Hi,
I'm new to this site. I found you in a desparate trawl of the web looking for help. My son has all the recognised symptoms of a P excepting cruelty to animals. He is also an addict. He is out of touch with the kind of concern he creates in the family and had progressed from moodiness when he doesn't get what he wants to verbal aggression and physical (body language) intimidation - he is a six foot 25 year old -. As far as I know he has not YET assaulted anyone in the family but last Christmas he threw his younger sister 5ft 2" and less than 8 stone to the floor and smashed a glass on the floor. It was very scary. What I'd like to know is does a P progress from verbal assault to physical as a matter of course? He gets into fights outside the family and has one conviction for carrying a bladed instrument and one for assault (a girl in as night club who bumped him)??
Very worried.
Sarafina

Hi Sarafina

I’m pleased you found this forum, you will get a lot of support and information from the people who post here. Sometimes it’s just useful for contacting someone so you don’t feel so isolated with your problem. At worst it is a great place to have a rant when there is something you can’t sort but need to get off your chest.

My partner’s son appears well on course to be a P although only 13 years old. Does your son live with you? If he does I can imagine how difficult that must be. What made you think your son is a P and when did you first recognise the signs?

I didn’t think my partner’s son was cruel to animals but then found out he was but only with very small animals like kittens, although I knew he would kill any insect he could get his hands on including ladybirds. As he is so young and physically weedy violence hasn’t’ been a problem so far. Like with animals he is a coward so his violence comes out in destruction and stealing, he is very sneaky and underhand.. I’m not sure that he won’t get physically aggressive when puberty kicks in. He is very immature emotionally as well as physically so don’t know when we will get the full flush of hormones, mainly testosterone!

I suppose in a way we are lucky he is so small as he couldn’t attempt anything physical apart from once trying to stop me going in his drawers when he tried his best to restrain me but wasn’t strong enough. No doubt that day will come. He didn’t want me to go in his drawer because he had hidden 3 days of wet pyjamas in there even though we never even spoke about his bed wetting problem and there was certainly never any punishment. We have since found out he does it on purpose to punish us when he doesn’t get his own way so maybe you could call it a sort of aggression..

I would like to hear more about your story but unfortunately I haven’t got the experience of a 25 year old P like you, in fact you can probably tell me what I’m in for. Have you looked at the research section of this forum-you may find some answers there.

Best regards
Jan.

Hi Jan, (am not quite sure how to use this site so this reply may appear twice - sorry)
Thanks for responding so quickly. Sounds like you have a horrible time with your P. Sadly it doesn't get any better. Mine is not too smart so I have escaped much fraudulent and manipulative behaviour. (e.g. If he could work out how to forge my signature or use my bank details on the internet, I would be broke by now). Also, he can't be bothered to cover his tracks or lie for very long - you see - he really doesn't care what I think anyway - and he is terminally lazy - so it all becomes as he puts it too, 'Long,' and so he says anything to shut me up -including the truth if that works!
We have had some interesting chats. He tells me that predators are necessary so that prey can develop survival skills - and that assists the human race in becoming smarter. Sometimes I can't really follow his logic.

I read some of the discussions earlier on this site and find much that is similar. My P also suffered with encopresis as a younger child. His half brother (father's side) has similar traits as a P although as I don't live with him (thank GOD!)as well, it is hard to be sure, but he (the half brother) suffered with bed wetting until he was seventeen and got a girl fried - when it stopped. Their father, my ex-husband, is I believe also a P. He (the father who also bed wet) has another son /another half brother to my P - the dad was very promiscious - who is now a diagnosed schizophrenic.
If anyone else is reading this and finds it hard to follow - it is! My son, the P, seems to have come from a family that have some relatively severe mental disorders. These were cunningly hidden from me until after I married except for the nick name they gave me as 'The Provider'. I soon learnt exactly what that meant, and after four years escaped - not before I had had my P with him though.

