Our problem is not the psychopaths, it is those who enable them

Psychopaths are dangerous predators, but they are predictable. It is those who put them in power, and enable them, and who keep quiet that must be our focus

(If you have received this by email, please click on the title to access the most up-to-date version. I often continue to edit and correct typos after publishing the first version)

I have been writing this essay for a few weeks now. I have taken my time, because I wanted to make sure I say things exactly the way I want to say them. This topic is too important to get wrong.

As if to urge me to finish this essay, a number of horrendous examples of psychopathy have emerged in the past week. Thousands of deliberately, and carefully hacked personal electronic devices blew up indiscriminately in people’s faces all over Lebanon. We saw a video of Israeli war criminals, aka soldiers, throwing bodies of three Palestinians they murdered — who knows in what gruesome ways — off the roof of a private home these criminals appropriated illegally, in the illegally Colonised West Bank. Taking people’s homes to use as they please is something the Israeli military has been doing, and has felt entitled to do, for decades. They just walk in with their guns, and take the house. Anyone who resists, risks being murdered.

Then the story of Mohamed Al-Fayed, the powerful billionaire, former owner of Harrods blows all over the media. Al-Fayed spent years controlling, raping, and sexually abusing countless women, and teenage girls. As if this was not enough, we have also been hearing about the French case of a man who, for years, drugged his wife regularly, raped her, and invited many other men to rape her while she was unconscious. This was all done in a small town, where everyone knew everyone else.

Being a victim of psychopathic abuse (or psychopaths have children too)

I do not blame victims for waiting a long time to disclose, often until their perpetrators are dead. When victims finally disclose, I stand shoulder to shoulder with them.

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A word about my own self-disclosure — There are different approaches to therapists’ self-disclosure. In my Gestalt therapy training I learned that therapists can self-disclose, but under two strict caveats. First, therapists cannot disclose a ‘live’ issue. It has to be something that no longer has emotional charge, that is well and truly done and dusted. The second caveat is that the therapist’s disclosure must be strictly for the client’s benefit. Therapists cannot self-disclose to meet their own needs. I apply these rules when I disclose anything personal, in any context, including here. None of the personal information I share here, and in other places is ‘live’, and I only share what I share because I think (hope) it may be useful to the reader, or to get a point across.

If what I disclose makes you feel bad for me, I am grateful for your empathy. But be assured that I am well, and that what I share is no longer distressing for me. It is history. If I choose to share something, it is because I have integrated it enough, and it is no longer a ‘live wire’. Please be aware that what I disclose can be disturbing. I am sorry if you do find it hard to read, and you are welcome to skip the parts that are too upsetting.

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I know what it is like to sheepishly try to disclose my sexual abuse past to someone I thought was a friend, only to be told that I made it all up. I know what it is like to muster the courage to bring up my sexual abuse history with a psychologist I thought I could trust, only for him to tell me, without any basis, that it ‘could not possibly have happened’ to me... This set me back years in my recovery.

It is no secret that sometimes even therapists can find it difficult to believe their clients’ stories. Some stories of abuse that I have come across in twenty-five years of practice are so horrific, that they make my own childhood seem like ‘abuse lite’. Some people’s experiences can be beyond comprehension to anyone who has not lived through something similar. This is difficult for victims who survived their past. Victims need others to believe them in order to start to feel safe. All of us tried to deny what happened to us just to stay sane. When people show disbelief, they send victims straight to their defences, and no recovery can begin. There are plenty of people on social media who still minimise, or outright deny the experience of the Palestinian people despite all the evidence.

Having been a victim of a psychopathic mother helps me understand anyone who is or was a victim of a psychopathic person or system. As soon as I began to understand the history of Israel and its settler-colonial project, I had no trouble empathising with the Palestinian people. I saw with complete clarity the system Israel created around them, and the way it trapped them. Anyone who was abused would.

