Exposing Online Predators & Cyberpaths

[Bresias]

Re: Exposing Online Predators & Cyberpaths

Briseis:

So . . . I don't see that a heightened ability to empathize would increase vulnerability to psychopaths -- it actually should DECREASE it, as long as the empathic person is reasonably intact emotionally and intellectually.

The only thing that decreases vulnerability is knowledge. Due to narcissism and ponerization, most peoples boundaries are questionable. In a ponerized society that is growing more so by the day , how many empathic people are reasonably intact emotionally and intellectually percentage wise to you think?


Then, add in on top of that all of the false things we think- stand by your man, all people are good deep down, if I love him enough it will change , etc.


Or, the way I sum it up in how I was taught- Everyone is a bunny rabbit deep down in their heart, just like you. See those tigers and lions and bears? They're just pretending to not be bunny rabbits. When they do something bad or eat a bunny rabbit they just made a mistake. Everyone makes mistakes. You have to forgive them and love them, and then one day they too will be good fuzzy warm bunny rabbits.

Without both learning all you can about these creatures AND fixing your errors of perception with further knowledge about yourself and instrument tuning, the idea of empathy decreasing vulnerability is folly in my opinion. I can only speak for myself, but my empathy is what got played on the hardest both up front and each time I tried to leave.

It might be that we are understanding empathy differently. Otherwise, I agree completely about the necessity of knowledge, how it fine tunes the natural "tools" among much else.

I may be understanding the term "empathy" with too much personal contamination, and I'm glad to check that out further :)

I'm thinking empathy is a perception of another's internal experience. If this faculty (empathy) is free of personal contamination, as in this quote from Laura, (quoting Lobaczewski):

such as subconscious blocking out of conclusions, the selection, and, also, substitution of seemingly uncomfortable premises.

then I wager that an experience of empathy with a psychopath would result in an experience of anxiety and revulsion on the part of the "normal" person. Thus, hightened empathy equals greater protection.

When I met the psychopath I fell in love with and married, I experienced BOTH anxiety, deep discomfort AND a conviction my new man was an innocent, gentle diamond-in-the-rough. Hoooooooley crap! what a "substitution" and blocking of conclusions THAT was!!

My anxiety and revulsion was on the level of my body, I experienced these sensations in my body, NOT in my head, so that I could have articulated "This guy has me feeling anxious and uncomfortable." Due to the "conditioning" of having a psychopathic father, my inborn instincts were ignored or misinterpreted (I feel anxious because there is something wrong with ME). My "empathy" at this point was false, and I was projecting my vulnerabiities onto him, which I'm sure he was slurping up like mad. Maybe that is how psychopaths so successfully discern our vulnerabilities -- we project them onto them like a hippodrome . Just some thoughts that arise while I write this out!

Now KNOWLEDGE has (mostly) resolved the conditioning and when I feel that "gut feeling" around a person, I correctly interpret that I'm sensing something about THEM. Knowledge has corrected much distortion.

The only way I can verbally describe my true "empathy" response to a psychopath, or characteropath (if there's any difference) is physical, bodily discomfort. Probably a lot like what a water buffalo feels when they catch lion scent.

 

[Bresias]

Re: Exposing Online Predators & Cyberpaths

I'm speculating from my personal experience here . . . I've often had a sudden, mysterious sense of revulsion upon meeting a person. It is like a gut feeling, and no more elaborate than that. Then, because I have been steeped my whole life long in being "nice" and tolerant and accepting and equality, I've ignored or even shamed myself for my gut feeling.

Up until I woke up a few years ago, when I felt that gut reaction, I took it to mean there was something wrong with ME. And in my personal version of mismanaging reality, I would try HARDER to please this person! Instead of running the other way . Long story there, my father is likely psychopathic and there was some conditioning that had me going in all the wrong directions.

So . . . I don't see that a heightened ability to empathize would increase vulnerability to psychopaths -- it actually should DECREASE it, as long as the empathic person is reasonably intact emotionally and intellectually.

I could write the same exact words. That "be nice" program is basically part of the shutting down of our true emotions and the result is that we think with that emotional energy that gets diverted.

I still struggle with it.

Yes . . . for me, what it means is that I do NOT live in a "nice and safe" world, where everyone really had a bunny rabbit inside who might make a mistake now and then (thanks to EmeraldHope for that metaphor :) ).

Not that I'm surprised, I've always FELT it, but based upon objective reality. Up until very recently I did not acknowledge myself as an agent of power in my own life. At least in the same way I understand myself to be "powerful" now.

This is an area where my heart is farther along than my head. I respond and behave as if interpersonal safety is NOT some kind of given (based on internal bunnies). My head reels and wants to make excuses or explore my paranoia and rehabilitate it :D .

I don't give those doubts a lot of energy. Better safe than sorry, and I have been VERY sorry, enough for a lifetime at least

 

[Bresias]

Re: Exposing Online Predators & Cyberpaths

I neglected to add that I struggle with the old memes because I'd much rather live in a world where everyone has an inner soft sweet bunny, one that I can count on to stop scary behavior before I am really hurt.

This illustrates a refusal, on my part, to rise to the occasion and claim my adult life. And a lack of confidence I can successfully handle the bad bunnies.

Knowing what motivates me to cling to hopelessly deluded ideas points me in the direction of healing and/or resolving my previous refusal to cope.

 

[EmeraldHope]

Re: Exposing Online Predators & Cyberpaths

It might be that we are understanding empathy differently. Otherwise, I agree completely about the necessity of knowledge, how it fine tunes the natural "tools" among much else.

I may be understanding the term "empathy" with too much personal contamination, and I'm glad to check that out further :)

I'm thinking empathy is a perception of another's internal experience. If this faculty (empathy) is free of personal contamination, as in this quote from Laura, (quoting Lobaczewski):

such as subconscious blocking out of conclusions, the selection, and, also, substitution of seemingly uncomfortable premises.

then I wager that an experience of empathy with a psychopath would result in an experience of anxiety and revulsion on the part of the "normal" person. Thus, hightened empathy equals greater protection.

