I wasn't sure which forum to start this topic, so I put it here in the Family Section thinking that possibly the discussion would include information about children and families.

In reading some of the literature about psychopathy I've seen statistics that state how the percentage of male psychopaths is greater than that of females. I wonder how the studies were done to come up with that information. For example, did they study women prison populations like they did men?

What are the differences or similarities in style and modus operendi between male and female psychopaths?

Just taking the main marker of a psychopath: lack of conscience and empathy. How does this manifest as regards the sexes? What about the differences in the way boys and girls are raised as children and what is considered "appropriate behavior".

I think that there may be more female psychopaths than have possiblly been calculated due to the fact that their violence may be so covert that it passes undetected. They may be the more "silent partner" in a family or business structure. Just food for thought.

Cherie

Cherie, I've read a number of the true crime books centering on female psychopaths. One fact I have come upon is that female murderer psychopaths, through time (a couple of centuries) have tended to commit their murders in the quiet, difficult detect manner of poisoning. I have read about several who got by with their murders for decades due to the fact that the deaths were murders going undetected. This fits with your theory that female psychopaths may operate in a more covert manner. This is not always the case, take for example, Dianne Downs, who shot her children at point blank range, then tried to say a person alongside the highway had done it.

However. I personally believe there are fewer female psychopaths than male ones. I think this has to do with innate gender differences. Psychopathy (in my view) is a total disconnection from the inner self, from feelings, conscience, soul, spirit. Women are notoriously "more in touch with their feelings" than men. Some of this is probably conditioning, but I think it goes deeper than that, into what a woman is, spiritually, and what a man is spiritually. And I think biology reflects these differences. Women are softer, men are harder. Women's sex points inward. Men's sex points outward. Women's biology creates urges to nest and nurture. Mens' testosterone-dominated biology creates urges to be aggressive, fight over territory, and mate many females. I just think men are more prone to psychopathy than women.

It is known there are female psychopaths. And probably they go undetected more often than male ones. But I do believe their numbers are less.

Cherie, I had some thoughts regarding gender and psychopaths in terms of my psychopathic husband. I think one reason he was/is so difficult to detect is that he has a very feminine personality. He liked to brag to me, that when he was a research assistant in the psych lab at his university (years ago), he was given the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory, and scored remarkably high on female personality traits. He meant to point out to me how lucky I was, how sensitive his soul was, and how obviously at fault I was, for our problems, since I couldn't even get along with this very comapssionate man.

Psychopath did have feminine personality traits, but they were not the good ones. He was, hands down, the most subtle manipulator I have ever met, the most underhanded, covert soul imaginable. He also portrayed a range of subtle emotions, as women do (though he felt none of them). I have never seen anyone portray empathy more convincingly than Psychopath. He also could play emotionality as few men do, and did not back off from it as many men do, however, only when he chose, and when he chose, he always had an agenda.

However, Psychopath could not SPEAK the language of subtle emotion; he could only act it. His emotional speech was extrememly limited. he made up for the limitation with hyperbole: "I love you SOOOOOOOOO much! You are SOOOOOOOO beautiful!" This sort of superlative speaking works very well early in relationships. Later, when hurts and disappointments have piled up, the mate wants a different kind of reassurance that she is loved. She wants to know HOW she is loved since she can't figure it out...since words and behavior do not match. Psychopath could not say, "I love your thoughts and feelings." I love the way you pick up on how I am feeling." "I love your ironic sense of humor." It infuriated him when I asked him to expand on his stated feelings (I love you). He felt abused by it. "I said I love you, what more can I say? What more IS there to say? Why isn't that enough for you?" It is well-documented that a psychopath cannot speak subtle emotional language.

I would love to know how Psychopath scored on psychopathic traits on the test. But if anybody could beat this part of the test, he was/is the one.

