Aspies in the news

Aspies are like the prom king of personality disorders. That's right, you heard me aspies. I called you personality disordered. Money quote of how much people love aspies, discussing the film Adam:

"Mr. Mayer, 54, grew up on the Upper West Side and was interested in developmental psychology before being drawn into theater and film. He says the inspiration for “Adam” came when he heard a radio interview about Asperger’s while driving in California and became so “emotionally involved” that he had to pull off the road."

Imagine if people wrote this sort of stuff about sociopathy:

“Adam is about life, not his disability,” said Jonathan Kaufman, the founder of the Manhattan-based consulting agency DisabilityWorks Inc., who worked as a technical adviser on the film. “It uses his Asperger’s as the lens that colors his life, not the central focal point. It’s about relationships, love, family. The illness is not separate from the person.”

Yeah, I think it is tragic that they have no empathy, are completely focused on one thing (themselves), and are a leech on society's resources. Who else does that sound like? Can we be your prom queen, aspies? We're meant for each other.

Am I a sociopath? (part 4)

Our questioning reader writes again:

I'm sorry for emailing you so much, but I've never had the opportunity to speak with someone about these things without the fear of being judged. It's been eating at me for about 5 years, ever since I started realizing that there was something wrong with my emotional and moral circuitry. It's been extremely confusing for me, and I'm not sure how to cope with it.

I'm sure it must sound quite crazy.

After reading information at WrongPlanet and on your Site... though I have many of the symptoms of Aspergers, I find myself identifying more readily with things I've read here.

There's a side of me that I've struggled to repress ever since I became aware of it. When I was younger, I used to take pleasure in causing pain to people who I felt had wronged me. Even offending my ego was enough to set me off. I won't get into the things I did, because that's really not important, but what is important was the general lack of remorse I felt. It was always their fault. Their deserved what happened to them. They should have expected it. That kind of thinking.

But I did feel emotions. I just felt whatever emotions I needed to feel at the time. If I needed someone to feel sorry for me, I'd get very sad and start crying. If I needed someone to take my side in something, I'd feel victimized. The feelings were very shallow, but they were there none-the-less.

I don't feel that any more. Ever since I became aware of it, I haven't been able to allow myself to feel much of anything. I suffer terrible social anxiety now, and I never used to. I feel like I have to watch everything I say or do, and it's debilitating. The worst part is I can see how easy it would be to fit in if I could just bring myself to actively put on a show instead of relying on passive defense techniques... but I just can't do it. I'm afraid that I'll lose a part of myself that I won't be able to get back. I'm afraid of being hollow.

I want so badly for this quest to understand myself to stop. To end. Without worrying that I'll completely lose myself. I look in the mirror, and I see someone who is capable of anything.

It's so confusing, and it leads me in so many different directions. It's inconsistent. It makes me feel insane, but only when I'm thinking about myself. I just don't understand why I can't understand my own identity.

Constantly watching myself is debilitating. It's making life very tough. Keeping myself honest is very tough. My natural inclination in any situation is just to say whatever I need to say, but I struggle to speak with absolute honesty. I struggle not to magically become whatever a person needs me to become just to get close to them. When I'm around other people, I almost can't function, because so much of my focus is spent gauging my reactions and scrutinizing my thoughts. Am I being honest? Should I really say this? I usually wind up at a loss for words, or being brutally honest about everything... which makes it hard to have a sense of humor until I can "figure out" someone else's sense of humor.

Again, I apologize for all of this. I'm just hoping you can help me to understand myself, or give me some advice. I honestly don't know what's wrong with me. I just know that something most definitely is, and I'm afraid to settle on anything--especially sociopathy.

Am I a sociopath? (part 3)

I'm going to publish the responses from our questioning reader in roughly the same time sequence that I received them and responded so you can get an idea of his thought process, which may be very familiar to a lot of you:

One other diagnosis I'm considering is Aspergers Syndrome. Everything I said in my last email is true, but I lack the ability to blend in socially that I've read most sociopaths have. I'm oblivious to non-verbal communication, and there are many quirks that set me apart from those you might consider normal. I may simply share the emotional detachment, and a few other traits, with sociopaths.

