How to spot a psychopath

if only it were that easy...

Double standard for empathy

some of my readers have wondered at how it is possible to hurt a sociopath's feelings. in other worlds, given that sociopaths seem so calloused and unemotional, how can their sudden bouts of moodiness and hurt feelings be reconciled with their general icy, insensitive demeanor?

sociopaths tend to have a double standard for lack of empathy, manipulation, bluntness, lack of manners, and generally people's inability to conform to social norms to avoid becoming a boorish leech. i am known for being very frank and upfront with people, calling things as i see them with little to no attempt to use tact, but i can get very offended when normal people do the same thing back to me because they don't do it right (without the same charm, insight, timing, or finesse), or because it means something different than when i do it -- typically it includes an intention to hurt. i suppose a good analogy is how the meaning and context behind a white person calling a black person nigger is very different than a black person calling a black person nigger.

if you're in a seemingly loving relationship with a sociopath and he reacts with a lack of empathy at something you have said, it is probably because he is unaware of the need for empathy, or he is trying his hardest but is still coming up short, or he would try but he is too tired, or at the worst, he simply cannot be bothered to summon up the emotional reaction you seek. when people react that way to him, he correctly recognizes that there is latent hostility in the behavior. he knows how normal people treat each other. if you don't treat him that way, he will wonder why (and probably assume the worst),

i don't cry myself to sleep about people hurting my feelings or otherwise being insensitive to me -- i'm sure i deserve it most of the time. but if people are wondering how or why sociopaths could be offended by behavior that the sociopaths themselves seem to engage in almost daily, i think it is a little more complicated than a case of being able to dish it out, but not take it.

On love

i've been in love before. it's been a while, though. i recently watched a film that got me thinking about it -- all about young romantic love and the heartache and the emptiness, the relentless longing that accompanies it. i was with a good friend and we both agreed that although film was supposed to glorify love, it made love seem horrible, completely unpalatable -- like a disease. i felt for the characters. i have always been able to identify better with characters in a film than with most of the characters in my real life -- i guess filmmakers deserve the awards and accolades we give them. but more than that, i recognized the characters. i saw in their behavior things i had seen before in people that had been in love with me.

i recognized the facial expressions and the behavior of the people in film -- i had seen them before: the unrestrained attachment, the devotion, the loss of self, the anxiety, the jealousies, the fear -- above all i recognized the fear. love really is horrible that way. even if you love someone and they love you back and you can spend time together, and there are no hindrances or obstacles keeping you from being together, there is always the worry that the person will leave you, or change, or both. i have wondered before how empaths could commit such violent crimes of passion -- i caught a glimpse of how while watching this film.

i could see how the crime of passion starts much earlier than coming home to find your cheating spouse in bed with another -- it starts when you have substituted everything else in your world for this person in the sense that this is the one person whose life or death could mean your own. i know that love is helplessness. i feel helplessness when in love, i can only imagine that to an empath it feels like there is no choice, no volition, that you are no longer the master of your own destiny. you are a prisoner, a slave. i think some people begin to resent that loss of control. i could see how for some love could quickly turn to hate. and why not? is not the object of your love also the source of your torture? of an unbearable pain? a heaviness to your life that can only be relieved when in their presence? you could weep a thousand tears and there would still be no relief.

i wonder about these people who loved me. i am curious about how they felt about me, how they feel about me now. was i faithless in their eyes? uncontrollable? was i their life's sorrow? was i quickly forgotten? did they always know what or why they were feeling? did they hate me for it? i actually speak with one person, we have managed to stay very good friends, trusted confidantes, and i know that i'm not the only one who asks these questions. why love? why you? why not anymore? was there any purpose? any gain? apart from months and even years of their affliction, what was it all for?

and yet i yearn to be in contact with all my other loves: those who have moved on, and (to a lesser extent?) those who have not. i don't know what i want from them -- maybe just to have them acknowledge it, just to see behind the curtain into their minds eye. it's a symptom of this new age of media that we have little patience for unknowns. we're so used to having our questions answered, near instantly. i would give anything to watch those times together from their point of view, to be inside their head when it was all happening. more than anything, i want to feel the depth of their ache for me -- i want to know that it was/is real just like i am real. somehow i feel that it is their ache that defines me, that that is who i am. their ache, their nauseousness, their fear, their void seem to say so little about who they are as people, and so much about who i am as a person. i created that ache. i caused that pain. is that why people want to be in love? so they can hurt someone in a way so completely original and unique to them? so they can feel real?

Propaganda

sent to me by a reader, if you magnify the icon of Leopard's text editor (TextEdit) for mac computers you see the following:

Empath vs. sociopath morality

a reader sent me this link to a forum as an explanation of the differences between how empaths vs. sociopaths see morality.

And, well, the thing about human history and nature is that a split morality is *natural* for us. Empathy within the family/tribe, sociopathic-like behavior to oursiders. Like, every tribe calls themselves "the People". What does that make outsiders? Not-people... And then there's the Milgram and Zimbardo experiments, showing how apparently normal people, socialized in modern societies to have unnaturally large "tribes", can still do atrocious things with a bit of social pressure.

The sociopath doesn't care what he does to other people, or just doesn't respond to them as people. Normal people convince themselves other people aren't people, or deserve it, then do their atrocities.

another participant responds:

Ah! Someone who truly understands basic human nature!

There is a descending scale of human empathy involved. Stronger loyalty to immediate kin, somewhat less so to clan, somewhat less than that to local social clique, and so on. Building large scale societies requires the creation of an abstract cultural structure (morality, religion, hierarchy, mythology), that gives humans some reason to act towards the success of the larger group instead of the smaller. When two abstract cultural structures compete without violent conflict, we call that peace. When they interact with violence and destruction, we call that war. An abstract cultural structure that can longer bind its members to its own survival is said to be corrupt and decadent.

Assigning members of different human groups a lesser moral status is as natural to humans as breathing. Complete extermination of a group happens less often than other kinds of conflict resolution only because it is rarely cost effective. Too much work, or destructive to your own cultural tropes, or because oppression and enslavement is more profitable than extermination.

Whatever we think of GENOCIDE!, it isn't crazy or even irrational to most people who practice it.

Hitler may have had serious emotional issues, but he was not an original thinker. All the terrible things he did were not the product of his imagination. He only collated ideas that had been floating around Germany for generations. He happened to have the imagination and political skill to weld those ideas into a popular governing philosophy, and didn't become clinically insane until he started losing the war and, along with it, his emotional stability and his grip on reality.