Thanks

My family has always been very supportive of me and whatever I've gotten myself up to. The book has been no exception. Some of my family members are supportive because they believe in "the cause" like I do, that sociopaths are often misunderstood, understudied, and that more can be done to integrate them better into society. More of my family are supportive just because they love me and want what is best. They love me for who I am, including the sociopathic traits. A few members of my family and some friends love me in spite of my sociopathic traits. They wish I could be different but they accept me as I am. I'm lucky that I don't really have family that have rejected me, just a few friends and colleagues.

For one of those middle category of family members, I send her an occasional email from people thanking me for the book and explaining that they found some explanation, solace, support, kinship, etc., or that the book otherwise helped them to better understand who they are and conceive of a better way to live based on their own specific situation. I send her these emails because she's interested in these people. Every time she gets one, she says she's surprised. I don't know why she's surprised and neither does she. I guess it's one thing to know someone who has been diagnosed as a sociopath yourself, but I think she is never expected that there are so many with all different backgrounds who read the book and identify with what I've written there. Or perhaps didn't think this type of people would find it helpful to read the experience and thoughts of others like them? Or maybe she believed that this type of people would not care enough about the experience to write me about it? So I keep sending her the emails periodically and she reads them and thinks the whole thing is fascinating, and I think her reactions are what is fascinating. I wonder if some of you would be surprised that rather than this being just a place for sociopaths to self-justify bad behavior, a lot of people are earnestly seeking to understand how/why they are different and how to do/be better at whatever it is that is important to them. Which is a very human experience and desire that I think almost anybody could identify with. 

But this the type of email that I will forward her, under the subject "A startling clarity, brought to me by you":

I've just finished your book, and felt the need to reach out to you because you've made yourself available, and because I found your story and message so engaging and refreshing. 

I appreciate what you've done. The "cause" as you call it, is greatly in need of individuals like you, who are willing to lay out their experience in hopes of allowing others to gain some perspective. I'm aware that you hear this often, but I found it quite satisfying to be able to stare, for a few minutes each day, at a few squiggles arranged and printed onto paper, and feel, suddenly, a sense of understanding I never imagined possible. I have never been able to relate, in earnest, my worldview and experience to anyone I've known in person. After reading your book, don't feel the need to. I understand what I am, and that I'm not alone. I don't necessarily feel a sense of belonging, but I do feel as though a veil has finally been pulled from my eyes. 

I won't bore to you the details of my life or my recent self-diagnosis, but I will say that I discovered you at the time in my life at which you were most needed. I have never looked to another human for direction, held a role model, or knelt to idols, but you should know that I have a curious reverence for you. 

I hoped you might be able to offer perspective on some things, not only as a sociopath, but as a functional and seemingly successful member of society. 

I want you all to know that I feel the same way reading the things that you choose to share, either by emailing or commenting on the blog. I feel like I've learned so much from reading your thoughts, either because I identify/agree with them or because I don't. I've changed my mind a lot over the past 5 years or so, which is one of the major reasons why I still love to do it. So thanks to everyone for what you do.

Richard 'The Iceman" Kuklinski

A reader writes:

Definitely worth watching all of the interviews/documentaries (and HBO has made a few over the years) with famed mafia hitman Richard Kuklinski, especially the one with the psychiatrist.

What is especially relevant to your blog would be the the end of the interview, where the psychiatrist does a pretty good job explaining in succinct terms the genetic and environmental causes of ASPD and how both factors work together, in a way that makes a lot of sense without having to bring a lot of biological jargon into it, and without having to resort to chicken/egg arguments.

Kuklinski's anxiety and contained anger while listening to him is palpable.

The very end is quite powerful.

Loving unloveable people

My sister told me that I should listen to the most recent episode of This American Life.

It's really interesting, particularly for people who often hear that they are unloveable, because the show really questions what it really means to love. The first half of the show is about a family who adopts a Romanian orphan. The mother believed strongly that people should do things that they're capable of, and she felt capable of adopting a child, even one with special needs. The son, Daniel, was ok for the first 6 months, then rapidly deteriorated when it finally became clear to him that his birth parents had abandoned him to spend his first 7 years living in a crib, and he misdirected his hatred to his adoptive parents.

Daniel was diagnosed with attachment disorder, characterized by a lack of empathy and lack of conscience. Daniel threatened his parents several times, including holding a knife to his mother's throat. His mom stopped teaching him how to read because, in an era of Columbine, she worried that he would independently research ways to hurt her or others. When asked how she could love someone who is homicidal, she responded "Because he was my son! I mean you have to love him or else there's no way out of it. . . . I don't think I ever questioned my love." His mom stayed with him even after the dad had to hire a bodyguard to protect the mom from the son's outbursts, even when an acquaintance of hers and a friend and mentor of Daniel's, also diagnosed with attachment disorder, committed cold-blooded murder.

Daniel started attachment therapy, including a period of 8 weeks in which he could not be more than three feet away from his mother. After that, he ceased to be violent but still stole. He then began "holding therapy", where for 20 minutes a night his parents would cradle their thirteen year old hulk of a son in their laps and feed him ice cream while looking in their eyes and trying to bond. Daniel began to transform, began to help around the house, made friends, and had his old furniture moved back into his room (previously removed as a throwing hazard). His parents raised him to be Jewish, hoping that the religious instruction would help him acquire something of a conscience. After years of being a very poor divinity student, to the extent that he would frequently be taken away from the temple in police cars, he was finally given an award for best student in his confirmation class. In his speech he thanks his parents, saying that he loved them very much. His mom says that it was the most spectacular moment of her life.

