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!!!!!!!!