Thanks for your replies, kris. I've been thinking about this for awhile. When my daughter was little (preschool age) she had trouble with being too pushy and aggressive especially with other children. And I was told by one of her teachers that if she had been a boy her behavior would have been more acceptable. So I don't know how or if that figures into this whole gender issue other than to think that there is a lot of aggression even within a pre-diagnosed psychopathic child. And now my daughter doesn't often exhibit this side of herself, however when she does, it's awful to experience because it has a raging quality to it.

These are my thoughts for now.

Cherie

Some more thoughts on the gender thing and psychopaths. I had a friend who became my friend during a time in my life when I was very ill and sad. I welcomed this friendship and was so GRATEFUL that this woman understood and sought me out during this time. I felt indebted to her and over time when I noticed things about her that were red flags (like she would really yell at her children for the slightest irritation that she felt, or that she was never really nice to me again like she was in the beginning of our friendship). In fact, it was all turned around. She was needy forever more and called upon me whenever she needed something from me. The friendship that I had initially felt was gone. And over time it got worse. She got increasingly needy and unavailable, sneaky, and then the cruelty and rage started to rear their ugly head. Sigh. As I've been writing this I am even more aware of what this woman was about. She unmasked as all the psychopaths that I've known have. Finally, when I could no longer make excuses to myself for her bad behavior and confronted the demon, she turned it all around and played the victim herself. I have a very strong instict that this woman is a psychopath. Looking back I can think of more events. Things that she did that hurt my feelings, or things that she did to her children. How manipulative she was and without conscience in her actions, but so sly and wih such slick speech.; but I had learned that if I ever spoke about my feelings or questioned her that it would get turned around into what a horrible person I was. Always. Of course, psychopaths never accept responsibility for anything that they say or do to cause pain.

I think I was more unaware, confused, and blindsided because she was a woman.
Cherie

Cherie, I've had some women in my life I suspect of being psychopathic, too. I can't say they were because I didn't have the kind of close and longterm relationships with them that I had my psychopath husband. But I can say that there were psychoapthic dynamics in those relationships. One of the earliest stands out in my mind.

J came from a very wealthy family, and was an only child. She lived on a trust fund. In the seventies when we were friends we both had small children and were in our twenties. J was ostensibly "a beautiful person". She was soft-spoken, extremely bright and articulate, and attuned to the higher or spiritual, in everything. For unknown reasons that left me utterly confused, she was simultaneosuly, one of the most selfish people I'd ever met.

Our husbands worked together, earned a similar salary, both of us were stay-at-home moms. J considered the salary so small, it was basically pocket money. But my family lived on ours. She knew we did. J didn't live in the housing provided by this organization, but I did. She bought a beautiful home to live in near the place her husband worked.

Our friendship started out lovely, then J began to ask me to babysit...alot. It got to be once a week. Then she would call, and tell me the days and times (3 or 4) she needed for the next week. I worked hard everyday to make it possible to live on my husband's salary. I was an old-fashioned wife, grew a big garden, canned and froze produce, used cotton diapers. It was hard enough watching my own kids, without J's, too. When she would call, I would tell her how busy I was, then she would proceed to tell me what days she needed me to watch her kids.

She blew my mind. I didn't know what to make of her.

She often asked me to sit her kids at her home. This involved driving 45 minutes across town. With my 2 babies. Then she would call at the last minute, and ask me to pick up some grocery items. She never reimbursed me. One of these days, I spent my last seven dollars. I needed the money to make it to the end of the week. I kept showing her the receipt. Eventually, she took it and it disappeared. She didn't give me the money.

After a few years, I distanced myself from J. But I remained confused as to whether or not my feelings were valid. Everybody thought J was wonderful. Other people did huge favors for her just to have her in their lives. People babysat her children for whole weeks, while she went to Maine to pick blueberries, or some other "worthy" cause. So J stayed on the periphery of my life.

She got me into a group that did re-evaluation couseling. This is where people work in pairs to encourage one another's talking about their feelings. I got paired with her one night, and she began sobbing deeply, telling me how hard she worked at getting my friendship, harder than she had ever had to work at getting anyone's friendship, how she still didn't feel she had it, and how much this hurt her. I wasn't honest, didn't tell her why. I was only 20-something, and I wasn't sure it WASN"T my fault. I mean, everybody else liked her, what was wrong with me?

