Victoria Asian female psychopath Part 2

This was a super interesting one for me because I've tried to be less ethnocentric about my view of psychopathy, but with the language barrier and travel restrictions, it's been hard to connect meaningfully with any Asian psychopaths, and bonus a female Asian psychopath. Here's the description from the YouTube video:

M.E. Thomas of Confessions of a Sociopath interviews an East Asian woman in her 20's about why it may be easier to "mask" psychopathy in Asian than western cultures. 

1. There's no real word or sense of meaning regarding psychopath in East Asian cultures. 

2. The social norms are all explicit and easy to follow. 

3. Public displays of negative emotions are frowned upon as being a burden on the rest of the community, i.e. they require the listener or observer to respond empathetically, which is considered a little rude, too individualistic, and a burden on the community. 

We also talk about animal experiments, narcissistic parents, guilt vs. shame, and public shaming and community centric punishments in American law and East Asian culture. 

Appealing to Cognitive vs. Emotional Empathy

From a reader:

Thoroughly enjoyed your book. I'm pretty sure you hit on the right conclusions in the closing chapters. I used to work with batterers and some violent offenders. Emotional self regulation and empathy tend to range along a spectrum. The highly emotional men (empaths - as you refer to them) that I worked with responded well to empathy. Men on the sociopathic end of the spectrum tended to view emotional displays of empathy as pathetic and useless. The sociopaths I encountered tended to be quite adept at "cognitive empathy" (the ability to model and predict behaviors from an intellectual perspective), but were blind to feeling. As a consequence, they didn't seem to perceive compassion or guilt. It took me a while to come to the conclusion that the soft, tender, vulnerable part of them just wasn't there in the same way as it often is in others. 

They were however exquisitely stunned to consequences. I learned very quickly to drop empathy as a psychotherapeutic intervention, and to focus on rewards, punishments and outcomes in their lives. They were quick to pick up the fact that kindness was often a far better long term strategy for getting what they want than cruelty. 

Pro social behaviors can be taught to children without a conscience. Parents and teachers just need to know what they are working with. I could go on and describe the manipulative games the sociopaths I worked with used to engage in, the special interest they took in manipulating their therapists, the telltale language they used to describe others, or how they game the system, but you already know these things. I liked working with them. I think I was a puzzle to them. Encountering someone who could be "touchy/feely", and who could abruptly turn off their empathy to confront them directly seemed to confuse them. I imagine that I was able to promote some interest and a sense of unease in knowing that I could see through them. Interesting people. Everyone's trying to make their way in the world.

When Your Child Is a Psychopath

A reader writes:

I’ve been keeping you in mind, particularly since lately I see more and more nuanced discussions of psychopathology cropping up. Paul Bloom’s ‘Against Empathy’, though I haven’t yet read the full book, is a particular point of interest for me. But I found out today that The Atlantic had published this article very recently, and I wanted to share it: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/06/when-your-child-is-a-psychopath/524502/

What stands out for me in this situation is the fact that the girl, Samantha, is adopted; I know that children who have been abandoned or through the foster system face greatly increased hardships in their development, which is something I find deeply troubling on a social level. It seems to me that whatever harmful antisocial traits Samantha has may have been exacerbated by past trauma, even as early as her infancy.

Anyway, if you’re so inclined, please read it, and I hope you can take away something useful from it!

Incidentally, concerning the earlier stuff I mentioned about anime - have you ever heard of PSYCHO-PASS (yes, the title is in all caps)? It’s a speculative science fiction series specifically about psychopathy and preemptive judgment in criminal justice. You might find it interesting.

One of the more interesting things for me in the article was this paragraph on low resting heart rate (mine is always just barely hitting 60 beats per minute):

Psychopaths not only fail to recognize distress in others, they may not feel it themselves. The best physiological indicator of which young people will become violent criminals as adults is a low resting heart rate, says Adrian Raine of the University of Pennsylvania. Longitudinal studies that followed thousands of men in Sweden, the U.K., and Brazil all point to this biological anomaly. “We think that low heart rate reflects a lack of fear, and a lack of fear could predispose someone to committing fearless criminal-violence acts,” Raine says. Or perhaps there is an “optimal level of physiological arousal,” and psychopathic people seek out stimulation to increase their heart rate to normal. “For some kids, one way of getting this arousal jag in life is by shoplifting, or joining a gang, or robbing a store, or getting into a fight.” Indeed, when Daniel Waschbusch, a clinical psychologist at Penn State Hershey Medical Center, gave the most severely callous and unemotional children he worked with a stimulative medication, their behavior improved.

And regarding the ineffectiveness of punishment or bad experiences in terms of modifying behavior:

Faulty brakes may help explain why psychopaths commit brutal crimes: Their brains ignore cues about danger or punishment. “There are all these decisions we make based on threat, or the fear that something bad can happen,” says Dustin Pardini, a clinical psychologist and an associate professor of criminology at Arizona State University. “If you have less concern about the negative consequences of your actions, then you’ll be more likely to continue engaging in these behaviors. And when you get caught, you’ll be less likely to learn from your mistakes.”
***
This insight is driving a new wave of treatment. What’s a clinician to do if the emotional, empathetic part of a child’s brain is broken but the reward part of the brain is humming along? “You co-opt the system,” Kiehl says. “You work with what’s left.” 



The article also talks optimistically about the possibilities of treatment, with this caveat:

No one believes that [the boys in treatment] will develop true empathy or a heartfelt moral conscience. “They may not go from the Joker in The Dark Knight to Mister Rogers,” Caldwell tells me, laughing. But they can develop a cognitive moral conscience, an intellectual awareness that life will be more rewarding if they play by the rules. “We’re just happy if they stay on this side of the law,” Van Rybroek says. “In our world, that’s huge.”

