How Psychopaths Work

This was an interesting podcast that a reader shared with me.


To me it started off a little self assured of itself in starting certain things as fact that seemed wrong-ish to me, or at least debatable. It reminded of listening to non-Mormons talk about the Mormon religion with such certainty or men talking about the female experience with such certainty, if that gives you an idea of what I mean.

Probably my favorite parts were about halfway to the end where they start acknowledging the very problematic ways that psychopaths have been studied, the discrepancies in psychological "knowledge" of what sociopaths are and how to diagnose them, how psychopaths are diagnosed (stressing criminal behaviors), how they're given psychological treatment or not, how they're punished for their diagnosis by the criminal systems, how they're stigmatized by society even though a psychopath is in no way responsible for being a psychopath (genetics and upbringing). They quite rightly opine that history is not going to look kindly on humanity's current treatment of psychopaths.

There was also an interesting discussion of gender bias in the way that sociopaths have been studied and the diagnostic criteria. 

Baby Boomers = generation of sociopaths?

I have expressed my prejudices re baby boomers before (i.e. generation of narcissists), but someone wrote a book about how they're sociopathic. From the Huffington Post:

In his new book, A Generation of Sociopaths, writer and venture capitalist Bruce Gibney puts forth the controversial hypothesis that baby boomers ― specifically the large subset of white, middle-class boomers ― are, both individually and as a group, unusually sociopathic. Gibney cites mental health data showing boomers have significantly higher levels of antisocial traits and behaviors ― including lack of empathy, disregard for others, egotism and impulsivity ― than other generations.

As a result, boomers have used their substantial voting power to create a society and government that don’t work very well. Or, as Gibney puts it, boomers’ “private behaviors congealed into a debased neoliberalism.”

The author regarding the impact of boomers' dogged self-interest:

There’s obviously been a substantial deceleration of economic growth. The Great Recession arguably began in 2001 and we’ve never entirely recovered ― so that’s 16 years of lost opportunity. 

The second big thing on the economic front is the intergenerational passing of burdens, and the most salient one is the debt. Gross debt to GDP 40 years ago was 34 percent, and today it’s around 105 percent. It’s projected by [the Congressional Budget Office] to exceed the World War II highs by the early 2030s. When boomers start taking control and influencing policies, the policies get worse on the debt, so that now we haven’t seen these levels of debt in more than 70 years.

There are consequences to these levels of debt. ... But that’s not really relevant for the boomers. This is not their problem and they have not been serious about it. The debt wasn’t discussed as a serious issue during the 2016 presidential election, but Social Security was ― because we know that this program is going to be partially insolvent by 2034. And this is the only thing that Trump and Clinton could agree on: Social Security ― untouchable. Medicare ― untouchable. These things are sacred. They couldn’t even agree where to stand on the stage together, and they agreed on Social Security.  

People who know me personally know I rarely pass up an opportunity to take potshots at baby boomers. It's not even the selfishness that gets on my nerves, because really everyone is selfish. It's the delusional self-aggrandizement. Boomers all think they're self-made success stories, just because they happen to have been born perfectly timed to profit from one of the biggest economic booms in known history. As they say, a rising tide lifts all boats, but a lot of boomers credit their success to being a particularly skilled captain. I think it's great (for me) when these people apply that hubris to their trades in the stock market, but it generally makes them boorish dinner companions.

Sociopath, though? No, I stick by my initial assessment of narcissists. I'd like to think that the average sociopath is much more self-aware than the average baby boomer.

An Introduction to Psychopathy

I am still surprised by the amount of disagreement about psychopathy, sociopathy, antisocial personality disorder, etc. that you'll get from any source -- academic, pop psychology, etc. With that small caveat (nothing is definitive), I found this article on psychopathy to be a good overview with academic cites (and links in the original). Here are some selections:

