Extremes

And she claimed it took no effort of will to hold him as he wept as he raped her. She just stared into his eyes lovingly the entire time. She stayed where he left her all day in the gravel, weeping and giving thanks to her religious principles. She wept out of gratitude, she says.

She had addressed the psychotic's core weakness, the terror of a soul-exposing connection with another human being. Nor is any of this all that different than a man sizing up an attractive girl at a concert and pushing all the right buttons to induce her to come home with him and lighting her cigarettes and engaging in an hour of post-coital chitchat, seemingly very content and close. But what he really wants to do is give her a special disconnected telephone number and never contact her again. And that the reason for this cold and victimizing behavior is that the very connection he had worked so hard to make her feel, terrifies him.