sure. The prologue to my doctoral dissertation consisted of several pages of "memoir," events that took place when I was eighteen. When I began I considered them facts, but on checking - names, dates, etc - many, perhaps most turned out to be untrue, or inaccurate. Some were blurred by time, others, I suspect, are unconsciously embroidered to make a good story, some I might even have made up. I honestly don't know any more. Are these lies, or the kind of self deception that falls under the heading of story-telling? No one lost anything by them, but they're not exactly factual either. Charlotte Brontë wrote of Jane Austen: "Miss Austen merely writes what is real, I write what is true." Is that a vindication I can employ or just an excuse? It is a little disturbing to discover at this late date that I appear to have made up a good deal of my own history.

              Comment


                #8
                Yes, that's like when my grandparents used to argue about whether something happened at their house "on the ridge" or "in Laurel". That happens to everyone.

                MsD: I'm OK, thanks. I find talking about it kind of therapeutic. I get triggered when I see it in other people (so you can imagine how much fun it is to have trump on TV every day--I wish he would drop dead).

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                  #9
                  Yes

                  To me, lying requires either conscious knowledge of the lack of truth or reckless disregard for the truth (yes, it's lawyerly, sue me). Trump and Johnson so both, incessantly.

                  I have always been very interested in the stories that families tell about family history. In my experience, they almost never stand up to strict scrutiny, there are always, mistakes, elisions and omissions, though some families do more of that than others.

                  There was a time during my academic history phase that I very much wanted to examine the reality underlying the emigration stories that my family told. Some elements of them were clearly fanciful, but others, while being equally colorful/amazing, could very well be true. I looked at it seriously enough to determine that there just wasn't enough data to do it properly, and then I became immersed in other pursuits. But there was always a part of me that was hesitant to discover and reveal truths that people who had been through incredible hardships had chosen to obscure.

                  Comment


                    #10
                    Originally posted by ursus arctos View Post
                    I have always been very interested in the stories that families tell about family history. In my experience, they almost never stand up to strict scrutiny, there are always, mistakes, elisions and omissions, though some families do more of that than others.
                    Ain't that the truth (heh!)

                    My Mother could easily tell one version of past events one day, then totally deny she ever said it a few weeks later, and say something quite different. Worryingly I think she was convinced of the truth of what she said on both occasions. This is why it's a concern for me, I share far more of her traits than those of my Father.

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                      #11
                      My family weren't 'storytellers', and I learned that you could rely pretty much 100% on what they said. My wife's family tells tall tales, 'porkies' and outright, three-alarm lies. The women (three sisters and my wife) lie to deceive, to please or to simply entertain. After 20+ years, I take everything with a grain of salt. Even to the point where L will come home and say "This woman almost ran into me at the grocery store, gave me the finger and yelled at me to go fuck myself." and I just go "Oh yeah?" I've heard that story from her literally 100 times. Maybe some woman shot her a dirty look...maybe she didn't. But that's the kind of story her mother tells, and now she tells them.

                      Me, I just go to the store, buy milk, and come home again. Nothing that dramatic ever happens to me. But it happens to her on a walk to the corner to post a letter.

                      Her dad is almost as bad, but I think it's tied to his need to always be talking. He's just spinning yarns so he can keep talking. I don't listen to much of it, though. There's no point in it.

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                        #12
                        The woman my ex drove to suicide was recently divorced when she met him. She and her ex owned a liquor shop on a busy highway in a small town on the Gulf Coast, and she got the shop in the divorce. She had also received a substantial insurance settlement from a massive multi-car accident that she and her family had been in several years earlier. He met her somewhere, at a coffee shop, I don't remember, but as soon as he heard that she owned that shop and had money in the bank, and that her husband was out of the picture, he was like a shark smelling blood in the water. He told me that he was thinking of buying the shop from her and that he wanted to spend some time there to observe how the business was doing. At some point he rented an apartment for her and gave her the down-payment for a new car. She thought that she was in a relationship (he was staying overnight at her apartment some nights while lying to me about his whereabouts--this was way before cellphones). He would find ways to spend her money in ways that she thought he was spending his own money on her--that's what these people are so skillful at doing. And after there was no more of her money to spend, he left her abruptly without explanation.

                        I didn't learn about her suicide until many years later. After my ex left her in financial and emotional ruin, she lost custody of her son. I don't know if my ex knows what happened to her, but I do know that he wouldn't care.