While it is past antisocial behavior that is particularly important in predicting future criminal activity (Walters, 2003), it is CU (callous unemotional) traits that are at the core of developmental trajectory associated with psychopathy (Frick and White, 2008). The disorder is developmental. It has been shown that CU traits in particular and the psychopathy more generally are relatively stable from childhood into adulthood (Lynam et al., 2007; Munoz and Frick, 2007). In addition, the functional impairments seen in adults with psychopathy (e.g., in responding to emotional expressions, aversive conditioning, passive avoidance learning, reversal learning, extinction) are also seen in adolescents with psychopathic tendencies (see later).
***
Psychopathy is not equivalent to the psychiatric conditions of conduct disorder (CD) or antisocial personality disorder (ASPD) as defined by DSM-5 or their ICD-10 counterparts. The diagnostic criteria for these disorders focus on antisocial behaviors rather than on etiological factors such as the emotion dysfunction seen in psychopathy (Blair et al., 2005). As such these psychiatric conditions describe individuals with difficulties in executive dysfunction (Moffitt, 1993), as well as individuals with symptoms stemming from CU traits. Consequently, individuals with psychopathy are a more homogenous group than those individuals meeting the criteria for CD and ASPD (Karnik et al., 2006). It should be noted, however, that DSM-5 includes the specifier for CD ‘with limited pro-social emotions,’ which stem directly from research on youth with CD and CU traits (Pardini et al., 2010; Pardini and Fite, 2010). Furthermore, the diagnosis of ASPD now includes components of psychopathy (APA, 2013). While the disorder of psychopathy will still not be equivalent to the DSM-5 diagnoses of CD and ASPD, there will be greater overlap in diagnostic conceptualization.

Psychopathy is characterized by an increased risk for antisocial behavior (Frick and Dickens, 2006; Hare, 2003). While several psychiatric disorders and neurological conditions, including CD and ASPD (APA, 2013), confer an increased risk of reactive aggression (Anderson et al., 1999; Leibenluft et al., 2003), psychopathy is unique in that it conveys increased risk for instrumental aggression (Frick et al., 2003). 

Interestingly, an article that was cited included this assessment of treatment options: "While treatment recommendations are currently sparse, recent work has shown that previous assessments of treatment amenability in this population may have been overly pessimistic."

Also, because I had to look this up too:
"A classic measure of stimulus-reinforcement learning is aversive conditioning -- the individual learns that a particular stimulus is associated with threat. Individuals with elevated CU traits show marked impairment in stimulus-reinforcement learning. Indeed, an individual's ability to perform aversive conditioning at 15 years has predictive power regarding whether that individual will display anti-social behavior 14 years later (Raine et a., 1996)."

Just depression

I responded to another "am I a sociopath?" email two years later and found another young person who would now describe what she was going through at the time as something very different from sociopathy. I asked her to write how her perspective changed over those years:

During most of my teenage years, I was determined to find the crucial component to my personality; a defining factor. Something has to be wrong with me, because no one else seems to have my problems and issues. In 9th grade, I had friends; none close, but people to talk to during class, and see in the halls. I would act differently around all of them... (it wasn't until two years later that I noticed this behavior). When around the cool kids, I'd act cool, when around the nerds, I'd act nerdy, and so on. I'd take on similar personalities, so I could fit in, and have friends. 

Later on I noticed that my emotions were fading away... as if one day I'd wake up and no longer be able to feel a certain emotion. I first noticed it with embarrassment, from my ability to do anything and not feel that emotion from it... I felt fear at the realization that I could potentially lose my emotions and become void. It was until one day that I no longer feared losing my emotions that I realized was a sociopath. I didn't feel empathy or regret... I didn't care who I upset. Albeit I realize it now, just a teenager's desperate attempt at clawing their way into accepting themselves. 

All of this was from depression, that went unnoticed for years. I didn't know that then. I convinced myself, and others, that I was a sociopath, and I lived by it. I didn't allow myself to feel emotion, and that bit me in the butt. In the latter part of my teenage years I sorta, grew out of that pit devoid of emotion... Back then, I wanted to be important and special. A lot of people going through their teenage years experience this with other categories too. I wanted to be the strong one of my family, no emotions to cloud my judgement... pure logic; like a robot. I take this in part that there was no father figure in my family. I felt like I had to be the man. 