Sesame Street on Empathy

I saw this interesting Sesame Street clip defining empathy. Curiously, they never define it as feeling what another person is feeling -- only understanding or imagining what another person is feeling. I guess we would call that cognitive empathy, perhaps even just perspective taking. If that is all that is needed, then I think each sociopath here passes the Sesame Street standard? If anything, it's the autism spectrum that struggles to perspective take?

Rodents have empathy?

Researchers did a follow up experiment to some earlier rat empathy studies and found that rats were willing to help other rats even to their own detriment, but only if they had some prior familiarity with the particular strain of rats, e.g. an albino rat being bunk mates with a black and white rat. If they didn't have any previous experience with that strain of rat, they would not help. Or according to the Washington Post: "The creatures aren’t born with an innate motivation to help rats of their own kind, but instead those with whom they are socially familiar."


The rat empathy thing is interesting because it suggests an evolutionary advantage to empathy, not necessarily a "humans are special snowflakes of the animal world" reason for empathy. The articles discussing the findings use an interesting choice of words that accords -- they call the rats actions "noble" and other such language. This helps explain to me a little more why the fetishism for empathy, that people are biologically pre-programmed not only to engage in empathetic acts, but that they are also pre-programmed to find those acts appealing in the same sort of way that they crave sugar or find others attractive or not based on their pheromones.

Another interesting idea is that with all of these studies with animals and empathy (see also prairie moles), the animals will not act with empathy unless they are familiar with either the particular animal in need (spoiler alert, but see for example Ser Jaime's actions in recent Game of Thrones episodes) or at least someone of the same breed. It's like what they say about gay people or mormon people or any other people that a lot of people often have a hard time understanding or being ok with -- you just have to know one or two of them personally in order to humanize them to your own self.

What implications does this have for sociopaths, if everyday sociopaths stay hidden forever? Will people never learn to show empathy to them?

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).

Tylenol = other people's painkiller

Researcher's at Ohio State University found that using at least one type of over the counter painkiller decreases your assessment of other people's pain:

When you take acetaminophen to reduce your pain, you may also be decreasing your empathy for both the physical and social aches that other people experience, a new study suggests.

Researchers at The Ohio State University found, for example, that when participants who took acetaminophen learned about the misfortunes of others, they thought these individuals experienced less pain and suffering, when compared to those who took no painkiller.

“These findings suggest other people’s pain doesn’t seem as big of a deal to you when you’ve taken acetaminophen,” said Dominik Mischkowski, co-author of the study and a former Ph.D. student at Ohio State, now at the National Institutes of Health.
***
In an earlier study, Way and other colleagues found that acetaminophen also blunts positive emotions like joy.
***
While these results had not been seen before, they make sense in the light of previous research, Way said.

A 2004 study scanned the brains of people as they were experiencing pain and while they were imagining other people feeling the same pain. Those results showed that the same part of the brain was activated in both cases.

“In light of those results, it is understandable why using Tylenol to reduce your pain may also reduce your ability to feel other people’s pain as well,” he said.

The researchers are continuing to study how acetaminophen may affect people’s emotions and behavior, Way said. They are also beginning to study another common pain reliever – ibuprofen – to see if it has similar results.

This makes sense to me. I feel like I identify more with people and experience a stronger, more compelling cognitive empathy for people undergoing something that I can relate to. Because I haven't traditionally felt or acknowledge my feelings, is that why my empathy is so underdeveloped? I.e., does your experience feeling or having felt a particular thing directly relate to your ability to empathize? Is part of empathy just an emotional memory you're experiencing or a projection of our own current mental states on those of others?

Just a dick?

In what has become an impromptu series of "Sociopath, or just _____?" (e.g., sociopath, or just puberty? Sociopath, or just smart? Sociopath, or just depression? Etc., a reader wonders:

I'm well aware you get hundreds of emails from people who are desperate to become sociopaths, so they tell you how unfeeling they are and how they don't care about anybody. And after reading your blog for over a year a question began to fester in the back of my brain and I crave an answer. Why would people, at the slightest lack of empathy, jump to the conclusion that they are a sociopath? And the reason i bring this up is, i used to feel like them. At some point in my life i just decided, i love to hurt people, so i must be a sociopath. I now realize that i'm just a douche. I still enjoy seeing people crumble before me when i attack all of their insecurities at once, but I'm not a sociopath or a psychopath. But what i'm confused by is, why is it so hard for people to come to the realization that they are just dicks?

M.E.:

I think you may be confusing lack of empathy with sadism. Some people don't care about other people, but they have perfectly intact empathy. Other people know that they don't connect with people, and it looks (internally) and feels a lot more like what I would imagine autism would feel like. Their brain is not capable of processing empathy the most people's brains (apparently) do. They can pretend that those empathy and emotional connections things are going on, in fact, they can pretend so well that no one else suspects what's really going on.

Although there's certainly bound to be overlap between empathy-impaired people and dicks, a diminished capacity for empathy is different and doesn't necessarily lead to enjoying exploiting people, or even just taking a special pleasure in your own agenda at others expense. So which are you? 

Empathy's role in defining otherness

From a reader:

I've begun to take your advice on "getting people to my side", as you called it, by coming out to them. I decided to tell my oldest, and whom I consider my only close friend, about me being a sociopath. He's an incredibly empathetic person, and upon telling him it was almost as if he had lost that ability with me. Like he was no longer capable of empathy or understanding with me because it was such a shock to find out his friend had been lying to him. Even after a decade long friendship (even I'm surprised it's lasted that long) he nearly ostracized me simply for who I am. One of his defining features is that he hates lying, and it's one of the reasons why I told him. He is maybe the only other person I respect, other than you M.E., so telling him became an easy choice. Although, it took him almost four weeks to finally begin accepting it; he nearly hated me up until that point. 