                        It's sad that she didn't live long enough to know that he ended up in prison.

                        Comment


                          #13
                          Yes, I've spent many hours in therapy. I've also had very supportive family members and friends. There were times while I was still in it that I wasn't close to any of them (you know how abusive partners cut you off from having a lot of contact with other people?), but as soon as I needed them, they were there. They had a lot of questions, but they were never judgmental.

                          Comment


                            #14
                            That is a heartbreaking story. I’m sorry that you have to carry that with you. I hope that woman’s son has found peace even if she could not.


                            My family didn’t pass down a lot of grand “stories” and are not really storytellers in the traditional sense. My uncle John and great uncle Howard are the last of my older relatives who might fit that description and now they’ve both passed on.

                            We are pretty rigorous, I guess. Both my mom and my dad’s mom were really into genealogy. This was long before one could look things up on the web or do DNA tests. We found out about our family by looking for marriage records in old churches in Germany or traipsing through poison ivy to find a gravestone in Middleoffuckingnowhere, Virginia. If there is some story that sounds especially too good to be true - like that I’m related to Joe Tinker of the 1906 Cubs - than it was at least presented to me with appropriate disclaimers.

                            So I know a fair bit about my ancestors or know where I can find out if I forget, but there’s a lot of color and detail that I can only guess at because it wasn’t passed down in family lore or written down.

                            Memory is certainly unreliable. Every old memory is a copy of a copy of copy etc so there’s lots of opportunity for it to lose fidelity.

                            Comment


                              #15
                              Originally posted by WOM View Post
                              Her dad is almost as bad, but I think it's tied to his need to always be talking. He's just spinning yarns so he can keep talking. I don't listen to much of it, though. There's no point in it.
                              There are hundreds of degrees of untruth beyond pure yarn spinning, which is probably harmless, to the extreme of what FF has experienced, which is tragic. When I was about fifteen my mother told me she'd tried to have me aborted. Not a backstreet job, just a bottle of gin and jumping off a table. She did it, so she said, at her mother-in-law's suggestion because she and my dad didn't have enough money for a child. I later mentioned the incident to my sister, who's pretty blunt, and confronted my mother about it. She denied it ever took place, or that she'd ever discussed such a thing with me. I knew that was a lie, but was the abortion attempt, or the fact my grandmother instigated it? I've absolutely no idea. And because of my mother's conscious or unconscious deceptions I'm not absolutely certain of where my own truths lie. If that makes sense.

                              Comment


                                #16
                                This is a really interesting thread.

                                I worked for an organisation where the CEO had the tendency of junking everything our team had worked on and dictating what the new direction should be. He usually did this at the 11th hour causing us all a huge amount of re-work. I thought he was just a bit of an asshole but later realised he was a sociopath and simply had no idea how his actions impacted on other people. In his world every idea he had would be better than whatever had already been drawn up so he didn't even need to hear about that...

                                Then events in his personal life took a turn, instigated by him, which he justified as being 'sad but necessary'. He treated his wife in an appalling way and showed no remorse. What he did was incongruous with the values of the organisation and he was really surprised when people told him that. He thought it was all okay, you see, so why wouldn't people accept it?

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                                  #17
                                  And on the family stories thing, it's a standing joke in our family that my mum retells events in such a way to put herself at the epicentre in a heroic role. I don't think that's conscious redaction. She just does it.

                                  Comment


                                    #18
                                    Originally posted by Amor de Cosmos View Post

                                    There are hundreds of degrees of untruth beyond pure yarn spinning, which is probably harmless, to the extreme of what FF has experienced, which is tragic. When I was about fifteen my mother told me she'd tried to have me aborted. Not a backstreet job, just a bottle of gin and jumping off a table. She did it, so she said, at her mother-in-law's suggestion because she and my dad didn't have enough money for a child. I later mentioned the incident to my sister, who's pretty blunt, and confronted my mother about it. She denied it ever took place, or that she'd ever discussed such a thing with me. I knew that was a lie, but was the abortion attempt, or the fact my grandmother instigated it? I've absolutely no idea. And because of my mother's conscious or unconscious deceptions I'm not absolutely certain of where my own truths lie. If that makes sense.
                                    True or not, that's a terrible thing to sat to a 15 yr old boy. I'm sorry. AdC

                                    Sympathies to FF & MsD too.
                                    Last edited by Nefertiti2; 25-06-2019, 05:56.