I know first hand why most victims do not speak out, when they are still under attack. I was a child of a dangerous, violent, psychopathic mother, and a prolific pedophile father who sexually abused me, and other girls for years, from very early in my life. He continued to try to touch me, and prey on me, even when I was in my twenties, and already married. When he no longer had easy access to young girls, he used to travel to Thailand with friends of his, where they used and raped little girls as young as six years old. He bragged about it, which is how I found out. When we were small children, my father used to lecture to me and my brother that children are ‘like shares’. You have them, so you can ‘get dividends’. He was visibly pleased that he ‘owned us’, and could do to us whatever he wanted. He effectively admitted to being a predator but he never thought there was anything wrong with it.

In my nightmarish family environment I was always much more afraid of my mother than I was of my father. I was completely trapped, and under her constant control, and surveillance. In early childhood I was subjected to horrendous violent attacks, mind games, erratic, and crazy-making behaviours, and dynamics. There was nowhere to run. I was a dependent child, strictly prohibited from telling anyone what went on inside the family, and I never did.

I know what it is like to be caught in a system where you feel completely trapped and powerless. I know what it is like to feel that the abuser has complete control over you. I know what it is like to not even understand what is happening to you. You wonder if all these surreal events are really happening to you, when life around you seems to continue as normal, and everyone thinks the perpetrators are nice, even exemplary people.

Victims of psychopaths have no good options. The purpose of a psychopathic system is to control and consume you. If you try to fight the psychopath on your own, without outside help, you cannot win. This is because psychopaths are prepared to do what healthy people cannot. They would go to any lengths to maintain their control over their victims. They are also good at painting their victims as ‘crazy’, and themselves as the victims. You can see how skilfully Israel has been doing it for seventy-six long years. If you do not try to fight to free yourself from the psychopath’s trap, you are slowly annihilated. Whatever you do is wrong. If you know the history of Israel and its settler-colonialist project, you know there is nothing that the Palestinians could ever do right. They are caught in a psychopathic system determined to exterminate them. To be clear, I am saying that settler-colonialism is by definition a psychopathic system.

One of the main reasons that victims often doubt their reality, is that perpetrators are good at controlling and manipulating victims’ memories. This is called ‘gaslighting’. I hear a lot of people misuse this word, but gaslighting is not just another word for lying. Gaslighting is making someone doubt, and question their perception of reality. Gaslighting is effective, because of the power perpetrators have over victims. As a victim, there is also a part of you that wants to deny your own suffering, and your own abuse. Many victims hope against hope that they are just imagining things. It would be so much better if the abuse never really happened. But the evidence is in victims, in their psychology, and in their bodies. Trauma cannot be faked, and it is always inflicted.

Gaslighting is not just there to prevent victims from seeking help. This ‘crazy-making’ strategy in itself gives pleasure to the psychopath. The stronger the control, the more pleasure the psychopath gets. Being able to manipulate someone’s perception of reality, seeing the confusion on their faces, is a real treat for a psychopath.

Many years ago, after I moved to Australia, I met up with one of my cousins who as a young man was visiting from Israel, and touring Australia. This cousin is the son of my mother’s youngest brother. We met at Circular Quay in Sydney, and over ice cream he proceeded to tell me with a smile that when he and his sister were children, they envied us. They alway ‘wanted to be like us’, because our family was so ‘perfect’. I was stunned. I started to tell him slowly, and cautiously that things in our family were not exactly how they appeared. He then rose to his feet, and walked away. I never saw him again. He could not bear hearing anything that challenged his long-held perception of our family’s ‘perfection’, carefully cultivated by my mother.

My reality could not be more different than my cousin’s perception, but his shocking revelation offered me valuable insight into how effective my mother was at creating the image she wanted. Psychopaths are good at this. It never ceases to amaze me how dumb, or maybe naive we are as a species. Most people are too easily impressed. Despite everything we know, despite tens of thousands of years of atrocities committed by humans against humans, if a person is well-dressed, and polite in public, people assume they are also good. Most people do not want to give up their perception of others as good, even when faced with the most damning evidence. It is another reason that victims are afraid to speak out. They know they would encounter doubt.

