Sociopath for a day

I thought this was an interesting experience, from a comment from a recent post regarding a temporary experience of not feeling (or not feeling connected to) a sense of empathy:

One day I experienced something that I'm convinced was close to clinical psychopathy. It was at the same time as lots of physical and nervous system symptoms as well, so I know it wasn't 'just psychological' or 'emotional'...it also felt very physical. 

It's hard to describe, but I'll try because I've never written about it before and it may ring a bell with someone somewhere, who knows. It was similar, I suppose, to my 'emotions cutting out' experiences, but much, much more extreme (so it didn't really feel similar at all). It felt REALLY weird - I suppose as weird as taking a mind-altering drug of some kind or being severely intoxicated - but it wasn't like any of those. (just as weird/abnormal as them). 

It was one day, on which I woke up feeling like this:

I had no 'me' sense whatsoever - I wasn't 'me'. I was a person, but there was no 'me' feeling about it. And I had 'lost my bond' with everyone - that's distinctly how it felt. I was aware of all this but couldn't 'care' or be worried or afraid because I was incapable of all those feelings - any of the feelings that normally belonged to my personality, that made me 'me'. I was TOTALLY cerebral. 

It was the most interesting experience I've ever had, in terms of an education in what was possible, how different 'experience' could be - I was experiencing something I couldn't have conceived of with my usual imagination. It actually felt very 'clean', simple, 'pure' in a way - immensely calm and clear... totally - but not like a calm version of 'me', just calmness itself - totally empty, void of any feeling (emotional, not physical). I hadn't even been aware of 'having bonds' with anyone until this experience, when one of the most obvious things, that struck me first, was that they had gone / that was gone. 

It didn't horrify or sadden me, because I was incapable of all that, but it 'concerned' me cerebrally because I saw that if someone very 'close' to me were to phone, I would have to act. I knew that could act whatever I needed to, that it was all absolutely easy (also very alien for my personality, because of my normal compulsion and liking for being open and genuine and 'natural'). At some point the thought occurred to me 'I wonder if this could be what psychopathy is like' - in those days I knew next to nothing about it and had no interest in it, but was aware that it was about 'something being missing' and that thought brought it to mind. 

I automatically thought to 'test' it by mentally envisaging the sort of thing associated with psychopathy - the worst sort of crime associated with it - was I capable of it? (something I simply couldn't do now, which is why I'm not elaborating or describing it - I literally can't contemplate or let myself mentally envisage it, and couldn't have done before this experience, or at any time in my life except for this day). As a mental experiment, having no emotional qualms, or capacity for any, I asked myself, could I commit X - and realised I could, because EVERYTHING WAS THE SAME, without any emotional 'value' attached to it - with that part of me missing, that function not operating, NOTHING effected me, there was no 'meaning'- everything was the same, it was a landscape without difference, without emotional difference, without meaning difference. I was as equally capable of one thing as another, they were all equal - just actions, that I was disconnected from, because 'I' wasn't there, there was no 'me'. 

But what I also observed - what was part of the same observation - was that neither did I have any desire to commit anything - everything was equal in that sense too, no 'value' attached. I had absolutely no impulse to do anything like the example I thought of - it was neutral, everything was neutral - and knew I wouldn't, that I was in no danger of doing anything unwanted, I simply wasn't interested. This is why, when I read sociopaths here explaining that the absence of empathy does not in itself produce - or even have anything to do with - sadism, etc - that the two have essentially no connection with one another, I know exactly what they mean and have no difficulty believing them, I know they are telling the truth. But they are trying to explain something which is simply outside the experience of normally 'emotional' people, so I also see why others can't comprehend it, can't compute it. I'd never have been able to do so without that experience that gave me a glimpse into such a different possibility of experience.

I then tested it again by picking something else which would be one of the last things I'd ever contemplate (or be capable of) doing ; Could I run up and down the street naked? Ye - it would mean literally nothing to me. No fear, no excitement, no anything - nothing was producing any kind of emotional response or 'meaning' in me internally. 

It was a fascinating and very eye-opening experience. I realised that all these things are emotional functions, and that if emotional function becomes impaired or drops out, this is what is left. Cerebral function alone is a very very different experience. It is not IN ITSELF bad, good, or anything. Bad and good are emotional entities, they belong to that side. It doesn't 'exist' in the cerebral side, which is all I was experiencing that day. The only trace of 'personality' I could detect at all - and it was tiny, and not really anything like my normal 'composite' personality in any way - was the very slight feeling now and again of what I'd imagine a playfully mischievous seven year old boy feels like - that's the best way I could describe it. But even that wasn't strong enough to influence or impel me in any way. I simply got on with doing my income tax return, as it was the day before the deadline and I had no choice. 

To my amazement, I was better at maths (calculations) than I'd ever been in my life - the absence of emotional 'reluctance' (huffing and puffing and grumbling) that normally goes along with it for me (which, again, I only became aware of by its unusual absence this day) made it ultra-easy, straightforward, and made me remarkably efficient. I was getting this right first time, for the time ever! 