I did get stronger through the years. This is why my marriage to a psychopath eventually hit a wall.

p.s. This J I am talking about had alot of extramarital affairs. I was given to understand that she needed to do this because she was so badly mistreated by her husband. Psychopath and I socialized with her and her husband, and I ALWAYS had the feeling that her husband was being baited, trapped, manipulated and sabotaged into acting badly (not really badly, more the appearance of badly), and/or being made to look like he was acting badly toward his wife when he wasn't. I always saw him as in a lot of pain, and suffering horrible low self-esteem. I vaguely recognized that I saw him that way because I felt the same way, in my marriage.

More reflections on J (woman friend). Another thing she did was to consistently invalidate my legitmate feelings, in my relationship. We talked about our marriages, as women do. When I told her that my husband, J, got angry if I wanted to wash the dishes after a meal, she said, "Well, I think it would be nice to spend time with him when he wants." But when I told her that J refused to grocery shop with me, when I asked (2 babies in a grocery is an ordeal), she said, "Well, he wants to have a division of labor. While you are doing that, he can be accomplishing something else. That's working together."

When I told her J had cheated on me during my pregnancy, her response was, "Pregnancies are horny times for men." This was actually malarky. I continued our sexual relationship up to the day I went to the hospital to give birth, and did not wait the 6 weeks after to resume it. In fact, husband J was "serviced" the day I got home from the hsopital each time. Husband J was never "horny", but I was because he ignored and rejected me for long periods. But I was so hurt by friend J's comment that I didn't respond. It just hurt me that she didn't relate to my deep pain over being worth so little during this fragile vulnerable and very special time between a husband and wife.

It's amazing how one can look at these p relationships, and identify the exact same dynamics in each. One of those things is consistent invalidation of the victim's feelings. Notice how in the first instance, she invalidated me based on a concept (spending time together as the highest principle), then reversed this truism (division of labor as the highest principle) in order to be consistent, in her invalidation of me. With a psychopath, you are always in the wrong, no matter your position, in any issue.

I know my life's journey has been about coming to awareness of truth, achieving clarity. I had these p relationships, all along the way, supporting Psychopath's view of reality, and denigrating my view of it. It was like a net around me. I really had to get clear on my own. So many of my relationships supported the psychopathic illusions. But God was merciful and did provide me some of the other kind, too, good, true friends who helped me find my way to the truth.

One more J story: During my second pregnancy, I learned that husband J had slept with almost all my friends. That pregnancy was horrible. I didn't think I was going to survive and give birth. I was actually friends with woman J during that pregnancy, and right after, told her all about what I'd been going through. I was a wreck, could barely eat or sleep, was dying while caring for an infant and 20-month old.

When the baby was maybe 2 months old, I made a plan to leave her with friend J while Psychopath and I went out. It would be my first outing alone with him. We dropped off the children. We were going to a play. Psychopath did what he did every single time we ever went out alone, got sick, and couldn't go to the play. We went back to friend J's house. I was expressing my deep disappointment to her, in the kitchen. Psychopath was somewhere else with her husband. Friend J said, "You need to not be so wrapped in YOUR feelings. I think J (my husband) is in alot of stress in his job."

Husband J had just cheated on me through my pregnancy, WITH MY FRIENDS. I'd just given birth while in emotional Hades, not eating or sleeping. Now, caring for 2 babies, still in emotional hell because of husband J's abuse, and I needed to care about HIS feelings, not mine!

You should have met this woman. She was the epitome of mother earth tender-hearted gentle wisdom. I just could never understand why the things she said hurt me so much. She was SO sweet! (and she said these things sweetly, with an air of tender mother earth wisdom)

You can't evaluate what is going on by the impression people make. You have to look deeper.

kris, from reading what you wrote about your "friend" and from what I've remembered about the woman I wrote about it makes me wonder more just how the percentage of female pyschopaths is arrived at. If its in prison populations, etc. With all the information that has been coming to light about the psychopaths that are not in prisons such as the corporate psychopaths, cult leaders, etc., it makes me think there may be more information also about female psychopaths.

