Born to Destroy … Psychopathy in Females, a Life Story

Born To Destroy: Psychopathy in Females: A Life Story

Born to Destroy is a riveting and nuanced journey through the interpersonal dynamics and life course of the female manifestation of psychopathy and the impact the disorder has within the family. (For more details, go to www.winisbooks.com.) Thank you, Winifred Rule for so courageously sharing these necessary details, connecting them with science and providing this opportunity to more fully understand psychopathy within the context of ordinary living and the years of mental minutiae and calamity that characterize the life course of psychopaths and the people they live, work and interact with.
– Jacqueline Helfgott, Ph.D., Professor/Chair of the Criminal Justice Department at Seattle University

Winifred Rule’s Born to Destroy, the story of her psychopathic mother and psychopathic sister, is not only a masterful fusion of intimate memoir, scholarly commentary, and compelling narrative, it is a literary achievement, a tour de force. I don’t recall ever reading a personal history related to the psychopathy of others, much less one that so vividly dramatizes the bewilderment and pain of growing up in a family dominated by such perverse egos. Among the wonders of this instructive tale is the ultimate triumph over the cruelty and evil of her mother and sister by the author who eventually is able to share support, love, and trust with her own husband and children.
– Sidney Offit, Author; Curator Emeritus, George Polk Awards; Member of the Faculty, New School University and Hunter College

Born to Destroy by Winifred Rule belongs on the bookshelf of every clinical psychologist and psychotherapist who deals with families and the abusive dynamics that plague them. Masterfully written, it is the true life story of Wini and her psychopathic mother, a woman who abused her daughter from early childhood through her marriage to a loving, decent man, through the birth of grandchildren and beyond. To survive the parentage of a psychopath is a stellar achievement. Born to Destroy is proof that Wini has not only survived, but triumphed.
– Paul Babiak, Ph.D., author of Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths Go to Work. His work has been featured in countless news and media outlets including the New York Times, Washington Post and Harvard Business Review.

This book is a compelling and unforgettable reminder that not all psychopaths are men. The female psychopath walks among us. She may charm like a songbird, but will sting like a scorpion.
– J. Reid Meloy, Ph.D., author of The Psychopathic Mind; Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, University of California, San Diego

A powerful, moving, insight-filled story about one woman’s life with a psychopathic mother and sister. Packed with tension, drama and hope, Born to Destroy is a book you will never forget.
– Betty Kelly Sargent, veteran book and magazine editor and published author. The former editor-in-chief of William Morrow, she has also held positions as executive editor of Harper Collins, executive editor of Delacorte Press, and fiction and books editor of Cosmopolitan Magazine.

Winifred Rule’s Born to Destroy offers her readers a set of “lab notes,” as it were, on the mystery of the psychopathic personality: the who, the how and the why of this condition. From within her own family, Rule describes psychopathic behavior, helping readers to formulate anew a question long debated between religion and behavioral science: Is the demonic necessarily present in the psychopathic?
– Rev. Dennis McManus, Ph.D., Professor, Georgetown University and St. John’s
Seminary, Boston