How and Why I Started Working in Pathology

I get asked often why I ‘chose’ to work in pathology. For me, I didn’t choose pathology, pathology chose me. Sounds trite and catchy, but it isn’t anything I went looking for and if I knew then what I know now, I probably wouldn’t have opted to even explore the field.

Over the years I have continued to try to teach others that ‘Pathology costs normal people everything.’ It has led me to ponder the question ‘so why would a normal person even stick around?’ As you well know, people end up with pathologicals by ignorance of the disorder and/or curiosity. This is true for therapists as well. Most of us end up ‘being’ in the field of pathology long before we realize it and or even know what pathology is.

I have had many professionals with far more credentials than I have ask me ‘How is it that you so understand this issue about personality disorders and pathology?’ So far in my career, I’ve trained other psychiatrists, medical doctors, ARNP’s, therapists of all kind and clergy about the long term effects of pathology on relational health. I have been a consultant to other therapists and agencies, written books about it which has been read in most major countries of the world, done countless TV and radio shows, and run a website and counseling practice based on it. It’s been a message I’ve touted for 20 years. But to understand why I understand it, we need to rewind the video tape.

My Sister

My sister is 4 years older than I am but since high school I have been ‘charged’ with watching her. I remember when my parents went to Vegas for a weekend I was 15 and a sophomore in high school and my sister was 19 and out of high school. My parents told me I was in charge of the house and ‘her’ and to let nothing happen. HA! Their wheels left the driveway at 6pm and by 6:10 pm the keg arrived and about two dozen people who didn’t leave our house for days. The first night I awoke to a naked guy standing over my bed. I packed my bag and went to my grandmothers leaving my sister in charge of her own fate.

Years earlier when I was four or five years old, I realized my sister was not like other people’s sisters. I also noticed we didn’t have a relationship like most sisters had. Well, we didn’t have a relationship at all. In all the years we slept in one bedroom together I can’t recall any conversations we had. While under hypnosis I told the hypnotist that I was an only child. What I do remember is her hiding in the bedroom closet with a rubber witch mask on and jumping out and scaring me while I was asleep.

I remember her pushing me down the stairs and my head becoming impaled in the door latch which required a head full of stitches.

I remember her locking me in my mother’s bedroom so she could make out with a guy in the basement. The only way out was to kick the window out with my foot. I almost lost my foot in that accident—requiring stitches and concerns that my Achilles tendon might have been cut.

I remember her pushing me down our steep driveway during one of my first times on roller skates.

I remember her hitting eight cars in one night when she had been drinking.

I remember her going to rehab, failing, going to rehab, failing. I remember her going to jail, and jail, and now jail again.

Mostly I remember her as having almost no affect—no emotion. You could talk to her and she might not even notice you spoke. She never made eye contact and only had one friend in grade school. Once we moved, she never made female friends and her only age-related interactions were to sleep with guys as soon as she met them or drink and drug with them.

By some miracle, she gained and maintained sobriety for 20 years. I waited for the positive ‘personality change’ that often accompanies recovering addicts. Her affect never changed. She never made friends. She worked minimum wage jobs and stayed home collecting hordes of pets.

Marriages came and went with little effort on her part to start them, keep them, or end them and seem unaffected by the end of them. She went from our parents house, to someone else’s and kept that pattern her entire live never living on her own. She didn’t have a checking account, didn’t have a driver’s license long or consistently and never seem interested in going anywhere or doing anything. Although she lived only 30 minutes away, she would show up at holidays with my mom and that would be the only time I would see her. She had babies and either aborted them or gave them away. When I had children, she had very little interest in them at all.

Then she relapsed back into drinking and her personality still didn’t change. She was still avoidant, dissociated, disinterested. She went through periods of homelessness which always resulted in my mother taking her back. It never seemed to faze her what it was doing to my mom or what the family thought about her behavior. Today, I don’t know where she is but I can tell you she’s still the same.

Since I was a child I wondered about her ‘oddness’ –her lack of attachment, lack of friends and interest, crushing inability to talk to others or even want to. After graduate school, I realized that my sister had a personality disorder. At the very least she is Schizoid and perhaps even a little sociopathic.

From under the age of five, I learned what a personality disorder in someone else ‘felt’ like—it wasn’t warm, it wasn’t compassionate, it was robotic and machine-like. It was cold and distant. It was strange. And I never forgot what that felt like.

My Step Grandmother

My dashing young looking grandfather was the spitting image of Jack La Lane—the exercise guru from the 1950’s. My grandfather was fit, handsome, with a head of dark hair. He was an engineer who had worked his way out of Alabama poverty to a nice life outside of the grip of the coal mines.

Despite his strong religious convictions, one day he divorced my grandmother. My mom and her sisters came to find out the reason why he got divorced was for a ‘black haired hussy’ who worked in the bank. He obviously was having an affair and quickly married her.