Cherie

I see your point, Cherie. I just did a mental survey of the people I've encountered in my life who exhibited psychopathic traits. The numbers of male and female ones are equal, six of each. I also noted that I was less inclined to characterize the female ones as psychopathic if they were "nice" and "well-liked".

Here is little aside that is interesting and kind of humorous. Almost all of the females liked goats. J had a herd of them. I noted this yesterday, and have been trying to figure out what it is about goats that female psychopaths like so much. I think it is the image of being a "goat person" (Goats are the most gentle animals except for sheep, but sheep don't give milk, or anyway, most people don't drink sheep's milk). Women who tend goats inspire an image of gentle, nurturing earth mother, and wholesome, natural, earthy women. Since image is everything to a psychopath, I suspect J's goats were part of her image.

Beware of the goat women!

J is such an interesting example of a possible female psychopath. I've thought of some more things that unnerved me about her. She once told me that, when she was a child of about seven, she liked to lay where she was and just pee because it felt so good to break the rules. She described lying on the floor, and just peeing on the rug, or lying in her bed, and peeing there. I had the sense that she was relating something she believed to be a universal human experience, and was expecting me to relate to it. I didn't, and at the time, I felt myself to be kind of inferior because I didn't. Inferior was the way I always felt with J. I just felt she was more...more wordly, more experienced, richer, certainly, she'd been around the world, and I just thought my experience of life was less than hers. That I had a smaller life, and was a smaller person.

J was absolutely the dirtiest woman I've ever been close to. Her bathrooms were like the ones in gas stations where you slam the door and run.

Winter of 75-76, I was separated from Psychopath, just living in hell, as usual. We'd bought a house on a river, and he'd destroyed my home within months by window peeping and exposing to the next door neighbor. The house was for sale, a divorce was in the works, I was applying for welfare, had 2 babies to care for, Psychopath was giving me $20 a week to feed us all. The washing machine had frozen up and broken, then the water pump (coldest winter on record), no money to fix them, cotton diapers to wash. J came and visited me. Suddenly, she announced she had body lice, and hoped me and my babies wouldn't get them from her. I was speechless. All I could do was stare at her. She left. Though she remained in my life, I was never really friendly after that.

kris, I just wrote a reply to your post regarding your own statistical analysis of the ratio of male to female psychopaths and I lost it in cyberspace. Ok, I'll recreate it.

Its so interesting how you kind of proved my "theory" based on my gut instinct that psychopathy is an equal opportunity personality/character disorder. I think it would be prejudicial otherwise; like saying males are more evil than females. I suspect that they manifest in different ways and different life arenas. I found this interesting site called Crime Library and some articles on female serial killers called "Black Widows". Not a pretty subject, but it does demonstrate that even in the prison population, the women are more subtle in their style.

Crime Library on Black Widows

Sorry I can't make it clickable.

The information about the women and the goats is great. I had no idea. But I have known women who did use a "mother earth" persona to hide behind. It makes sense.

Cherie

**edited to make link clickable, Di

Thanks for making it clickable, Di.

Cherie

Cherie, Thanks for the site. I'm going to look at it more later today.

I was just carried away by a memory of something one of the female possible psychopaths in my life did. This was the young woman my husband had an affair with at the place where he worked, which was also my home.

After I had known about her for some time, we had a long talk one day, actually all day. I told her about the cheating, beatings and humiliations I had endured over the years. She had a gripe with Psychopath, too. He had also been insensitive to HER. She had been crocheting a baby blanket for my pregnant daughter's baby for months, in staff meetings, and my insesntive clout of a husband had not even MENTIONED it!