That's not me now... I climbed out of the hole I dug myself into by conditioning myself to feel happiness. What I mean by that is, I would do my best to find something to make me happy during my day... It took a while to feel full emotions again but now I'm at the point where it's a normal part of my life. I have learned that with happiness, comes sadness... and to not block either emotion. Emotions are like yin and yang and you cannot have one without the other. 

Mental health is not self-diagnosis, mental health is accepting your personality for what it is... if you are normal, average... that's okay. I had to learn that. Also of course, seeing a therapist helps, which is what I did to get my anxiety under control. Now, I will be driving down the road and I'll smile at a bright blue day, and I'll smile at a gloomy rainy day. Both are beautiful to me, because contrast is good. 

The whole period where I thought I was a sociopath is not something I'm proud of. It's a little embarrassing because I genuinely believed it. and now I know how stupid it was. Let this be a lesson to all.

Liar, liar

One thing I am always a little surprised by is how horrified people are of the idea of sociopath mask-wearing and lying. Doesn't everybody? The main difference seems to be what sorts of things people bother to lie about? Maybe not even that? From the New Yorker blog's "How to Tell When Someone is Lying":

People lie all the time. According to the psychologist Robert Feldman, who has spent more than four decades studying the phenomenon, we lie, on average, three times during a routine ten-minute conversation with a stranger or casual acquaintance. Hardly anyone refrains from lying altogether, and some people report lying up to twelve times within that time span. I might open a conversation, for instance, by saying how nice it is to meet someone—when I’m really not at all happy about it. I might go on to say that I grew up in Boston—a lie, technically, since I really grew up in a small town about forty minutes outside the city. I could say that the person’s work sounds fascinating, when it’s no such thing, or compliment him on his (drab) tie or his (awful) shirt. And if the person mentions loving a certain downtown restaurant where I’ve had a terrible experience? I’m likely to just smile and nod and say, Yes, great place. Trust me: we often lie without giving it so much as a second thought.

We lie in most any context—Feldman’s work has turned up frequent lies in relationships ranging from the most intimate (marriage) to the completely casual. Some lies are small (“You look like you’ve lost a bit of weight”) and some bigger (“I did not have sex with that woman”). Sometimes they are harmless, and sometimes they are not.

Interestingly, although it is very difficult to become a personal lie-detector, studies suggest that people are pretty ok at subconsciously detecting lying:

In a series of studies, out this month in the journal Psychological Science, the Berkeley team had students watch a video of a possible criminal who was being questioned about stealing a hundred dollars. As in an actual interrogation, the suspect responded to both baseline questions (“What are you wearing?” “What’s the weather like outside?”) and target questions (“Did you steal the money?” “Are you lying to me right now?”). Half of the potential criminals were lying; half were telling the truth. Each participant watched one truthful and one deceptive video.

Next, the students completed a simple assessment: Were the pleaders in the videos telling the truth? Just as in prior studies, ten Brinke’s subjects, when asked direct questions, did no better than chance at determining who was truthful and who wasn’t.

But then the students participated in one of two unconscious lie-detection tasks. In each, they saw still photos of the two pleaders alongside words that were associated with either truth, such as “honest” and “genuine,” or lies, such as “deceitful” and “dishonest.” Their goal was to categorize the words as indicative of either truth or lies, as quickly and accurately as possible, regardless of the face they saw along with it. If “genuine” flashed on the screen, they would press a button to classify it as a truth-category word as soon as possible.

When the researchers dug deeper, they saw that the participants’ unconscious instinct fared far better: in both studies, they were significantly faster at properly categorizing lie- and truth-related concepts when those concepts were presented with the lying or truthful face, respectively, from the video. Seeing a liar’s face made people faster at classifying lie-related words than truth-related words—and seeing a truth-teller had the opposite effect. “When you see a liar’s face, the concept of deception is activated in your mind even if you’re not consciously aware of it,” ten Brinke hypothesizes. “It’s still unclear just how high a percentage of lies our unconscious mind is able to sense accurately, but discrimination is definitely occurring.”