                                    Comment


                                      #19
                                      Storytelling runs deep in our family. My mother was a writer and had about seven different pen names and I swear that a large part of her exaggerations and genuinely believed encounters that she had with so-called ghosts, including headless ones (I’m not making this up) came from some kind of weird disjoint between what most of us would call reality and a dreamworld in which taxes never needed to be paid and everything would always turn out alright. Don’t get me wrong: she had a heart of gold and gave me and my sisters all the help, but at the same time Independence, as we wanted and needed.

                                      There were odd stories such as the one which went that her legal father wasn’t her biological father, the latter being an Irishman who had come over to North Wales for the weekend and ended up in bed with my grandmother. No concrete evidence was ever produced for this; I was told that it was a family secret which nobody wanted to talk about and so I shouldn’t ask. I half suspect this was a way of separating herself from her father with whom relations were, to say the least, often strained.

                                      So I’m a storyteller too but in my case I tend towards the factual, and maybe this comes from my father who was a mathematician in particular and a scientist in general, and always looked, Spock-like, for the logic in everything. I’ve always been a chronicler of events and one day had the idea of trying to archive my life according to the places where I had slept for at least part of a night; I knew that this would be of little interest to anyone beyond my immediate family (and probably not even them!) but at the same time I found the whole exercise theraputic and stimulating.

                                      What sources did I use to compile this list? Well, my own memory is obviously high up there. I know from experience the various towns I lived in as a kid, when my parents were often moving (my father served in the Royal Navy). Then there are the memories of others, for example those of my sisters. My aunts were very useful in adding a few places (from my early childhood in Caernarfon and in East Anglia) where I had no idea I had even been. Even more helpful has been the fact that for many years of my life, I kept a diary: with very few significant gaps, I have journals dating from 1973 through to 1996. There isn’t an entry for every single day, but there are certainly mentions of places I visited, hotels I stayed in, parties I crashed out at and buses I slept in. As well as this, I made a couple of separate notebooks of certain European InterRail trips, with detailed daily information. Also, my five years in Sudan are especially well-documented
                                      -

                                      After 1996 I mostly gave up writing diaries. I’m not sure why that was: maybe after the upheavals of my earlier life I was becoming more settled (since that year I have lived, on a permanent basis, in “only” five different flats, although of course I have also spent various nights, as before, in hotels, girlfriends’ houses, trains and family residences). However, from around about the turn of this century, I started using the internet, so it’s been possible for me to check hotels where my family and me have stayed, remind myself of flight information and so on via the wonderful source of undeleted emails. I’ve also found out exact addresses through data available on social sites, such as Facebook.


                                      Other sources of information which I have used include letters (in the days when people wrote letters I tended to keep a lot of them), the address of a friend written in an old passport (someone to contact in case of, etc.), pay slips dating back to the late 1990s. Google Maps and other similar websites have also been useful. And visa stamps in those old passports have also helped, as have a couple of old health cards I came across (how much I weighed in my first three or so months on this earth, and details of inoculations). I’ve also relied on other documented information, such as which football match was being played during a particular trip, or on old hotel bills found in the scrapbooks I keep, or even checking up when a Spanish-language version of King Lear was performed in Sagunto.

                                      Memory is obviously fallible and like all of us I’m guilty, often without really meaning to, of changing details to enhance the anecdote. Is this the same as lying?

                                      Comment


                                        #20
                                        Originally posted by MsD View Post
                                        I want to make a separate thread about this as I don't think people take any notice of me saying "he's a Narcissist", or are confused about sociopathy and psychopathy. Psychology isn't my field and I'm presenting this as a friendly heads-up, possibly for discussion, for other people's experiences or as food for thought (or for people to correct me, if you think this is too simplistic/inaccurate). It isn't my "thing", even if it seems something of a hobby horse. I don't claim expertise here so I'm not going to say "well, I've been reading this stuff for 10 years, so I think I know what I'm talking about". I will just share what I know and put a couple of links at the end.

                                        Narcissistic Personality Disorder overlaps with Sociopathy and Psychopathy; the important thing to note for a lay person, IMO, is the prevalence of these conditions and how badly they can affect people. An estimated 25% of the population quoted in some places, although it's impossible to calculate. Even if they don't target you personally, they may affect you by using you to destroy another person, use you as an unwitting pawn or witness.

