MENTAL HEALTH – Shared Psychosis

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This is a really great article about the way psychopaths can manipulate others by inducing a “shared psychosis” with their victim(s) — otherwise known as trauma bonding or Stockholm Syndrome. Psychopaths are way too far gone to ever be cured. Don’t try to help one; you can’t. This well written article really drives home the evil and creepiness of psychopathy–and most are not even criminals. They achieve their desire to completely destroy another person or group of people (such as the followers of a cult leader) using perfectly legal means. No Contact is the only way to handle a psychopath (NC here could be expanded to to include malignant narcissists who are just under psychopaths on the narcissism spectrum, most garden variety narcissists, and yes, even a few very sick borderlines too).

30 thoughts on “MENTAL HEALTH – Shared Psychosis”

  2. I’m not sure why you would think that psychopaths cannot be cured. Firstly, the structure of this statement sets it up as if a psychopath needs to be completely healed or not completely healed, as if their whole pathology was one illness that they either have or don’t have. But, reality’s not like that… someone doesn’t have to be cured to improve… if their acting out can be controlled, psychopaths can actually be helped to different degrees. Usually though, unfortunately, the facility that does this (stopping acting out) is a prison, which is a very untherapeutic environment in other ways.
    I read some writing about this by Donald Rinsley, who had worked with adolescent and adult psychopaths. He wrotes that to the degree that psychopathic people also had any degree of borderline or narcissistic personality traits, they would in fact respond to psychotherapy. So, they are not “incurable” in theory, except perhaps a few very hard core criminals. But in practice it’s probably rare that the circumstances would come together where you’d find a way to stop their acting out and someone would be in a position to talk to them in a way that could help (and yes, I know what a psychopath is in the general sense; it is very hard to help them in most situations).

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    • Yes…these people often belong on hospitals a and not prisons. However, some of them do belong in prisons.

      I think lucky is saying all or nothing in regards to a relationship with a Psychopath. I would agree that there is seldom going to be a cure when it comes to having a romantic relationship with one. I would tend to agree with her on the all or nothing analogy. Because I have high doubt’s that a Psychopath can sustain a healthy non violent relationship with a partner. I do believe they can manage their disorder so that they can become functional in society. And I believe they key motivation factor for them in that is the desire to never go back to prison.

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      • So what I’m trying to say is, her analogy makes sense in the sense that it is all or nothing when it comes to a romantic partnership with a Psychopath, because its risky for the victim involved. Its dangerous, because there is no way to know what triggers them off. In that sense there are ways to teach them to manage their behavioral patterns. But I am leaning to the no cure analogy when it comes to intimate relationships with them. Mainly because a woman faces danger when the behavorial technique backfires. Often it backfires and a woman losses her life during a domestic violence dispute. So until we find a real solid cure, I think we should stick to the analogy that it is not possible to have a functioning relationship with someone who suffers from ASPD.

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        • I agree. While it MAY in very rare cases be possible for a psychopath to be cured, it’s best to assume a psychopath or malignant narcissist is always going to stay that way, at the very least for your own safety if you have left one because of the potential danger. So don’t ever trust anyone with this disorder or try to “fix” one yourself. You can’t do it. And that goes for men as well as women. Psychopathic women can be every bit as dangerous as a psychopathic man, and because they may hide their true motives better, may be more so.

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      • I generally agree that it’s hard for someone without a conscience to have a meaningful romantic relationship… why would they want to? Their goal is to use people to achieve their own ends, not have a mutual loving relationship.
        On the other hand, I don’t think I’d call it a “disorder”… that’s a medical word. When I’ve read about psychopathy, what I understand happens is that a child is abused so badly that it simply gives up all emotional investment in others at a very young age. It doesn’t develop a conscience or learn right and wrong, and doesn’t care emotionally what happens to other people, good or bad. It is kind of like a psychological predator or animal. Pretty scary. But this is a, or maybe the ultimate, deviation of emotional development, rather than a medical condition. I have this strong bias against using physical-medical language to describe emotional developmental problems; that’s why I say this.

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        • I’ve heard it likened to the way a cat goes after a mouse. The cat only knows that it’s a cat and the mouse is food. It doesn’t feel empathy for the mouse because the mouse is just food to them. It isn’t a creature. That doesn’t mean the cat is inherently evil though. A psychopath is evil only because as humans, we are supposed to know better than treat others as prey. But it’s still in their nature, like a cat. The psychopath doesn’t see the victim as a fellow human, just like a cat doesn’t see mouse as a creature, or we don’t see ants as living things when we step on them. It’s indifference rather than hate per se (though I do hate ants! LOL)

          The main difference is I don’t believe any psychopaths were actually born like that. They put up a total wall between themselves and any other human because they were hurt so badly by abuse they dared never be vulnerable again–and being empathic requires you to be vulnerable. I’ve seen some malignant narcs are actually very good with animals (my ex is one) and actually able to empathize with animals but not with other humans. It’s weird but its true. I think I need to write a post about that actually.

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          • Yes I generally agree… I don’t believe psychopaths are (mostly) evil in the sense of making a conscious choice over and over to hurt others (which is part of why victims tend to be disbelieving of their actions, because it’s hard to step into the mind of a psychopath and see how different it is). They just don’t care and don’t know that they’re hurting others, most of the time. It is like a hunting cat. Or, perhaps, like ISIS, which has been brainwashed into believing it’s ok to kill and torture other people. I doubt most people in ISIS are truly evil; they just believe the lies they’ve been told and think it’s ok and just to do those horrible things.

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            • Yes, I agree for the most part but what about a serial killer like Ted Bundy or Ed Gein who derived pleasure from seeing their victims suffer and went out and deliberately sought out vulnerable victims?