Honestly, I'm very confused. I would see a professional, but I have a problem with authority figures even though I find myself seeking some kind of validation. I'm not sure I could be honest with doctor, even if I tried--even if I thought I was being honest. As I said, looking into myself isn't something I'm very good at.

About being a sociopath... do you experience no emotions at all? This isn't how life feels to me. It feels to me like my emotions are filtered to the point of being beyond my comprehension, like an engine silently powering all of the logical mechanisms in my personality. To be honest with you, I didn't even recognize them until a phase of drug abuse cracked my ego. Coincidentally, it was the first time I realized I could be wrong and recognized that rationally, I wasn't the smartest person on the planet.

Anyway, that was several years ago, and I've come to recognize the existence of my emotions, but I can't embrace or express them because they're quite terrifying. They're very primitive... very simple and extremely powerful. To me, this doesn't really fit with what I've read about sociopaths. It seems like it may be a) an autism spectrum disorder or b) some kind of developmental disability. I find it hard to believe that a true sociopath could be made aware of his own feelings through drug abuse, though I suppose anything is possible. What's your take on this?

Thank you for your response. I'm glad you took the time to make one.

Aspie's bully sociopaths

In keeping with the previous post of aspie's/autie's not being as innocent as they seem, I was sad to see this story of an innocent sociopath being tormented by people with asperger's/autism. I guess being empathy-challenged makes aspie's/autie's excellent bullies:

I got involved in a forum war on Aspergia three years ago, in which I was arguing that a sociopath’s neurodiversity should be respected just like everyone else’s. The argument got started after a woman who was a clinical sociopath started posting on Aspergia’s forum. She had a very poor understanding of other people’s emotions, and she habitually made provocative statements as a way of getting responses that were strong enough for her to understand. Although she knew this wasn’t the ideal way to interact with people, she didn’t know what else to do. She came to Aspergia to learn how autistics dealt with the problem of misunderstanding emotions.

Of course, she didn’t explain all of this forthrightly and ask for help. I don’t think she was capable of expressing her intentions so clearly. Several of us dragged it out of her after a long, convoluted discussion that literally went on for days. After we figured out why she was there, a few of us started giving her advice on constructive ways to ask people about their feelings without being manipulative.

Unfortunately, by then she had already annoyed several other members of the forum with her confusing and provocative writing style, and they got together and decided to hound her off the forum with a barrage of nasty personal insults and rants about sociopaths. The poor woman did her best to avoid taking the bait and to practice writing friendly, non-provocative posts, but it didn’t matter what she wrote—they bashed it, and her, mercilessly.

I told them they should be ashamed of themselves for bullying a person because of her neurology on an autistic rights forum. The resulting argument went on for two months.

I’m not trying to start a war here, but I do feel it’s necessary to say this: Sociopaths have a cognitive disability. They’re not necessarily evil, and they can be taught more positive ways of interacting with people. And I am very strongly opposed to demonizing any group of people on the basis of their neurology.

First of all, I want to know what is this aspergia and what happened to this woman?Second, I wonder why she would be on an asperger's/autism site for advice on understanding emotions. That seems like the blind leading the blind to me. But fellow sociopaths, be warned that you will get even less acceptance from the rest of the empathy-challenged community than you will from the empaths themselves, to their eternal shame.

More aspie feedback

More aspie feedback re this blog:

The really severe sociopaths have a creepy emptiness inside. The eerie emptiness of sociopaths is what people were referring when they say things like "looking into the eyes of a soulless killer". There's nothing there. Their lack of insight comes from this empty place inside, not disorientation with the outside world, like an Asperger's lack of insight.

