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President's Report for 2019
Hello again, and thanks for looking at our Annual Report. 2019 was a big year for the Foundation, a year of finishing things we had started long ago. Although we kept up our usual work of providing education about psychopathy and of trying to help people who have had experiences with people with psychopathic traits, it was two big long-term projects that took up a lot of our attention in 2019.
The first was our Kickstarter campaign. After years of preparation we finally launched the campaign near the end of 2019. It seems too harsh to say you have to wait until the 2020 annual report to find out what happened, so I will spill the beans: We were able to meet our goal of raising over $10,000 to help fund the development of two online courses. In fact, the final amount we raised was $11,602! [You can click here to see our Kickstarter video]
In case you have not heard about the courses, our plan is to create two online courses. Both are intended to provide education about psychopathy to mental health professionals, and we plan to make our first course available to the general public as well. This introductory course is designed to educate people about the nature and impact of psychopathy; it will cover the basics. We continue to believe that a lack of understanding about psychopathy is one of the biggest reasons that psychopathic people are so successful in doing as much harm as they do. People with psychopathy have a range of interpersonal, affective, and behavioral traits and they often exploit and deceive others causing a substantial amount of harm. But if we understand the signs and symptoms, we are in a much better position to protect and defend ourselves; that is the goal of this first course.
As you know, we post a lot of science-based material on our website. When you learn more about psychopathy, you are less likely to be fooled by psychopathic people – or at least more likely to figure out that someone has deceived you before it is too late. You are also more able to help those around you who are going through traumatic relationships.
The second course, specifically for mental health professionals, is designed to help them be more effective in helping victims and survivors recover from traumatic relationships with psychopathic people. We have learned from speaking with victims and survivors that many mental health professionals get virtually no formal training in psychopathy. Although this lack of education seems (almost) criminal to us, it may be partly because of all the controversies and misunderstandings about psychopathy. Unfortunately, psychopathy is STILL not specifically represented as a personality disorder in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (the DSM-5) published by the American Psychiatric Association.
This means that many professionals are only trained in the other personality disorders, the most closely related to psychopathy being antisocial personality disorder. [For a more specific discussion about the similarities and differences between psychopathy and antisocial personality disorder, and the ways in which the term sociopath is widely misused, we encourage you to read this resource written by Bob Hare and myself or this short resource: What is the difference between psychopathy, sociopathy, and narcissistic personality disorder?]
In this course, we cover: a) how victims and survivors are likely to present themselves to therapists and counselors; b) how to identify some of the cues that can help professionals know when to be suspicious that someone with psychopathic traits could be contributing to their clients’ suffering; and c) what are some of the support techniques that can help people recover and move on with their lives. It is our belief that this course will aid many therapists provide better help to their clients.
Again, THANK YOU! We are grateful to everyone who donated to the Kickstarter campaign, and we encourage you to stay tuned for the 2020 annual report for updates on our progress toward developing these courses!
The second big project that took a lot of work in 2019 was our new Membership Program. Although it was not fully debugged until April of 2020, the Membership Program was launched toward the end of 2019. The new system developed by Matthew Handy, a very talented website developer, allows people to join as members at the Regular level (for $25 a year), at the Silver level (for $100 a year), or at the Gold level (for $500 a year). If you click here, you can learn more about the perks we are giving out for membership at every level. While it is still early, it looks like the membership program is a hit. We plan to say more about it in the 2020 report, but, for now, I can say that many people have joined, and a lot of former members have decided to renew their memberships, as well. Without going into all the rewards of membership, I want to highlight one of the big perks of membership: access to our exclusive Members Page. We launched this in 2019 to provide access to additional resources on psychopathy, which we are posting there, (thanks to help from our European Aftermath volunteers), so the Members Page is another place to learn more about the nature and impact of psychopathy.
One of the first things we posted on the Members page was a conversation between Dr. Michael Koenigs and Dr. Rhonda Freeman on some of Dr. Koenigs’ recent neuroscience studies of psychopathy.
Putting together a Kickstarter campaign is much more complicated than one might assume, so I want to thank all of our volunteers who pitched in, especially Dr. Jacqueline Helfgott of Seattle University and several students there, Anastasiya, Phoebe, and Gillian, who helped to select the prizes and write and put together the short film we used, as well as Dr. Robert Schug of California State University, Long Beach, for recording the narration, and Dr. Rhonda Freeman who edited the video to make it look so good. Thanks to all!
Of course, we recognize that some people who would love to support us have lost much of their savings to people with psychopathic traits, and so we understand if you cannot afford to support us through membership. We have tried to make it relatively easy by keeping the cost so low for Regular membership. Thanks again to everyone who has joined!
Some of our other accomplishments from the year include:
✓Adding seven new resources on psychopathy to our website. For a more detailed look at what happened on the website during 2019, please click here. Four of these are summaries created by the Research Committee. They summarize some of the newest findings so that people without advanced degrees can learn about what scientific studies on psychopathy are finding. Click here for a more detailed listing of all the new resources. There were also two Ask-the-Expert columns by psychopathy researchers. Finally, there was another web conversation with a psychopathy expert. I spoke with Dr. Adelle Forth of Carleton University about some of her ground-breaking work on the experiences of people who survive relationships with psychopathic people. [Click here for links to that web conversation and our other web conversations with psychopathy experts]
✓ Responding to direct requests for help. During 2019, we received 49 requests for help. Click here for a report from our Help Committee about how we have responded to these requests. One thing we have noticed is that requests for help come in from a number of different countries, including some non-English-speaking countries. We know there can be people with psychopathic traits everywhere, so these requests from countries all over the world demonstrate the value of our translations into other languages; people are reaching out to us from so many places. We are very grateful for translators around the world who volunteer their time to make information about psychopathy accessible to people who do not speak English. If you are in a position to help us translate material to reach more people in need, please consider it.
✓We have not publicized this yet, but we also developed a Pinterest page in 2019. We have only a small number of pins on our board right now, but we want to do what we can to help people who use different social media platforms to learn about psychopathy. We will be adding more pins to the board in the years to come. [Click here to visit our Pinterest Board.]
✓Helping to recruit participants for a study of survivors. We believe research about how people with psychopathic traits impact the people around them is critical to reducing the harms they produce. What many people go through is tragic, but, if we can learn from it, and help educate others to protect themselves better, we can reduce the negative impact of psychopathy. We are happy when we can help researchers reach out to survivors in ways that protect their privacy. (Of course, we only help people carry out studies that have received approval from academic Institutional Review Boards.) We will be reporting on a summary of the findings of this study once the final results are available.
Again, thanks for your interest in the Aftermath Foundation. If you have been supporting us, your support is very much appreciated. If you would like to learn more about how to support us, please click here.
