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Lies and Liars: How and Why Sociopaths Lie and How You Can Detect and Deal with Them
Lies and Liars: How and Why Sociopaths Lie and How You Can Detect and Deal with Them
Lies and Liars: How and Why Sociopaths Lie and How You Can Detect and Deal with Them
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Lies and Liars: How and Why Sociopaths Lie and How You Can Detect and Deal with Them

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Approximately 12 million Americans, or one in twenty-five, are sociopaths. But what does this statistic mean? What exactly is a sociopath? What do they do to be labeled as such? And how many people are affected by them? While everyday lying has become acceptable and even socially necessary, it is often difficult to discover when someone is manipulating you through lies or other actions. Since a sociopath has no conscience, he or she feels no remorse about piling lie on top of lie until, eventually, the façade comes crashing down and he or she is exposed.

When Dr. Scott was warned about a film producer she had hired, she confronted the woman, only to be fed explanations and excuses. Eventually, Scott found that she had been the victim of this sociopath for five years, along with many others. In this book, she delves into medical research on sociopaths as well as interviews with sociopaths and victims alike to provide a comprehensive picture of this mental disorder. Lies and Liars also includes information about:

The types of lies told by sociopaths in different situations
The relationships between sociopaths and victims
Recognizing when someone is lying
How to deal with a suspected or discovered sociopathic liar

The odds are very high that you know a sociopath already, so figure out what signs to look for to prevent yourself or your loved ones being manipulated or harmed.
LanguageEnglish
PublisherSkyhorse
Release dateMar 1, 2016
ISBN9781634503884
Lies and Liars: How and Why Sociopaths Lie and How You Can Detect and Deal with Them
Author

Gini Graham Scott

Gini Graham Scott, Ph.D., CEO of Changemakers Publishing and Writing, is an internationally known writer, speaker, and workshop leader. She has published over 50 books with major publishers on various topics and has written over 3 dozen children's books. Her published children's books include Katy's Bow, Scratches, The Crazy Critters First Visit, and Where's the Avocado? published by Black Rose Writing. She has published 8 children's books through her company Changemakers Kids and is a member of the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators. She does workshops on self-publishing and creativity. She also helps clients write books as a ghostwriter and self-publish or find publishers and agents. Her websites are www.changemakerspublishgandwriting.com and www.ginigrahamscott.com.

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    Lies and Liars - Gini Graham Scott

    INTRODUCTION

    Ihadn’t intended to write a book about sociopathic liars. But after I spent two years living in L.A. to get into the film business, I found myself drawn into the web of a woman I’ll call Sylvia who claimed she could produce and direct my script. She continually lied about it for five years, until I discovered the truth. At the same time, she victimized an associate, Rick, after she and her partner shot a film for him in another country and refused to give him the film. When he called me to declare Sylvia and her partner were criminals, she told me increasingly bizarre stories about Rick’s connections to a criminal underworld that were after her and her partner, so she feared for her life and put the film under lock and key.

    At the time, I believed her. How could someone who presented herself as a successful producer invent such stories? But in time, as explanations and excuses mounted about the delay in editing my film, I began to question and finally doubt her. When I spoke to others from the cast and crew, I uncovered an extensive pattern of secrets and lies, and I realized I had missed many warning signs along the way. I had become the victim of a sociopathic liar, as had my business associate and many cast and crew members.

    This experience inspired my research into sociopathic liars, who are at the extreme end of a continuum of liars, and according to varying research accounts represent about 1–4 percent of the population. A higher perspective of sociopaths may be in certain fields, where there is pressure to gain success, so deception and trickery may be part of one’s repertoire to achieve this end.

    In 1994, I published a book called The Truth About Lying about how and why people lie and how to detect and deal with their lies. That book was inspired by several people lying to me in various business dealings, and in writing the book, I developed a Lie-Q Test to score people on the how much they lied. This led to a continuum of liars in four major categories—the self-proclaimed Model of Absolute Integrity who almost never lies, the Real Straight Shooter who normally doesn’t lie, and the Pragmatic Fibber and Real Pinocchio, with a greater aptitude for lying. These four categories included almost everyone—and everyone lies—and for most people, lying was largely a practical way to get along in the world and have better relationships with others. Virtually no one was a compulsive or sociopathic liar.

