Grains of sand

From a reader:

4 minutes ago I finished your book. Loved every page of it. Devoured it in 3 days I loved it so much. I've always been so intrigued by psychopathy and other behavioural disorders. I've thought for a long time that it's unjust to punish people for who they are and their genuine wants and desires. My opinion even extents to pedophiles and all the rest.. But it does leave me confused as I do feel hurting people is wrong (I am an empath). Irrelevant. Anyways.

On the last page you invited the reader to email you to discover your real name. I would love to know it. I had a suspicion too that you were perhaps a male? Throughout the book I kept thinking about your motives for writing.. In the conclusion you mentioned changing the world, suggesting that a motive was to end the stigma around sociopathy, in hopes for an easier future for you, 'in the light'? But was it also somewhat out of boredom, the need for a stimulus? Or not only a protection of yourself, but the possible protection of future sociopaths ("inclusive fitness theory"). Which gave birth to my final question below.

Final query: Can you empathise with other Sociopaths? You don't mention having a relationship with other sociopaths.. I don't know how that dynamic would go, do you?

My response:

I don't think I have empathy for other sociopaths, but for whatever reason I have always had a sense that there is not as much separation between us as some people think. What is bad for one group of people really is bad for all people. I have always intuited that, but used to come up with utilitarian reasons to justify that belief. Just in the past few weeks I feel like I have realized the underlying belief is that for each one of us, part of our identity is our individuality and part of our identity is we collectively make up the universe -- like how cells in the body are both individual and collective, or like how a beach is really just a collection of grains of sand. 

Psychopathy, autism, and pointing fingers (part 1)

This was an interesting article from an autistic activist who is also anti-ableism in all its forms about why psychopath is a too often misused and maligned term/disorder:

I have become used to being told that I do not have feelings, that I am innately incapable of relating to other people as human beings or having any empathy at all, that this is a core component of what it means to be autistic. I have become used to hearing this said constantly by so-called professionals, dramatically by television personalities, clinically by journalists and academics, and casually by friends, acquaintances, family. But I have never become used to the feeling of absolute devastation weighing somewhere deep in my chest each time I find myself on the receiving end of this accusation.

Empathy is what makes us human.

It’s no wonder that the idea of psychopathy is terrifying. If psychopathy means the inability to experience empathy, and empathy is what makes us human, then psychopathy is literally the dehumanizing condition. Psychopaths populate crime dramas, horror films, murder mysteries, and thrillers. It’s the casual diagnosis for mass murderers, serial rapists, and child abusers.

But it is also deeply personal, profoundly ableist and sanist, and rooted in a complex, interlocking web of structural racism, ageism, and sexism.

She draws connections to autism and sociopathy and criticizes those with disorders who distance themselves from other disorders for the sake of seeming more normal to the ableist:

In response to frequent claims in the media and by policymakers that autistic people lack empathy (and are therefore violent psychopaths), many people in the autistic community, including autistic activists, begin the process of disavowal.

“No, autistic people are nothing like psychopaths. We are more likely to be the victims of crime while psychopaths are usually victimizers.”

“No, someone who would shoot dozens of innocent children wasn’t autistic. That’s not autism. That’s mental illness.”

“An autistic person wouldn’t commit such horribly violent crimes. Only a psychopath could do that.”

If empathy is what makes us human, and autistic people are as human as anyone else, then we must have empathy. It must be some other kind of person who doesn’t experience empathy. It must be someone who is truly psychopathic. This is the logic path that afflicts so many disability communities. Disavowal of one another has become a way of life. Many autistic people routinely decry the use of the slur retarded, yet assert in the same breath that they aren’t crazy or mentally ill. 

I love this tendency amongst people to distinguish their own failings as being somehow more excusable than other people's failings, e.g. "my limitations on empathy are not as serious as yours," or "my impulsivity or violence is due to excess of emotion, not lack of emotion," or "I'm only violent when I'm misunderstood, but you can be violent based solely on opportunism."

For more on the problems of stigmatizing mental illness, either coming from within or without the mental illness communities, see also United States President Barack Obama.  

Seeing through a glass darkly

A reader asks, "How can we be close to people or things if we can't feel?" My response:

It's a good question. I don't think we can do it in normal ways, we just have to figure out what works for us. Have you ever read the Helen Keller story? Very fascinating. I remember being amazed when I first read it, just thinking about this girl who had no frame of reference for anything that we consider part of the "real world" other than touch. I found it so curious that she was smart, was able to spell words, but was just unable to understand that the words applied to different objects, that there was such thing as a word. I had first heard the story when I was young and i remember most of my young colleagues seemed less impressed by her. I felt that they didn't really understand that someone could have an entirely different existence than theirs, even in the same world, the same city, the same family even. I think I had my own Helen Keller epiphany-moment when I read her story. Before, I had thought of everyone as being essentially robots existing in a world solely for my interactions and my benefit. The story was such a detailed account of another person and I remember it making me think: different people exist, just like different animals exist, and people can be as different from each other as a fish from a llama or a cow from a parrot. Of course I still thought that most of the people around me were the same-ish, like dolphins (including me, when really i turned out to be a shark). But I think this was a good way to learn the lesson because when I did discover I was a shark, I wasn't horrified. I just thought i was a natural variant, had an entirely different world view from most, like Helen Keller.