Life at home ? - of course my son the P lives with me - who else would stand him? Where else would he go? is a sort of living nightmare in which one never knows what will go wrong next, I dread hearing his voice on the phone when I am away from home, as I know it will be some new desperate situation out of which I will crawl, poorer and more depressed and more exhausted than before.
He does things to sabotage being left- steals car keys and crashes/ abandons car, steals holiday money, steals passports, a lot of it is about money. He can't get or keep a job. There is always a reason why - an upcoming court case, or no mobile phone (?)- talking of mobiles, he cannot keep them for some reason - they disappear - but he can steal the sim card out of mine and sell calls to foreign parts on it. I don't have a contract line now so that if he steals my sim card it will only have a fiver or so on it. Well I guess we can all tell endless stories, but I am interested in the link between violence and development of a P and also the hereditory aspect of it. His father, Primary P, spends most of his time in prison now for either theft or violence... but what is curious is that when I realised what Primary P was like I divorced and took my P son to another country where he had no contact for thirteen years with his father - so it is not modelled behaviour, BUT with every year that passes he becomes more and more like the Primary P - is that usual?
Hope you'll post a reply,
Cheers Sarafina

Hi Sarafina, welcome to the forum.

For my two cents, my guess from reading quite a bit about garden variety abuse is that it does escalate. That is why they say if someone in your life slaps, hits or gets physical it won't get better without help. In the case of a Psychopath and the lack of being able to work things out in therapy I don't see any way your son would change. This is only my opinion.

Does your son live with you? Do you know what kind of drugs he uses? Sometimes drugs can make a person appear to be a Psychopath for instance Meth can cause some symptoms like violence, stealing, etc.

What was his life like during his growing up years?

Di

Hi Sarafina

Don’t worry about getting used to using the forum, I still make blunders and quite often lose a long diatribe into the ether. I always type my posts in Word now to avoid it happening again.

There are so many similarities….the laziness I know well. Everyone can be lazy at times but the P seems to take it to extremes. The F(Fledgling)P will also tell the truth occasionally when burdened with the effort of being questioned. He is not too smart either and I can always outwit him by considering all possible outcomes to any given situation.

I have also read that the psychopathic gene is a very strong gene, because of the P’s in-built selfishness and lack of conscience they make sure that they survive by using whatever methods they can such as promiscuity, lying, cheating, stealing and general parasitic behaviour. It makes sense when you look at it from an evolutionary point of view. They can walk all over anybody to get what they want.

FP’s mother has mental health problems as does his father’s brother, he has Narcissistic Personality Disorder so the genetic predisposition comes from both sides. His mother is verbally aggressive but as far as I know not physically violent. Her new husband has been to hell and back with her too but they seem to be surviving (he was a heroin addict) but he now works and has a car and disposable income so FP has rekindled contact with his mother and step father as they will be easy pickings for him. He has already tried to extract a mobile phone from them because we won’t supply him with one for many reasons apart from the fact they are banned at his boarding school. He lied to her saying the one he had got put through the washing machine(he has never had one) and the reason he didn’t phone her from school is because there isn’t a phone (totally untrue-the boarding house has a special booth so the kids can make private calls). I supplied him with enough coins to make 80 phone calls but he spent the money within the first week and only made 3 calls home.

FP has been with my partner for the past 7 years since he was 6 so his behaviour should be more influenced by his father but as each year goes by he gets more like his mother, he does and says exactly they same things as she does and that is not modelled behaviour.
I have been told by Dr Viding that it is a developmental disorder so would not have been so obvious during his early years although there would have been some red flags if his family had been more clued up about what was normal behaviour in childhood. I would say FP is also a primary P i.e. born that way. There seems to be a trigger factor which sets them off on their path and a recent TV program suggested it can be the birth of a sibling or a new parental relationship. Both of which were definitely true for us.

I don’t know whether you have read Dr Essi Viding’s research on the development of the condition, I think Di posted it in the resources section but if you can’t find it let me know and I’ll send it to you.

It must be so difficult for you as it is for my partner as he desperately wants to believe his son “will grow out of it”. It is his only child and such a disappointment to him and he naturally wants to love his child but in his deeper moments tells me he doesn’t even like him. He talked about unconditional love but I don’t believe there is such a thing, we all have to earn love and respect from others. That is the love is blind syndrome-I suppose Hitler’s mother loved him unconditionally. It is a projection onto the P of what we would like them to be. Is there anything you can say you love about your son? You must have some fond memories of when he was small.