I am slow. I did not get why that bothered me for weeks. the answer slowly formed. First of all, how crass and self-centered can one be to sit in a public meeting crocheting a blanket for the grandbaby of the married co-worker you're having an affair with while both his wife and the pregnant daughter are just yards away, in their home? (My daughter and her husband lived with us at the time.) Then, how crass and egotistical can you be to be doing something so shabby in order to get ego strokes? And THEN, how crass and insensitive can you be to actually tell the wife of the man you're having an affair with, and complain about not getting the expected kudos for your selfish and tasteless behavior??????

She was playing "mother earth", doing something wonderful for my daughter and her baby. The real effect of her behavior was that neither of my daughters got to enjoy their first pregnancies because their mother was a sobbing wreck, and their original family was breaking up.

By the way, this one loved goats, too.

I've tried to remain open minded about my ex daughter in law; so I don't know for certain whether she is a psychopath or not. Just reading these posts about possible female p's, however, brought back a lot of observations about her. If the primary characteristics are lack of conscience and lack of empathy, she undoubtedly qualifies there.

I'm quite sure that most of you who post here will not find it unusual that it seems most often to be the little things that pop to mind when thinking about these people. I took my grandson to his mother's this morning (age 3 1/2), after he'd spent a week of holidays with his father (who had to go to work this a.m.) My grandson didn't want to go. He wanted to stay with me (as a second choice, since his dad was at work). I told him that his mom would have really missed him (a concept he understands, because he tells me he misses his dad, even if he's only been gone to work for a few hours). So, he quietly agreed to get out of the car and go into his mum's. She DID smile at him when he walked in, BUT SHE DID NOT HUG HIM OR EVEN TOUCH HIM. My heart just about broke. She hadn't seen him for 7 days and 7 nights. I can't resist picking him up and hugging him EVERY TIME I get to see him.

It also brings to mind a time when she and my son were still together, and I was babysitting both her 6 year old child and her and my son's 1 1/2 yr. old at the time. She came in, and naturally, both kids more or less ran to her. She looked at them and said "I can't pick both of you up so I'm not going to pick up either one of you". She is SO COLD. How could you do that to a poor toddler?

Fortunately, my son has joint custody, and has his son in his care almost 50% of the time. He is very physical and loving, and so are my husband and I, so we give the little guy lots of body contact. And he's very much of a hugger.
But, unfortunately, she still has him the other 50% of the time; and I can't allow myself even to think of her first son, who is now 9.

At any rate, what I do know is that psychopathy or evilness, it DOES exist in females as well as males, and from my observation of this ex d-in-law, I would agree that it is often quite subtle and devious. There are lots of stories that could exemplify that as well.

This discussion is really pointing out to me what a person with a hidden agenda....psychopath can accomplish. Its mind boggling and no wonder it takes a long time to figure out. To a person who doesn't think like that its unfathomable. kris, I've been slow too, if it means catching on to the subtle con.

I've been remembering things about the exfriend who I mentioned in my earlier post. The lack of conscience was outstanding. She had a way of using words and innuendo to make herself sound pure and blameless, even while she was causing pain to those around her. One of her tools of the trade was that she presented herself as a highly spiritual, special favorite of a religious leader in the community. Its amazing how easily intimidated I was on so many levels. This woman used so many outer disguises as she found people to play and use along her remorseless way.

Besides religion, she feigned illnesses and actually had people thinking she was close to death and running to the hospital where she "held court". This woman is the healthiest speciman, in reality. Springs back quickly as soon as she's gotten her share of attention and sympathy. What an operator! She used unpredictability as a way to keep everything off balance. And the biggest way that I think she hooked me other than befriending me when I was at a particularly weak point in my life, was being one of the few people who disliked my psychopathic exhusband. The fact that she admitted to seeing what I saw; basically a horrible man. And she made sure to tell me how he made her skin crawl just to be around him. Of course I believed she had good intentions towards me; that's what she wanted me to believe. Something interesting, though. I asked her in the beginning of our "friendship" how she could see what my exhusband was like (no one else did). She actually told me that it was because she was a little bit like him. Understatement of the year.