All that got me thinking: was the cause of his negative reactions from his empathy? Was is strong moral compass and empathy the source of his inability to connect with and understand someone who lacks those things? Is empathy the reason people like me, or the gays, or anyone else considered "abnormal" by those with a "moral high ground" get ostracized and alienated? All I want is to be myself publicly without scorn from the people around me. Will this society change in its own, or do we have to make it change?

I don't know the answer to his question. I wish I did, and I'd love to hear people's thoughts on it. Here's my attempt to give some sort of response:

I wouldn’t say that empathy itself leads to this, but I think that the illusion that empathy often gives can lead to this. By that illusion I mean that I don't really believe that empathy is as functional (and certainly not as flawless) as people seem to report experiencing it. Maybe I'm just overly cynical, but I wonder how often people are accurately feeling the same feelings that someone else is feeling. The whole concept seems really foreign and almost absurd to me, like a superstition of a culture to which I don't belong. It seems like such magical thinking to even believe that the common belief of empathy exists. But I think a lot of people have an unexamined faith about it. It feels very real and true to them, so they have no reason to doubt it, or question its failure rate like I do. And it is that faith in empathy, I believe, that contributes at least in part to people treating otherness as they do. The empathy gives them the illusion that we are all connected (or at least the ones that they feel connected to). It emphasizes and validates that sense of connection -- proves it to be true, in a way, to the person experiencing the empathy. The empathy helps people to feel like others are a part of them in some way, because that's how they experience it -- they believe they feel the joys and hurts of another, so how couldn't they be seen as a part of them? But if you can't empathize with someone or they can't empathize back, that sense of identification and connection isn't there. If anything, it's seen as a threat -- not just to the person, but to their whole group of people they do identify, e.g. all white people, or all males, or all gay people. 

I was recently reading an article about the rise of polygamous unions and the calls to have these unions legitimized as the marriages that they functionally are. The arguments in favor, of course, are very similar, even identical, to the same sex marriage arguments. But is there widespread support? No. Why? I think at least in part because those people are seen as other, they're difficult to empathize with. I identify as ambisexual, or at least sexually fluid. I read media sources targeted at gay audiences, especially now as I continue to try to build a stronger sense of self and identity and integrate all facets of myself in the process. They do not support polygamous relationships, not even same sex ones (perhaps especially not those, because they "make a bad name" for the community that has been so successful in normalizing as of late). 

I had to laugh because I recently saw an article lauding a woman for being a gay woman in science with Asperger's. She is quoted thusly: "While I’m not trying to push my ideas on anyone, I’m happy to know there are people that might look at me and feel more comfortable about being themselves." Good for her, and I really mean that. I am so pleased to see other marginalized groups gaining recognition, acceptance, and even accommodation and appreciation for their special needs and attributes. This is not sour grapes but just a fact: no group I am part of would laud me for what I am. No group would not even openly acknowledge me as being one of them. 

As a society, I do think that we want people to feel more comfortable about being themselves (google Mr. Rogers "It's you I like"), but still only if they fit certain acceptable categories, albeit an ever expanding list. Certainly you can't be open about being attracted to children still, nor being diagnosed as a sociopath. That's fine, I understand that's how things are and I actually fully expect things to change with that respect in my lifetime (how could they not? transgenderism was taboo only a decade ago). But I do wonder what role empathy plays in all of this.

(And just to clarify for those who might misinterpret, I don't mean that we have to accommodate all behaviors just because someone is wired differently. Rather I think that we shouldn't keep people out just because they are wired differently if they're able to conform their behaviors as needed. For example, I strongly support increased understanding and acceptance for pedophiles in the sense that I believe that they can't help who they are and that if it was possible for them to be more open about their condition, they could possibly get better help and fewer children would be harmed as a result. I feel the same about sociopaths. No one is advocating for special treatment. But demonizing or ostracizing someone who comes out as a sociopath is compounding the problem, not helping. Yes, the sociopath probably misrepresented him or herself by not revealing that he was a sociopath, but is it really fair to punish them for that evasion when this is how people react to the truth?)

Hating the idea of sociopaths

From psychologist Barry Schwartz, via Brain Pickings. First regarding the amorality of science:

When a scientist, or anyone else, discovers something, it doesn’t occur to us to ask whether that discovery should exist. In other words, though discoveries often have moral implications, they do not, by themselves, have moral dimensions. If someone were to suggest that the Higgs boson shouldn’t exist, we’d wonder what mind-altering substance he’d ingested. Inventions, in contrast, are a whole other story. Inventions characteristically have moral dimensions. We routinely ask whether they should exist. We wonder what’s good (life improving) about them, and what the drawbacks are. We debate whether their wide distribution should go forward, and if so, with what kind of regulation.
***
Social science has created a “technology” of ideas about human nature… In addition to creating things, science creates concepts, ways of understanding the world and our place in it, that have an enormous effect on how we think and act. If we understand birth defects as acts of God, we pray. If we understand them as acts of chance, we grit our teeth and roll the dice. If we understand them as the product of prenatal neglect, we take better care of pregnant women.

I like that. I feel like sometimes people think of the existence of sociopaths as some sort of moral issue that they can take a stance on -- anti-sociopath. But as one recent comment noted, that's a little like saying that you're anti-gravity (back to the future!) or anti-phytoplankton (whoa!). Things that exist primarily just exist. There may be a moral element in how they are created or, I don't know, maybe something else in there too. But too many people think that it's just enough to be anti-sociopaths, as if disliking them would eliminate them. But that's like disliking poverty. Or disliking drought or famine or disease. There are sociopaths in the world. Disliking them or wishing they were all locked up and killed won't prevent there from being more sociopaths. The more rational thought if you wanted to prevent mental disorders would not be to just hate on mental disorders, but to understand how and why they occur and try to figure out some way to prevent or treat them humanely. I don't think anyone (at least not here) is truly "pro-sociopath", as if that were the pinnacle of all humanity has to offer. You don't need to convince anyone that sociopaths sometimes cause problems for themselves and others, but given that's true (as it is true with almost everyone at sometime or another), the only truly helpful question is, what are we going to do about it?