Human predators are out there, always hungry, always looking for prey. A prey, a victim, is just someone who happens to be available and unprotected at the moment the predator pounces. When a tiger grabs an antelope, is it the antelope’s fault?

Human predators

Any human being with an impaired executive brain/prefrontal cortex can be considered a potential predator. Psychopaths have an impaired executive, and also an impaired limbic brain. Unlike people with healthy brains, an impaired limbic system makes psychopaths unable to generate normal feelings in response to what goes on around them. Not all psychopaths were mistreated in childhood. It is a wicked myth perpetuated by a confused, dishonest, and cowardly mental health field that does not want to admit there are things it cannot ‘fix’.

When it comes to human predators, there is always a genetic component at play. Some psychopaths are born without the ability to develop a proper, fully human brain. Even if they are raised well in a loving environment they would still be psychopathic. People’s brain development can be harmed by a bad childhood. But most people who suffered from developmental trauma (childhood trauma) are perfectly healthy, and can recover and grow to their potential. Their brains might have trauma wired in, but their executive is intact, and so is their neuroplasticity, the ability of the brain to wire and re-wire itself all through life.

It is not the fault of people with autism, or dyslexia that their brains are structured the way they are. But people with autism or dyslexia, or other forms of neurodiversity can still have a fully functional brain, which makes them ethical, and safe. By contrast, psychopaths are always dangerous. Not all psychopaths kill people and eat them, rape, torture, collude with genocide, or steal people’s savings. Some, with less power or status, are ‘just’ psychologically exploitative, and controlling.

Psychopaths are victims of a form of neurodiversity, which caused their brains to not develop properly. But it does not make them innocent. They are extremely dangerous. If you understand something about psychopathy, you can also see how predictable psychopaths are. The texts and emails that I have been privy to in twenty-five years of practice could have all been written by the same person. The context and circumstances might be different, but the message and the themes are always the same.

Psychopaths (and anyone with a personality disorder) cannot help but do harm. You cannot be friends with a shark, or a Bengal tiger. You cannot make them empathise with you, and if they are hungry, you cannot negotiate your way out of being eaten. They are what they are. A relationship with a psychopath can never be equal, or safe. To psychopaths others are either a resource, a supplier, or nothing. Everything is always about them. In healthy relationships we share physical resources, time, energy, love, and attention with others. Psychopaths do not share.

Control is the ‘meat’ that human predators consume. Whether psychopaths murder, rape, torture, control their victim’s movements, finances, or freedoms, it is the control itself that they crave. Psychopaths are always hungry, and are always on the lookout for control. Once they corner their chosen victim, they pounce. It has nothing to do with who you are, how you look, how smart or educated you are, how you behave, or how much you try to accommodate them. Psychopaths do not understand why others object to what they do. They have no empathy, and cannot reflect, which means they cannot ‘see themselves’. They do not have the ability to feel concern about the impact they have on others.

Like all predators, psychopaths are driven only by their survival instinct. They worry about being caught, because they do not want to be stopped from hunting. Do not confuse their fear of being caught with a conscience, some innate understanding of right and wrong, or a capacity to feel remorse. If you trap a psychopath and confront him or her with their actions, they get angry, or they might play the victim. They genuinely think it is unfair that they are stopped from being who they are, and they genuinely do not get why anyone would try to stop them. It is hard to grasp this, when you look at a human face that can even be attractive. We routinely project ourselves on others and assume that everyone feels the way we do. Unless we pay close attention to everything, we can be easily fooled.

Psychopaths can do nothing without enablers, collaborators, and by-standers

The BBC is acting all pious and righteous now. It rightfully gives a platform to Al-Fayed’s victims, and its reporters, and presenters are saying all the right things. But as more details of the story emerge, I have to consider that at least some in the BBC, (and other media channels) knew something was going on in Harrods while it was happening. To be clear, I doubt that they have just discovered it.