                                        Learning about this has been a huge life step for me that I didn't reach until I was into my fifties. I was involved with a Narcissist and his behaviour shook me to the core. Another woman he'd almost driven to the point of suicide (really, and intentionally) alerted me to the syndrome, which opened my eyes and really helped, as I realised it wasn't my fault, my imagination, my problem, any of those things. I'm not a "natural victim". I'm emotionally attuned, with good self-esteem. I care about others. I'm self-reliant, positive, sometimes bolshie. Of course, I thought these were healthy traits - they are - but they're a magnet to narcissists. Before I read about this I wasted time and energy trying to work out why he did things, working from the assumption that he was a normal person.

                                        Things to learn:

                                        What distinguishes narcissists (or those with the other disorders) from normal people who are just a bit selfish/full of themselves? Empathy, or lack of. They either don't understand how others feel or don't care, or find it amusing (some people with autism present like this, as do some people who are very introverted, but judge them by their acts - people with autism generally don't try to play people out of spite, although that does happen occasionally).

                                        These people don't observe rules.They are a weird mix of high and low self-esteem. They think they're special but at the same time, they fear that really they are worthless. Yes, we all go through phases of feeling *a bit* like that, but we don't generally live our lives that way, and make other people suffer for it.

                                        These people will hurt, confuse and play people just for the fun of it. We're all familiar with the term "gaslighting" now; this is where it comes from (apart from the classic book / film etc.) The aim of the game is to control, confuse, weaken, discredit.

                                        These people usually present as "nice", personable, charming. Often they seem to be the victim of many "crazy", jealous or envious people who tell lies about them. Their sob stories are plausible, and humbly, reluctantly told. They're only telling you (and you and you and you) because they feel they have someone who understands at last.

                                        These people often rise to the top, as they are charming/charismatic and don't give a shit who they trample on the way. They seem dynamic. This does not mean all "nice" or successful people are narcissists; just that a disproportionate number are. Imagine how far you could go if you didn't care about the feelings of others.

                                        These people lie all the time, often about pointless, silly things. Truth has no meaning or value to them.

                                        If you have a narcissist boss, it may be best for you to walk away. You will never win and you'll get crap appraisals unless you're their bum-licking favourite/sidekick, in which case you'll be OK until they turn on you, at which point you may have gone along with things that made you morally uncomfortable, such as unfair treatment.

                                        If you have a narcissist partner, extricate yourself and have a policy of "no contact" unless there are children, in which case have a witness/intermediary to observe what goes on (their not observing rules again, turning up on wrong days, not turning up).

                                        If you have a narcissist family member, minimise contact, and the power that they have over you. Don't put up with their nonsense. Accept that it's their problem, not your failure as a son/daughter/parent/sibling. If you're their one "Golden Child", you'll be used for them to live their fantasies through, or to make your siblings feel shit.

                                        If you know someone who says their ex was an awful, controlling, lying, maniac and tells you weird stories that don't make any sort of sense, while their ex always seems like a plausible, calm, nice person who only tells their side reluctantly ... well, the first person may actually be telling the truth (or not).

                                        There's a ton of info on the web, and there's a bit of a "narcissist survivor" industry going on, as with any self-help, tons of pages on recovery etc., some better than others. It's female-dominated as most experiences, or the most devastating experiences, seem to be male narcissists abusing women.

                                        I'm linking to Melanie Tonia Evans first as she is insightful; more clinical explanations don't quite hit the spot of the emotional damage wreaked. This article is about Narcissism, specifically.

                                        https://www.melanietoniaevans.com/ar...understood.htm
                                        This is very instructive. Thank you.

                                        Comment


                                          #21
                                          I’ll own up to at least 3 of those “how to spot a narcissist” traits in the OP. But I’m not saying which ones & maybe I’m fibbing, and it’s more

                                          But seriously, I’ve always found this a fascinating topic. My sympathies to those who have suffered trauma at the hands of such personalities. Being in The City as I was for most of my working life, you get to spot - and clash with - plenty of psychopaths & narcissists, usually towards the top of the pile and on the trading desks. And then there’s the more benign Billy Liar types who spin yarns at the drop of a hat. Though there’s loads of decent people too, just doing a job.