I would love to know how your son’s problems developed if you could bring yourself to tell me. I feel forewarned is forearmed.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Regards
Jan

Hi Sarafina, Sorry that this is a bit rambling, but I wanted to get a few thoughts down:

My brother's violence certainly esclated over the years -- at least to the extent that he was able to get away with it. He was often in fights, and beat my younger sister once (chipping a tooth) because she didn't do something he askd. He always had a strong sense of self-interest though (an understatement), so he always knew exactly how far he could go without jeopardizing himself.

I believe that Dr. Hare is an advocate of teaching criminal psychopaths that crime is not in their self-interest rather than making an appeal to morality. I suspect that deep self-interest is what keeps many of them under control. My feeling is that the danger with violent psychopaths is that they may come to believe that they can get away with greater violence, even killing -- that they might come to believe that they're smart enough to outwit the authorities.

I was certainly always afraid of my brother -- there was an aura of danger about him, and I never knew for sure what he might be capable of doing if provoked. He died several years ago, and I will admit that lying under the terrible grief for such a wasted life was deep relief that I wouldn't have to look over my shoulder anymore.

In terms of the question of the heritability of Psychopathy, I'm pretty convinced that psychopaths are born, not made -- my brother didn't have any children (that would take being in a relationship for a while and it might also mean that his wife or girlfriend would get 'fat' -- something he despised). However, my frandfather certainly was on the continuum of psychopathy, and it may be that there is a genetic component, though I understand that mothers of psychopaths often report difficult births or pregnancy problems. Could it be that genetic vulnerability combined with other problems creates the right environment for the development of psychopathy????

Dear Diane,
Sorry this reply is late. I shall try to answer your queries. Yes, my son lives at home, my home, my London flat, with me and my daughter no. 2 (16yrs). He smokes cannabis all the time (skunk preferred), and crack in phases - when he is down for some reason- e.g. has a court case that carries a custodial sentence coming up, or has a row with important others (me and his ex-girlfriend and mother of his daughter);has been robbed of his gold 'bling' chain or 'video' phone during a fight or by his 'friends'.
Recently, and due to some change in our circumstances - not the least being discovering this website, I have been able to be more firm. I now have an exclusion plan and am in the process of carrying it out. This week I excluded him from the flat for 24 hours for smoking crack in the home. He stayed away for ten hours but came back crying at 9pm that he was hungry and no one else would have him. I fed him but was determined not to give up on my system to protect my daughter and I - and I made him sleep outside.
I don't know how this system will work. I also have some internal exclusions planned (his room has an exit to outside), if he continues to use verbal violence and intimidating behaviour. Fingers crossed he will figure out its better to be nice than nasty.
Wish me luck!
As a child briefly, he was a a high forceps delivery with some trauma to his neck tissue and cranial bruising. I divorced his father when he was ten months and took a new partner when he was about two. His first sister was born when he was four. As a baby he was responsive, happy, walked early, talked early, cut teeth, didn't fuss too much about being weaned at a year old, but has ever since never drunk milk - I think in annoyance and disgust that it wasn't mine. He suffered from encopresis and I didn't handle it well, as I felt it was a reflection on my bad mothering, but apart from that he was popular and not unkind to his sister, once carrying her over two fields in the spring - when she suffered an asthma attack - and literally saving her life.
He had a good relationship with his step father, but he(step dad) was unfortunately a weak and mostly absent father and my relationship with him did not work. Still X seemed happy enough, loved football had a charm that seemed to get him masses of friends.
However, he was slow at school and learnt to read only because I sat with him ever night for an hour (I'm a teacher). He was impressionable, one teacher saying "X is only as good as the child he sits next to - and unfortunately he always sits next to the idiots,"
He was always lazy, and as he got older, selfish too - taking the girls' Easter eggs and eating them ALL. He could not delay gratification at all and did not seem to learn from the consequences of his actions - often the whole family would go to great lengths to shield him (which I still do)from the consequences. He developed an addiction to sweets which ruined his teeth (he was too lazy to brush them) even extreme dental agony did not teach him to stop secretly eating sweets all the time. He was too lazy ( I say lazy because he had home tutors to help him as I knew he was slow)to do ANY academic work. Subsequently he was expelled from his school in Form 2 for academic failure and that was after repeating as well. He then attended an American School (where academic pressure was not the entire focus - more was directed at thinking skills and citizenship )- he stole a Video player from the Geopgraphy Department of the American School in Year 10 and was expelled from that school too. During the intervening years he took up with known low life - drug users and theives who used him as his family had money. He however aspired to their level and came back to England and became a 'youth'in a hoody on the streets of Brixton. I got him into Westminster College but after two terms he dropped out. By this time he was using crack and cannabis freely. I think, now, he aspires totally to their life style and value system in which it's all out there -the system -and he is its victim, ergo- he must steal and lie and be 'harsh' etc etc... I do hope you can shed any light on his behaviour, mental make up as I'm searching and searching for some intellectual angle on him, as the emotional side of my relationship with him is so draining. Sometimes I feel like it's a death sentence on me - one where if I die he will have no other to support him, and if I live he will kill me off either directly or by default so to speak. A terrible situation.
Sarafina