Psychopaths are as dangerous as they are predictable, but they cannot do anything on their own. Blaming the psychopaths among us is convenient, but every member of society is responsible for their own actions and choices. Psychopaths always have help, and some form of shielding and protection from being discovered, and from scrutiny. Victims, of course, are never the problem. The problem we face comes from those human beings who know what is going on, but either directly enable it, or say nothing, and allow things to continue. Israel has been acting with impunity, because its ‘friends’, the US, UK, Australia, Germany, France, and the mainstream media are actively helping it by furthering its narrative, helping it cover up its real intentions for the Palestinians, and shielding it from scrutiny. Our own law enforcement agencies, and politicians try to curb protest and assault pro-Palestinian supporters, instead of calling Israel out for what it is and what it does.

Why would human beings say nothing, and allow atrocities to continue, even when those atrocities are so obvious? Are they all psychopaths themselves? Some might well be. For example, Israel’s ‘elite’ military units, the ones committing the genocide in Gaza, and in the Colonised West Bank have a disproportionate number of members with psychopathic traits. They are specifically selected for lack of empathy and emotion through elaborate and complex selection processes developed by psychiatrists and psychologists working for the Israeli military. (What is going on in the heads of these highly educated professionals?)

Each time BBC Radio 4 allows some Israeli collaborator to speak about Israel’s ‘point of view’, I change the channel. I know the BBC would argue that they are just trying to be ‘balanced’. But how can there be balance where there is abuse? There is no ‘balance’ in the reporting of Al-Fayed’s depraved crimes. Nor should there be.

The BBC certainly knows what Israel has been up to, but its bosses still maintain the immoral and inexcusable pretence of ‘balance’ in reporting. So many staff members, reporters, and others sit at their desks making a conscious decision to remain silent. There are many like them everywhere. Men and women working in pubic and private organisations know when the organisations they work for are involved in human rights violations, murder, environmental destruction, political persecution and corruption, or even in covering up workplace bullying. These people continue to sell their time and work, continue to do their duties while turning a blind eye to what they help facilitate. They know who they are. These men and women can get together, start to say ‘no', and do the right thing. Media reporters could start doing what they know is right, despite their editors. When individuals in any position tolerate the intolerable, and allow it to continue, they cause untold harm and suffering. I do not care if they make deathbed confessions when the harm they enabled has already been done, and they are too old and out of the system to make any difference. I want them to act now.

We cannot continue to comfort ourselves with Hollywood movies, where the good guys win and the bad guys get their comeuppance, while in the real world it is the opposite. We love these movies, because in the real world the bad guys are in charge, and they always win. It is time that ordinary people drop their blinkers, their excuses, and rationalisations, and stop compartmentalising. People who witness, or know about bad behaviour, corruption, and immorality, or who work for corporations or government organisations that harm their own people, or others have a duty to speak out. There is power in numbers. It is not fair to expect just one whistleblower to come forward. Those who do are amazing, and deserve respect. But they should not be alone. They have to be supported by all their colleagues who know what they know. We cannot negotiate with psychopaths or legislate against their predatory behaviour. Psychopaths cannot change, and they will always find ways around any legal checks and balances we may put in place. The answer lies in not enabling psychopaths when they show themselves. When they do, people have a duty to expose them. Only by making a huge fuss about injustice, corruption, and human rights violations, not only in street protests but inside organisations, will we begin to change the world. We do not need to ‘cull’ psychopaths. We need to disable them and render them powerless by making sure their potential victims are protected, and by not colluding with the systems and cultures that they create and foster.

When we come across an abusive system, our priority should be to protect victims, and dismantle the power structure that holds them captive and gradually destroys them. I do not care what the BBC’s own, highly paid and powerful Huw Edwards has to say to justify, or explain the dozens of child sexual abuse images on his computer. I do not care what Israel has to say, nor do I give a damn about the views, or excuses of those who aid and abet Israel. But I do want to know what goes through the minds of those who say nothing, when they know exactly what is going on around them.

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