Just read the article in the 'resources' section.

Oh my God, yes, absolutely! I always found it really weird the way my dad spoke. It would take him half an hour to get a sentence out, and they were always so convoluted!!!

I couldn't work out if it was because he'd fried his brain with drugs, but I always kinda felt that wasn't the whole story. There was a part of me that knew he was weighing up the effect of what he was about to say, that he was always on the attack or on the defensive with everything he said.

Thank you for posting that. It's helped me make another connection.

I agree.
The simple "I had to do this", which still rings in my ears... "I had to lie", "I have to lie"...

Starry,
I found it so interesting that you said it was really weird how it took your father so long to get a sentence out. I had the same experience with my psychopath. I thought it was because she had grown up bilingual, so the brain had to process two languages. There is research to support this as well, just as there is research to support the fact that prolonged drug use affects people's brains. However, like you, I now realize that the real reason it took her so long to get things out, particularly when talking about emotional things, is that EMOTIONS are a second language for her. She would take FOREVER to get out any words related to her feelings, because the entire realm of feelings is so foreign to them. As an example, on the day she met her new victim, the one she would use to "help" her get away from me, I spoke with her on the phone. She screamed at me that I hadn't asked her about the party she went to. I had asked, and I repeated what she told me which was that it was a nice atmosphere, good food, etc. But, she couldn't tell me that after the party she had had tea with a guy and he had hit on her. Very simple words for most of us, right? All it takes is a sentence. I met this guy and he hit on me or he liked me. Later, she told me that it would've taken her 3 hours to explain it, because she would've had to have explained the whole scenario. When the psychopath gets to vibrating, senses that there is someone there to use, its like their whole brains shut down. They can't think, just do, act, react. They can't see the big picture or the consequences of their actions, because all they can do is focus on that moment and the opportunity there.

I had the exact same experience. Talking about anything "relationshippy" would get my Psychopath to literally "freeze" between words. He was moving his hands around, as if trying to indicate he wants to say sth.

From what I've observed is they either:
- try to say things they heard, or saw; cry when they cannot manipulate with words anymore - but the tears of a Psychopath are never real, they're there, but they're fake, and it's quite easy to see, there is no pain on their face, just tears on an emotionless mask (I used to think he just is a guy, and guys don't cry, so maybe that's why he looked so odd when crying).

- if they don't know how to act - they will repeat after you - either say the same things you said, with some different words, or just turn the words around on you - f.e. if you say "I feel like an object to you, how could you hurt me like this, how can you do this?" - a Psychopath would answer: "How can you think that? How can you look at me this way? I never wanted to hurt you. You are hurting me saying this! You are such a bad person to say this to me (I am so perfect)!"

I've just been reading the posts about making inferences that somebody may be psychopathic, based on the way they speak. This causes me feelings of great misgiving.

I don't want to deny any of the statistical surveys and studies. But the substantial reasons to believe a person may be psychopathic surely come from the way he/she acts, to manipulate and abuse those around, to harm them somehow, and not from patterns of speech.

Unusual speech patterns may even result from the abuse and suffering imposed on the victim of a psychopath -- such as the abuse of a child by a psychopathic parent. The psychopath may even point to features or defects of speech to stigmatize his/her victim further -- for example, in part, to try and deflect other people's attention away from the misdeeds of the psychopath him/herself, and towards the stigma of the victim.

So I see a great risk of misusing something like speech-patterns to stigmatize people wrongly, and to victimize them further when they may be victims already.

(I'm writing as someone who very slowly and after long decades of abuse, came to the painful conclusion that my mother is either psychopathic or else so near the definitions of it as to make little practical difference. The psychopath is able to invent and deploy many techniques of abuse.)

I was thinking the same thing - especially regarding children copying their parent’s style of speech - what they say and how they say it. Psychopaths a really good at getting people to behave like them in various ways. Let’s not risk going a little psychopathic ourselves by calling people who display suspicious speech patterns psychopathic without first noting all the other nasty actions that accompany the disorder.

That being said the information regarding speech seems to ring true in my experience and it might be a good thing to be cautious when dealing with those who display such signs.

Hmm, that's not what I said.

I said my father is a psychopath because of the way he has acted towards me, towards others in his/my family, and towards other people. The patterns of his behaviour go back over 50 years now. If you read the rest of my posts and threads, that's what I say.

Then as an additional post (my post number 200 plus on this forum) I pointed out that my father has a very strange speech pattern. It's weirder than any I have encountered, and I'm not the only one who has noticed it in his way of talking (speed, delivery, choice of words).

This, in addition to the weird things he sent me as presents (the very few times he could remember/be bothered). He sent me rubbish he had in his house, broken things, old things, torn, stained things.

Having studied my father closely, dissected his train of thought and his behaviour, I believe there is a connection between all these things and his 'condition' (for want of a better word).

>Hmm, that's not what I said.

>I said my father is a psychopath because of the way he has
>acted towards me, towards others in his/my family, and towards
>other people. The patterns of his behaviour go back over 50
>years now. If you read the rest of my posts and threads, that's
>what I say.

Your reply post does make things clearer. (I'm new here, and had not read your other posts in other threads.)

I sympathise with the treatment you've suffered. In particular, the giving of rubbish 'presents' looks to me like a very possible sign of (undeserved) contempt -- of a kind that I'm too familiar with. Such things can be hard to bear. (It can be even harder as I've found for the son or daughter of a psychopathic abuser to come to an understanding that the parent, of all people, actually is an abuser.)

I believe what you say about a connection between your father's speech and his abusive behaviour. At the same time, the abusive behaviour is surely the crucial thing. Whenever people come up with characteristics (such as patterns of speech) that could become used as surrogate markers, I worry that they may end up indeed used in that way, no doubt in other hands, to replace the thing that they have been thought to stand for. This brings a heavy risk that they will be used to make false-positive identifications elsewhere, with a potential to cause victimization of the innocent.

Absolutely.

I'd got to the conclusion of who he was a while back. After I did some digging into his past, and I realised that I wasn't to blame for what he'd done to me.

Then some of the 'smaller' patterns of behaviour fell into place, like the 'present' giving. I realised that other people were all essentially replaceable and therefore also worthless to him. A family member or a friend had no special 'worth' in his eyes, they were just fodder, and once the fodder was exhausted he would just move on to someone else. So why spend time and effort looking out a special gift for a special moment in their lives, like a birthday present?

The speech pattern is a weird one. He always took forever to get a sentence out. I swear, you would be falling off your chair as he measured out the words and dragged them all out. My brother said it was because he was on the defensive. I didn't think that was quite right. So I applied my rule of thumb which I always apply with our dad: he's the opposite of me (or anyone else I know). And it dawned on me, wasn't on the defensive, he's measuring out words so very carefully because he's always on the attack.