Unconscious discrimination seems to play out in more life-like scenarios, too. In a series of prior studies, conducted by an unrelated group at the University of Manheim, the psychologist Marc-André Reinhard and his colleagues found that the ability of student judges to detect deception improved drastically if they were given time to think—but only if, in that time frame, they thought about something other than the case they were judging. If they had to make an immediate judgment, they did no better than chance. The same was true if they were allowed to deliberate consciously. But when they were kept from consciously deliberating, by, for example, completing a demanding word-search puzzle, their accuracy improved significantly. Reinhard concluded that, in the unconscious-deliberation condition, the brain had had time to integrate the subtle cues that our conscious mind can’t quite perceive into a more complete judgment.

Why is it so hard for people to spot sociopaths then? Could it be that some people are willfully blind?

Problems and (no?) solutions

A certain type of reader of this blog would find this comment to be incomprehensible, stupid, disingenuous, short-sighted, illogical, immoral, deceitful, offensive, over-simplifying, and dozens of other terrible things:

We do not always have a choice as to whom is part if our life. If a close relative or a co-worker is a sociopath, we may need to make room for them in our life. My point is that if there was better awareness and acceptance of sociopathy, there could be better harmony and less pain, destruction, awkwardness, hiding and running away for both sociopaths and empaths. 

Our society has learned to accept, even embrace most genetic, behavioral, physical and mental differences - people deformed by polio, people of different races, creed and religion, homosexuals, bisexual, transexual, people with down syndrome, autism, amputees, blind people, deaf people, etc. Are the sociopaths so different that they should never be accepted? Is our society too rigid to make allowance for them? 

The trouble is that sociopaths intentionally hurt people, whereas all of these other types don't, right? Or is it that those other types might intentionally hurt people, but they don't do it for sport? Or is it that those other types might intentionally hurt people, but sociopaths are so much more effective at it? Or is it that those other types might intentionally hurt people, but the types of hurts that sociopaths do are worse? Or is it because those other types are not categorically defined by their propensity to hurt people, but sociopaths are?

It's kind of convenient to say that sociopaths do terrible things and aren't at all treatable (where is the proof?). It basically allows society to wash its hands of this particular subset of people while providing a palatable scapegoat for all of the nastiness that normal people get up to but can't quite face in each other (or themselves). The tricky part is that a lot of us live in civilized cultures where for most people with psychological issues like this we try to treat them or accommodate them. But maybe you argue that sociopaths don't need to be accommodated because they thrive, you say. But what happens when you identify them and then take away their ability to thrive? If they are outted are they thriving? If they are imprisoned, are they thriving? Once you take away their ability to thrive, then do you treat them? Accommodate them? Never, because they don't deserve better? They don't seem like victims to me. If anything they are always victimizers. But what happens if one or more of them truly become victims? Collateral damage in the service of a greater cause?

Maybe even if they eventually become victim they still deserve what they get because they decide to be that way? They decided to be born with the genetic predisposition and decided to be raised in a particular way to cause them to be a sociopath? But they would chosen to be that way if they were given the choice over again? Would you choose to be who you are if given choice? How about they didn't choose to be the way they are, but they do choose to do the things they do? As much as we all "decide" to "do" the things that we do? So they should be punished just like an empath would for the same crimes? More harshly? Less harshly?

I'm being sincere. Let's hear people's best solutions, not just the first step, but all the steps that follow until we've reached some sort of equilibrium. (Or ignore the real issues and start the personal attacks, as some of you like to handle these types of posts, even though there is nothing at all personal about this post).

[Also, we all agree that there should still be leper colonies, right? Kind of their fault getting leprosy in the first place, and if any of you got leprosy you would voluntarily ship yourself off to some dungeon to rot so as not to risk infecting anyone else? I think that's how Jesus would us to handle it?]

Being told you're a sociopath (part 2)

(cont.)

As I asked myself these things, another realization came to me.

I was born with severe astigmatism. We know now, that I hadn’t been able to see much of anything for the first years of my life. But back then, nothing was out of the ordinary. I thought I was perfectly normal and so did the people around me. It wasn’t until I started reading, writing, and watching TV. My parents noticed how I would sit right up to the screen, and burry my nose in the paper to read or write. Still, I was completely oblivious. My world was the blur that it had always been. Then, one day, my mom picked me up early from school and said we were going to the doctors. On the way, she asked me if I could see. I told her that of course I could. She stopped by a red octagonal sign and asked me to read what it said. I told her it didn’t have any words on it.

