Hi. I'm looking for sympathetic/understanding ears who have gone through or are going through a PhD with psychopathic supervisors. Mine feel they need to own my soul. I am an adult with many years of experience behind me but they infantilise me and I can do nothing without their prior consent. This includes writing papers or applying for internships or workshops that might aid my career plans. Or taking on a job to support myself and pay my bills!

Unless they are kept abreast of EVERYTHING going on in my life, and all my plans, they are vicious and passive aggressive. I feel like I am having a relationship with a person with some sort of malicious personality disorder.

An example of the sort of behavior I have endured includes:
My father passed away early in my PhD and this obviously impacted my work. On the one hand my supervisor wanted to know what was going on, but then made insensitive comments about my reaction to it. At other times, it is like my father's death never happened at all and any issues I have are just because I am selfish and lazy. At other times I am told that supervisors are not there to "baby" their students, and that our issues are our own and not to use them as excuses.

It takes all the self restraint I can muster not to just quit and move elsewhere :(