I had already learned not to let who I was interfere with who I wanted to become. I had already made the decision not to be defined by my race or my height or my age or my gender or my intellect or anything else. That may sound funny because I refer to myself as a sociopath and have this blog all about what it is like to be a sociopath. I may use the term sociopath as shorthand for the type of person I am, the particular genus and species of human animal, but I do not let it define me. I do what I want to do. I realize that my world, my experiences, my relationships, my love is not the same as anyone else's love, but I have all of those things. Maybe other people want to say, "poor you" (or "you monster," depending on their inclinations), "you'll never have what I have." I just want to say to those people, "yeah, you're right. Thanks for pointing out the obvious." So let them sit at holiday tables eating roast beef while I am eating tofurkey, let them have their emotional dramas and outpourings while I remain blissfully unaffected. I have no shame in who I am, and frankly I find it offensive when people ask, "do you ever wish you were different?" Can you imagine asking that of someone of a different race? or a different gender? or even someone with a disability? I should answer, "yes I wish I was different, I wish I had the ability to completely ignore inane comments."

But to more specifically answer your earlier question, I don't suffer from depression, and I don't even really suffer from loneliness, thanks to a large circle of family and friends. I actually find some meaning and joy in playing my "part" in society. I just think of it as every day is someone else's birthday, so I have to be on my best behavior and be nice to them. I try to get lost in pleasing other people, making them happy, making their world better. It is actually rewarding, and reinforces and maintains personal ties (which I appreciate), and indulges my desire for power as well. I have tried living a lot of different ways, but I have been happiest and most stable when I have been trying to have an others-centered life rather than a self-centered life. I'm not saying that the latter is any sort of "wrong" or a "bad choice," that is just what has worked for me.

Beauty

I have always sought out beauty. I grew up in a superficial culture in a superficial family, absorbing its standards of visible aesthetic appeal as a matter of heritage. As I learned more about the world, I began to understand that there is a beauty beyond those things skin deep. I learned to appreciate the beauty of the way things worked--the complexity of life. I was a voracious reader, initially deriving pleasure from the general narrative or the descriptions of new places or adventures. At one point in my late teens, however, I learned to appreciate that books also portrayed the inner worlds of people whose minds, though not often like mine, were like people I knew or would meet. When I learned that, people became very beautiful to me as well, not just their bodies or their wit.

I was so captivated by beauty during this time period. I still am, but back then it I was very overt about it. At one point I had three explicit goals in life: to notice everything, to appreciate the beauty in everything, and to be the perfect friend (this was, of course, before I was self-aware). All three reflected my burgeoning fascination with all things living and beautiful--my constantly awakening senses and awareness to the world around me. It was as if I had lived in two dimensions all my life ("me" and "not me") and now I was suddenly aware of the infinite complexity of the world. I was giddy, drunk on each new discovery.

With beauty on my mind, it's no surprise I chose to study music at university. One thing that I loved about studying music is that every day I could relate to other musicians in (seemingly) every way--a frequency that I had never experienced before and never have since. One story sticks out in my mind. I was in a jazz related class and the professor was talking about voicing particular chords, i.e. which notes of the chord go where in the range of the instrument and in which order to each other. The professor started waxing on about a particular pianist who had the most beautiful, organic voicings--voicings that could take a typical chord progression and make it sound utterly novel due solely to effective voicing choices. The professor was going on about this pianist for several minutes and what made the voicings so special without using the name of the pianist. He could have been talking about any of a million people--Bill Evans, Oscar Peterson, Duke Ellington being the typical favorite examples of this particular professor, but for some reason I just knew that he was talking about Carole King. It was a weird intuition, we were in a jazz class (Carole King is a folk musician), the professor was quite old, and Carole King is not even really known for being a pianist, but I was right.

There were many instances like this where I felt completely in sync with fellow musicians. Every day I connected with my fellow musicians in ways that I often miss, now that music has taken a back seat to other pursuits. Studying music was a blissful respite from the real world, from having to pretend all the time. (Musicians are perverse anyway, as is music, which consists primarily of setting up expectations and then playing with people's expectations--very manipulative, very teleological).

I think this obsession with beauty heavily influenced the way my value system evolved. It's hard to imagine what I would be like if I hadn't gone through that obsessive phase. For better or for worse, I think that the pursuit of beauty and study of music shielded me from certain harsh truths about myself that I wouldn't have to confront until graduate school, when I finally realized to what extent I was different from my peers. I still use beauty and music as a daily escape from humanity.*

(Carole King has beautiful vocal phrasing, as well as the aforementioned idiosyncratic piano voicing.)

*Although humans are the origin of a lot that I find beautiful, they don't have a monopoly on it. Also truth and beauty have a certain transcendent quality to them that never really smacks of being something inherently human to me.