Another interesting thought:

However, there are two things about idea technology that make it different from most “thing technology.” First, because ideas are not objects, to be seen, purchased, and touched, they can suffuse through the culture and have profound effects on people before they are even noticed. Second, ideas, unlike things, can have profound effects on people even if the ideas are false… False ideas can affect how people act, just as long as people believe them… Because idea technology often goes unnoticed, and because it can have profound effects even when it’s false — when it is ideology — it is in some respects more profound in its influence than the thing technology whose effects people are so accustomed to worrying about.

Neurofeedback

I have been putting off writing about this because I wish that I knew more and could tell you more, but I also feel like better something than nothing. This past summer I did a round of 15 sessions of neurofeedback along with a friend who really wanted to try it and wanted sort of a buddy in the process, but also because I have always struggled to fall asleep and stay asleep and this was recommended to me as a potential help. I don't really want to try to describe the process completely or even my experience with it (nor give the impression that I endorse it) but I do want to relate a little of my experience with it.

I first started with a QEEG mapping of my brain, essentially (and forgive my ignorance) where they put a cap on your head are tracking your brain waives with all of these nodes placed in different areas of the scalp. This UCLA professor kind of describes its use in neurofeedback here. One thing that I found incredibly credible about the results was that knowing nothing about me (I never told him about my diagnoses of anything), my practitioner told me, in this very cautious way, "I don't want to alarm you or anything, and this is definitely something that we can see in the "normal" population but it is much more common in the autism spectrum, but your empathy and emotional processing regions have abnormally low functioning. Do you ever feel like you are disconnected from your emotions or other people?"

So even though my primary focus was on sleep, brain efficiency, and perhaps increased creativity (if any of these were possible and I was just making a wishlist), my practitioner became pretty fixated on working on the emotional processing. Sometimes he wouldn't tell me outright that was what he was doing for that particular session, I could just tell from the types of questions he would ask me. Sometimes he told me but said that he thought it was necessary to get that up and running before we targeted other things on my wishlist.

Things I appreciated about the experience:

1. It was a little validating to hear that my brain actually is demonstrably mapped out to be crapped out (at least according to these metrics) when it comes to empathy. 
2. Making the little green boat move with my brain waves while keeping the red and yellow boats still in the little electronic regatta made me realize: (1) my thought patterns are a lot more fixed and beyond my control than I realize and (2) because I consciously process so much information as it comes into my brain, I am less open minded. By the latter I mean that my very mechanism of trying to consciously process as much information as I can rather than letting the subconscious deal with it requires me to quickly categorize the data as being interesting or important or not, and always according to my pre-existing criteria. I've always thought that this made me function higher cognitively because less is getting past me, but I realized that it also has the weird but predictable effect of making me search for familiar patterns and thus be closed minded to truly new things, concepts, or types of information. 
3. Certain sessions (again forgive my ignorance) where he wasn't tracking my brain waves but feeding my brain certain waves could be an absolute trip. Once I felt for all the world like I was on an opiate.
4. I slept really soundly and deeply after almost every session in what felt like deep, restorative sleep. 
5. I did sometimes feel waves of affection or other very strong emotional moments of truth, either during the sessions or in the days between the sessions, that suggested that there is still (for me) a capacity for less muted emotions. 

I didn't continue after 15 sessions because my talk therapist suggested that the problem with the neurofeedback technology and techniques are that the brain changes are there, but that they don't last. Again, I did not do any research to verify that claim, so forgive my ignorance.

Even if the effects did not last, there were certain realizations I made during the process that have lasted. I understand better how my brain takes in raw information and that my most efficient brain processing is not to try to earmark or categorize everything as it is coming in (as I naturally default too now), but rather to try to passively let the information come to me in whatever form it chooses to take -- as if there is a direct tunnel of information from the source straight to my brain and I just need to keep that tunnel clear, not force anything. I realized that I do have strong attachments to my loved ones, even if that feeling of attachment or love does not always seem very accessible to me. My practitioner was also a dabbler in dream interpretations, and I learned that whether or not dreams actually have meaning, there was sometimes useful information to glean from the analysis of my dreams. Maybe I will discuss one particularly clear example in a future post. 

Acquired hyper-empathy (or a surgical treatment for low empathy?)

This is an interesting Wired article (link to the full study) about a woman who had part of her temporal lobe removed as part of a treatment for epilepsy and after acquired what her doctors described as a "hyper-empathy":

The researchers are careful to make some distinctions – they say there are two forms of understanding other people’s mental states (an ability known as Theory of Mind): a cognitive variety, which allows us to represent the beliefs and intentions of others; and an affective variety, which allows us to represent their feelings and emotions. They further explain that empathy is separate from Theory of Mind and is about feeling other people’s emotions. The finding from their tests is that Susan has heightened “Affective Theory of Mind” – that is, an enhanced ability to recognize the feelings and emotions of others; and heightened empathy, in the form of an intense response to other people’s emotions.

The tests

The researchers arrived at these conclusions after subjecting Susan to various neuropsychological tests. One of these tapped her Affective Theory of Mind by asking her to rate her agreement with statements like “I am good at predicting how someone will feel”; another tapped her empathy levels by asking her to rate statements like “I get upset if I see people suffering on news programmes”. More objective was use of a French version of the Reading The Mind in The Eyes Test, which involves identifying a person’s current emotions purely from looking at their eyes. Susan excelled at this test compared with ten healthy control women. The researchers also tested Susan’s Cognitive Theory of Mind using a false-belief task. This takes the form of short stories and the test-taker must deduce which character knew what in each scenario. On this, Susan performed no better than controls.