This is very helpful in developing my growing awareness of how psychopathy has influenced my life.

Cherie

worried, Thanks for joining this discussion. Your grandson is very lucky that he has you to love and look out for him.

Your ex daughter in law sounds a lot like the woman I was describing as my ex friend. She was also exremely cold towards her children and lacked patience beyond belief. There are other off the wall behaviors about her that I've been recollecting. Its good to get feedback like what you've written.

Cherie

Cherie,
One of the other things that always comes to mind when I think about this girl, is her statement early in the relationship; "I cannot tell a lie". Should have clued in then that "the lady doth protest too much". She lied for good reason (self defense) and for no reason. And, I think she often believed her own lies once she'd told them often enough. Her mother was the same, in the limited contact I had with her. I remember the mother was giving a baby shower after our grandson was born. The d-in-law told me she didn't know why her mother was doing this. She didn't want a shower. I encountered the mother in a store who said to me, "I'm only having this shower because M wants one". Not important, but typical of the endless lies and half truths in that family.
More important was an occasion when they were separated earlier, and my son & I went to the mother's house to pick up his son. We knew M wasn't there, but we had a legal document entitling our son to pick up his son. Not only did the mother come to the door and insist the baby wasn't there, she had M's older son, then about 5, come to the door too, and tell us that the baby was gone with his mother to an appointment. It wasn't true. It's one of the many reasons I worry all the time about the older guy, with whom we have no control, as well as our own little guy.

Worried:
How blessed your grandson is to have you watch out for his well being and provide the love and nuturing that is needed. The young male P that I know had a son from his second marriage. The ex wife stripped him of all parental rights at the time of the divorce. This was all the detail that he shared in regards to this matter, but I would have loved to know more. He did state to me once that he "hated children", so obviously his ex wife was very wise in her decision!! As far as your D in laws statement of "I cannot tell a lie", boy have I heard that one before!!!!!!!!

It seems so much easier to "strip the parental rights" from a man than from a woman. We had the intervention of the office of the Children's Lawyer, whose responsibility it is to be concerned first with the welfare of the child, and even they (or at least the social worker assigned to the case) felt that somehow the child was better with his mother (and half brother), even tho' she recognized that this "mother" was lying about my son being abusive, etc. etc. Consequently, my son settled for this joint custody arrangement, feeling that the cards were stacked against him, being the man; and we would never get anywhere trying to prove she is mentally and emotionally abusive to the children. That is SO hard to prove, and this social worker was not interested in input from other people who knew both parties involved.
So, even tho' I appreciate your kind comments that our grandson is lucky, I personally feel he could be A GREAT DEAL LUCKIER, if we could minimize his mother's role in his life - or remove it!!!
The ex of the young man you speak about is lucky he's out of her child's life!

Worried:
It is truly unfortunate that the court system can't see that just because someone is a female, it doesn't mean they are qualified to be a "mother". If people would just listen and be open minded before making such an important decision!! I know it must be so frustrating, for YOU know what would be best, but you have your hands tied when it comes to dealing with the system. Best regards to you, your son and especially your grandson. You are in my thoughts.

Another note about the system. The social worker on the case indicated to my son and his ex that she was aware that the ex had lied about my son being abusive. One of those lies involved having her 7 year old son suggest to his teacher that his dad had "touched his pee pee" while they were wrestling. When this child was interviewed by a Children's Aid worker, he said he didn't know which dad had done it (natural or step) or when it had happened. Could anyone doubt the child had been given a story to tell? The social worker on the case had access to all this information, yet still stated that M had made good decisions for her first son, and should have the final say on decisions about the second one, if they couldn't agree on joint custody.

Makes me wonder about what someone suggested earlier, that a lot of psychopaths may be hiding in the mental health field. And if this person was just making an honest judgement, then judging that lying about abuse is a normal thing for women to do, when they want out of a relationship (and she said she thought it was) indicates that our society is in a pretty sad state.