I got glasses a week later and I’ve been wearing them ever since.

The point was that I didn’t know what my mother meant when she asked me if I could see before I got to wear glasses and truly see the world for the first time. I didn’t think that the world could be anything other than what my eyes had always told me it was. Nothing could have suggested otherwise because I had no idea what the word “see” really meant.

Which is what I think happened with the word “sociopath.” How could I have connected the dots and seen such a thing in me if the word had no meaning for me? Only now, years later, do I look back and laugh at all the times I would get into social pitfalls and awkward situations because I had no clue what was wrong with the people around me. I see now it was me. I would focus, like you, on all those little moments when I had convinced myself I was normal. Back then it was the world that was different and full of crazies.  

Reading your book was like a revelation. That mask of normalcy you speak of, only now do I realize how hard, how draining it had been to keep up pretenses for so long! But because I had never really considered it a mask at all, having it fall now became this boulder crashing off my shoulders. Every smile, every forced emotion, was like I was trying to pick up that boulder and toss it back on me.

Granted, I’ve been slowly getting my game face back on. It’s been getting easier to regress into the comfortable routine I had so mindlessly gone through for years, but I know I can never be the same. Just like seeing the world through glasses for the first time, clear and definite, I have now seen behind the curtain of my own self-deception.

Whether an actual doctor will diagnose me as a sociopath I don’t think I will ever know. I have no intention of going to a therapist or talking to someone about this and, even if I am ever forced to, I’ll lie my way out of it with a clean bill of health.

The only person that will probably ever hear this story, or know what I have gone through for the last few months, is you. I had to tell someone, and you were the only one I knew I could tell. I don’t need confirmation from you about what I am, although your opinion would be much valued. Like I said in the first paragraph, just a reply would be nice so I know you are real and not just a book and a website.

It's interesting how similar this story is to my own story and others that I have heard. The first time I really thought about what the word sociopath meant, I was in my early twenties. I was doing a summer internship with someone who became a fast friend. It was very similar to the class about Evil -- she was very interested in theology and Mormonism, so I told her all of my opinions on morality and she told me I really should consider the likelihood that I was a sociopath. When I looked up what the word meant, I immediately recognized certain aspects about me, but there were other things that didn't seem to quite fit. I didn't really identify with the label right away, or at least I had my doubts. In the five years or so after that informal diagnosis and before my official diagnosis, however, I became better able to assess not just my own behavior, but to better understand the behavior and motivations of empaths. There were many things I shared in common with empaths, particularly superficial similarities. But I slowly started to realize that even though I often had similar behaviors to empaths, my motives were very sociopathic. And seeing things in that way was very similar to having my vision of myself and others suddenly coming into focus. 

Does anyone else have a similar story?

Being told you're a sociopath (part 1)

A lot of people ask me, do sociopaths know that they are sociopaths? I have always said yes, or at least that they usually know that they're different even if they're not quite sure what to label that difference. But I also think that young sociopaths often underestimate exactly how different they are from most people. From their perspective, the main differences they notice are how people make irrational emotional choices or how people do not use their brains as efficiently and effectively as the young sociopath does. What they don't necessarily realize is that other people are making similar assessments about them and their behavior. Perhaps other people notice that the young sociopath makes hyper rational choices, or that the young sociopath seems emotionally detached. In other words, young sociopaths often spend much of their time watching and studying the behavior of others, but sometimes they themselves are being observed and classified, perhaps by people that actually know what a sociopath is and are able to identify the observed traits as being sociopathic. I thought this story from a reader was a great illustration of how a sociopath feels about being told they are a sociopath:

I am 18 and an undergraduate freshman, and my story begins when I took a Philosophy class titled EVIL. I took it because it struck me as an interesting way to go about taking care of a GE requirement. And indeed, it was interesting, just not for the reasons I thought it would be….