    After my book published, lying became even more common and acceptable after President Clinton put the face of a popular politician on everyday lying due to accusations about the Monica Lewinsky affair in 1998. Initially he protested I did not have sex with THAT woman, though ultimately Clinton came clean and followed these revelations with an apology tour, which put him back in the nation’s good graces. In turn, this saga of lying and forgiveness increased public awareness about lying and led to a new interest in lying, generally from books and articles about detecting lies and those revealing the extent of lying in public and political life.

    Later, reality TV and game shows like Survivor and Big Brother helped to make lying not only acceptable but a necessary strategy to win the game through manipulating others and lying when necessary to remain on the show. The winning approach was lying strategically to create alliances while betraying others and offending the least number of people who might vote against one in the end.

    Yet, while everyday lying has become more common and acceptable, there is a great distinction between pragmatic, socially acceptable lies and the big lies which become a crime and result in deep public scorn—as in the Bernie Madoff case, or the frequent and guiltless lies of a sociopath, which harm others. Such a sociopath is commonly charming and articulate, so it can be hard to detect the lies, which makes it more devastating when the lies are uncovered, after a close personal or long-term business relationship. These lies can be especially harmful when they lead unaware victims to actions based on these lies, such as by investing or loaning large sums of money based on false assurances and promises.

    After an introductory discussion on the research findings about sociopaths, the book features interviews with sociopaths and victims with a focus on sociopaths who have been successful in everyday life.

    To this end, the book covers the following topics:

    • my personal experiences with lying

    • understanding the reasons for lying

    • the lies sociopathic liars tell in different situations

    • the relationship of victims and sociopaths

    • the experiences of victims who have lived or worked with sociopathic liars

    • recognizing when someone is lying

    • determining how to deal with a suspected or unmasked sociopathic liar.

    PART I:

    INTRODUCING THE LIES OF A SOCIOPATH

    CHAPTER 1:

    LIES AND DAMNED LIES IN L.A.

    How could I miss all the signs that I was dealing with a sociopathic liar, when I came to L.A. with high hopes of getting some of my scripts produced as films? Many warning signs were flashing, but I wasn’t aware of them since I was new to the industry and was new to the common behaviors and traits of a sociopath. Also, I naively wanted to trust and believe the best in others, though now I know to temper that approach with a more show me attitude. So by way of introduction, let this story serve as a cautionary tale for others.

    I should have recognized the first warning sign, when I met Sylvia, who claimed to be a successful producer at a 2007 film funding conference in L.A. where she was promoting a new film. I had just been to a workshop on how to raise less than $20,000 for a microbudget film shot in minimal locations. After I had the money for such a film, Sylvia expressed interest in helping me, and we met at a coffee shop near the freeway when I drove from L.A. to Oakland, where I lived at the time.

    Sylvia described being very successful in building a dozen health franchises to over $10 million in annual sales, although she claimed the company owner forced her out since he felt she was earning too much in commissions. So now she hoped to repeat this success in the film business. Moreover, she claimed she could call in some favors to make my low budget film look like a $200,000 film.

    Though I was impressed, in hindsight, I came to recognize many warning signs, the first one being that Sylvia never mentioned the company by name. But knowing little about the film business, I accepted what Sylvia told me as true and I imagined that her huge success in this other business might indicate she could turn my small investment into a successful film. Yet her claims should have been a warning, since successful lies often don’t include specifics one can check and verify. Plus sociopathic liars often embellish and exaggerate to show they are successful to persuade others to help them get what they want. And they may be eager to lie to place any blame for problems on others.

    In any case, wooed by Sylvia’s success claims, I agreed to move forward with her, and on my next trip to L.A. we worked out the agreement. Then again, I ignored any warning signs, including her persuading me to increase the budget to $40,000 with a $10,000 payment to herself, since she would be spending so much time on day-to-day production details. Still another warning sign was her telling me not to let anyone know about her $10,000 salary or the budget, since she would get about $200,000 in favors and make this look like a big budget film. Sylvia’s don’t tell requests were the beginning of a series of secrets and lies that are a common pattern for sociopaths, who create a web of lies to achieve their success.

    A few months later, casting began. I didn’t recognize still more warning signs, such as Sylvia’s conflicts with the more experienced directors to whom I introduced her in order to guide her as a co-director, since she had no credit directing a film before. But repeatedly, Sylvia declared that these directors were not as experienced as they claimed. She also now claimed that she had been a director on a recent film she was promoting, but didn’t get any credit because she made the film with her partner, who wanted full credit for himself and she gave it to him, supposedly because, It’s something you do for love, she said.