When I met the psychopath I fell in love with and married, I experienced BOTH anxiety, deep discomfort AND a conviction my new man was an innocent, gentle diamond-in-the-rough. Hoooooooley crap! what a "substitution" and blocking of conclusions THAT was!!

My anxiety and revulsion was on the level of my body, I experienced these sensations in my body, NOT in my head, so that I could have articulated "This guy has me feeling anxious and uncomfortable." Due to the "conditioning" of having a psychopathic father, my inborn instincts were ignored or misinterpreted (I feel anxious because there is something wrong with ME). My "empathy" at this point was false, and I was projecting my vulnerabiities onto him, which I'm sure he was slurping up like mad. Maybe that is how psychopaths so successfully discern our vulnerabilities -- we project them onto them like a hippodrome . Just some thoughts that arise while I write this out!

Now KNOWLEDGE has (mostly) resolved the conditioning and when I feel that "gut feeling" around a person, I correctly interpret that I'm sensing something about THEM. Knowledge has corrected much distortion.

The only way I can verbally describe my true "empathy" response to a psychopath, or characteropath (if there's any difference) is physical, bodily discomfort. Probably a lot like what a water buffalo feels when they catch lion scent.

I gotcha- I think we are on the same page for sure. I could say the same thing about my psychopath as well, from the bodily sensations etc. He pursued me in such a fairy tale manner though that I, like you, thought there must be something seriously wrong with me that I felt those things. My dad is " path" as well also.


In the Women Who Love Psychopaths thread, I wrote a post near the end of the thread that pretty much outlines what you just said- I thought he was the same as me, projected that, took walls down, got DESTROYED.


The point I was trying to make I guess is that for most women, heck people, there are so many programs running that empathy doesn't do them very much good at all in regards to these types. Now developed empathy cleared of muck is another thing all together! I guess my point was that not many people in the world have it .


I say these things because I had fit Sandra's outline of the perfect victim for a path and for a while I did get overly hung up on the hyper empathy quality in a "Wow. I'm Spesh-ul- I have hyperempathy" way. It was in fact a huge hinderance as it created a lot of resistance to what I have learned here because it was hard to put down some of my emotional thinking due to it. Reality proved Laura right though in the end.


I can remember when I was a little girl, that certain people would be introduced in social settings and having a huge revulsion and being MADE to go give them a hug or kiss on the cheek and being reprimanded to not to act "ugly" when I would go hide behind my Nana. These people were total strangers! It is no wonder I grew up to distrust myself.




Add- I guess saying that my empathy got played in my first post to you, in that context I had meant my feeling bad for him, and pity, which he played like a violin.

 

[Bresias]

Re: Exposing Online Predators & Cyberpaths

I gotcha- I think we are on the same page for sure. I could say the same thing about my psychopath as well, from the bodily sensations etc. He pursued me in such a fairy tale manner though that I, like you, thought there must be something seriously wrong with me that I felt those things. My dad is "path" as well also.


In the Women Who Love Psychopaths thread, I wrote a post near the end of the thread that pretty much outlines what you just said- I thought he was the same as me, projected that, took walls down, got DESTROYED.


The point I was trying to make I guess is that for most women, heck people, there are so many programs running that empathy doesn't do them very much good at all in regards to these types. Now developed empathy cleared of muck is another thing all together! I guess my point was that not many people in the world have it .


I say these things because I had fit Sandra's outline of the perfect victim for a path and for a while I did get overly hung up on the hyper empathy quality in a "Wow. I'm Spesh-ul- I have hyperempathy" way. It was in fact a huge hinderance as it created a lot of resistance to what I have learned here because it was hard to put down some of my emotional thinking due to it. Reality proved Laura right though in the end.

I can remember when I was a little girl, that certain people would be introduced in social settings and having a huge revulsion and being MADE to go give them a hug or kiss on the cheek and being reprimanded to not to act "ugly" when I would go hide behind my Nana. These people were total strangers! It is no wonder I grew up to distrust myself.

Add- I guess saying that my empathy got played in my first post to you, in that context I had meant my feeling bad for him, and pity, which he played like a violin.

There's tons of well-researched stuff on empathy out there . . . I'm just winging it with my personal "take" here.

Empathy seems a lot like an instinct, installed with the original operating system. I know instincts can be distorted, having had my own distorted in order to survive a pathological parent. I sought love, approval and safety, and to get a reasonable simalcrum of them FROM him (and my overwhelmed mother), it was imperative to distrust my "gut feelings".

I remember my little sister announcing one evening at the dinner table, "I like Mommy better than Dad. He's too mean."

She was lifted from her highchair and shaken and thrown in her crib. Then "Dad" collapsed with his head in Mom's lap calling himself terrible names and how much he "loved us all" while we didn't appreciate him blah blah blah. Poor fellah (not!). I am a year and a half older than my sister, and remember my horror listening to her say those words. I'd already learned my own lesson, apparently. These are good examples of having your natural instinctual responses scared right out of ya. For me, just feeling that sense of "Uh oh!" around another person was enough to trigger anxiety and self-loathing.

I felt deep pity for my father through out my childhood, in spite of how violent and terrifying he was.

Instead of reacting "naturally" to exploitative, violent people, I responded with "pity" and an impulse to please them as if my life depended on it. It DID at one point. Marrying them and accepting jobs from them only followed .

The "pity" or "sympathy" I felt for predator types was NOT empathy. I wasn't "seeing" their poor wittle lost souls weeping for the lack of love, because they have no such thing inside them at all.

It was pure projection (of my own weeping, injured self) in the service of injured and distorted instincts.

I STILL to this day have automatic "thoughts" or whatever they are, to humanize psychopathic behavior. Like in an earlier post I made on this thread. I still want there to be hope for them, but just wanting that does not change reality.

As far as the "hyper-empathy" thing and "emotional thinking" . . . I don't know about one leading to the other, but then again I haven't explored what hyper-empathy even means. "Emotional thinking" . . . . lol, yep, hand raised :D .

