3 Comments

1. 

   Anonymous

   28th February 2018 – 12:58 am

   What kind of therapy will help treat these disorders? My husband has these and we cannot find a psychologist that has been able to help him. What sort of approach / theory does a psychologist need to use? Please help me find someone for him.

   Reply
   • 

     Barbara Roberts

     28th February 2018 – 4:21 pm

     Hi, and welcome to the blog. 🙂

     So far as I know, and I learned this from Dr George Simon and other reading I have done as an interested lay-person, there is no specific therapy that treats the manipulative / malignant types of character disorders.

     You will find it helpful to read more of our articles about George Simon. Here is our George Simon tag.
     But I don’t suggest you get your husband to read any of our stuff. He is only likely to twist what he reads and use it against you.

     I also suggest you read our New Users’ Info page as it gives tips for how to guard your safety while commenting on the blog.

     And after reading the New Users’ Info page, I encourage you to look at our FAQ page.

     I changed your screen name to Anonymous, because it looked like you had given some of your real name. If you want us to change the screen name to something else, just email TWBTC (The Woman Behind The Curtain). Her address is twbtc.acfj@gmail.com.

     Reply
   • 

     Barbara Roberts

     6th August 2020 – 9:16 pm

     Hi Anonymous, thank you for commenting here, and may I extend you a warm welcome. 🙂

     If your husband was REALLY serious about wanting to change, he would not be expecting you to do the work of finding a treatment program or therapist that would help him. I encourage you to turn your focus away from trying to find help for your husband, and instead look at our Frequently Asked Questions to see what interests you there.

     Don Hennessy ran groups for groups for male intimate abusers, but stopped when he realised they were not doing much good and were dangerous in some cases.

     Dr George Simon Jr says that there is no ‘silver bullet’ treatment for character disorders. He says that character disordered people who manipulate others and use covert or overt aggression are extremely resistant to change.

     In his article Contrition Revisited, Dr Simon says: —

     A relationship partner whom you’ve confronted and who is truly contrite about their dysfunctional ways and really wants to make things better talks and acts in certain predictable ways.

     The contrite partner does not say things like: “I’ll go to therapy if it will make you happy,” or “I’m doing what you asked me so will you get off my back?” or “Can’t we just put things behind us and get on with life again… I said I was sorry a million times now…. What else do you want from me?!” Rather, he or she says things like: “I know I really messed up and I really hurt you,… I know I’ve got some issues to work on,… I want to make things better and make up for what I’ve done and I want to be sure I never do such things again,… I’ll do whatever it takes to get your forgiveness and trust.”

     And what real contrition looks like is action that’s in line with and backs up such words. Such action does not include trying to drag you into the therapy process from the beginning, using all sorts of manipulation and impression-management techniques (like I outline in “In Sheep’s Clothing”) to make the therapist wonder if you’re crazy for insisting your partner come in. Instead, real contrition in action means doing one’s own work ardently and faithfully and only when changes are really evident, inviting one’s partner into a conjoint process of relationship repair.

     Here is a quote from Dr Simon’s article How to Recognize True (and false) Contrition —

     A person’s character deficiencies inevitably spawn a host of irresponsible behavior patterns – bad habits that can become easily ingrained and, once rooted, extremely hard to break. Often, these dysfunctional patterns involve forms of mental, emotional, and even physical abuse within relationships. And while many of the character-impaired individuals I’ve worked with experienced periods of profound unhappiness and even a degree of regret over their actions, only a handful made truly significant changes in their once destructive behaviors. But those who truly did address their behaviors and succeeded in changing their lives for the better displayed a rare quality that seemed to make all the difference: genuine contrition. By definition, personality patterns are deeply ingrained and hard to modify. But that doesn’t mean a person can’t change. People can and do change every day. That is, genuinely contrite people do. This begs the question about what contrition really is and how to know when someone is really experiencing it.

     Here are some more links you want to further explore Dr George Simon’s material.

     Dr George Simon Jr — his internet writings and his books.

     Psychopath, Sociopath — is there a difference?

     Contrition, Repentance and Forgiveness

     Denial versus Lying

     Reply

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