Richard-Mornas and his colleagues conclude that theirs is a “fascinating case of a patient with a hyper empathy associated with exceptional performance in a task of affective theory of mind after right amygdalohippocampectomy [that is, partial removal of the amygadala and hippocampus]”. They note that the regions where brain matter was removed are part of a neural network, together with the prefrontal cortex, that is involved in understanding other people’s minds and feelings. “The present case report suggests that a new permanent cortical organization of attention and emotion processes has developed in our patient that may be responsible for an enhancement of affective theory of mind,” they said.

The article goes on to suggest reasons to be partially or even highly skeptical about the woman's largely self-reported and unverified claims. The author's main argument seems to be yes, it is possible this happened, but we can't be sure it happened to this woman in this way to the extent she says.

But I kind of want to believe it because I started doing a little neurofeedback this summer (I'll try to write more on this when I get a chance), and a large part of the treatment was focusing on stimulating the temporal lobe to get me more up to speed on things like being connected with my feelings and empathy for others. And at least during certain times of the treatment, I did feel an unusual degree of affection and love for the my loved ones -- extremely high for me certainly, and probably high for anyone, give their reactions to my feelings? Or maybe they were just surprised that such expressions of love were coming from me. :)

Empathy: Overrated?

So asks this Atlantic article, regarding whether the Age of Reason should give way to the Age of Empathy:

Bad idea, say the cognitive psychologist Paul Bloom and the neuroscientist Richard J. Davidson. At their Aspen Ideas Festival talk on Thursday, Bloom allowed that a the word “empathy” as it’s sometimes colloquially used—to mean kindness, goodness, morality, and love—is unobjectionable. But in the Obama-esque sense of feeling another’s feelings, empathy, they contend, it mostly hurts the world. “To the extent that I’m an empathetic person,” Bloom said, “I’m a worse person.”

Empathy is a documented psychological phenomenon: If you see someone else poked in the hand, Bloom said, your own pain centers in the brain will light up. And scientists have demonstrated that you’re more likely to help someone whose pain you feel. The problem, as Bloom sees it, is that “because of its focusing properties, [empathy] can be innumerate, parochial, bigoted.” People are often more empathetic toward individuals who resemble themselves, a fact that can exacerbate already-existing social inequalities. And empathy can cause people to choose to embrace smaller goods at the expense of greater ones. "It's because of the zooming effect of empathy that the whole world cares more about a little girl stuck in a well than they do about the possible deaths of millions and millions due to climate change,” Bloom said.

Empathy can also make people do evil. “Atrocities are typically motivated by stories of suffering victims—stories of white women assaulted by blacks, stories of German children attacked by Jewish pedophiles," Bloom said. It also can lure countries into violent conflicts based on relatively small provocations, and researchers have shown that people who are more empathetic are more likely to want to impose harsh punishments on people. “The more empathy you have, the more violent you are—the more ready and willing you are to cause pain,” Bloom said.  

Empathy doesn’t even necessarily make day-to-day life more pleasant, they contend, citing research that shows a person’s empathy level has little or no correlation with kindness or giving to charity. And in the professions centered around helping others, empathy can be a burden, leading to burnout and incompetence caused by emotional contagion. “When I go to my therapist, I want her to understand me and I want her to make me better,” Bloom said. “But if I’m going, ‘I’m anxious and depressed!’ I don’t want her going, ‘I’m anxious and depressed!’”

So what should empathy be replaced with? Bloom and Davidson proposed two things. One is “rather cold-blooded, rational cost-benefit analysis,” Bloom said. “Go after not what gives you buzz, but what really helps other people." For example: Instead of giving to a child beggar in India, and thereby reward the criminal organization that likely put that child there, donate to Oxfam. The recommendation dovetails with the rising “effective altruism” movement, which The Atlantic’s Derek Thompson recently described as “munificence matched with math.”

Of course, this sounds a lot less emotionally fulfilling than helping someone you have a connection with. That’s where the second potential empathy replacement comes in: compassion.  To do good, Bloom said, “we need an emotional push. But the push need not come from empathy. It can come from love, from caring, from compassion, from more distant emotions that don't come from being swallowed up in the suffering of others."

At the University of Wisconsin, Madison, Davidson has studied the brains of Buddhist monks and explored the ways that compassion is neurologically distinct from empathy. He even believes it to be an intrinsic trait like linguistic ability—something that must be fostered at a young age to be implemented throughout life, and something that can be strengthened through practice. To that end, he and his colleagues developed a “kindness curriculum” for preschoolers.

But what about personal relationships—don’t they rely on empathy? Bloom and Davidson said it’s possible but not yet scientifically proven that some amount of empathy is indeed required in order to practice compassion. But they contend that even the closest relationships need not be dominated by the sharing of emotions. At the end of the Aspen session, an audience member posed a scenario to the scientists: What if she was fired from her job, and her partner offered her a back rub and kind words but didn’t truly get why she was upset? Wouldn’t the comfort feel hollow, useless?

“What you’re really asking for is compassion plus understanding,” Bloom replied. “Suppose you feel humiliated. I don’t think it’s what you want or what you need for your partner to feel humiliated. You want your partner to understand your humiliation and respond with love and kindness. I think for your partner to feel humiliated would be the worst thing you want. Because now, you have to worry about your partner’s feelings.”

The science of evil

I wanted to write a response to this NY Times review of Simon Baron-Cohen's book "The Science of Evil," but I already expressed most of my outrage about the book and it's theory that a lack of empathy is the root of all evil here. Today, however, there was an interesting response to both Baron-Cohen's book and Jon Ronson's "The Psychopath Test" by Yale professor of Psychology Paul Bloom, again in the NY Times. Under the title "I'm Ok, You're a Psychopath":

For Baron-Cohen, evil is nothing more than “empathy erosion.”
***
Now, one might lack empathy for temporary reasons — you can be enraged or drunk, for instance — but Baron-Cohen is most interested in lack of empathy as an enduring trait.
***
For Baron-Cohen, psychopaths are just one population lacking in empathy. There are also narcissists, who care only about themselves, and borderlines — individuals cursed with impulsivity, an inability to control their anger and an extreme fear of abandonment. Baron-Cohen calls these three groups “Zero-Negative” because there is “nothing positive to recommend them” and they are “unequivocally bad for the sufferer and those around them.” He provides a thoughtful discussion of the usual sad tangle of bad genes and bad environments that lead to the creation of these Zero-Negative individuals.