I was too young to know the real storyline behind the marriage but thought she was ‘prettier’ than my country grandma he had divorced. This one wore suits and high heels and red lip stick.

My grandfather began, for the first time in my life, to ‘ask’ that I spend a weekend at their house. I was uncomfortable with that and cried and didn’t want to go. He never wanted me to stay with him before, why now? I was sent anyway.

When my grandfather was outside gardening she would say things like “I’m not going to feed you while you are here and I don’t want you to tell him.” When my grandfather came in and asked if I had breakfast she would say “Yes, she’s already done” and would stare cold ice cubes into my soul when she said it. I could go the entire weekend without being fed.

I went to get dressed and found that my suitcase was ‘missing.’ All of my clothes and toys were ‘some how lost’ but would be returned if they were located. She ended my visit by locking me in the office with her and reading dark and scary ‘poetry’ to me so that I would understand ‘who my soul belonged to.’

One Christmas Eve the phone rang and I heard my mother gasp then dial my aunt. Our Christmas Eve plans were cancelled. My grandfather was mortified that she had been picked up for shop lifting and put in jail on Christmas Eve. He couldn’t understand it—he had plenty of money, why would she steal? This incident would be repeated over and over again—jailed for shop lifting. But it didn’t stop there, when they were invited to our home or other family members, she would steal the silver ware, an ash tray, a plate…anything that she could. She was found rifling through drawers, jewelry boxes, and closets while at other people’s homes. She was blowing through my grandfather’s money at a rapid pace and complaining there wasn’t more.

But there was more—it was called a life insurance policy. Lo and behold my healthy and fit grandfather became mysteriously ill. His health declined rapidly and he was put in the hospital. The doctors couldn’t figure out what was wrong with him.

The day I was forced to visit him at the hospital, my mom stopped at the nurse’s desk to ask about his progress. I continued on to his room and stood in the doorway watching ‘her’ slip a white powder substance under his tongue as he fought and twisted in bed. I watched her pinch his oxygen tubes to cut off his air. The doctors said they found a foreign substance in his body and unsure of its properties, felt he would be improving if it weren’t for ‘whatever’ this product was. She was never caught or prosecuted. My grandfather died in the preceding weeks. She sold the house, took the cash, and left the area.

I didn’t know ‘what’ she was but I always remembered what she felt like—something evil like I heard preached in Sunday school—the kind of feeling that makes you WANT to believe in God, the kind of feeling that leaves the hair sticking up on the back of your neck. I never forgot what that kind of disorder ‘felt’ like. My step grandmother was a psychopath.

My Father

My father began playing the trumpet at age two. It was too heavy for him to hold so they stood him on the dining room table and hung the trumpet from the chandelier with a chain. By age four he was on Vaudeville and partially supporting the family. My grandmother became an instant ‘stage mom’ with all the glory associated with hanging out with celebrities back stage.

By age seven he was in Julliard School of Music in New York touted as a child prodigy. He had a contract to be in a movie with Shirley Temple, was in a movie with Bing Crosby and went on to play with all the legendary jazz greats like Woody Herman, Frank Sinatra Jr, Tommy Dorsey, Duke Ellington and for presidential inaugurations. He was on the first 11 years of albums of James Brown’s. He worked with the famous Doris Day, Rosemary Clooney and all the up and coming stars of the 50s, 60’s and 70’s. He kept scrap books that were three inches thick of every event he ever performed at, every note or newspaper mention, every picture…every moment of his life was chronicled for all to see.

He went on to start the Jazz Studies Program at the University of Cincinnati, College Conservatory of Music which is now one of the top ten music schools in the country. He was an unbelievable musician—the kind of natural talent born in a child and flushed out early in life. His music was intense and effortless—his teaching ruthless and brilliant.

Then in the prime of my dad’s career when his brilliance was being recognized everywhere, when he was in such demand and could write his ticket to anywhere…he was murdered–stabbed to death outside of his own jazz club by a drunken, drugged up, motorcycle gang guy with a criminal history as long as he was tall. He plunged a knife into my dad’s stomach and ripped upward—a knife move called ‘Mafia style.’ The brilliant child prodigy bled out not only his life blood but his legacy in a grungy curb in a bad neighborhood. BAM—it was all over. I didn’t understand what would cause someone to ‘just kill someone so easily’ especially someone so famous. Pouring over court testimonies and transcripts I couldn’t wrap my mind around ‘what’ that was or ‘what’ causes people to be like that. I saw pictures of him and TV film footage. I never forgot what it felt like to experience such callousness and casualness about death—about murder. I never forgot what a psychopath felt like. Mr. M was a psychopath—now released from prison to casually kill again.

The Three Faces of Evil

While in high school I was chronically afraid of at least two or three ‘Faces of Evil’ that many of us in school feared. These were three guys who grew up together and went to the same grade school. Now grouped together like the saying of ‘A Cord of Three is Not Easily Broken’ – they were high school terrorists bent on destruction.