 

[sandrabrownma]

Re: Exposing Online Predators & Cyberpaths

So . . . I don't see that a heightened ability to empathize would increase vulnerability to psychopaths -- it actually should DECREASE it, as long as the empathic person is reasonably intact emotionally and intellectually.

Well, after being in the pathological relationship for a while, I doubt the empathic person is reasonably intact emotionally or intellectually. I mean that is what the pathos does-- yes, she might have been so entering the relationship but it does not take long in pathological exposure until the damage is done. And the empath victim projects her behavioral/emotional analysis onto him and believes positive attributes exist where there are none. Hyper empathy (anyone read Oakley's new book on it?) i think is an act of superimposing the unprocessed emotional material onto others, espec her own projections of how she 'would' act and react. An inverted narcissitic object relations kinda thing.

 

[EmeraldHope]

Re: Exposing Online Predators & Cyberpaths

So . . . I don't see that a heightened ability to empathize would increase vulnerability to psychopaths -- it actually should DECREASE it, as long as the empathic person is reasonably intact emotionally and intellectually.

Well, after being in the pathological relationship for a while, I doubt the empathic person is reasonably intact emotionally or intellectually. I mean that is what the pathos does-- yes, she might have been so entering the relationship but it does not take long in pathological exposure until the damage is done. And the empath victim projects her behavioral/emotional analysis onto him and believes positive attributes exist where there are none. Hyper empathy (anyone read Oakley's new book on it?) i think is an act of superimposing the unprocessed emotional material onto others, espec her own projections of how she 'would' act and react. An inverted narcissitic object relations kinda thing.

Wow ,Sandra- thanks for that reference. Pathological altruism puts a whole different spin on hyper empathy . And to think, in my prior ignorance when I first read that term I thought it was special in some way. Oh my goodness what ignorance can do to a person.


http://www.amazon.com/Pathological-Altruism-Barbara-Oakley/dp/0199738572 is the link for forum members.


Oh and by the way, thank you from the bottom of my heart for your book. You have no idea how much it helped way back then to understand what happened.

 

[Bresias]

Re: Exposing Online Predators & Cyberpaths

Well, after being in the pathological relationship for a while, I doubt the empathic person is reasonably intact emotionally or intellectually. I mean that is what the pathos does-- yes, she might have been so entering the relationship but it does not take long in pathological exposure until the damage is done. And the empath victim projects her behavioral/emotional analysis onto him and believes positive attributes exist where there are none. Hyper empathy (anyone read Oakley's new book on it?) i think is an act of superimposing the unprocessed emotional material onto others, espec her own projections of how she 'would' act and react. An inverted narcissitic object relations kinda thing.

Hmmmm

I include EmeraldHope in my response, too. You posted just as I was googling Oakley and Hyper-empathy, so I clicked on your link for the book and saw (from the book description, my bolding):

Pathologies of empathy, for example, may trigger depression as well as the burnout seen in healthcare professionals. The selflessness of patients with eating abnormalities forms an important aspect of those disorders. Hyperempathy - an excess of concern for what others think and how they feel - helps explain popular but poorly defined concepts such as codependency. In fact, pathological altruism, in the form of an unhealthy focus on others to the detriment of one's own needs, may underpin some personality disorders.

I had an episode of "burn out" in a previous job where I was a nurse manager, and my boss -- whom I greatly admired -- was probably pathological. He was a PhD psychologist, charismatic as hell, and deadly correct when he peered into mine or other people's "motives". In spite of that, I loved this job. I loved "taking care" of the staff, and helping THEM take care of the patients.

I was a complete mess when I resigned from that position. I couldn't find my butt with both hands and a flashlight. I see now it was (in part) because he WAS an expert in his field, and had a greater grasp than I did. I opened myself up to him like a clam in high tide :D because I wanted to learn from him. Oh, boy. I learned plenty.

When (inevitably) I began to "own" what I'd learned, and began to independently make decisions, was when our relationship became a daily struggle. I had no idea why. I sensed I "suddenly" no longer had his support. I tried and tried to regain his support. I entered by third (and most recent) therapy. My therapist suggested that my boss felt uncomfortable with my independence.

What I hear you saying, Sandra, is that empathy is not something a person consciously controls? In other words, empathy creates a bridge between two people in which a kind of "download" can occur. In the case of an intimate relationship with a psychopath, the faculty of empathy opens the empath to the destructive inner landscape of the psychopath.

Heck, it sounds OBVIOUS that empathy isn't under some kind of conscious control!

OR, that the "information" the empathy allows IN will set off alarms, so that the empath can withdraw this faculty in self-protection.

I know that NOW, I have the capability to open or close the door. I admit I keep it closed much more than open.

I forget there was a long and painful process between where I was and where I am now. "Hyper-empathy", without most distortions, lights up the garden variety psychopaths. And what I do, when I sense that "energy", is I close down. I can do it without ruining my day. I leave the area, cut short any strange conversations, stay polite and reserved. I can use the "professional relationships" excuse :D to keep my distance.

What I left out in my previous posts is that indiscriminate intimacy with pathologicals DOES result in damage, because of the empathy thing.

I am engaged with one of the pathological people revealed earlier in this thread: Mary McGrannahan. I have convinced myself I am not affected, I am not "downloading" this energy. Perhaps I am over-estimating myself.

Engagement, meaning she is contacting me on my blog, and I have responded to her a few times.

 

[Gimpy]

Re: Exposing Online Predators & Cyberpaths

I am engaged with one of the pathological people revealed earlier in this thread: Mary McGrannahan. I have convinced myself I am not affected, I am not "downloading" this energy. Perhaps I am over-estimating myself.

Engagement, meaning she is contacting me on my blog, and I have responded to her a few times.

I've learned (like most of us, the hard way) not to engage people like her at all. Why? Sometimes I think I'm just too tired of all the drama to put up with it. ;) Other times it just makes sense to step aside when someone like her takes a swipe at me, so that its simpler to cut contact and go on my way.

