Feb 27 2011: HARMONIOUS INCONGRUITY (80 X 100 cm)

There was editing to remove information regarding information that might reveal someone's identity...  

SENSEI SPEAKS:

There are certainly overlapping traits for NPD and psychopathy, and I have been thinking lately that spousal abusers are typically either one or the other, and perhaps a bit of both.  There’s a bit of research to back this up, I think.  Personality disorders generally are messy, and thus difficult to diagnose, but let’s put it this way:  anyone who beats up his wife/girlfriend, blames her for making him mad, then feels sorry for himself that she doesn’t understand him—such a person is narcissistic not a psychopath. 

A psychopath, to me, has very little of these emotional responses to their own or others’ pain because they are incapable of empathy or deep feeling.  I think they are quite capable of obsessive tendencies and other stuff, not to allay anxiety but to make the environment suit their needs.  With NPD, they feel sorry for themselves because they can’t get their needs met, other people don’t do what they want them to do so they can’t fill the narcissistic void (i.e., the hole in the doughnut).  I don’t think there is any such longing or need in a psychopath; they don’t feel much at all, and may do things to try to feel something in the way that thrill junkies jump out of airplanes for a “rush” and feel bored when they are just doing normal things.  Or they become predators (polite or not).   With NPD, they are overly sentimental about their own emotions and give their feelings a primacy that is never reciprocated by the world or not adequately, and so it looks like they don’t have any empathy for others when the problem is more that others are the means to an emotional end.  Whereas I don’t think the psychopath has any sentiment at all, for themselves or others.  The narcissist has lots of feelings but their feelings are all directed toward themselves.  The psychopath doesn’t feel much, or at least feelings are not a hugely motivating force like they are for the narcissist.  But, I see your friend Sue’s point about aggressive narcissists=psychopaths, I just don’t think all psychopaths are aggressive, I think they just look aggressive because we interpret their lack of empathy as aggression when it’s really a lack of feeling capacity.  There are, I believe, aggressive psychopaths, but I think they are either trained into that or they just get interested in that kind of power because they get a buzz off it.  Was Jeffrey Dahmer aggressive?  From what I have read, no, not in the sense we think of, he just killed people because of his peculiar obsessive sexual perversion, but he apparently didn’t get all that angry in the process.  We think of aggression as anger, that the fight or flight response kicks in and anger is instrumental, it has a purpose to protect us.  For Dahmer, people were just like bugs or lab rats to him, and without any social conscience to say “Hmm, shouldn’t keep going down this road”, he just got weirder and weirder.   But he wasn’t trying to protect himself from anybody because he became a predator for a purpose that only made sense to him.  I think he just graduated to people from animals, and he didn’t think there was much difference. 

Psychopaths don’t see others as subjects just “things”. 

Anyway, thanks for the blog.  Just glad I don’t live with either one.

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To make a long story longer...

Taking into consideration there are no pure “types”, yes, I believe psychopaths are not capable of much emotion, they can only approximate it by imitating others.  We focus on their lack of empathy because it is the one thing that we think leads to crimes against other people.  I would argue that they are emotionally undeveloped across the board, and that the rage we associate with psychopaths in movies (see Hannibal Lecter) is our way of “explaining” that only a psychopath could do such horrible crimes.  Well, shucks, most of the Nazis were bureaucrats, common thugs and antisocial punks, and they did horrible crimes because they didn’t see the people they killed as people like themselves.  I am sure they loved their mothers, but anyone who wasn’t part of their social group was nothing.  The Hell’s Angels are the same; they have a sentimental code of brotherhood and loyalty which simulates family and brotherly love and they have real emotional attachments to each other for the most part, but outsiders are simply prey.  The difference is that the psychopath doesn’t see ANY people as different from animals or insects or rocks and cannot really form attachments to anyone of any depth.  They just see people as objects. 

I don’t know that psychopaths are all that methodical, because I think that they likely make social mistakes based on their inability to read or relate to others’ emotions; they can’t even fake it very good.  Faked emotions may be manipulative in their intention, so it’s possible your mother’s faked emotions look so fake because she is pursuing a rational agenda at the time, not displaying an emotional reaction.  She likely could read your emotions if she could pay attention to someone’s besides her own.  There is some indication in the psych literature that people can “grow” out of borderline tendencies around their forties, as they keep getting feedback from others that they are not going to have friends or family if they don’t smarten up.  I think the personality disorders are so intermixed that is why they are trying to rework them, and I think you can get symptom overlap between several.  But to me a psychopath is much more than a personality disorder, it is an emotional deficit that occurs very early in development and may have little or nothing to do with learned behaviour.  I think a lot, if not all, are born that way.  If they are brought up weird, they get weirder; if they are brought up well, they might be successful lawyers.  Ever see that TV series about the “good” psychopath whose father trains him to do “good” killing?  “Dexter”?  Haven’t seen it but it sounds interesting.

Your mother manipulates others and thinks they don’t notice, partly because nobody can quite believe she’s doing it and nobody calls her on it, and partly because I think she convinces herself that her scheming is really for your own good if you’d only see things her way.  But it’s not; you can’t manipulate somebody into their own good (try telling that to some of my colleagues, mind you).  In short, I don’t think your mom is a psychopath, but from what you have described she is manipulative, self-serving, and self-absorbed.  She seeks to have her kids fulfill her emotional needs (and/or financial ones, for that matter), and she has a command of emotions but tries to use them to her purpose.  We call that “instrumental”, since the emotion serves another purpose than its own expression.  She does not seem like a psychopath, but I could be wrong.

Feb 27 2011: HARMONIOUS INCONGRUITY (80 X 100 cm)

The above painting is sort of my own Rod of Asclepius.  It is a symbol of myself, as the tree-like figure, and my mother, the snake.  I also remember the Old Testament, where Moses presented to his people the bronze snake on a pole. The people were speaking against God and he set serpents among them.  Then the people repented and, instead of taking away the serpents in answer to their prayer, God provided a remedy in the form of a serpent. 

In making this my own symbol, there is a penalty of sin/pain/death for sinning (or in this case, going against my mother who THINKS she is God and that if anyone goes against her they are sinning).  The remedy I provide for myself (who had a 'death' of sorts, for choosing to go my own way and to assert my own will) is the snake (mother) becomes  part of me.  I become stronger/immune to her venom.  I have my own roots taking energy and nourishment from my surroundings (those I love and those who love me, hence the bright yellow light surrounding the central subjects in the painting).  I am separate from my mother, she does not have her roots or suckers or tentacles in me sucking my essence and nourishment out me (she feeds off people).  I cannot be moved.  I am drawing nourishment and love from somewhere other than my mother.  I am completely separate from her.   She tried to take over, but only a part of her became a part of me.  I am transformed into something other than my old self.  I used to be still, passive, bending to her will, but no more.  I can recognize and can no longer be harmed by attacking serpents (like my mother).  I have been bitten so many times, that the poison no longer affects me.   Or at least, I'm getting to that point.

Cheesy, isn't it?  8P