The following is a guest post written by Dr. Liane Leedom, a contributor to the Lovefraud Blog. Dr. Leedom is a psychiatrist who was conned into marriage with a sociopath. She had a child with him, who carries a genetic risk of developing the personality disorder. Dr. Leedom is author of Just Like His Father? A Guide to Overcoming Your Child’s Genetic Connection to Antisocial Behavior, Addiction and ADHD, available at the Lovefraud Store. The article drew 139 comments on Lovefraud. The original post and comments are here.
If you read the stories of victims of sociopaths, many common themes are apparent. One of these is the victim complains that he/she is riddled with anxiety while the sociopath goes on with life effortlessly. From the point of view of a victim, then, it is hard to see fear as a gift. Many say they wish the sociopath suffered some anxiety over the mess they made of their lives. The worst sociopaths even go to prison multiple times but only view this fate as “an occupational hazard.”
Over the past 100 years, clinicians and scientists have written about the lack of fear in sociopaths. Many have speculated that lack of anxiety or fearlessness is one of the causes of psychopathy. In fact, one researcher was able to show that the level of anxiety shown by children in the first two years of life predicted conscience at age 6. Low-fear kids had less of a conscience. In these low fear kids, only empathy predicts conscience.
If like me you are raising a fearless child whose other parent is a sociopath, you have to understand this risk factor for the disorder. Fearless kids require specialized parenting that focuses on developing empathy. They have to be super empathetic to make up for their deficit in guilt, anxiety, and fear. There is much evidence that the development of empathy can be enhanced by the right parenting.
Many fearless kids, like my son, are resistant to punishment. So the only hook you have with them is a loving relationship. You need a big hook, too, because the same fearless kids are energetic and very impulsive, so they require a great deal of correcting. Their only motivation to learn to control their behavior is to gain the approval of those they love. This is why the usual American parenting style, which does not foster close family relationships, produces sociopathy in fearless at-risk kids.
Many parents who realize that they are raising a fearless at-risk child believe that discipline will fix the problem. They therefore seek advice on how to do this effectively. They use all the techniques only to find out that they may work in the moment here and there but do very little to impact the fearless child’s behavior overall.
I should add that fearlessness and dominance behavior go hand in hand. These kids are what most people call “strong-willed.” Many religious leaders have therefore said that it is important to “break the will” of strong-willed kids.
The problem with trying to break the will of an at-risk child and focusing on discipline is that these do not instill what at-risk children need to develop a conscience. These kids don’t need to be broken, they need to be fixed! The fix involves teaching them to love.
When teaching a child to love, it is important to remember that negative family experiences have a stronger weight in our minds that loving ones. The at-risk child responds to negative interactions, not with fear but with more dominance behavior. Psychologists have determined that in order to be of equal weight, our positive loving experiences have to outweigh our conflicts by 5:1. So we have to experience 5 times more love than conflict in order for us to feel stable.
You see the Catch 22: These kids need constant correcting because they are so impulsive. If they get a thought to do something, they do it instantly and they have a hard time terminating an unwanted behavior. So the usual parenting means 100 times more conflict than love for these kids. In a nut shell that is why many develop sociopathy. Study after study has shown that when normal loving parents adopt children with genetic risk (whose biologic parents are sociopaths), they turn negative and punitive toward the kids.
Without focused practice loving, the absence of guilt turns into a complete absence of conscience for at-risk kids. A person with guilt deficiency can have a conscience if he/she has empathy. Without either guilt or empathy you get a psychopath.
OK, now many of you are saying to yourselves, “I don’t buy this fearless, lack of anxiety crap. The sociopath I was with was neurotic as hell.” Although studies of groups of sociopaths show that within individuals the level of anxiety is negatively correlated with the level of sociopathy, it also turns out that the rates of phobias (other than social phobia) and anxiety disorders are not lower in sociopaths.
Scientists are presently very puzzled trying to reconcile all these observations. The evidence that fearlessness and lack of anxiety are causative in sociopathy is fairly strong. How do we explain, then, phobias and anxiety in sociopaths and conduct disordered kids?
I can offer some explanation based on my reading and my own observations of sociopaths and their offspring. I think the critical question is when the fear system develops in a child. I think that in many sociopaths, the fear system develops too late to impact their development in a positive way. So if a child develops fears after he or she has already developed a pattern of dominant, impulsive behavior, those fears do little to positively impact his personality development. Instead these fears lead a child to become even more aggressive in self-defense.
