The Psychopath: A True Story(5)
I didn’t just want to tell my story, I wanted to understand why it had happened at all. So at the same time as writing The Bigamist, I started to research people like him. What I found out was fascinating!
THE PSYCHOPATH
At first, it was hard to find out more about people like Will Jordan because I didn’t have the language to know what questions to ask. There was very little online about bigamy other than to describe what it was in legal terms. I searched terms like ‘liar’ and ‘fraud’ but nothing came close to the situation I had been in. Then I asked a question about manipulation and abuse in relationships and came across a website – www.lovefraud.com – set up and run by Donna Anderson. It was a revelation. Suddenly here was a whole community of people who had experienced something similar to me. Here was a website dedicated to recovering and sharing stories like mine. I read article after article about people being victimised by emotionless predators and it sounded all too familiar. I devoured the site hour after hour, soaking in all the information like a starving child being given a first meal. Suddenly I was no longer alone and the first piece of the puzzle fell into place.
Donna had been the victim of a sociopath, and launched her website in 2005 to help protect others from being exploited in the same way. I wrote to Donna telling her what had happened to me and she was incredibly supportive. I had found a community of people who truly understood what I had been through because they had experienced something similar. I now had a name for what he was – a sociopath. It gave me the starting point I needed to find out more.
As I delved further into the research I discovered that sociopaths and psychopaths are essentially the same thing, but with one crucial difference. Psychopaths are born, and sociopaths are made.
From my understanding of the research reports I have read, a psychopath is born without any chemical empathic response and therefore has no emotion or ability to love. Basically, if I deliberately broke my finger in front of you with a loud ‘snap’ you are likely to wince, your eyes crinkle, duck your head down or back with a sharp intake of breath. That is because empathic people have a chemical empathic response to other people’s pain. It lights up parts of our brains which make us ‘feel’ other people’s pain inside our own heads, like a hot needle being seared into our brains. Psychopaths are born without that. The lack of that simple chemical response changes everything: no empathy means no love, no remorse, no guilt, no shame. Without empathy there is no emotional connection to other people and no internal restrictions on what one person can do to another.
Unlike a psychopath, a sociopath might be born with ‘chemical empathic response’, but due to early childhood abuse and neglect has it conditioned out of them, and as a result grows up without empathy for others.
Neither ‘psychopath’ nor ‘sociopath’ are official titles in medical terms, nor are they listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (the current version is DSM5), which is the definitive book on what is and is not classed as a mental disorder in the international psychiatric community. Both these terms (along with narcissism) come under the DSM5 category of ‘Antisocial Personality Disorder’. Because they aren’t official terms, there is a lot of variation in the research articles about the finer details of the individual personality disorders, so this is just an overall layman’s perspective on the information I’ve gleaned.
The words themselves tell you which is which – ‘Psych’ meaning to do with the brain/mind itself, ‘Socio’ meaning to do with society, and ‘path’ meaning a diseased or suffering person. From the articles I read it appears that once an individual grows up, the conditions are indistinguishable from each other, so I will use the term ‘psychopath’ to cover both. I initially thought Will Jordan was a sociopath but over the years the definitions have changed and I later realised it’s more likely that he is a psychopath.
Psychopaths are not mentally ill – they are quite rational and in control – in some sense far more so than neurotypical or empathic people. Psychopathy is a personality disorder characterised by persistent antisocial behaviour by someone with impaired empathy and remorse, demonstrating bold, disinhibited and egotistical traits. It is generally considered incurable and untreatable because it involves a lack of chemical response – something that can be suppressed pharmaceutically but cannot be recreated with drugs or therapy. In any case, a psychopath, by definition, wouldn’t seek treatment even if it was available. (As a side note, if you have ever worried if you might be a psychopath then that’s proof you’re not – a psychopath would never worry about it.)
Due to their lack of concern for anyone, people around them become like characters in the video game The Sims: to be used, played with and discarded at will. They have learnt techniques through repetition of this game that help them seduce their victims. Two of the techniques I started to see mentioned repeatedly on sites that I visited are love-bombing and gaslighting – both of which are toxic methods of controlling people. Reading up on them gave me absolute clarity that this is what Will Jordan had done to me.
‘Love-bombing’ starts with compliments, endearing gestures and public displays of affection, constant and intimate messages, and lavish gifts. They will refer to being ‘soulmates’ and declare undying love within a few weeks of meeting and generally it feels like they’re pulling the relationship forward a little too fast, but the targeted individual goes with it to see where it leads. Basically, psychopaths demonstrate a level of commitment which is out of proportion to the length of time that the couple have known each other. They’ll provide anything that someone might want from the perfect blossoming romance and the sort of things you see in romantic movies as the couple are swept off their feet in love. Most importantly, it will be everything that the target will be most impressed by and feel emotionally connected to.