Since doing the EE breathing, and especially the diet changes, its been possible to surf my own emotions and figure out what's 'rocking the boat' of my mind when running into creepy people. When meeting violent men, its dislike at first sight. If a group of people feels like a comfy old pair of shoes, it means that there's a deep dysfunction that will trigger old methods of coping that don't work. It varies....patterns leap out at me that never made sense before. Once I get the impression that I'm dealing with a predator, I just move on without giving them anything to latch onto. The only time I get nasty is if the creep decides to pursue, he/she then just gets Blank Face...that ends it without expending any energy.

When meeting co-linear people? There's a 'wait and see'...over time this 'wait and see' has grown into a kind of joy I never thought I'd find. That's neat, and I think its something a lot of people are looking for and not finding much of.

When (inevitably) I began to "own" what I'd learned, and began to independently make decisions, was when our relationship became a daily struggle. I had no idea why. I sensed I "suddenly" no longer had his support. I tried and tried to regain his support. I entered by third (and most recent) therapy. My therapist suggested that my boss felt uncomfortable with my independence.

What I hear you saying, Sandra, is that empathy is not something a person consciously controls? In other words, empathy creates a bridge between two people in which a kind of "download" can occur. In the case of an intimate relationship with a psychopath, the faculty of empathy opens the empath to the destructive inner landscape of the psychopath.

Heck, it sounds OBVIOUS that empathy isn't under some kind of conscious control!!

Sounds like your relationship with your boss was like the one I had with my Mother. She still complains that her biggest regret is encouraging me to be independent. She trained me up to tell her everything about my life in detail. When I learned it wasn't healthy, I quit doing it, and she did NOT like that.

I think its possible to 'read' your own empathic responses to other people through self observation. Its not so much about controlling what you feel as learning what punches certain buttons, learning why it happens, and then acting on what you know? Make sense?

I'm currently working through "In and Unspoken Voice" more thoroughly, to deal with a lot of emotional crap that's boiling up at the moment, so I do apologize if I'm not making sense here.

I don't see being an empathic person as a bad thing or a vulnerability as much as its just another human trait the psychos try to monkey with. Emotions are overwhelming, sure. That's why the breathing and diet are so key...once the tools are there, its possible to deal with things without feeling like a target.... ;)

 

[Laura]

Re: Exposing Online Predators & Cyberpaths

In this post http://cassiopaea.org/forum/index.php/topic,673.msg3456/topicseen.html#msg3456 I wrote about my own experience with trying to engage/deal with the pathological. The post is rather long, so here's the relevant excerpt:

As recently as a week ago the issue came up again due to an experience I had that made it clear to me that I am NOT as immune as I would like to think I am. What is funny is that it seems Lobaczewski "sensed" something was wrong and wrote an email to me saying "I am uneasy, is something wrong?" I wrote him back last night a long description of the incident.

The short version is that I decided to deliberately expose myself to psychopathy, up close and personal. It was like a personal "test." Even though it seemed like, on the surface, that I was unaffected, within a day or so of this exposure, I noticed that my mind kept going back to the schizoidal psychopathic declarations.

Now, keep in mind that, in this case I am talking about, it is not someone who falls into schizoidal jabberwocky under pressure that can be easily discarded. No indeed, this individual is smooth, calm, uses lots of language that promotes himself as a great teacher, teacher of love and light, and so on. What is different is his plain, simple, and ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN declarations that are LIES. And I mean that I KNOW they are lies. I also know that HE knows they are lies. In other words, I know he is lying CONSCIOUSLY, and he does it with such sincerity, with such compelling certainty that it is staggering! And the lies are all about ME. One of the most bizarre of these lies is that I plagiarized my own autobiography!!!! I mean, that just FLOORS me!

So, to observe him operate, to observe him work on an innocent party, an individual who might even be thought reasonably critical, was quite amazing. Not a single one of the people under the spell of this psychopath has ever thought that it might be useful to ask my family or friends (many of whom read said volume before it was published for fact checking purposes) whether or not my autobiography is plagiarized or not. Or to ask me personally about anything. He makes a big issue about demanding that I answer a whole list of questions in public that cannot be answered in public because the answers include extremely personal information about private people that I have no intention of making public for their safety as well as my own.

But I KNOW all that. I know how spellbinders work, and how they always travel with a "Greek Chorus" even if they often create the image on the internet that there are more people following them than really are by playing different parts on message boards and "talking to themselves" half the time. It still works on gullible people. It's almost comical to observe because the writing styles give them away so easily.

As I said, after this hour or so of self-torture, I thought - well, that was easy! Three years ago I would have taken to my bed for days after reading such lies told about myself! Now I can read it and even chuckle at some of the more outlandish claims that people suck up like manna.

But something strange happened: I began to question myself. Not about the facts... but about reality itself. What got to me was, strangely enough, the "pity factor." Here was a small group of people just literally SCREAMING that I had hurt them!!! I had, in some way, destroyed their lives. They were wounded, damaged, looked to me for help and I just brazenly took advantage of them and cast them aside. That was one variation. Another variation was that I was destroying the minds of other human beings (possibly untold numbers) talking about Organic Portals, or psychopaths, propagating the C's material, etc.

So it wasn't the lies that were told about me personally (or my husband, or our group) that affected me. Since I knew with certainty that those were lies, I have documents and dozens of witnesses, and so on, that isn't even the issue. The issue was the question as to whether or not what I am doing hurts people or not.

So, I forgot the main rule: Do NOT consider anything produced out of schizoidal rants as an idea which I ought to consider in the context of my own convictions and reason.

In other words, at some level, as I repeatedly recalled to mind the words emerging from the apparently anguished rage of these individuals, I began to interpret them in a manner corresponding to my own nature.

And it was PITY that opened the door. I began to HURT for those people who claimed that I had hurt them.

It was all downhill from there.