Also realize that if a child’s fear system, which is supposed to develop by two, doesn’t develop until four or five, he or she is left without the tools to manage fear. Children are supposed to use their loving relationships to cope with their fears. At five, At-risk children already have a poor relationship with their caregivers because of their impulsive behavior. Who is such a child supposed to turn to when afraid? The only thing that child can do is to focus on having interpersonal power. If he or she is powerful then he or she can’t be hurt. I encourage you to go and observe this for yourself this summer. Go to a local playground and observe the kids. You will see the dominant ones using fantasies of power to cope with their fears.
So as I have said before, sociopaths do not have the gift of fear. The way fear works in their lives never helps to keep them safe. Their experience of fear is aberrant; they suffer with it but that suffering does them no good. For sociopaths fear and anxiety are not connected to avoidance of stuff that gets them in trouble. For them fear and anxiety are connected to the opposite, fantasies of interpersonal power. Feeling anxious only makes them more aggressive toward others.
Great article. I agree with your view on parenting children ‘at risk’.
I’m not absolutely certain love will ‘fix’ neurological issues with a genetic basis, but I can’t think of any other or better way to at least try. And other ways are certain to fail, as they are certain to fail with all children.
Thanks for sharing!…
…..
“Dr. Leedom is a psychiatrist who was conned into marriage…”
She was conned into getting married!?? … Now how about that! – I mean, Whoa, how did he manage to get her to sign or go up the isle without her realizing she was about to get married?
And she got a child with him afterwards!? Why then he must’ve been okay at least at that point for her to forgive him that he conned her into marrying him, no?
It’s virtually impossible to be conned into getting married. Marriage is a decision, otherwise it must have happened at least in correlation with force or threat, and in that case force or threat weighs heavier in my understanding than does ‘conning’.
What I’m basically saying here is that I see something wrong with the way she thinks and sees her reality.
I know of this psychiatrist, I’ve read the entry you refer to some months back, and I quite frankly do not agree with much of what she says, not with the way she treats her ‘child at risk’, not with the way she thinks, and not with her viewpoint.
You mention focusing on developing empathy in the kids of such parent/s. Yes, I agree with that, but she is focusing on fear! That is cruel!, not loving! And it is not likely to make the kid grow up an empathic person, even if it’s empathy inclined to begin with.
Treating somebody as a psychopath will only cause them to become one (a secondary psychopath). Otherwise – if the child is already born with a strong genetic predisposition – it’s likely to have no effect anyway. This ‘psychiatrist’ may be rearing a psychopath. I wish I could stop her. I won’t even attempt to get through to her by verbal/written means, for I know what will come of such an endeavor given my own “relationship” with psychopathy.
Why do you think a psychpath mentality is hereditary? Humans are born clean of knowledge, it is all learned by various means from various sources. In about 10% of mentally troubled people, according to rational psychologists and psychiatrists, a chemical anomaly may be responsible (a greater proportion helped by medicines, but 90% of mental trouble is from learned bad ideas.
Psychopaths are not just psychologically troubled, like “free lunch” crooks, but want to hurt people.
I recommend http://www.drkenner.com and http://www.drhurd.com for advice.
The above comment by Keith is sadly the way that most people think. Please read or listen to the interview with Dr. Robert Hare on npr titled “Creator Of Psychopathy Test Worries About Its Use”. He explains how this misconception (that people are born as blank slates)is the reason so many psychological (physical) problems have not been explored and diagnosed accurately. We’ve wasted decades blaming the parents, environment etc., when the problem was internal. Not “wanting” to believe something does not make it true and does not make it go away (or we could wish away poverty, molestation, etc.).
Pointing fingers at the parents is another unique form of abuse and rape. Since even the experts in this field (psychopathy) have no treatments that work (Hare, Adrian Raine, Kent Kiehl etc.)and these are doctors armed with the knowledge that an MRI set up to check for this can reveal UNEQUIVICALLY that one is without remorse, love, etc., yet they somehow expect those of us who are not only uneducated in psychopathy, untrained, and trying frantically to help our child (all the while being accused and blamed by others that it is something, if not ALL to do with our parenting). (If only we could possibly do MORE!)
So NOBODY is being helped. The concerned people in the child’s life are basically being used as test subjects, and will certainly be the first to be blamed when they were ultimately unable to “fix” the child. The psychopathic child is not being helped, as there is no help to be had. Doctors will give ANY OTHER diagnosis rather than just tell the parent that it is psychopathy. (Just to name a few: anti-social, bi-polar, borderline, histrionic personality disorder, autism spectrum disorder, etc.) So where does this leave us? Right here, arguing amongest ourselves while the psychopathic child/adult just blithely sails on, completely unaffected as they ARE COMPLETELY UNAFFECTALBE.