He has a point, tho, about how badly sociopaths are viewed. In a sense, it is a natural disorder that is beyond their control, just as AS is beyond control. People just hate them more because AS people seem innocuous and naive. But on the other hand, some NTs tend to treat sociopaths better than autistics, respecting and fearing bullies whereas some NTs feel more comfortable dumping on AS people. So I don't think that sociopaths are as brutalized and marginalized as AS people are. So his whining rings pretty hollow.

and another:

On the Sociopath blog. Very interesting. Glad he's done it. However, given that one of the major symptoms (and a clear give away once you've known one long enough to see the full cycle of their operations) is the way they continually try and evoke pity in you. And that is the aim of that blog. See the way he says "he would join the Aspie party if he could because the Aspies get ALL the sympathy". What utter rubbish!!! We're the ones who are good people at heart, yet get treated like monsters. They're the ones who are destructive heartless manipulators, yet they manage to charm the pants of everyone the meet...for a while. And then they blame their victims for being 'weak'.

The thing we have in common is that we are both see weaknesses in NT behaviour. However, in general we suffer as a result of those weaknesses, the sociopaths benefit from them through their ability to exploit them.

And lastly:

Je le doute.

There is little to none of the glibness/superficial charm alternating with hostility and contempt that define the psychopath's relation to the world. Obviously I haven't read it all, but I don't even think psychopaths have the patience to write blogs. They're more likely to break a computer for not doing what they want it to do.

Ah really? Not charming enough. Sigh.

More feedback

Some more feedback regarding this site left on other sites:

I found the perfect site for him, its a pro-sociopathy blog (found by googling chay's 'sociopath for dummies' on a whim! luvs) where the author goes on about sociopathy being a normal human variant and stuff about how superior he is and shit. Should appeal to this person's narcissism. He's be wearing the disorder like a badge of pride after this and after all, don't we all want our madmen out of the closet? Win!

Aspies are particularly interested:

Psychopathy and other personality disorders is one of my special interests. I've been reading about the psychopath mind online from time to time and this website http://www.sociopathworld.com/ the guy is asking the same thing we're asking and that is for his mindset to be acceptable in society. I totally agree with Neurodiversity to the core but I had a feeling this would present itself as an issue and a problem. More and more of them are going to ask to be in the ND movement and will even try to pretend to be an aspie. This man is using our logic against us and logically and technically he is correct and again I was afraid of this would happen.

I think what will have to happen is we're going to have to develop some kind of code of ethics for the ND movement and for any different mind configuration. If we have one already as I am just beginning to get into this than it will need to be developed in more detail.

We also have to be able to develop a way to root these types out and out them when they do inflitrate our movement.

I don't know. Aspies are always talking about how they can tell who are the sociopaths and who aren't, but they have always seemed to me as clueless regarding sociopaths as they are regarding neurotypicals. In fact, I'm pretty sure sociopaths have already infiltrated the aspie/autie movements and do their business with those groups undetected. The good news, though, is that maybe this means that socios and aspies can live symbiotically, especially if the aforementioned infiltration hasn't caused any problems already.

Pretending to be normal

I'm sorry to keep harping on this (and this), but aspies get all the breaks for some reason. This article is about bit torrent programmer Bram Cohen who learns late in life that he has Asperger's. Under the heading, "Learning Empathy:"

One afternoon in the summer of 2003 he was eating at a Mexican restaurant in Berkeley with his girlfriend, Jenna, and her young daughter. They were talking about empathy, a notion that baffled Cohen. "Then a baby cried, and my daughter turned and made a sad face," Jenna recalls. "He said, 'You mean like that?' I said, 'Yes, it's automatic.' " Not for Cohen, though, who told her that emotions seemed mysterious. Jenna, who had worked with autistic kids, suggested he might have Asperger's.

Cohen never sought a formal diagnosis but turned his considerable attention to the matter. He learned how to detect and mimic human expressions, follow social cues, maintain eye contact, flirt. He began pretending to be normal. "Then I realized how out of it I had been my entire life," he says. Jenna likens Bram to the android Data on Star Trek: "He'd add information to his social algorithm and practice until it became natural. He's graduated to being an eccentric nerd."

After that comes more "bla bla bla, aspies are great, look what this aspie was able to accomplish" lovefest. And then the ridiculous comments:

"What a well written article on a seemingly great guy. You've got to admire anyone who acknowledges inherent 'differences' and actively works to improve themselves and their relationships. And to his wife, you must be a true saint to put the time and effort into such a complex situation. Thank you for sharing your story."

