Courtney Love: A Perfect Case Study in Female Psychopathy?

It is rare that I sit down and write up a piece having just watched a movie. However, having just sat through the powerful and disturbing docudrama Soaked in Bleach,  which surrounds the endless inconsistencies involving the official suicide verdict of of Nirvana's Kurt Cobain on April 5, 1994, I wish to stress how potentially useful this film - and the scenes portrayed in it - can be in generating a universal awareness of psychopaths and how they function in terms of how they control and confuse others. 

The narrative of the story concerns the work of Tom Grant, a private investigator hired by Courtney Love, during the early days of April 1994, when Cobain had apparently gone missing following his release from a drug rehab in Los Angeles, and then his subsequent return to Seattle. Without spoiling the plot, I will point out several markers which Courtney Love demonstrates that may possibly indicate how she could be a full-blown psychopath. Assuming the information presented within Soaked in Bleach is accurate.

Her initial meeting in a hotel room with Grant, in which she is barely dressed and is using her - albeit 'skank'-level - sexuality to create an initial (gaslighting) state of confusion and a sense of distraction/unease within the private investigator's concentration levels from the outset. In the recording of the audio cassette tapes Tom Grant made with Love, in which he asked awkward questions, or when the investigation was not developing in the direction she required, Courtney Love uses many dysfluencies in her speech patterns, such as 'um' and 'ah', which has been shown in research into speech studies of criminal psychopaths, to be far more common with psychopaths than the population at large. The psychopath is 'buying time' to make up their next lie, and the almost constant stream of 'ums' and 'ahs' are interjected into their dialogue for this very purpose. In a highly charged emotional context - in this case involving the possible suicide of a spouse - a normal person does not 'buy time' in their speech patterns, as they are much too concerned and worried about the fate of their loved one.

NO CONTACT EVER AGAIN 

If there is one aspect of my work which I think has proven to be the most effective, it is popularisation of my constant mantra of NO CONTACT EVER AGAIN when dealing with a pathological or manipulative person. In the case of a psychopath, NCEA is extremely important as it puts the target in control for the first time. In the docudrama Soaked in Bleach we can see Courtney Love's reaction to Kurt Cobain putting NCEA on his wife and how psychotic - and in her case, potentially dangerous - she becomes as she realises that she has lost her emotional grip and psychological hold upon Kurt Cobain. I tell people time and time again that they can never 'get back' at a psychopath, but they can remove themselves from the psychopath's powerful psychological hold over them by going NO CONTACT EVER AGAIN. 

I cannot recommend the movie Soaked in Bleach enough and I state this as someone who is not a fan of Nirvana's music and my only motivation here is pointing out what a potentially useful case study the film provides in profiling Courtney Love's possible psychopathy, as well as encouraging people to watch this excellent production in and of itself.