I was once married to a sociopath. His mother
was a sociopath also. She refused to let her
son mature.He was treated like he was four years old. She would tell him to hang his head, look at his shoes, and place all his fingers close together while she berated him.
Onn the other hand, he began showing the same symptoms toward me, such as taking me somewhere, dropping me off, and telling me to call him and he will pick me up. when I called,he refused to answer the phone. I called someone else to come and get me and when I returned home he was sitting in a chair looking up at the phone on the wall. I said, “why didn’t you answer the phone.” he said, “I didn’t hear it ring.” I left him shortly after that incident. So, sociopaths seem to breed sociopaths.
How absolutely UNREALISTIC this advice is. That parenting a “fearless” child requires ABSOLUTE PERFECTION on the parents part. (And calling a psychopathic child “fearless” does NOT change the FACT that he or she is a PSYCHOPATH.) How can ANYONE expect to be so perfect? You simply CAN’T. And as you read more and more articles on psychopathy, you will see that there is NO HELP for the parents of psychopaths. NONE AT ALL. In fact, if you are a parent who is a non-psychopath and the experts realize this, you will perpetually be held to unrealistic expectations (as suggested in this article) AND be blamed when you ultimately fail.
People who are BORN a psychopath are this way forever. There is no way to make them feel empathy and with this brain functioning comes many things. They want to be worshiped and to dominate. They also like to alter other people’s perceptions of things, again a control tactic and a form of manipulation. It’s simply their nature. Any demonstrations of love are an act and a form of manipulation, and what this author is telling us is to teach psychopaths how to be better actors.
This is the second article I’ve read by this author that is dangerous and wrong. She has another one that says MRI’s are incapable of showing if one is a psychopath. If you pay attention as you read more and more you will see that many people who write about psychopaths are actually psychopaths themselves. They are very PROUD of what they are and they want to boast about it but we haven’t quite reached the stage in our culture where this is celebrated and accepted. Who knows what the future has in store but if you are a non-psychopath you are very rare.
My son displayed an unusually high tolerance for pain ever since he was 1 year old. Today, hard knocks do not bother him when playing, but when he feels as though he is being targeted or attacked, his response is explosive and disproportionate to the damage received. He has difficulty engaging his imagination to play with toys except for when we tell him it is time for bed, time to eat, or time to wind down because the baby is sleeping. He intimidates, raises his voice, and attacks me when his father is at work, and used to hit me when I was pregnant to get his way. In the face of what he wants, he does not care about anything or anyone else. However, he still craves the attachment to family even though he is disruptive and somewhat hyperactive when the rest of the family is just hanging out. If we do not give into him, or need to discipline him, he says ‘you don’t love me,’ and seems to believe it. He pervasively steals household items–even money–that intrigue him, and lies audaciously instead of admitting it. He has harmed at least 2 animals in front of an adult, and in front of a child, but felt like it was in the interest of self-preservation to some extent. He was fearful of a cat, although it was not attacking or pursuing him, so he starts punching it mercilessly; the owner looked out the window, and he continued. He has myself, his dad, his sister, and a wealth of grandparents supporting him. He has many friends, although some discontinue playing with him because of his quirks. He has a tendency to rationalize his behavior, make excuses, and posit that he is the victim and not vice versa. He will make up stories and say things to manipulate me into playing outside, or getting anything else he wants. He whines sometimes, and we tell him it is inappropriate. As a toddler, he was read to and received attention around the clock. He gravitates towards video games and TV, although we sharply limit it. He is not neglected, but rather asserts himself front and center in our lives.
I did not teach my son to steal, deny vehemently, and lie audaciously when caught red-handed. I did not teach my child to domineer others, use his ingenuity to be sneaky, or behave wildly. It is not our fault! How can psychopathy and sociopathy be the parent’s fault when we never model the negative behaviors that our psychopathic child displays? It is not easy taking care of the boy. I am only 24, still in college, and lack a career–these are stark differences from parents with more resources, such as an adoptive parent. My child is infinitely draining, and only greater support from society and a lot more money could help us. The child is quite expensive, and has caused the family hardship because of his behavior.
However, my son talks about Jesus being in his heart, and I discuss with him how other people feel, and about social problems around us. He is interested in the nature of social problems and some injustices. Jesus ministers to his heart, and I believe we are doing everything we can to support and love him in spite of himself.