And even more naive:

"Profoundly uplifting story. Mr. Cohen shows the world what it's like to see with the eyes of a genius"

I'm seriously disgusted. I think I just threw up a little in my mouth. I'll never understand empaths. What is the difference between this guy's crazy lack of empathy and a sociopath's? Is it really just because he seems sort of harmless? ("Little kids would be frightening psychopaths if not for the fact that they're relatively weak and dumb compared to adults.") But he can't be that harmless if he created a program that is used to share pirated movies and games with millions of users.

As I have said before, I am all for rights for the empathy challenged, but have a little consistency! How is that everyone hates sociopaths for having no conscience, but aspies can do no wrong? People are utterly creeped out by sociopaths learning and mimicking emotions, but with aspies it is "acknowledg[ing] inherent 'differences' and actively work[ing] to improve themselves"? I feel like I am taking crazy pills.

In which I clarify that I do not hate Aspies

So this post came across a little strongly against aspies. Maybe just a little. I was very careful not to advocate any sort of violence against aspies, but still...

It's not that I dislike aspies. I actually really like them for their loyalty and all of their other good traits. If it seems like I'm down on aspies, it's only because I'm jealous of their superior social position. The truth is that if the aspies asked me to join their club, i would say yes in a heartbeat. I'm like Lindsay Lohan's character in Mean Girls and the aspies are the cool crowd. I'll talk trash and pretend I'm better, but if I got invited to one of their parties I would stay up all night deciding what to wear. (Ah, Molly Ringwald... interested in being a sociopath spokesperson?)

Sometimes I even claim to be an aspie myself. Who wouldn't? If for nothing else, for the aspie pride t-shirts! I mean, I have some of the signs: inability to pick up social cues, weak sense of empathy, inability to conform to social norms. All I would have to do is tone down the charm. If I can pass amongst the empaths, certainly I can keep a low profile amongst the remarkably unaware aspies. And who knows, maybe all sociopaths are aspies. Just like the movie Underworld, where all the vampires and werewolves are long lost cousins, socios and aspies can finally realize that we're really just two sides of the same coin. What do you say, aspies? Ready to become one big family?

I can't wait! We could have family reunions or conventions. It could be as popular as Comic-Con! In fact, let's have all the socios dress as vampires and the aspies as werewolves and go to Comic-Con next year! It's going to be so great. Say you will, little aspies. Say you will.

Am I my Asperger brother's keeper?

Aspies and sociopaths have a unique relationship with one another. Asperger Syndrome is a personality disorder on the autism spectrum that is commonly described as or confused with high-functioning autism. Asperger syndrome is characterized by "a lack of empathy, little ability to form friendships, one-sided conversation, intense absorption in a special interest, and clumsy movements." It was originally labeled "autistic psychopathy." Aspies are very similar to sociopaths, with the most obvious exception being that sociopaths are socially charming and aspies are socially awkward. Despite the lack of empathy, one of the core traits of a sociopath, aspies are treated as totally legitimate in our society. Even though aspies seem to be sociopath eunuchs, their childishness and naivete is what makes them palatable to the rest of society.

This is a Cain and Abel scenario. In Steinbeck's East of Eden, the Cain characters are all smart, cunning, and effective. Cathy is the prototypical sociopath. The Abel characters are clueless. Their redeeming values are their guilelessness and ineffectiveness. They are the absence of bad, rather than the presence of good. The flighty Abel characters would be nothing without the hard-working Cain characters. And yet everyone always loves the Abel characters and hates the Cain characters. And the Lord had no regard for Cain and his offering. Cain was furious, and he was downcast.

There is a lot of aspie pride. "Celebrate neuro diversity" "Why be normal?" There is also quite a bit of aspie hate for sociopaths. Aspies villainize sociopaths and don't even want them discussed in the same breath, even though there are clear links between autism and "bad sociopath" behavior. The disparate treatment of these two classifications of individuals have some wondering, why? And how are sociopaths supposed to react to this unequal treatment? Not at all to endorse this type of behavior, but I know how one famous sociopath reacted:

Cain said to his brother Abel, "let's go out to the field." And while they were in the field, Cain attacked his brother Abel and killed him.