People with autism and Asperger’s syndrome, Baron-Cohen argues, are also empathy-deficient, though he calls them “Zero-Positive.” They differ from psychopaths and the like because they possess a special gift for systemizing; they can “set aside the temporal dimension in order to see — in stark relief — the eternal repeating patterns in nature.” This capacity, he says, can lead to special abilities in domains like music, science and art. More controversially, he suggests, this systemizing impulse provides an alternative route for the development of a moral code — a strong desire to follow the rules and ensure they are applied fairly. Such individuals can thereby be moral without empathy, “through brute logic alone.”

This is an intriguing proposal, but Baron-Cohen doesn’t fully elaborate on it, much less address certain obvious objections. For one thing, if people with autism can use logic to be good without empathy, why can’t smart psychopaths do the same? And what about the many low-functioning individuals on the autism spectrum who lack special savant gifts and don’t spontaneously create moral codes? On Baron-Cohen’s analysis, they would be Zero-Negative. But this doesn’t seem right. Such individuals might be awkward or insensitive, but they are not actively malicious; they are much more likely to be the targets of cruelty than the perpetrators.

I think there’s a better approach, one that involves breaking empathy into two parts, understanding and feeling, as Baron-Cohen himself does elsewhere in his book. Individuals with autism are unable to understand the mental lives of other people. Psychopaths, by contrast, get into others’ heads just fine; they are seducers, manipulators, con men . . . and often worse. . . . The problem with psychopaths lies in their lack of compassion, their willingness to destroy lives out of self-interest, malice or even boredom.

Bloom goes on to criticize Baron-Cohen's theory by pointing out that everyone can suffer from a lack of empathy due to circumstances or sometimes through choice. Unfortunately Bloom does not then take the final step of questioning whether a lack of empathy should actually be the scientific definition of "evil," as Baron-Cohen advocates, but instead makes a nod to the I-hate-sociopaths camp, quoting: "'Why should we care about psychopaths? They don’t care about us.'" At least people are starting to think twice before drinking the Hare et al. Kool-Aid of fear-mongering.

Empathizer

From a reader:

Hello!

First I have to say that I found your book absolutely fascinating. 

Now, to start with, I've done plenty of my own research, asked my therapist various questions, dropped casual questions about their observations of my various behaviors to friends and family, and I've come to the conclusion that, while I am not diagnosable as a sociopath due to a lack of recorded juvenile delinquency, very few relationships, and no police encounters, I decidedly identify with a higher level on the antisocial spectrum.

You talk in your book about how sociopaths don't "tap into" true human emotion, and that part of the condition is that we have to work in order to understand social currents. A reply you highlighted on your website said we are different "in the sense that they do not comprehend normal emotional responses and connections."

I've always understood human emotion. I'm brilliant at reading facial expressions, changes in posture, word choice, and I don't find it too difficult to empathize, though only ever for a brief time (about 10 seconds, or however long it takes me to successfully get a grasp on how the other person is feeling in order to properly respond,) and then it's as if I slip out of the emotional persona and back into my usual self with the understanding of the mechanics and nuances of that state of mind. Isn't this comprehension? And, more importantly to me, does this put me outside of the range of an antisocial personality, despite the rest of the traits accurately describing me? 

This question has been the greatest road block in my being able to accept my own (probable) identity as a sociopath. Everything else about sociopathy rings true to me, but my ability to understand and experience emotion confounds my ability to truly identify.

If you have time I'd love your opinion on it.

My response:

This is an interesting question. I'm not sure I really understand what the difference is either. But here's a story that I think illustrates it ok. Recently I was with my father, someone that I believe could probably be diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder. He was talking to an employee of his and was joking around about how he has chickens and you can eat chickens but his grandchildren just got kittens, and can you eat kittens? I knew that the lady he was talking to had a dog and a cat and had just gone back home during the lunch hour because she was worried that the HVAC system in her home wasn't working properly and they might be uncomfortable (she told me the whole story), so I was like 94% sure that she would not think his joke was funny and pretty sure she might actually be horribly offended. So I understood and predicted her emotional reaction better than he did. I've also been around empath types who get so caught up in their own emotions and their own issues that they lose track of their ability (or choose not?) to identify with others. And they say that people with autism have affective empathy but not cognitive? And sociopaths are opposite? So I guess I don't really understand what people mean by empathy. I certainly am able to identify people's emotions. And often I do that by sort of imagining myself in their shoes. And I think that's cognitive empathy, but it's hard for me to understand how affective empathy would be any different. 

What do you think? Should we publish exchange on the blog and see what other people have to say?

Pseudo-science

Psychologists who study personality disorders frequently make unwarranted and unnecessary value judgments and other normative statements. In this article, Psychologist and "autism expert" Simon Baron-Cohen promotes his new book on empathy and makes what I believe are some unsupportable statements that betray a bias that is wholly inappropriate in a man professing to give an accurate, objective opinion on the role empathy plays in human interactions. Here are some illustrative quotes:

• As a scientist I want to understand the factors causing people to treat others as if they are mere objects. So let's substitute the term "evil" with the term "empathy erosion".
• Zero degrees of empathy means you have no awareness of how you come across to others, how to interact with others, or how to anticipate their feelings or reactions. It leaves you feeling mystified by why relationships don't work out, and it creates a deep-seated self-centredness.
• People said to be "evil" or cruel are simply at one extreme of the empathy spectrum.
• Zero degrees of empathy does not strike at random in the population. There are at least three well-defined routes to getting to this end-point: borderline, psychopathic, and borderline personality disorders. I group these as zero-negative because they have nothing positive to recommend them. They are unequivocally bad for the sufferer and for those around them.
• Empathy itself is the most valuable resource in our world.
• Empathy is like a universal solvent. Any problem immersed in empathy becomes soluble. It is effective as a way of anticipating and resolving interpersonal problems, whether this is a marital conflict, an international conflict, a problem at work, difficulties in a friendship, political deadlocks, a family dispute, or a problem with the neighbour. Unlike the arms industry that costs trillions of dollars to maintain, or the prison service and legal system that cost millions of dollars to keep oiled, empathy is free. And, unlike religion, empathy cannot, by definition, oppress anyone.

