Donna Anderson’s important latest post reminds me that one topic which will never be worn out is that of the psychopath’s lies and their impact on others.

This week I want to very briefly introduce yet another take on this inexhaustible topic. Everyone lies, but there’s something else at stake in the case of the psychopath’s lies.

To illustrate: you might say about any regular (non-psychopathic) person, “Things would be better if s/he was to lie less often. Her/his soul or psyche would be healthier as would her relationships.” That’s true. Now try this on for size and notice how wrong it seems: “Things would be better if the psychopath was to lie less often. His soul or psyche would be healthier as would his relationships.”

Weirdly, this is patently not the case. The psychopath will be just as sick/evil no matter how many or how few lies he tells. It’s not a quantitative but a qualitative matter.

Lovefraud recently received an e-mail from a reader. Her company had hired a new guy and she was tasked with helping him learn his job. The guy immediately made her feel extremely uncomfortable. Here’s what she wrote:

I can’t look him in the eye or even stand to talk with him. He is very “nice” and has never shown any angry tendencies. I can’t explain my feelings but my intuition tells me to be wary and afraid of him. He exhibits self-important behavior and is glib and overly polite. Just the thought of him makes me shudder.

Editor’s note: This article was submitted by Steve Becker, LCSW, CH.T, who has a private psychotherapy, hypnotherapy, and clinical consulting practice in New Jersey, USA. For more information, visit his website, powercommunicating.com.

Have you ever seen a cat toy with a stunned, cornered mouse? How it will capture the mouse, dangle it in its mouth for a while, release it momentarily, allowing the mouse the pretense of an escape, only to recapture it, dangle it some more from its mouth, perhaps release it again briefly, now to watch the mouse, increasingly frantic, make another escape bid, only to recapture it, now letting the terrorized mouse (and, as if it’s fate) dangle yet some more, in dreadful uncertainty?

As a victim of love fraud, I have two reactions to Valentine’s Day. First, I hate the thought of all those sociopaths out there male and female, who are using this day to lock in their next victims. Early in relationships, sociopaths present themselves as great partners. They certainly don’t pass up the chance to pour on the charm on a day like Valentine’s Day. Furthermore, since they can be very focused on sex, Valentine’s Day is an opportunity for them to score. My vision of Valentine sociopaths includes those who are simultaneously wooing more than one victim. Perhaps we should consider whether Valentine’s Day should also be named “Love Fraud Awareness Day.”

My second reaction to Valentine’s Day is that I am reminded of all those who have loved sociopaths only to be harmed in every sphere of their lives. Cupid’s Arrow can be deadly if the result is involvement with a sociopath.

Last week Lovefraud posted a new True Lovefraud Story about a con artist named Dennis SanSeverino. The creep pretended to be loving and rich long enough to convince his victim to trust him. Then he took her home and inheritance.

This story is a classic case of a sociopath targeting the vulnerable.

When the victim, Trish Rynn, met SanSeverino, she had just endured a difficult breakup with her boyfriend. In the months that they got to know each other—Rynn initially refused his many dinner invitations—he must have been listening intently as she chatted about her life. Rynn’s ex-husband was physically abusive. After the marriage ended, Rynn spent 10 years in court fighting child custody and child support battles. The strain sent her into clinical depression, from which she was just beginning to recover.

Rynn was vulnerable, and SanSeverino was attracted like a shark to blood in the water.

Yesterday was a tough day at Lovefraud.

First thing in the morning, I got a call from a woman I’d spoken to before. She was hysterical.

From what she’d told me previously, it sounded like she was dealing with three sociopaths—her husband, her oldest son, and a guy she had an affair with. Initially, her husband had condoned the affair. Then he left her. Then he returned. Then he smeared her with her family and friends. The oldest son was violent.

“You have to get out,” I advised.

“I don’t have any money,” she whined. “My husband hid the checkbook.”

“Is your name on the account?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“Then go to the bank, withdraw money and leave.”

Then she started telling me that she begged her husband to make her son stop disrespecting her.

Editor’s note: This article was submitted by Steve Becker, LCSW, CH.T, who has a private psychotherapy, hypnotherapy, and clinical consulting practice in New Jersey, USA. For more information, visit his website, powercommunicating.com.

We can begin by noting something that both narcissists and psychopaths share: a tendency to regard others as objects more than persons. Immediately this raises concerns: you don’t have to empathize with objects; objects don’t have feelings worth recognizing. You can toy with objects; manipulate and exploit them for your own gratification, with a paucity of guilt.

Welcome to the world of the narcissist and psychopath. Theirs is a mindset of immediate, demanded gratification, with a view of others as expected—indeed existing—to serve their agendas. Frustrate their agendas, and you can expect repercussions, ranging from the disruptive to ruinous.

Distinct explanations for their actions

Allow me to introduce the “Babe” who could be Drew Peterson’s next wife. She is Kumari Fulbright, a young lady who participated in the Miss Arizona pageant as Miss Pima County in 2005, and Miss Desert Sun in 2006, who also reportedly serves as a law clerk for U.S. District Judge Raner Collins. Here, she is pictured as Miss May in a calendar for Subguns.com (www.title2media.com, photo used with permission). See ABC News for the complete story.

But Drew Peterson and the rest of you guys had better watch out because sweet little Kumari “is accused, along with three men, of tying up her 24-year-old ex-boyfriend with plastic cable and duct tape, and holding him captive for hours in two different Tucson homes.” The authorities allege that while she held her ex-boyfriend captive, she “bit him several times while he was bound, stuck a butcher knife in his ear … said she was going to kill him, [and] pointed a pistol at him.” We all wish the victim here a speedy recovery.

The Deccan Herald newspaper in Bangalore, India reports on the arrest of a female serial killer, 43 year old Mallika. The story can be read here and here.

Serial killers are actually very rare creatures, and the female of the species is truly unusual. Perhaps that is good reason not to make a big deal about something so rare. One thing, though, caught my eye and made me think lovefraud readers may be interested too. I’ll summarise the story and you tell me what you think.

Here’s what raised my eyebrow

She allegedly committed all the murders single-handedly and for gain. She is no psychopath, the commissioner said.

Editor’s note: A Lovefraud reader sent the following entry from her journal. “About 2 1/2 months since the sociopath revealed himself for what he was, I’m now assessing how I made myself so vulnerable in the first place,” she wrote. “Shockingly I realize I likely still am… still am as vulnerable… until I do my next needed self-work: truly healing my relationship with myself. Deeply.” The following piece represents a step in her healing.

I was thinking about whether I’d ever be able to reclaim my memories, once sweet, once preciously loving, of the past two years… ever since the sociopath revealed himself for the liar and deceiver that he is via his cruel departure.

I am grateful for his departure, don’t get me wrong. But I am still in the midst of my ongoing process to try to make Meaning and sense. (I have kind of surrendered to the hopelessness of “making sense” of it all. But I will ever strive to find, make, imagine Meaning!!)