I began to think: "well, if these people think I am so awful, maybe I am?!" And then I began to start looking
at myself and everything I had ever said and done in a very negative light. I began to wonder if someone like me - obviously so different from these other people - has a right to exist since my existence causes pain to others. How dare I come along and take their happy lives away from them by expecting them to do the very hard (admittedly so) work that is required to find something of truth? After all, if they are so happy believing lies, what right do I have to upset that apple cart and cause them pain?

Then things began to really deteriorate. After taking the thoughts that far, I began to question my own view of everything. I began to ask myself do you really KNOW what is the difference between good and evil? After all, if these people believe YOU are evil, maybe they are right and you are wrong. What right do you have to exist?

Now remember, I am falling into this state all the while knowing the FACTS that are incontrovertible that I can see they are lying about. What's more, I can see that they are lying CONSCIOUSLY.

But still, their declared pain has evoked pity in me and that pity was the spider's web. Something mysterious began to act on my mind in a strange way and the result was that I found myself feeling exactly as though
I had no right to do anything, to want anything, no right to ask for anything, no right to live even. Everything I had ever done had done nothing but hurt other people. All these people were hurt, they were all
screaming out loud how I had hurt them, and obviously such a person as myself ought to just do the right thing and go out behind the barn and shoot myself and save the world further misery.

It took me about four days to come out of it. It was like falling into a black hole of despair and self doubt and self-accusation. It was slow and insidious, like poison.

So, it seems that I'm pretty good with dealing with the intellectual side of it, but when the pity ploy comes along, I'm still the world's biggest sucker. The instant I think that someone has been hurt by me or by something I have done, even inadvertently, I am almost drowning in suffering.

It lasted about four days. The time previous to that, about 8 months ago, involved someone close to me who was subverted by this filth. In THAT case, it was a lot worse. I ended up with a herniated cervical disc that took two months to heal.

What to do? How to make oneself not only intellectually immune, but also emotionally immune?

And then:

I'll finish this off with what Lobaczewski wrote to me about that after I wrote to him to describe what had happened to me.

This idea is something that has exercised me to no end. As recently as a week ago the issue came up again due to an experience I had that made it clear to me that I am NOT as immune as I would like to think I am. What is funny is that it seems Lobaczewski "sensed" something was wrong and wrote an email to me saying "I am uneasy, is something wrong?" I wrote him back last night a long description of the incident.

Thought I would share the exchange with Lobaczewski that resulted from this incident (along with a few comments):

Rzeszów, thursday, 2. March 2006

Dear Madame Laura.

Thank you for your long and sincere letter of 24 February. It permits me to be a little bit helpful for you.

The experiences with your persecutors and your own responses are calling to my mind the very similar, we passed many years ago during the time of compulsory "ideological indoctrination". Please also read this again. (page 144 in the pre-print) Then take an attitude of a naturalist and study, in a objective way, the typical responses of a psychopathic personality to your activieties. It will render you more immune in result.

Here I will insert the passage Lobaczewski refers to:

May the reader please imagine a very large hall in some old Gothic university building. Many of us gathered there early in our studies in order to listen to the lectures of outstanding philosophers. We were herded back there the year before graduation in order to listen to the indoctrination lectures which recently had been introduced.

Someone nobody knew appeared behind the lectern and informed us that he would now be the professor. His speech was fluent, but there was nothing scientific about it: he failed to distinguish between scientific and everyday concepts and treated borderline imaginations as though it were wisdom that could not be doubted.

For ninety minutes each week, he flooded us with naive, presumptuous paralogistics and a pathological view of human reality. We were treated with contempt and poorly controlled hatred. Since fun poking could entail dreadful consequences, we had to listen attentively and with the utmost gravity.

The grapevine soon discovered this person's origins. He had come from a Cracow suburb and attended high school, although no one knew if he had graduated. Anyway, this was the first time he had crossed university portals, as a professor, at that!

"You can't convince anyone this way!" we whispered to each other. "It's actually propaganda directed against themselves." But after such mind-torture, it took a long time for someone to break the silence. We studied ourselves, since we felt something strange had taken over our minds and something valuable was leaking away irretrievably. The world of psychological reality and moral values seemed suspended as if in a chilly fog. Our human feeling and student solidarity lost their meaning, as did patriotism and our old established criteria. So we asked each other, "are you going through this too"? Each of us experienced this worry about his own personality and future in his own way. Some of us answered the questions with silence. The depth of these experiences turned out to be different for each individual.

We thus wondered how to protect ourselves from the results of this "indoctrination". Teresa D. made the first suggestion: Let's spend a weekend in the mountains. It worked. Pleasant company, a bit of joking, then exhaustion followed by deep sleep in a shelter, and our human personalities returned, albeit with a certain remnant. Time also proved to create a kind of psychological immunity, although not with everyone.

Analyzing the psychopathic characteristics of the "professor's" personality proved another excellent way of protecting one's own psychological hygiene.

You can just imagine our worry, disappointment, and surprise when some colleagues we knew well suddenly began to change their world-view; their thought-patterns furthermore reminded us of the "professor's" chatter. Their feelings, which had just recently been friendly, became noticeably cooler, although not yet hostile. Benevolent or critical student arguments bounced right of them. They gave the impression of possessing some secret knowledge; we were only their former colleagues, still believing what those professors of old had taught us. We had to be careful of what we said to them. Our former colleagues soon joined the Party.

Who were they, what social groups did they come from, what kind of students and people were they? How and why did they change so much in less than a year? Why did neither I nor a majority of my fellow students succumb to this phenomenon and process? Many such questions fluttered through our heads then.

Those times, questions, and attitudes gave rise to the idea that this phenomenon could be objectively understood, an idea whose greater meaning crystallized with time. Many of us participated in the initial observations and reflections, but most crumbled away in the face of material or academic problems. Only a few remained; so the author of this book may be the last of the Mohicans.

It was relatively easy to determine the environments and origin of the people who succumbed to this process, which I then called "transpersonification". They came from all social groups, including aristocratic and fervently religious families, and caused a break in our student solidarity to the order of some 6 %.