Mixed amongst these statements, he cites two extreme examples to justify his conclusions: a BPD wantonly screaming at her kids and an ASPD who bottles a hapless barfly to death for looking at him funny. The odd thing is that although Baron-Cohen acknowledges that there is a spectrum of empathy, he firmly places both the BPD and the ASPD at absolute zero. Interestingly although he is an autism expert he does not mention the relative position of autistics on the scale, presumably because any stories of auties being violent would destroy the symmetry between his zero empathy = evil parallelism. Frankly, this type of hackjob excuse for science sickens me, particularly since I know that the natural consequence of something like this is the masses blindly following it as "truth," self-congratulating themselves while they embark on a modern inquisition ratting out the heretics that dare differ from them in any way. And this guy is worried about religion oppressing people? Doesn't he realize that his pseudo-science is its own religion with zealous adherents ready and waiting to oppress? The hubris of it all is simply astounding.

Road rage

A funny thing happened to me while I was travelling. I had gotten a car and was having a few problems with local drivers. I had grown up and learned to drive in a place where everyone quickly becomes an expertly efficient driver, or faces very stiff social sanctions, including possibly death. This place had no such rule of the jungle. Everyone, including their cars, was fat and bloated from years of complacency.

I got stuck out on the road during their rush hour, which seemed odd given the size of this place. There was something about their driving that suggested that they were not used to traffic, that maybe it had sprouted up only in the past 5 to 10 years and not everyone had learned to adapt. I was headed south on a broad, multiple lane boulevard and came upon a backed-up the intersection of another large boulevard with highway entrances. I waited in line for two lights, passing the time reading comments from the blog on my smart phone. During the green light that should have allowed me to cross, someone cut into my lane, slowing me down enough to keep me from proceeding through the intersection. I didn’t really mind. I had nothing to do, nowhere to go, and I was entertaining myself with my music and reading material.

Cross traffic took their turn, but quickly became backed up in the intersection. Cars just kept coming even though there was no way for them to clear the intersection in time. When the light turned green for me again, there was a car completely blocking not just my lane, but the lane next to me. I wondered at the driver's stupidity and waited for social sanctions in the form of honking, yelling, and fist shaking, but they never came. Was that my role as the driver closest to her, best informed as to the problem? I let out a few beeps in quick succession, heard a longer one from a few cars back in response, but nothing else. But when I looked at her, I didn’t feel like doing anything more. Both hands were on the wheel at 10 and 2, fists clenched to the point of whiteness. She purposefully avoided eye contact, staring ahead as if realizing she was about to endure the worst 1 minute of her day. She was so rigidly focused on enduring her fate that she didn’t even attempt to move one lane over, which if maneuvered correctly could free up at least one lane of traffic. I felt badly for her.

We waited that light out, staring at her. When she finally cleared the intersection and cross traffic picked up again, I was determined not to let the same situation happen again. I creeped further into the intersection myself, rolled down the window and gave various gestures and commands meant to dissuade others from enter the intersection unless they could safely clear it. When the light turned green, I sped off, taking back roads the rest of the way.

I had a small crisis of identity. Had I just empathized with that woman? Was I finally tapping into that piece of humanity that I lacked? Looking at her, clearly in a state of nervous discomfort, I myself felt nauseated and uncomfortable. Was that me mirroring her own emotions, or was that the heat, the humidity, and my food not agreeing with me? Twenty minutes later I determined affirmatively that it was the food, but for those twenty minutes I had a very Grinch moment of wondering whether my heart was growing three sizes. It wasn't at all unpleasant.

Moral of the story is that road rage kills, kids.

UPDATE: Interestingly, since this post was initially published, research has shown that sociopaths actually can feel empathy in certain situations when their attention is drawn to the task of trying to imagine what it might be like to be that person.  

Responses to a hypothetical

Ok, we had a good split of responses from the hypothetical. There were 60 total. Approximately 29 people identified as sociopathic. Of those 29, six were diagnosed. Only 16 total people total were diagnosed with anything, including sociopathy. If you're curious to see all the responses, here's a link (there are 9000 total words).

My response to the hypothetical was that if extreme pain was an issue, we should pair up empaths with each other. If it is true that they feel each others' pain and find it painful themselves to inflict pain, then when an empath smashes another empath's fingers smashed with a hammer, that should be a twofer in terms of amount of pain juice. So my main thought was, given that we are in this situation, we should handle the task in the most efficient way possible.

I gave the hypothetical to me extreme empath friend. She suggested that she just wouldn't play. She would spend that time trying to find a way out or just die because she didn't think it was likely that we would be released after the fluid was collected anyway. Interestingly, she has always bucked what most people (including me) would just accept as their lot. For instance, as a child she refused to go to Kindergarten until her father started bribing her with coffee.

Her neurotypical significant other said that he would lock himself up in a room and just hope to avoid anybody, maybe even take a nap because that's how he deals with stress.

Using those three responses and what I predicted would be a fourth, I came up with four categories of responses: (1) cooperative (main goal is figuring a way to get it done, not necessarily to hurt people), (2) opposition (active resistance, (3) avoidance (passive resistance or noncompliance), and (4) sadism (primarily concerned with hurting people). I coded the responses accordingly (see document linked above).

