Senility or Psychopathy?

Feb 2026

Unfortunately, I feel obligated to report some grave news concerning the status of my father. Like any family, we've had our ups and downs, but for most of my life, I considered him a basically good (if antiquated) person. But I have recently discovered that something is seriously off.

It is hard to determine whether he has legitimately lost his mind, or is just pretending (to conceal something -- at any cost), but the situation is bad enough that people are pretending it's not happening, so of course, it falls upon me to be the only one telling the truth again. For the record, I think it's both: I think he has serious cognitive defects but he's also manipulative and hiding things. I suppose it's a pretty scary problem and with diminished mental faculties, one may not understand how to handle it or even remotely care what the consequences are. But he also seems able to turn off the craziness when he believes it serves him to do so (to an extent).

Sometimes he is overly concerned with money, other times he shrugs off huge losses like it doesn't matter at all. Yet no part of his contradictory nature concerns him because he can just go sleep off every needless catastrophe. He has clearly given up. I think he sees the end coming and wants to take others down with him (to some extent, he is succeeding). Like the future doesn't matter anymore. So I need to speak up, and others should chime in too, so he can't just attack me for pointing out the consequences of a mind left to rot after retiring.

But be forewarned, it's not that easy: he's still rather effective at manipulating people (like my mother) and I doubt many will put in the hassle to figure out how true and catastrophic what I'm saying is. But it has to be said -- he's out of control. It's hard to summarize manipulation succinctly but his mechanism is essentially to steal the cake and give a sliver to charity to seem nice. Then he'll tell me to keep my mouth shut because he knows corrupt cops. Is it true? I don't know. He'll say anything. He said he wants to be in an asylum. He projects aggression onto the most innocent question, like he's desperate to instigate conflicts to distract from even the simplest and most polite rational inquiry. Then a minute later, he's fine, like nothing happened. So I don't know what the issue is but I must advise against trusting his claims since one cannot predict what random or critical detail will be a total fabrication.

One of our conflicts is that he still insists on retaining total control of partially inherited family assets, but without accurately measuring performance or doing the homework to know how to use it responsibly. Every time I try to have a mature conversation with him, he sabotages it with some emotional or crazy distraction, until I give up, so that he can make it seem like I am the one pushing him away. This and countless other disastrous behaviours has resulted in damages beyond his ability to admit, but I think the subconscious guilt and cognitive dissonance is dementing him.

For the record, my mother is also losing her marbles a bit, but it seems like her heart is still in the right place. She is having to carry his weight -- which isn't fair -- but she has been letting him get away with shit for too long. I suppose it comes in handy to have someone with extremely flexible morals around, but it's a double-edged sword.