The remaining majority suffered varying degrees of personality disintegration which gave rise to individual efforts in searching for the values necessary to find ourselves again; the results were varied and sometimes creative.

Even then, we had no doubts as to the pathological nature of this "transpersonification" process, which ran similar but not identical in all cases. The duration of the results of this phenomenon also varied. Some of these people later became zealots. Others later took advantage of various circumstances to withdraw and re-establish their lost links to the society of normal people. They were replaced. The only constant value of the new social system was the magic number of 6 %.

We tried to evaluate the talent level of those colleagues who had succumbed to this personality-transformation process, and reached the conclusion that on average, it was slightly lower than the average of the student population. Their lesser resistance obviously resided in other bio-psychological features which were most probably qualitatively heterogeneous.

I had to study subjects bordering on psychology and psychopathology in order to answer the questions arising from our observations; scientific neglect in these areas proved an obstacle difficult to overcome. At the same time, someone guided by special knowledge apparently vacated the libraries of anything we could have found on the topic.

Analyzing these occurrences now in hindsight, we could say that the "professor" was dangling bait over our heads, based on the psychopaths's above-mentioned specific psychological knowledge. He knew in advance that he would fish out amenable individuals but the limited numbers disappointed him.

The transpersonification process generally took hold whenever an individual's instinctive substratum was marked by pallor or some deficits. To a lesser extent, it also worked among people who manifested other deficiencies, also the state provoked within them was partially impermanent, being largely the result of psychopathological induction.

This knowledge about the existence of susceptible individuals and how to work on them will continue being a tool for world conquest as long as it remains the secret of such "professors". When it becomes skillfully popularized science, it will help nations develop immunity. But none of us knew this at the time.

Nevertheless, we must admit that in demonstrating the properties of pathocracy in such a way as to force us into in-depth experience, the professor helped us understand the nature of the phenomenon in a larger scope than many a true scientific researcher participating in this work in one way or another.

Now, back to Lobaczewski's letter:

Their furies are to be understand as the symptomatical responses. For them you are the worst enemy. You are hurting them very painfully. For a psychopath, revealing his real condition, tearing down his Cleckley-mask, brings the end of his self-admiration. You are threating them with destroying of their secret world, and bring to null their dreams of ruling and introducing their best social system possible. When his real condition is publicly revealed, a psychopath feels like a wounded animal. In such conditions, suicidal thoughts are common among them.

To defend themselves they are using all the possibilities that nature endowed them with. The unusual creativity of suggestive innuendos, new catchwords and so on, they employ is their typical way. (Look page 167). Therefore, such aggession could be readily foreseen! And so you have an opportunity to study this phenomenon of psychopathic nature.

Again, I will insert the relevant passage that Lobaczewski has indicated:

Psychopaths are conscious of being different from the world of normal people. That is why the "political system" inspired by their nature conceals an awareness of being different. When we just observe the role of ideology in this macrosocial phenomenon, quite conscious of the existence of this specific awareness, we understand why ideology is relegated to a tool-like role: something useful in dealing with those other naive people and nations. Pathocrats must nevertheless appreciate the function of ideology as being something essential in any ponerogenic group, especially in the macrosocial phenomenon which is their "homeland". This factor of awareness simultaneously constitutes a certain qualitative difference between the two above-mentioned relationships. They know their real ideology derived from their deviant natures, and treat the "other" with barely concealed contempt.

A well-developed pathocratic system thus no longer has a clear and direct relationship to its original ideology, which it only keeps as its primary, traditional tool for action. For practical purposes of pathocratic expansion, other ideologies may be useful, even if they contradict the main one and heap moral denunciation upon it. However, these other ideologies must be used with care, refraining from official acknowledgement within environments wherein the original ideology appears overly foreign, discredited, and useless.

The main ideology succumbs to symptomatic deformation, in keeping with the characteristic style of this very disease and with what has already been stated about the matter. The names and official contents are kept, but another different content is insinuated underneath, thus giving rise to the well-known double talk phenomenon within which the same names have two meanings: one for initiates, one for everyone else. The latter is derived from the original ideology; the former has a specifically pathocratic meaning, something which is known not only to the pathocrats themselves, but also to those people living under long-term subjection to their rule.

Doubletalk is only one of many symptoms. Others are the specific facility for producing new names which have suggestive effects and are accepted virtually uncritically, in particular outside the immediate scope of such a system's rule. We must thus point out the para-moralistic character and paranoidal qualities frequently contained within these names. The action of paralogisms and paramoralisms in this deformed ideology becomes comprehensible to us based on the information presented in Chapter IV. Anything which threatens pathocratic rule becomes deeply immoral. This also applies to the concept of forgiving the pathocrats themselves; it is extremely dangerous and thus "immoral".

Back again to the letter:

Take also some pity for the psychopaths, but for yourself as well. Dose your activity properly and share it with other persons. Be conscious of this, that this is a world-wide problem, solving of which is a matter of a long time, of the whole our century, I believe. Do as much as you may, and do not face more trouble than you must and you may endure. Everyone needs some rest and enjoyment. It is your duty to be healthy!

The solving of this huge problem needs firstly a profound research in biological and psychological nature of such phenomena. Actual knowledge is still not sufficient for practical action. Then the popular lesson of psychology is to be introduced to shools, including the necessary information on psychopathies, and on the non-hereditary causes of mental abnormalities as well. This last is what I try to propagate in Poland. Really to nobody is given the joy to see the results of the toil of his life.

Let me pass the words of kind Regard and greetings for you and your Husband.

Truly yours,

Andrew Lobaczewski.

I wrote back as follows:

Subject: Re: A bit help Date sent:
Fri, 3 Mar 2006 15:45:28 +0100


Dear Professor,

Thank you for your kind words of support.

One question I have is: do you really think they actually feel "suicidal?" I'm trying to understand this because I have always understood suicide to be a consequence of great despair - emotional pain including self-doubt - which the psychopath does not ever experience.