Perhaps people who read this blog won't be surprised, but the large majority of sociopaths chose cooperating. As one person put it, once they heard the rules of the game they became "task-oriented." Why is this? I'm not entirely sure, but when presented with a game like this, sociopaths (high-functioning?) seem less likely to challenge the underlying assumption and more likely to find a way to game the system from the inside. As long as I'm pretty sure the game isn't rigged I'm most likely to play by the rules (and do it better than anyone else by being creative) than to completely subvert them. For instance, in my younger days I would scam people all of the time but didn't tend to outright steal from them.

Cooperative sociopaths were either coldly rationale about getting the job done or were trying to game the inherent weaknesses of the set-up. Interestingly while sociopaths seemed intent on trying to game the system, they were also concerned with the noncompliance of others and how they might try to enforce compliance. They treated the exercise as if it was a game of Diplomacy, tending to advocate for a more regimented and organized approach with due care to isolate the victims and rabblerousers lest their fear, panic, or rebellion spread. (Prompted by a fear of mob mentality? Desire to keep control of the group?)  While the cooperative sociopaths were concerned with emotions and psychological states to the extent they predicted individual behavior, the sociopaths were not concerned with minimizing psychological or emotional scarring, only physical (and they were oddly concerned about that).

In comparison, non-sociopaths who selected cooperation were often concerned about minimizing pain overall, and even emotional pain. Some were worried about minimizing their own pain or maximizing their own chances of survival. Some were primarily concerned with keeping some measure of at least an illusion of control over the situation, or at least being creative with the solutions to the problem.

Interestingly, most of the non-sociopaths answered both questions (how would you feel and what would you do), whereas far fewer sociopaths bothered to answer how they would feel. Even if the sociopath did address how he would feel, it was often in terms of non-emotional reactions, e.g. being impressed, sighing at the bad luck, or just being angry or frustrated.

More interesting still, when asked to imagine the reactions of their "opposites." sociopaths were most likely to focus on their emotions as opposed to what they would do. In contrast, non-sociopaths focused on what the opposites would do, not what they would feel. This suggests that sociopaths tend to see non-sociopaths in terms of their emotional reactions and non-sociopaths see sociopaths in terms of their actions.

Sociopaths also tended to see empath reactions more in terms of group dynamics (e.g., the sociopath would try to predict how they would act as a group), whereas non-sociopaths imagined sociopaths as operating as more of a lone wolf. Again, this is probably true to life -- statistically this situation would have only 1 or 2 sociopaths and the main thrust of the group dynamic would be from non-sociopaths.

I was pleased to see that empaths (at least the ones who visit this site) didn't assume that sociopaths would be uniformly sadistic. Rather, most of them correctly predicted that sociopaths would be rational and efficient (only two sociopaths were coded as sadistic, the other two sadistic responders were BPD and narcissism).

My favorite response about what your opposite might do was from an aspie: "I honestly have little idea."

Thanks for participating!

Song

If I had a mind to,
I wouldn't want to think like you.
And if I had time to
I wouldn't want to talk to you.

I don't care
What you do,
I wouldn't want to be like you.
I don't care
What you do,
I wouldn't want to be like you.

If I was high class
I wouldn't need a buck to pass.
And if I was a fall guy,
I wouldn't need no alibi...

I don't care
What you do,
I wouldn't want to be like you.
I don't care
What you do,
I wouldn't want to be like you.

Back on the bottom line,
Diggin' for a lousy dime.
If I hit a mother lode,
I'd cover anything that showed.

I don't care
What you do,
I wouldn't want to be like you.
I don't care
What you do...
I wouldn't wanna,
I wouldn't want to be like you.
I wouldn't want to be like you.

How do you cope?

From a reader:

A little bit of background on me; I'm 27, male and I've been trying to figure out what is wrong with me since middle school. At first I thought it was my upbringing - and I'm still curious if that played a role in how I've turned out. I had a tough childhood, and I was forced to become defensive at home and at school. More recently I'm noticing that; as far as I can tell I don't connect with people or have the same emotions or thought processes they do.

It has worked out for me fairly well in my professional life, I tend to advance quickly in the things that I do, because I have an innate understanding of what people want. In my personal life, it's just about destroyed it. It's not so much that I attack people, I do subtly manipulate relationships in my personal life - and much more in my professional life. The problem is I can't relate to people, I can't relate to their emotions at all. There are times I feel like I should be sad, because I can tell everyone else is sad, but I'm not. The emotions I generally feel strongest are anger and frustration, or irritation.

I feel like I can only juggle a handful of relationships, otherwise it's too much to keep up with and process. I guess what I'm getting at is this; if I told people how I really felt, or what I thought about life, and how they go about their lives, they would be horrified. If I acted as I feel I should, and I were really how I am, they would not want to know me. It's not that I'm aggressive, or violent, but I don't understand how they think. Everything seems to go through some sort of filter and come out dirtier than when it went in. Personally, I think in terms of A+B=X, about almost everything - including relationships.

So I guess my question is, how do you cope with this? Was there a time where you just decided to accept who and what you are? I don't know if I'm a sociopath, I don't really understand any of it, mostly because I don't have anything to compare it to. It would be helpful to understand where you're coming from, and possibly other sociopaths as I might actually relate to it.

My response:

This sounds very close to my own experience, although I couldn't say for sure whether that makes you a sociopath. I don't know if anyone really accepts himself completely. The problem with the idea of finding yourself (perhaps particularly if you're a sociopath) is that you're aiming for a moving target. But I think you'll be surprised that many people will be able to understand you or at least accept the bulk of you if you are honest with them -- particularly those who are most empathetic, oddly enough. Many of the people you tell may disappoint you, but you at least have the option. Should we see what other people think?