This is not an informational post. I wish to cover certain events publicly for the record.
In this blog I have occasionally discussed a therapist who I consider to be mentally ill, to be a rigid narcissist (one of Scott Peck’s mentally ill evil of his book ‘People of the Lie’). I had an old friend who had four sessions a week with this therapist (let’s call her Nancy) (Nancy Becker, LCSW, http://nancybeckertherapy.com/, https://therapists.psychologytoday.com/rms/name/Nancy_Becker_LCSW_New+York_New+York_145736) including group therapy. Any group therapy run by a therapist with a denied personality defect will become something of a cult in celebration of that defect. This defect also lead her to admit psychopaths to the group. “Treating” psychopaths in group therapy with non-psychopaths is like throwing a piranha into a goldfish bowl. For this I believe she should lose her license and her normal clients should consider suing her for malpractice. Furthermore this therapist came from a therapy cult background, the Sullivanian Fourth Wall theater as I recall.
Anyway the practice is in my neighborhood. In the normal course of a week I will walk by their building 3-4 times (it’s on Broadway). I never interact with them in any way. I haven’t seen my old friend (an ex) in many years. However there seems to be something terribly wrong now.
A couple days ago I ran into a senior associate of this therapy group in a grocery store, actually her husband, let’s call him Steve (Steven Cope, LCSW, http://www.stevencope.com/, http://www.yelp.com/biz_photos/steven-cope-lcsw-new-york), who is a therapist himself. He seemed considerably agitated, even fearful, at this meeting, which is bizarre. I have also noticed that the group’s “circle” has been reacting to me bizarrely. Perhaps it springs from an event of some months ago.
On that occasion, I was walking some twenty blocks downtown to do some shopping. I absently noticed that I ran into a particular individual 3 or 4 times on the trip downtown. When on the trip back uptown I kept running into him again, I realized he was following me. If I looked at him he would suddenly turn to a crosswalk or go into a store. But then he’d be back again. I also realized that he had a confederate shadowing us on the other side of the street.
There was nothing professional about them. The one near me had sort of a long nose, pointy face, strange eyes and an extreme arrogance of attitude. I considered him to be an immediately obvious psychopath. The other seemed like a normal young guy, brown haired, with a beard (I think).
When we were back uptown within a block or so of the therapist’s location I stopped and confronted him silently. They disappeared when I took out a camera phone. At that point I then took a picture of a car nearby that I knew was affiliated with the group in case the car had been used by them to jumpfrog my position during my shopping expedition. I had previously seen the car parked on my block on days I had scheduled comings and goings, going by slowly when I ate at outdoor cafes, shadowing me at walking pace a block, block and a half back as I walked, etc.
The above is the whole event (though I did run into the psychopath in a totally different part of town that I regularly visit a week or so later). Afterwards, I also began noticing that their “circle” in their immediate neighborhood responded to my presence completely out of proportion.
So my conclusion is that these two were therapy group members of this therapist. I don’t know what the psychopath had to say to others, but it is a cause for worry. I wish to turn down the volume, there is absolutely nothing going on here, absolutely no reason for anyone to be fearful of me. The above account is the sum total, but psychopaths will tell any lie they can get away with and I don’t know what these two claimed. I’m totally guessing, I just don’t know. I have no idea why Steve was agitated at my presence.
Also angry psychotic level narcissists can be extremely dangerous. I don’t want any further developments.
One of the reasons I took up writing this blog was to hold up a big ‘BACK OFF’ sign to petty psychopathic harassment. It doesn’t seem to be working.
The Path Whisperer 
“The one near me had sort of a long nose, pointy face, strange eyes and an extreme arrogance of attitude. In other words I considered him an immediately obvious psychopath.”
Yeah, that makes sense.
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I certainly did not come to that conclusion based on any small list of traits or actions, rather based on the totality of his impression on me. I am as sure that the sky is blue as I am that this individual is a psychopath, and not a mild one. I rarely claim to be presenting proof of anyone’s psychopathy, and certainly not to anyone who has failed to recognize the many psychopaths they’ve met in their own life. I will present cues, however — if they speak to the reader, great, if not, perhaps they will in the future, perhaps not.
Oliver Sacks said “speech – natural speech – does not consist of words alone . . . It consists of utterance – an uttering-forth of one’s whole meaning with one’s whole being” (the President’s Speech, https://pathwhisperer.wordpress.com/2011/02/06/i-told-you-i-told-you-i-told-you-the-subconscious-is-where-its-at-ronald-reagan-was-a-sociopath/). The same could be said of all things human, walking, standing, etc. People with eyes to see and ears to hear do pick up quite a bit.
This individual also recognized and hated me.
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I had never heard of the Sullivanians. After googling them, I have to say there seems to be nothing different between them and thousands of other crazy cults which have practiced down through the ages. Psychotherapy is no less a belief system than any other religion and charismatic individuals can modify it to attract adherents just as they can with any other belief system.
Let me express my empathy with your situation. Personally, I wouldn’t be worried. It just seems they like to project bravado. Although psychopaths can be violent, a great many of them are simply content playing head games.
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