You are describing it as a "wounded animal." Isn't it more like an animal whose attempt to kill another creature for dinner has been thwarted? If the crocodile doesn't eat the zebra, I don't think he feels like killing himself he just gets "smarter."

A friend of ours, a lawyer whose hobby is mathematics, had a cousin who was a patient of Cleckley and was diagnosed as a psychopath. This cousin eventually committed suicide. He has studied the subject deeply and he questions whether or not his cousin was, indeed, psychopathic.

Do you know of cases where a real, confirmed, psychopath has done this?

You say to have pity for the psychopath. Well, I am trying. But I find that I feel about them the same way I do about crocodiles. I don't want to do away with crocodiles, but I don't believe they should live among people.

In fact, after working my way through this recent "effect," I realized that the main issue was that I was moved to pity by these individuals and that pity is what triggered my own self-accusations. After all, these people were saying I had hurt them (even if I knew it to be lies) and above all things, I do not want to hurt anyone!

Thank you very much, and our best to you.

Laura

The response:

Rzeszów, Monday, March 6. 2006.

Is a crocodile really guilty that he is not born a chimpanzee? You are partly right finding some similarity of the essential psychopathy to the way of thought of a crocodile. They are somewhat mechanical. But, are they guilty, that they have inherited an abnormal gene, and their instinctive substratum is different from that of big majority of human population? Such person is not able to feel like we are doing, or to understand a person bearing a normal instinctive endowment. Please also to try to understand a psychopath, and take some pity for them. Limiting the role of psychopaths in ponerogenesis, particularly causing tragedies of women, and then gradually the number of their appearence is a real aim.

As in concern of the suicidal tendencies in psychopaths', it is a confused matter. They enjoy the life and "eating lot of meat." But putting them wise of their incorrectable abnormality is dangerous to the therapist and to themselves. It causes suicidal tendencies realized often by overuse of narcotics. Even with psychopathic prisoners, a psychologist must be circumspect.

Take as well in your consideration that in the whole pool of pathologic factors taking part in ponrogenesis, all kinds of psychopathies make up some less than a half of the total number. The pathologic conditions, usually not hereditary, are making more than the other half. Stalin was not a psychopath. He was a case of frontal characteropathy (Character disorder) due to the damage of frontal centers (10A&B) caused by a disease he experienced as a newborn. This produces the dramatically dangerous characters. I describe the role of such woman. (Page 83-86). Fortunately, the contemporary care for newborns' reduces such cases to a small part of appearence in early XX century, and to lighter cases.

With best greetings.

Andrew M. Lobaczewski

What really caught my eye in the above was this: Limiting the role of psychopaths in ponerogenesis, particularly causing tragedies of women, and then gradually the number of their appearence is a real aim.
Someone commented recently that the drive to overturn Roe vs Wade was a psychopathic maneuver to insure that more psychopaths would be born since women who had been raped would be forced to bear the children of violence.

 

[Mr. Premise]

Re: Exposing Online Predators & Cyberpaths

In this post http://cassiopaea.org/forum/index.php/topic,673.msg3456/topicseen.html#msg3456 I wrote about my own experience with trying to engage/deal with the pathological. The post is rather long, so here's the relevant excerpt:
...

Their furies are to be understand as the symptomatical responses. For them you are the worst enemy. You are hurting them very painfully. For a psychopath, revealing his real condition, tearing down his Cleckley-mask, brings the end of his self-admiration. You are threating them with destroying of their secret world, and bring to null their dreams of ruling and introducing their best social system possible. When his real condition is publicly revealed, a psychopath feels like a wounded animal. In such conditions, suicidal thoughts are common among them.

I wrote back as follows:

Subject: Re: A bit help Date sent:
Fri, 3 Mar 2006 15:45:28 +0100


Dear Professor,

Thank you for your kind words of support.

One question I have is: do you really think they actually feel "suicidal?" I'm trying to understand this because I have always understood suicide to be a consequence of great despair - emotional pain including self-doubt - which the psychopath does not ever experience.

...
Laura

The classic example I remember of a psychopath committing suicide is the notorious Charles Stuart case in Boston. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Stuart_%28murderer%29 He was the guy, classic smooth psychopath, who killed his pregnant wife on the way back from the hospital, wounded himself, then told police a black male jumped in their car and did it. The Boston police ransacked the black neighborhoods around the hospital on orders from the police chief and the mayor, but the homicide detectives naturally suspected the husband. Months, later, as they were preparing to indict him based on his brother's testimony, he jumped off a bridge and killed himself.

 

[Laura]

Re: Exposing Online Predators & Cyberpaths

The classic example I remember of a psychopath committing suicide is the notorious Charles Stuart case in Boston. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Stuart_%28murderer%29 He was the guy, classic smooth psychopath, who killed his pregnant wife on the way back from the hospital, wounded himself, then told police a black male jumped in their car and did it. The Boston police ransacked the black neighborhoods around the hospital on orders from the police chief and the mayor, but the homicide detectives naturally suspected the husband. Months, later, as they were preparing to indict him based on his brother's testimony, he jumped off a bridge and killed himself.

Yes, that question has been answered in the affirmative several times in my reading since I wrote that letter and post.

 

[go2]

Re: Exposing Online Predators & Cyberpaths

I am engaged with one of the pathological people revealed earlier in this thread: Mary McGrannahan. I have convinced myself I am not affected, I am not "downloading" this energy. Perhaps I am over-estimating myself.

I am a member of a recovery group of fifty to sixty members and lot of pathology walks through the door and I don’t just mean predators, but their enablers as well. Empathy is not the mechanical enabling behavior of a rabbit. Empathy is the capacity to feel the inner state of being of other people, and to act appropriately based on empathic cognition.