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            • Yeah I’ve read about those cases; I’d say they are actually not as evil as many people think. Rather, their personality has been taken over by the internalized abuse / neglect they were destroyed by in childhood (e.g. read about Ed Gein’s mother, who emotoinally abused him in many ways). In essence, their mind has been colonized by internal schemas which compel them to find new victims to replay and live out scenarios they suffered at the hands of their parents or abusers as a child. So, for Ed Gein, the people he killed would represent his identification / “mastery” over / internalization / replying of the rageful relationship he experienced with his mother or other early figures. By killing those people, he could put himself in the role of his mother and not be the weak child any more (emotionally), and he could maintain the feeling of an internal relationship to his abusive mother, even after she died.
              It’s kind of like the relationship between Norman Bates and his mother (who died long ago, but was preserved in the Bates motel) described in the movie Psycho by Hitchcock. Norman was a good-looking young man and could have had a relationship with the young woman that visited his motel. But because his internalized relationship to his abusive mother dominated his mind, he couldn’t perceive reality clearly, and instead felt compelled to kill the woman because he felt his mother would have been jealous of his relationship with her.
              In both these cases, I don’t think the person is “evil”, although it’s sometimes comforting to judge them as evil. Rather, they are themselves victims, in a most horrifying and disturbing way, of their childhood experience, which they then replay with their future victims.

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          • The guy I know loves cats. Many of the photographs he sent me have him in photos with kittens in his hands. The photos make him look very loving. Because you would think that any man that relates to cats and kittens in photos would be loving, gentle and harmless. I think this man has a strange dominant relationship with cats.

            His nickname for me was Kitty Kat.

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            • So you know about this weird phenomenon then. It’s actually pretty common. It’s not that they lack empathy per se, but have shut off their capacity to feel empathy for other humans. They may feel it for an animal (or maybe a lesser animal in some cases because dogs and cats are “too human” or something).

              I have also seen this happen where a psychopath hates everyone and is abusive to everyone but seem to genuinely love their own mother and somehow feel protective of them. You hear about serial killers who love their own mothers all the time (and usually the mothers were abusive). It’s like a codependent little piece of themselves remains immune from their otherwise impenetrable wall of narcissism. It’s really strange.

              At the risk of raising BPDT’s ire again with another mention of SV, he wrote a couple of touching stories about his relationship with a goldfish and a snail: http://gorgelink.org/vaknin/snail-en.html

              Kitty Kat, awww. I gotta admit that’s pretty cute, even though that guy’s incredibly dangerous.

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        • This is going to seem strange to you, but I believe the difference between a Serial Killer and a non killer Psychopath is the intensity of hate, and the arrousal level they derive from a specific fetish. The Psychopath has an OCD issue. They have agendas. Where one Psychopath may feel extreme pleasure and arrousal from the mental torture of women. Another Psychopath will derive extreme pleasure torturing and killing a woman.

          Most serial killers are white men. The man I know is not white, and he derives pleasure through Psychological abuse.

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          • Interesting. Actually it’s not that strange. There’s a condition in the DSM called a paraphilia, and it’s common for ASPD’s and malignant MN’s to have them. But not all psychopaths or even most of them have a sexual fetish connection to physically overpowering or tormenting their victim. They may be white collar criminals or something instead.

            If the serial killer derives pleasure from tormenting their victim, it’s because there’s a sexual fetish involvement in their desire to torture, but 99% of it is still because it makes them feel powerful and in control. I agree about the OCD bit too. For most psychopaths, it’s not that they deliberately set out to torment their victims, they just don’t care. Like the cat and the mouse.

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        • Kitty Kat. I have to say…he really did have some really cute ways about him. Its sad that he couldn’t have stayed that way. When he figured out that I had fallen for him. When he figured out that I was conditioned and emotionally bonded to him…he stopped being nice. He slowly became more and more cruel as time went on.

          Its too bad he couldn’t have stayed nice.

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            • I left you a FB message with the last words. He wasn’t able to reel me in for the kill. I gracefully gave him my last words. Words that I meant. I realized through all of this that what I feel I must express in life. And what I want to do in life I must focus on doing.

              And I do believe he has been reading your blog and our posts.

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            • I’m not sure what the kill was? Perhaps he was arrogant enough to believe he had the power to distract me from my new relationship and my band and songwriting.

              The truth is that he is powerless, and has lost his little chess game with me. The words Goodbye Mary had no impact. I got the final word, and the final word said. You meant a lot to me.

              Meant is past tense. I gracefully took the last words, and I had the confidence to say exactly what I feel.

              So what I’ve learned is this: Its my life. I’ll do whatever I want with it. I feel whatever I feel like feeling, and I’ll express it and say whatever I want. I learn that no persons opinion or judgement based on their belief system will hold me back from playing music or being in a band or writing lyrics, poetry and articles. I also learned that I won’t hold back. I will do whatever I want to do the best I can. I will let my cup runneth over with my creativity. And I will make my CD and perform on stage and give my performance my heart and soul.

              And last but not least… I will write on this blog whenever I want.

              So if he wants to reel someone in for the kill,…he’s got the wrong fish. I’m alive and swimming freely ❤

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            • No you don’t offend me at all.

              I stayed home from work today. I woke up with a sore throat, it was raining so hard. I wrote alot.

              I’m sure he’s more angry over what I’m writing about him, but I don’t care.

              I love the way my life is turning. Look,… Its only been 4 months since it ended, and look how much growth I’ve had.

              Actually, I’m grateful for meeting him. Through the annoying experience of him, I learned how to focus on myself and do exactly what I want to do.

              Oops,…I was supposed to say insperience. Its not experience, its insperience. Lol

              🙂

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