Hi Jade, Jan and Shelley,
Sorry I didn't realise if I reply to one, it posts to all! Didn't want you to think I'd not appreciated your responses. As you can read from my reply to Diane, my son really started to go sharply down hill at around 13 years old after his first expulsion from school, although the cracks were there long before. I think it was his aspiration to become a 'gangster' that started the BIG trouble - here I mean the drug misuse and the anti-social behaviour. From then on it has got better and worse so to speak. He has (finally)learned that repeatedly offending will end up in a prison sentence (so far he has escaped mostly because I show up with him at sentencing and they think 'Hello what a nice middle-class mum - from Cheltenham Spa [one judge ACTUALLY said that!]and sounds so well spoken - he must be a child who is just a little off the rails - forget that he has broken and entered the homes of others and admitted to handling stolen goods - we'll give him a suspended sentence and let mum re-educate him). I failed to do so. Now I refuse to go to court with him, so he has learned not to mug people any more, because without me there in court handling the barrister and smiling at the magistrate, he might not get off. So I suppose in that way it's better. He limits his anti-social behaviour to driving offences and passing on fake twenty pound notes(yes to me before I realised), dealing in a little drugs, running up debts and sponging off anyone who cares about him.
Like you Jade I cannot abandon him. But recently through this forum I am getting tougher. I'm excluding him in an escalating serious of sanctions first offence 24 hrs next one week etc for serious things and a swift 24 hour internal exclusion for theiving or shouting or intimidating me. I don't aim to change him, only to be more in control of my own home and get some peace, and train myself to be tougher. If as a by product he changes it will be good. He however has not suggested that he wants to change (ie give up the drugs for a start) so at the moment it is me out there toughing it out. The one joy is my daughter is sighing with relief and cheering 'About time Mum!'
Oops have to go, will finish this soon.
Would appreciate more hints on how to handle a P.
Please keep replying
Sarafina

Hi again,

I would say that my brother was a P/NP combination. He was an exceptionally attractive child and very bright. He learned early on that this was great currency and used it extraordinarily well. There is nothing like a handsome, articulate, charming P for trouble -- he really got anything he wanted from everyone around him. Everyone (peers, teachers, family members) admired him and catered to him.

I was older and left home early so I missed a great deal. I know that the obvious stuff -- school trouble etc -- was never really a big problem. He could talk/charm his way out of anything. Nothing was ever his fault. By the time he was in his mid teens he really blossomed as a P, but I missed much of it since I'd left home.

I knew he had been in a number of fights in bars etc, but always managed to keep out of trouble with the police. The fights were always someone elses' fault or he was there only to help out/protect some damsel or some such story. He lied with exceptional skill.

During these years (late teens early 20s), he was exceptionally cruel to his younger siblings who basically worshiped him. He belittled them and seemed to enjoy hurting them; he sexually abused our youngest sister; he beat and belittled our youngest brother. When our sibs were in their older teen years, he relaized that their admiration was worth something. By that time, they were working and he . . . well, he always had money. He had a wealthy girlfriend, drove her car, but had no job.

He was very promiscuous, but kept the wealthy girlfriend on the hook (a nice woman who was warned by my sister to keep her distance for her own sake, but the girlfriend replied, "I don't want to hear this. I already know all about you and your family and your jealousy and hatred of X.") In the meantime, my brother kept company with another wealthy (but much older) woman in another city.