The only real difficulty I experienced was towards the end of the day when I came to fill out the tax return online and discovered that I couldn't process the meaning of written language - I could read the words fluently, but after reading a paragraph I had taken in no meaning from it - I couldn't tell you what it had actually said, or meant.

It was the weirdest thing. But it showed me what is possible when parts of the brain are being effected or prevented from functioning normally, and the fact that it could reproduce what I am sure was something very close to clinical psychopathy, I found extremely eye-opening and interesting. (I woke up the next day normal, by the way. The 'me' feeling was back and I've had it ever since).

Theory of mind

A reader sent me a link to this Psychology Today blog post discussing how those in the dark triad (narcissists, Machiavellians, psychopaths) experience theory of mind.  The wikipedia definition of theory of mind is "the ability to attribute mental states—beliefs, intents, desires, pretending, knowledge, etc.—to oneself and others and to understand that others have beliefs, desires and intentions that are different from one's own."  It seems to overlap a little with cognitive empathy (which the article gets into a little).  The blog author further distinguishes between the social-perceptual component of theory of mind ("the ability to determine the mental states of others using immediately available non-verbal cues (e.g., eyes, face, hand gestures)") and the social-cognitive theory of mind ("involves the ability to reason about the mental state of others, and use that reasoning to predict or explain their behavior"), the former of which is tested by this "Mind in the Eyes" emotional recognition test (I scored 30).

The article itself is a little long and all over the place, but it makes some interesting points and some even more interesting conclusions.  One of which is that Machiavellians do more "mentalizing" than other people, "cognitively strategizing, scheming, and trying to infer the intentions of others," presumably to stay one step ahead.  Another seems suspect:

For most of our evolution, it payed to be cooperative and empathic. But during the course of our evolution, there were also selfish individuals who learned how to manipulate others to get what they wanted. They lacked empathy, perspective taking, and self-awareness (i.e., metacognition). Still, they had in tact lower-level perceptual theory of mind abilities that were good enough for them to manipulate others. In fact, their lower levels of empathy and higher levels of strategizing and spontaneous mentalizing worked to their advantage: whereas most people intuitively felt as though they were doing something wrong when they hurt others, these Machiavellian individuals didn't recieve [sic] the same emotional signals so they persevered toward their short-term selfish goals. In the process, they obtained more quantity of mates. Therefore, they remained in the human gene pool, along with their short-term mating orientation.

I can see that narcissists lack self-awareness, but what about Machiavellians and psychopaths?  I'm sort of underwhelmed by this guy's reasoning.  And he is a cognitive psychologist at NYU.  So credentials in the psychology world don't mean much?

But here's something else interesting I didn't know:

Andrew Whiten and Richard Byrne argue that primate intelligence stems from "Machiavellian Intelligence" -- the ability to manipulate and deceive others in the competition for scarce resources.

Hyperlexia

I have a hard time understanding verbal speech.  I can't pay attention to conversations with the television on -- my friends hate me for it.  Even if I'm really concentrating, I can only understand 90-95% of what is said when I am watching television or a film.  In fact, most of the time I don't bother going to the cinema, but wait until a movie is on DVD to watch it with the subtitles.

I noticed it when I was a teen.  I assumed that I had hearing loss due to playing in rock bands and attending loud clubs.  I started religiously wearing earplugs, hoping (as a musician) to guard what remained of my hearing.  When I stopped studying music and went to graduate school, I had to sit at the very front of every class, or I couldn't "hear" what the professor was saying.

Concerned that I might need hearing aids, I had my hearing tested several times.  Each time, my hearing was completely normal.  I was concerned that I was just gaming the hearing test.  When I was little I also had my hearing tested.  I learned to anticipate "tones" by watching the face of the person giving the test -- looking for "tells," microexpressions or other evidence that I should be raising my hand.  (Sociopaths must be difficult to diagnose for certain things because of this.)  At my last hearing test, several years ago, I insisted that I face away from the examiner who was already in another, darkened room separated by glass.  I passed with absolutely normal hearing.  Still I doubted the results, wondering if my acute sense of timing was causing me to hear tones in what I knew would otherwise be an uncomfortably long silence.

The puzzle was that I did not have a hard time hearing in general.  I took several acoustics and sound recording classes at university and had an exceptional "ear" across the sound spectrum.  It was just speech that I had a hard time deciphering.  Not language.  My reading comprehension has always been off the charts.  Verbal language.

My friend's niece learned to read when she was just one year old from (shockingly) those "your baby can read" DVDs.  Someone opined that the niece might be hyperlexic, characterized by an extraordinary facility with written language, frequently paired with a difficulty in understanding verbal speech.  Hyperlexia is associated with the autism spectrum (as with other language issues), with some experts believing that all hyperlexics are autistic.  I don't think I'm hyperlexic.  I show no real signs.  I do think, however, that my inability to decode verbal speech has less to do with my ears and more to do with my brain.  Brain wiring?  Attentional problems?  Whatever it is, it seems to not affect music cognition, but that's another thing shared with the autism spectrum.