                                          Comment


                                            #22
                                            I must say that I'm rather shocked and saddened that some fellow-OTFers have been so badly affected by the types of individuals that we're discussing.

                                            I'd love to be able to add something from my own experience but if I've ever come across someone who fits the description it certainly hasn't stuck in my mind. The only fantasist that I've known wasn't a powerful, controlling figure but a rather pathetic individual whose lies were transparent to all but the most naive.

                                            Comment


                                              #23
                                              Mrs Greenlander is fascinated by these type of people and meets both the perpetrators and, more often, the victims is her role as a therapist.

                                              We've got a classic narcissist in our family. My uncle on my Mums side is full of it. They live in America, but he is British by birth, so we don't see much of him but his lies are so unbelievable a kid can see through them. My first real experience was when our grandparents took us on a trip to London years back and while at the planetarium he whispered to me that Isaac Newton was his ancestor. Which, I suppose, is plausible but my grandma soon set me straight 'he'd have clamed whoever was on the back of the one pound note'.

                                              He was a policeman in Bermuda and later a pilot for Continental in the US. That is true. However he will claim he trains airforce pilots and any incident will be one he's experienced and done dealt with better - that pilot who made the landing on the Hudson a few years back, oh he's done that Sulley did it all wrong. But his ultimate classic was showing my boy who was about eight at the time a photo of my aunt and him standing at the bottom of an ornate staircase and telling him it was taken on the Titanic. While the rest of us gasped at his audacity my son just said 'well then you should be dead then. Or about 100' and walked away.

                                              But there's all the other things mentioned upthread going on too. I'm not sure my grandparents ever approved of him. There were family rumours that they tried to persuade my aunt to leave him but fifty years on they're still going. She never says anything when the stories come out. Often she'll go to the kitchen to fetch more drinks and let him carry on. My grandma has never been so forgiving and if not call him out, would always cast a look that said here starts the bullshit.

                                              He's a spender too. My grandparents were well off, he was an architect, she was head of the prison service on Bermuda and they were very generous. When my grandpa died in the early 90s the decision was whether my grandma would come to the UK and live by my mum or to the States with them. Florida won out, it was cheaper and the weather better. Plus my mum was still working full time. When my grandma died a few years back the money had gone, he'd symphoned off the lot. I suspect he lost a load in that 401k pension incident but there was nothing except a couple of secret accounts that my dad had managed for her without my uncles knowledge. They had to move out of their expensive pad, no doubt paid by my grandma, into her more modest pad. He was so brash though, again it's difficult to tell from this side of the Atlantic but it's pretty certain he didn't follow any Florida law relating to her death and execution of the will but my mum had neither the time or energy to contest it. Not that she was really bothered except by the thought of her obligations under the broken US laws.

                                              He's a nasty piece of work. On our last visit a couple of years back he took great delight in telling us he's good mates with the local grand wizard. We finished our dinner and left. Now my grandma is no longer around I'll doubt we'll go back.

                                              Comment


                                                #24
                                                Originally posted by MsD
                                                Just to be clear, there's a big difference between yarn-spinning and N/S/P. Although the yarn-spinning is interesting in itself.

                                                Do they use lies to get what they want and manipulate people?
                                                My uncle is an interesting one. He's a twin and his brother, though I've only met him once, seems a great company. He's gay, and came out when doing so was a really big deal. I'm sure most of my uncles behaviour is some type of over compensation and to prove his masculine and heterosexuality while covering his homophobia.

                                                No doubt he controls my aunt. Mrs G can't believe she hasn't left him, but I'm guessing it's long past that point now and they're co-dependent.

                                                Comment


                                                  #25
                                                  Wow! Lying, causing emotional pain, playing people off against each other, having absolutely no empathy or concern for their actions - that's my ma!

                                                  Very interesting stuff, thank you for posting MsD. And commiserations to those affected by these monsters.

                                                  My brother tells the odd tall tale but they are funny, harmless and entertaining. Apart from my mother, I've come across the odd bullshitter/conman/woman but alarm bells usually go off quite quickly and I avoid them, where I can. I'm always very disappointed when I do catch people lying or doing something underhand to me but it's very rare. I don't lie and I don't bullshit and I really don't expect other people to either. That is not to say that I haven't done things I shouldn't have and I certainly have character flaws but not as described above. Thankfully.

                                                  Of course I could be lying.



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