I learned later that he frequently forged cheques from our siblings' bank accounts (but they never had him charged because they loved him: You know the drill.) Things would go missing in my apartment, but I never really made the connection till much later.

In later years (when he'd temporarily worn out his welcome)
he moved away, calling whenever he was in trouble and needed cash -- and one of us would always give it to him. Once, he called us because he was involvd somehow with someone's death (a complete misunderstanding, of course. He was frightened, he wanted help to talk to the police, and he needed money to fly home). The siblings rallied, came up with the cash for airfare and sent it to him. Of course, he never showed up. I even naively called the police to try to clear things up, but by then he'd completely disappeared again.

By the time he was an adult P, he was scary. His life hadn't gone the way he expected (wealth, fame) and I think he felt owed and betrayed somehow. I didn't know the term P at the time and had no idea what was wrong with him really, but I always had a deep fear that someday he would turn up at the door with a gun and kill my entire family. It seemed the kind of thing he could do. When he showed up out of the blue for a family wedding, I don't think I slept the entire time he was there.

Did I mention that he wet the bed into his 20s? I often wondered what he did when he slept with a woman. Or maybe he never spent the night.

Well, that's at least some of the story. The violence and potential for violence seemed to grow over the years as he was thwarted in his goals. He seemed to somehow blame the family -- maybe his own lies became the story he believed in the end. But it seemed (at least to me) to make him more dangerous.

In terms of advice for dealing with a P, my feeling is that you can't and don't. If someone I loved was involved with one, I would tell them to get out, run, get as far away as possible, and don't ever look back.

Shelley~

Hi Shelley,
Thank for telling me about you brother. I know exactly what you mean by that sense of smothered violence. Recently I removed all the kitchen carving knives from the flat - not because of any explicit threat, but because of this insidious aura of potential danger. I don't know if it makes me or my daughter any safer, it certainly makes chopping up vegetables a lot harder!
Strangely enough there are some more similarities between your brother and my son. Both it seems are/were good looking. My son is breath-takingly handsome. Or at least he was. His stunning almost egyptian Ahkenaton like profile and six feet of toned muscle (he is vain and works out)are eclipsed now by an ever increasing sly and criminal look about the eyes. I used to feel the waste and the pity was twice as bad because he looked so good on the outside and was so rotten beneath- almost as if fate had conspired with him to manipulate me/others to the max. Now his true colour is showing a little more I feel his good looks are scary.
However, like Jade I also feels this unbareable sympathy for him. In his eyes the world has cheated him of his right(again fame and wealth)and I sense his impotence to change that and his despair at the only conclusion that he can come to -ie- that he, himself, is lacking- hence his bluster, blame and bullying. His denial unto death (mine probably as I'm the only one who tries to regularly confront him with the 'truth' as we see it)that it is anything to do with him. (there are some exceptions here - every now and then he ruefully admits he deserves what he gets - but whether that is yet another form of manipulation I don't know - I tend to think not as it often comes at the end of a long denial and he really isn't smart enough to work that out )
And I worry what will become of him if I cease to offer him some form of shelter. It's unnatural somehow to put myself before his welfare or at least un-motherly. My main strength is my daughter - what I can't do for myself against him, I can do for her.
I was interested that you said your brother seemed to blame the family or that you expected him to turn up with a gun and shoot you all. I wonder why they would have been his main target? And why it does appear that the family is the target in other crimes of psychopathic violence. Is it because they (Ps) are used to getting away with things in the family? Is it because they blame the family for cheating them of the wealth and fame owed them? Or hate the family for deserting them (quite resonably of course if you fear your son will kill you)? I'd be interested in your views on that.
I'm working on my home situation anyway, in the light of all this it does make a vey radical future plan imperative. Right now I've just got to maintain a holding pattern to see my daughter through sixth form and off to uni (1 and a half years now) and then I can escape too. However, as we all have to be in London and I'm not a millionaire (London prices make you faint)we will have to continue sharing a home. In a way there is some miserable security in the Devil you know who isn't mad at you (yet)- compared to the Devil you know - out there on the loose- who is mad at you. I know that if I threw my son out he would be very mad. And as he threatens: 'Don't get me mad. Don't make me loose my temper: I can be very spiteful when I'm mad.'
Words I don't ignore.
Sarafina