Mark was a tall, dark, and handsome charmer who easily hypnotized girls into taking their clothes off—even in the high school bathroom! He slept with adult women, rumored to have slept and dated teachers, he was never without a woman. He degraded them openly in front of others and would take them by the neck and push their face in his crotch in the hall ways of school. Then he’d lay his head back and cackle. He and the other two faces of evil would drag girls into the high school bathrooms and fondle them and then throw them back out into the hallways. You quickly learned which hallways were safe and which weren’t. Mark went on to play football and was admired for his prowl ness. A few years after high school, Mark was killed in a motor cycle accident driving 100 miles an hour, without a helmet and hit a concrete bridge overpass wall.

Mark’s friend, Tom was the second face of evil. Tom was wild, ruthless, and seemed to love the high of getting in trouble. He would hide milk gallons of beer in his locker and drink all day during school. He would take handfuls of downers at one time. At house parties on the weekend, he was the first to pick fights, hit girls, and jump from second story windows. He was crazy and with reason. His father was schizophrenic and eventually hung himself in their basement. Tom dropped out of high school and would accompany the other two faces of evil to downtown where they admitted to gang raping women in the alleys. Shortly after dropping out of high school, Tom was diagnosed as schizophrenic as well and hung him self in the same place his father had.

Keith, the third face of evil liked me. I was in a committed relationship with someone NORMAL throughout high school but it didn’t stop him from the feelings he had for me. Even by high school, Keith was a chronic alcoholic. At house parties where Tom was present, he never left my side and told me I wasn’t safe anywhere Mark or Tom was. Ironic protection from someone who raped women.

Keith could easily be enticed to enter into whatever they other two were doing. This came to include acts of violence, rapes, and eventually they gave Keith a gun and drove him to a liquor store to hold it up. Keith not following the plan didn’t just rob the store like he was suppose to, he took the clerk hostage at gun point. Then he fled state—to find ME! Keith was always saying if he could just ‘get it together’ he could be normal and date someone like me but he couldn’t figure out why it never happened. He fled to find me to tell me he would be going to prison soon. And he did—for six years.

When he emerged out of prison I got to see him. By then I had been through graduate school. We sat in the living room of his mother’s house and we talked openly about the psychopathy of all three of them. Lacking the insight that they are known for, he admitted that ‘something’ was wrong with the other two and his problem was alcohol. Twenty years later, he has been in and out of jail numerous times, has lost his drivers license for life, has never had a consenting relationship with a woman (only rape) and still lives at home with his aging mother.

Although I did not know what was wrong with these guys in high school, I never forgot the ‘stone cold’ eyes, the cackle of a power laugh, or the joy expressed about a rape. I never forgot what a gang of psychopaths felt like.

Hundreds of Clients

Since my youth in which I met so many pathologicals, I have been a mental health worker for 20 years in various capacities. I have had clients that were male socio/psychopaths. I have led Batterer Intervention Groups with abusers who some were also pathological. I have treated abused children and specialized in Personality Disorders with Secondary Trauma Disorders. I started and ran a large mental health center in Florida what specialized in Borderline Personality Disordered women which included Borderline women who had concurrent Dissociative Identity Disorder (previously known as Multiple Personality Disorder). I worked with the children of pathologicals. I worked with the partners of pathologicals.

I started and ran a long term treatment program for people with more than one personality disorder. I worked in hospital inpatient units, intensive outpatient programs, day treatments and domestic violence shelters. I have sat on Boards of non profits who worked with juvenile delinquents-turning-psychopaths. I can’t think of any population of personality disorders that I didn’t work with or come to understand. I worked with them in various treatment approaches and through every kind of treatment facility. I’ve run the gamut of working with victims and offenders, with personality disordered people and with their partners and children. I’ve circled around and around and around this issue of pathological love relationships: from the eyes of the disordered, from the eyes of the disordered families, and from their lovers and children.

I am 51 now. I have been learning about personality disorders since I was five years old—that’s 46 years of living with, experiencing, internalizing and noticing the aftermath of personality disorders.

People often say we treat what we are trying to cure in our own family of origin. That might be true. I may have come full circle in spending so much of my life in the work related to personality disorders just for me to say to myself “There isn’t much that can be done for my sister. I can’t help her but I do understand the disorder.”

Or to my dad “I forgive you. You gave out of what you had which wasn’t much. You might have been rich in talent but you were bankrupt in the ability to love.”

Or to the three faces of evil—the statement that most people aren’t brave enough to say out loud…”The world is slightly safer now that you are dead.”

That’s how I came to understand personality disorders so clearly—that the inability to grow to any emotional or spiritual depth, the inability to change and sustain change, and the inability to develop insight about how one’s behavior negatively affects others—clearly is the number one public health problem. It has led my crusade for public pathology education for the last 20 years.

I hope for the next 20 years I can still teach other how ‘not to forget what it ever feels like’ when you have faced some form of pathology. That’s how I learned, and that’s how you can learn too.

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