6. Psychopathic Punishments and The Aesthetics of Survival

Punishments are central to the core behaviour of psychopaths, whether it be triangulation or more brutal captivities and bodily harm. Since the prey of the monster the psychopath always lives within a captivity of silence, whether wittingly or or unwittingly, finding an expressive outlet in which to encode our sorrows and relational grief is essential for survival. In this episode I share a recording of poetry and cello, where despair is an obvious theme, albeit shrouded within images of natural beauty.

During my captivity with Dr. Mario (the main antagonist in these episodes), I compiled many manuscripts of poetry, couching my pain within the beauty I glimpsed in my surroundings. I wrote in this fashion in order to chronicle my life (troubled as it was), and simultaneously, obey the mandates of silence issued by my captor. Why the enigmatic style, you ask? It's because the monster always demands that his grotesque behaviours remain hermetically sealed within the relationship with his prime-target prey. Disobedience to this mandate incurs punishments.

We discuss the urgency of creative expression (albeit cryptic) within our captivity of silence. We do this in order to maintain a voice; in order to record life’s events, however distressing; in order to reify our time with the monster so as to not feel it has amounted to "wasted time". We also speak of the inadequacy of language to describe and discuss the experience of being drawn into a friendship or alliance with a narcissist, sociopath, only to find at some point in the future, that he’s been an imposter: the simulacrum of authentic human encounter.

Whether you are an unwitting accomplice of the psychopath, or his prime target, the entire drama of meeting a monster, becoming infatuated with him (discussed in earlier episodes), being punished by him in a variety of ways, and experiencing inexorable betrayal by him, defies adequate conversant terminology.

I speak of my foray to David’s studio to record poetry with cello; how the immersion within art, afforded hours of lessened physical pain. I reinforced the way disobedience to one’s captor incurs punishments. Hence, Dr. Mario, had many genial phone calls with David while I was there, he was insidiously reinforcing to him that my so-called psychiatric disorder presented as an illusion of physical pain--the anguish of experiencing triangulation.

We speak of how one in every four people we meet will, to some extent, lean toward a narcissistic personality disorder; how our encounter with these people is inescapable; how we will know the drama, chaos, and betrayal of this ersatz human affiliation on many occasions throughout our living.

We speak of how our expressivity, within ensnarement, becomes a seminal composition that will assist others in a similar predicament, as, there is a paucity of literature afforded the voice of the psychopath’s prey.