I worked with an individual in the recovery group, attempting to show him how to behave in group dynamics without disrupting or frightening other members. It made no difference. He continued to select victims one at a time and search for hidden emotional triggers and then to keep tormenting them until they left the group. I called him on taking hostages and terrorizing them. Then, J.. began a long campaign to take me hostage, but thanks to the information on psychopathy on the forum and the Work I have done he couldn’t intimidate me or find an emotional angle of attack. So far so good, I didn’t “download” his pathology or further respond to the persistent needling, although I began to fear how far he might go in his attempt to dominate the group by driving out more stable people, who have better things to do that get into a dirty fight with an intimidating predator.

The story gets interesting at this point; he began to take other people hostage and flaunt their helplessness to deal with his abuse, as an indirect attack on me. It wasn’t until the psychopath turned his full attention to tormenting me, that I realized I had not done enough to protect others as he picked us off, one by one. That was when I decided to go to war. I began to hunt him, tricking him into openly taking the group hostage, as most people, including myself, ignore pathology as long as it isn’t hurting me.

He began inviting people from the street into the meetings for cookies and coffee to disrupt the meetings. J… seemed to experience arousal when he induced conflict and chaos into the group environment. He brazenly changed the format of the meeting without engaging in group conscience or vote.

Group business is conducted by presenting issues to a steering committee. I insisted he follow the group procedure and this pushed the “cookie wars” into view of the entire group. The “cookie wars” was going to be presented to the steering committee…so he thought. I spoke first and it wasn’t about cookies. I told the steering committee I was going to make a motion to have J…banned from attending our group meeting based on persistent pattern of abuse and disruptive behavior. Shock!

It was amazing to see the enablers rush to his assistance, characterizing the conflict as two guys playing chimpanzee politics. Well, I went through with the motion to ban J…, presenting evidence of his disruptive and abusive behavior over a three year period. I pointed specifically to his total inability to see or change his behavior. He is one of those who is constitutionally incapable of recovery. Well, the group voted he could continue to attend group meetings, but seeds of truth were planted.

"Outing" the psychopath J… occurred seven months ago. Over that time he has continued to attend the meetings, as have I. He refuses to participate, further exposing his true nature. He is restrained from abusing individuals and from disrupting the group by the light from this forum, which I shined onto his persistent predation and malevolent influence on the group. The group has since obtained no-trespassing orders to ban several other individuals who were threatening or disruptive. Recovering individuals are no longer leaving. It is those who have threatening pathologies who leave when they realize predation will not be silently tolerated by the group.

I think Laura makes an important point, that we view pathology as a force of nature. We don’t resent or rage at nature. It is what it is. The emotional center must be cleansed of negative emotions to allow empathy to serve the function of knowing the inner state of another. When we know the inner state of another, we don’t get involved in relationship’s with psychopaths. We expose and ban them from our lives.

 

[Buddy]

Re: Exposing Online Predators & Cyberpaths

[quote author=Lobaczewski]
We speak of blocking out conclusions if the inferential process was proper in principle and has almost arrived at a conclusion and final comprehension within the act of internal projection, but becomes stymied by a preceding directive from the subconscious, which considered it inexpedient or disturbing. This is primitive prevention of personality disintegration, which may seem advantageous; however, it also prevents all the advantages which could be derived from consciously elaborated conclusion and reintegration. A conclusion thus rejected remains in our subconscious and in a more unconscious way causes the next blocking and selection of this kind. This can be totally harmful, progressively enslaving a person to his own subconscious, and is often accompanied by a feeling of tension and bitterness.

[/quote]

I find it fascinating that I simultaneously agree with this and am amazed that a statement about the inferential process can even be made to that degree of precision.

In ISOTM we find the speed relationships of the intellectual center to the emotional center to be expressed as 1 second to 8 hours. This means that as the narrator (or intellect) perceives 1 second to have passed, the emotional center has had the equivalent of 8 hours to do whatever it is doing. Wouldn't the slower intellectual center have quite a time observing at the speed that the emotional center works?

When Lobaczewski said "...prevents all the advantages which could be derived from consciously elaborated conclusion and reintegration", what is an example of an advantage to which he refers?

 

[go2]

Re: Exposing Online Predators & Cyberpaths

Hi Bud,

Yes, each center has its talent and world of apprehension and cognition. It is the wrong work of centers, for the intellect to imagine it can observe the world of emotion. The separate realms of knowing can together, be a whole greater than the sums of the parts, provided each brain center is allowed and encouraged its full individual range of function.

I think Lobaczewski is referring to emotional memory deflecting the reasoning and logical powers of the intellectual center. The emotional memory of events of childhood, emotional memories of traumas, emotional memory of tales of The Odyssy are inaccessible to or block the intellect without Work of coordinating and translating their separate realms.

It is said the emotional center, purified of the negative emotions; knows the truth with clairvoyant capability. The truth is a frightening thing; it is buried in the emotional memory so we can remain calm and safe in the dream world of intellectual imagination.

I understand the tension and bitterness of self, disconnected from the vast world of emotional cognition. The thinking self is disconnected from the possibility knowing higher worlds accessible by the purified emotional center.

Take also some pity for the psychopaths, but for yourself as well. Dose your activity properly and share it with other persons. Be conscious of this, that this is a world-wide problem, solving of which is a matter of a long time, of the whole our century, I believe. Do as much as you may, and do not face more trouble than you must and you may endure. Everyone needs some rest and enjoyment. It is your duty to be healthy!

The solving of this huge problem needs firstly a profound research in biological and psychological nature of such phenomena. Actual knowledge is still not sufficient for practical action. Then the popular lesson of psychology is to be introduced to shools, including the necessary information on psychopathies, and on the non-hereditary causes of mental abnormalities as well. This last is what I try to propagate in Poland. Really to nobody is given the joy to see the results of the toil of his life.

The last sentence in bold of Lobaczewski’s note to Laura, deeply touches my emotional center, giving me strength to be a small part of this great Work. The words don’t mean much to the thinking brain, but to the world of emotions it is a great tale of a man and a woman striving against incredible odds to learn and transmit deep knowledge of pathology. I am humbled by the example of love and sacrifice for generations not yet born. It is an aim worthy of a Real Life.