    So again I accepted her explanation, although I should have been suspicious about her changing story, and eventually, she became the sole director of my film, though I should have seen her inability to get along with other directors as another warning, since sociopaths often disparage others or make false claims about their experience to make themselves look good.

    More delays and excuses occurred: when we were in the midst of casting, she repeatedly claimed she was waiting for a cinematographer with a red camera to return from a film project abroad. But after six months when he allegedly returned, she said he had another job, and she needed to find another camera person, which took several more months.

    Meanwhile, I referred a business associate, Jerry, to Sylvia’s partner for a rewrite in return for a 10 percent referral fee. But that led to still more lies in which she disparaged Jerry as a pest who repeatedly called for advice, until she finally told him to stop calling, which I later discovered was part of a strategy to separate me from my associate—a divide and conquer strategy that sociopaths frequently use in power games.

    There were more lies when Sylvia claimed she had to visit a sick sister back East, which I later discovered was a ruse to cover up a trip to film a documentary for Jerry for three weeks in Indonesia with her partner. But after she returned and casting of the film continued, the big reveal came a few months later, when Jerry called in a panic claiming that Sylvia and her partner were criminals (You’ll read more about Jerry’s story in Chapter 4.)

    I was stunned. But when I was ready to cancel the project, Sylvia had a series of explanations after apologetically admitting the lie. Among them, she told me: My partner didn’t want me to tell you about the script, because he didn’t want to pay the commission …I didn’t give Jerry the film, because my partner and I wanted to edit it ourselves, since we feared Jerry would edit it very cheaply, which would hurt our reputations. In other words, she blamed the lies on her partner and Jerry, though I should have realized this attempt to blame others and not take responsibility herself was another warning sign.

    To further convince me, Sylvia had several people contact me to say she was a good person and that I should forgive her for this one lapse. Only later did I find out that Sylvia had gotten an associate to make these calls or maybe she even did herself, since she was an actress. So she used a lie to get out of being caught in another lie, building an expanding edifice of lies to explain away previous lies when she had been caught.

    Looking back, I realize I should have recognized her use of wilder and wilder lies to back up her story as a sign of a sociopath weaving an increasingly elaborate web of lies. But I didn’t know what to look for at the time.

    Over the next week, I went through a crisis of who to believe, though I should have recognized Sylvia’s wild story as an even more elaborate lie. But she seemed so apologetic and sincere about wanting to make my film, even offering to take no more salary to repay me for the commission I should have gotten. Plus I had already paid her $7500, and she was starting to cast the film, which she still claimed would look like a million dollars because of all the favors she would get.

    So now that the past lies were exposed and seemingly atoned for, albeit by the erroneous phone calls made to me, I thought she would continue on the project in a spirit of truth and forthrightness. But, boy, was I ever wrong, though I didn’t realize this for over four years.

    To make a long convoluted story short, among other things, Sylvia began to change the script on the set, including turning an agent from a supporting character into a lead to give her partner a leading role. And worse, she turned my suspense thriller about a wanna-be producer who goes on a revenge vendetta against a former mentee into a romantic comedy narrated by a dog. Why? Because she bought a puppy for a brief kidnap scene and later claimed this would be good for the film, since a Disney executive liked films with dogs (although she never actually spoke to a Disney executive). If nothing else, she had the sociopath’s great skill of building a facade of lies to cover up preceding lies, and she told them in such a convincing way that they actually seemed very believable.

    When it came time to edit the film, she delayed with more explanations, excuses, and reasons why she couldn’t show me the film, such as claiming that a Russian editor with the original footage on his hard drive had to go overseas for a few months to work on a project, so she couldn’t find another editor and had to wait for his return. But when he came back, he had another job. Another story was that she had put in $80,000 of her own money to finish the film, but no longer had any money to pay an editor. Then, she fell down an escalator, and was in a cast for six months. And when she gave someone $1,000 to get a loan, he disappeared, so she lost that money, and a prospective editor from her office proved unreliable. After about three years of this, when I offered to have someone in the Bay Area edit the film, now that I had written and produced forty short videos locally and knew more about what I was doing, she found an excuse to turn down my offer, claiming that she didn’t want to give me the film, because she was afraid I would steal it from her and because she had to be with the editor to guide him. Again, I should have seen through her lies and confronted her, but I kept giving her the benefit of the doubt.