As we started really dissecting the nature of evil, morality, conscience, guilt and regret, I began to notice things I had previously not even bothered to acknowledge. I began to disagree with my professor's black and white view on many concepts. I began to receive strange looks from classmates who always left the lecture hall with teary eyes and heavy hearts. An older woman sitting next to me eventually confronted me and suggested that I stop commenting to the class as it seemed I was offending her and other people with my, as she put it, “complete soullessness.”

I didn't understand what the big deal was. I had never had any real problems with what I said to people. I could be fun and sarcastic and usually everyone just loved to be around me. And now, for the first time, I felt exactly like an alien failing at disguising herself as a human.

One day, my professor asked me to stay after class. He asked me about my views I had expressed in lecture, so I clarified the way I had always thought of the nature of evil. He went on to ask me about more personal questions, like my attitudes towards friends and family… so on and so forth. For the first time, I didn’t know what to say. No one had ever asked me about my thoughts on these things so I said what I thought was appropriate. Finally, he  asked me if I had any history of mental health or violence. I told him, honestly, that I didn’t as far as I knew.

Then he brought up one word. He asked me if I knew what the word ‘sociopath” meant. At the time, I thought the word only existed in movies and TV dramas. A romanticized adjective to describe the Hannibal Lecters and the Dexter Morgans. As far as I knew, it had no practical meaning in everyday life. I told him as much.   

He confessed that he had been talking about me with one of his psychiatrist friends. It turned out he had actually invited his friend to sit in on a few of the lectures. He said that his friend had confirmed what he had already suspected, that I exhibited some traits of Antisocial Personality Disorder. (He didn’t use sociopathy the second time, but I learned later through research that they mean basically the same thing.) He suggested that I go see the school therapist or immediately seek some other form of professional help.

Hearing that from someone was like having water thrown on my face. I didn’t know what to say, or how to respond, how to act. So I didn’t say anything. I just thanked him for his time, told him I’d consider it, and left. I started doing meticulous research after that I learned that APD or sociopathy was a very real thing… and that the criteria of diagnosis hit very close to home for me.

And that’s when I stumbled across your book.
  
Reading through it opened my eyes in ways I wouldn't have ever guessed were possible. It was exciting and…fascinating, to have this previously fictional world open up to me and suddenly become very real. I wasn’t afraid or that shocked even. I was curious. I had to know more. And your book offered me insight that I wouldn't have never gotten otherwise. I could relate to most of what you wrote. I saw your writing and through it saw myself in a new light.

Which is what brings me to here and now. I don’t know if I really am a sociopath or just messed up in the head. Part of me really doesn't care. I am what I am. Others may have had issue with me in the past but I have never had any problems with myself. However, part of me also can’t help but be suspicious. I can look back at my life and make all the excuses I want for things I barely remember doing but that doesn’t change who I am now. If sociopathy is genetic then I don’t know where I would get it from because no one in my immediate family (that I know of) is anything like me. Is it like a switch, a mutation, a genetic malfunction, that can just happen from time to time? I don’t know.

The only thing I ask myself is how I could have gone through my life without the thought ever even entering my mind. I mean, from your book and from what most research says about this, you should know in your childhood years. But I didn’t have a normal childhood where this would have become immediately apparent. I was off, certainly. I was weird and creepy, sure. But was I really that weird, and that off?

Profiling the mentally ill

Andrew Sullivan had an interesting NY Times op-ed about profiling the mentally ill. The impetus was that a Canadian woman, Ellen Richardson, was denied entry into the U.S. on her way to a Caribbean vacation because of mental health diagnosis of being clinically depressed. Why stigmatizing mental illness is a bad idea for everyone:

People in treatment for mental illnesses do not have a higher rate of violence than people without mental illnesses. Furthermore, depression affects one in 10 American adults, according to estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Pillorying depression is regressive, a swoop back into a period when any sign of mental illness was the basis for social exclusion.

The Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990 prevents employers from discriminating against people who have a mental illness. If we defend the right of people with depression to work anywhere, shouldn’t we defend their right to enter the country? Enshrining prejudice in any part of society enables it in others. Most of the people who fought for the right of gay people to serve in the military did so not because they hoped to become gay soldiers themselves, but because any program of government-sanctioned prejudice undermined the dignity of all gay people. Similarly, this border policy is not only unfair to visitors, but also constitutes an affront to the millions of Americans who are grappling with mental-health challenges.

Stigmatizing the condition is bad; stigmatizing the treatment is even worse. People who have received help are much more likely to be in control of their demons than those who have not. Yet this incident will serve only to warn people against seeking treatment for mental illness. If we scare others off therapy lest it later be held against them, we are encouraging denial, medical noncompliance and subterfuge, thereby building not a healthier society but a sicker one.

If Physical Diseases Were Treated Like Mental Illness:

Sociopaths = natural human variant?

Sociopaths have existed for a long time and will continue to exist for a long time. Although some may wish them gone in the blink of the eye, that's not going to happen. So what next? A commenter made an interesting point:

I don't think the ability to be detached emotionally and to be charming is a disorder. Other cultures account for these personalities as within the realm of human variety, and only the United States pathologizes it. Ayurveda, for example, states that a certain subtype - the Pitta Vata - is more prone to be creative/charming and adaptable at their best, while angry and vindictive at their worst. Accordingly, Ayurveda gives specific lifestyle and diet recommendations so that people don't go off into the more negative part of the spectrum. 

Additionally, I should add that in modern medical literature, strong emotional reactions, depression and mood instability in general is correlated with imbalances in the intestinal microbiome. There are many studies that are now verifying the validity of traditional cultures' consumption of fermented foods and bone broth that effectively help heal the gut (other great options are the SCD Diet, the GAPS diet, and treatment for Small Intestinal Bacterial Overgrowth (SIBO)), thereby improving mood stability. 

Who knows whether any of this is actually accurate, but is at least an interesting hypothetical to consider, specifically should we take a page out of the Ayurveda's book and try to find some way to help our sociopaths play to their strengths and be socialized enough so that they can be a net positive? Or maybe up the smear campaign and hope that they all kill themselves for shame? Or maybe do some more, truly objective research that would give us a better idea of what our options really are?

Is Twisted's Danny Desai a sociopath?

Twisted, an ABC Family teenage murder mystery drama along the same lines as their Pretty Little Liars, has a potential (likely?) sociopathic teenage protagonist -- Danny Desai. It's so likely that Danny is a sociopath that the original working title for the show was "Socio" and the abbreviation gets thrown around at least once an episode, along with plenty of accusations that he is a sociopath from his teenage peers, some amusingly framed in amusing pop culture references to The Good Son, The Bad Seed, and We Need to Talk About Kevin.

The show begins with Danny, now sixteen years old, having just been released from juvenile detention for having killed his aunt when he was eleven years old, starting high school with his former peers. In the pilot another girl gets murdered and Danny's past history (and the convenient timing of the second girl's murder) make him a prime suspect both in the eyes of the police and the townspeople. But perhaps the show comes closest to acknowledging that Danny is a sociopath when his mother goes to visit his court ordered therapist:

Mother: "So, how's he doing?"

Dr.: "Well, he's a smart young man."


Mother: "Yes he is. Dr. Reidy, I'm sure that you've heard of some of the hateful words people have been calling Danny... monster, freak, sociopath..."

Dr.: "I wouldn't let it get to you Mrs. Desai. It's a heightened time."


Mother: Oh I know, but as a mother, how should I respond to people calling him that. [Pause] I'm not being clear. What are the signs that someone is a sociopath, so that I can explain why Danny isn't one?"


Dr.: "Most sociopaths don't murder anyone, but they do exhibit glibness, superficial charm, an easy ability to lie."

Mother: "Right."


Dr.: "Let's see, what else, they love risk, they don't consider consequences, they have a talent for imitating human emotion -- grief, joy. It's never real, but they're good at making you believe it is. Is that helpful Mrs. Desai?"


The funny part is that Danny actually did murder someone, along with exhibiting all of the other traits of a sociopath that his therapist mentioned. But his mom stands by him, even after having her suspicions about his sociopathy essentially confirmed. She even helps (she thinks) him cover up another possible murder.

Even if Danny is not a sociopath, it's an interesting exploration of a teenage boy living with the stigma of having murdered someone (or at least having been convicted of murder), and how he deals with that (spoiler alert, by alternating violent outbursts against his enemies and charming himself back into the hearts of his already smitten followers), and how his friends and family deal with it (almost unwavering support). That he is such a likeable character (unambiguously so if Twitter is any indication) suggests that the millennial generation (the audience for this particular show) might be the first generation to really accept and even embrace sociopaths in their own lives. So, that's hopeful.

Defining my disorder

This was an interesting NY Times op-ed ("Defining My Dyslexia") of someone's firsthand account of dealing with dyslexia and coming to see it as having both helped and hurt him in his life. I thought there were some interesting parallels:

Last month, at the Emily Hall Tremaine Foundation Conference on Dyslexia and Talent, I watched several neurobiologists present evidence that the dyslexic brain, which processes information in a unique way, may impart particular strengths. Studies using cognitive testing and functional M.R.I.’s have demonstrated exceptional three-dimensional and spatial reasoning among dyslexic individuals, which may account for the many successful dyslexic engineers. Similar studies have shown increased creativity and big-picture thinking (or “gist-detection”) in dyslexics, which correlates with the surprising number of dyslexic entrepreneurs, novelists and filmmakers.

The conference’s organizers made a strong case that the successes of the attending dyslexic luminaries — who ranged from a Pulitzer-winning poet to a MacArthur grant-winning paleontologist to an entrepreneur who pays a dozen times my student loans in taxes every year — had been achieved “not despite, but because of dyslexia.”

It was an exciting idea. However, I worried that the argument might be taken too far. Some of the attendees opposed the idea that dyslexia is a diagnosis at all, arguing that to label it as such is to pathologize a normal variation of human intellect. One presenter asked the audience to repeat “Dyslexia is not a disability.”

On what role people with a disorder should have in helping to define that diagnosis:

At the heart of the conference was the assumption that a group of advocates could alter the definition of dyslexia and what it means to be dyslexic. That’s a bigger idea than it might seem. Ask yourself, “What role should those affected by a diagnosis have in defining that diagnosis?” Recently I posed this question to several doctors and therapists. With minor qualifications, each answered “none.” I wasn’t surprised. Traditionally, a diagnosis is something devised by distant experts and imposed on the patient. But I believe we must change our understanding of what role we should play in defining our own diagnoses.

Before I went to medical school, I thought a diagnosis was synonymous with a fact; criteria were met, or not. Sometimes this is so. Diabetes, for example, can be determined with a few laboratory tests. But other diagnoses, particularly those involving the mind, are more nebulous. Symptoms are contradictory, test results equivocal. Moreover, the definition of almost any diagnosis changes as science and society evolve.

Diagnostics might have more in common with law than science. Legislatures of disease exist in expert panels, practice guidelines and consensus papers. Some laws are unimpeachable, while others may be inaccurate or prejudiced. The same is true in medicine; consider the antiquated diagnosis of hysteria in women. Those affected by unjust diagnoses — like those affected by unjust laws — should protest and help redefine them.

I like that part, particularly "Diagnostics might have more in common with law than science. Some laws are unimpeachable, while others. . . inaccurate or prejudiced". He mentions as an example the role that people with autism have had in helping to change the common understanding of what that disorder means, particularly outside of clinical settings in which most disorders are studied. Once people started coming forward in droves as having autism, it helped spawn the neurodiversity movement and got people to challenge their false assumptions.

Some people might balk at  efforts to redefine disorders (particularly one as nefarious sounding as sociopathy) as not being all bad or even having positive effects on both the life of people with the disorder and the world around them. I don't see why, though. Wouldn't you want to think that people (even sociopaths) are not all bad? That they have special skills that could benefit society? That they might also have rewarding lives? I guess I just don't ever see the long term wisdom in further marginalizing already fringe  groups.

Spotting a sociopath quiz

The "quiz" I made on spotting the sociopath and a chance to win a free book. Thanks again for your help.