    Meanwhile, as I became part of the Bay Area film community, I finally woke up and began to doubt Sylvia’s excuses. At last I gave her an ultimatum to finish the film by the next American Film Market in November 2013 or return the money I paid and keep the film for herself.

    That was the beginning of the end of what had been a long charade. Not surprisingly, I didn’t hear from Sylvia again about the film—a disappearing act that often happens when sociopaths realize that they have been exposed and the game is up. Then, a month later, I discovered that Sylvia had posted online a trailer for her romantic comedy narrated by her dog under another title, so she was claiming my film as her own. And later I realized this was one more ploy of a sociopath—having no conscience about taking something away from someone or betraying to reach one’s goal—in this case, recognition for directing her first film.

    Eventually, after I wrote Sylvia a series of letters about breach of contract, copyright infringement, and a request to take down the trailer with no response, I sent a take-down notice to the website host who took it down. Since then, nearly a year later, neither the trailer nor the website have reappeared anywhere again. And later, when I contacted the cast and crew members from the set from five years before, and called Jerry to reestablish a connection, I discovered the many ways in which Sylvia had repeatedly lied to them too—including telling everyone that the line producer had left the film after five weeks because he embezzled from the film, when there was nothing to embezzle, and he had actually left because of health reasons and because he was tired of driving Sylvia around like a personal servant, because she had no car. She even told everyone she couldn’t finish the film because I didn’t give her any of that money that I had promised.

    So the experience was an up close and personal look at how sociopaths operate, using lies to manipulate people to do what they want and separate people from each other, so they can’t compare stories or work together.

    Why didn’t I recognize the signs sooner? Because that’s the problem with dealing with a sociopath. Outwardly, they seem so normal, and are often very charming and articulate, so you don’t suspect anything is wrong. And taken individually, the lies might seem reasonable, such as claiming an illness, accident, or delay because someone is out of town. Then, too, if you question anything, the sociopath always has a ready response, though it will most likely be another lie. And we commonly want to trust the people we are with, especially when they offer to do nice things for us or give us surprise gifts, such as when Sylvia brought me gifts from time to time. But gift giving is often part of a sociopath’s charm to ingratiate him or herself, so a potential victim will more readily respond to their manipulations and accept their lies.

    Also, reflecting the two-faced nature of the sociopath, Sylvia tried to be very helpful while trying to turn me against Jerry. For example, she did research on the Internet like a private investigator to find things to discredit him and show how little he knew about the film business.

    So what can you do when you have suspicions that one has become a victim? In many cases, apart from ending the relationship, there isn’t much you can do after the fact. The key to best dealing with a sociopath, as discussed, is to look for warning signs in the first place; then carefully disengage, so you don’t become a victim of still more lies or a revenge vendetta for rejecting or exposing the sociopath.

    In my own case, beyond sending out a take-down notice so Sylvia couldn’t use any of the material I had paid for based on my copyrighted script and material, I found little I could do, as did Jerry when he tried to get back his film or the money he had paid Sylvia and her partner to make it. When we each spoke to the police, the officers told us the case sounded more like a civil matter, because any claims originated in a contract, and the lawyers we spoke to weren’t willing to take the case on contingency. It would be an expensive case to pursue and it was uncertain if Sylvia or her partner had any money to collect. Also, the media would have little interest in the story, since Sylvia and her partner weren’t famous, nor were we. Thus, sociopaths often can readily continue to do what they are doing, since after unraveling their web of lies and confronting them, one has little civil or criminal recourse. So they can easily go on to exploit the next victim.

    Thus, I view my experience and that of my business associate as a cautionary tale with lessons on understanding how a sociopath operates in order to avoid being manipulated and victimized by a sociopath and their lies, while they may outwardly seem like a great friend, partner, or business associate.

    I have written this book to make others aware of how the sociopath acts and lies, so readers can recognize the sociopaths in their lives and better deal with them. These sociopaths can be almost anyone—from a friend to a boss to a lover—and encountering and dealing with sociopaths is like traveling on a boat through shark-filled waters. You don’t want to fall out, or let the shark climb in or destroy the boat.

    CHAPTER 2:

    THE LANGUAGE OF LYING

    At its heart, lying is based on using statements, and actions supported by those statements, to mislead others to produce desired results—from getting money, jobs, position, and power to personal relationships and love. To this end, some lies may be told to facilitate everyday interactions,

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