Despite all of this, his mother still thinks that it is not possible to teach love. "I don't think the goal was ever love, the goal was attachment . . . I think you can work really hard to create an environment where you can form attachment. You want to create these situations where it's more advantageous for them to attach than to keep doing things their own way and being in their own world, isolated." When asked if she feels loved by Daniel, "Yeah, I feel love . . . I don't think he wants to hurt me, I don't worry about that at all." Although this is not the type of "love" that most people think of as love, the narrator imagines that the mother's pragmatism is exactly what has made her so successful:

"If you're the kind of person who actually needs love, really needs love, chances are you're not the kind of person that's going to have the wherewithal to create it. Creating love is not for the soft and sentimental among us. Love is a tough business."

I liked the idea that a practical approach can really be effective in instilling a sense of attachment (love?) in someone who otherwise seemed incapable of attachment. You can't force someone to love you, but you can indirectly influence them, incentivize them to want to attach. I feel like there are a lot of interesting pieces of advice for parents of a sociopath.

Other interesting parts include the first 5-10 minute discussion about how it used to be a Truth in psychology that parental love was unnecessary and even unhealthy for children. It makes you realize how young and flawed a "science" psychology is.

When saw we thee a stranger?

I grew up in a very welcoming church in which the primary doctrine was that we are all children of God (spirit siblings) with the divine potential to become gods ourselves. Over the recent holiday I asked my uncle how he converted to the church. He told me a story of being 17 years-old, searching for truth, and finding it in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. I asked him what were the church teachings that inspired him to make such a change. He said primarily the belief in the pre-existence -- that we had spiritual lives before this one and that we each chose to come to this planet and receive a body to have a physical existence.

After he answered my questions he turned it back on me. He had read the book and wanted to know what about the church made me keep believing, despite being the way I am. The truth is that I have always believed and never doubted. My mother thinks that is a gift of the spirit. But I've also never had reason to doubt. The teachings of the church have always felt as true to me as anything else people have told me. But I told my uncle, I have learned that everyone has their own view of any belief. There are no identical Mormons -- there are no identical political conservatives, or feminists, or humanists, or even sociopaths. Even though you can categorize people into big groups, people really are special snowflakes and they will not always fit the mold in the way that other members of that group will expect. That doesn't mean they don't belong to that group or groupings are not useful, We were never meant to be the same and we're all too complex to describe with just a few categories or characteristics. For instance, I used to fixate on the "criminal" description of criminal sociopaths, thinking that they must be the "low-functioning ones." It wasn't until I interacted with some that I realized that "criminal" didn't really mean everything I had just sort of assumed it did. Now I don't have such rigid views about how I expect people to manifest their personality disorders or other mental issues.

But bringing it back to religion, I liked this talk from a LDS Bishop about gay mormons:

Even in the Church, among brothers and sisters, we are sometimes strangers. We have a tendency to judge one another for failure to understand the gospel as we understand it or abide by the commandments as we ourselves do. In every ward there are members who speak disparagingly of those who are different, who question the devotion of their brothers and sisters on some basis, who treat them as strange.

In Romans, Paul emphasizes the importance of the saints having tolerance and charity for those who are different. To those who may make judgments about others in regard to their eating habits, for example, he says, “If a man is weak in his faith, you must accept him without attempting to settle doubtful points. For instance, one man will have faith enough to eat all kinds of food, while a weaker man eats only vegetables. The man who eats must not hold in contempt the man who does not, and he who does not eat must not pass judgement on the one who does; for God has accepted him” (14: 1-3, New English Bible; hereafter NEB). Disputations about the Sabbath day are seen in the same light. “This man regards one day more highly than another, while that man regards all days alike. On such a point everyone should have reached conviction in his own mind. He who respects the day has the Lord in mind in doing so, and he who eats meat has the Lord in mind when he eats, since he gives thanks to God. For no one of us lives, and, equally, no one of us dies, for himself alone. . . . Let us therefore cease judging one another. . . . Let us then pursue the things that make for peace and build up the common life” (14:5-7, NEB). Building that common life is our common stewardship and when we take it seriously we progress as individuals and as a Church.

I am struck by what Paul says because I think he is trying to teach a very important lesson: there are a number of things about which the Lord seems not to care, in which He gives us choice. It seems there are many issues over which we choose to be divisive, which are of no consequence to God. He doesn’t care whether we are Republican or Democrat, liberal or conservative, rich or poor, sophisticated or simple. It is probably of no concern to Him if we are vegetarians, eat white flour, have beards, wear colored shirts to Church, or the myriad other things that some of us consider important enough to judge, condemn, or spiritually disfellowship one another over.

Instead of focusing on such trivia, we should, as Paul says, “pursue the things that make for peace, and build up the common life.” Those things generally are love, understanding, tolerance, acceptance, liberality of spirit, magnanimity, and forgiveness.
***
[T]he following statements by Joseph Smith might prove instructive:

“The nearer we get to our Heavenly Father, the more we are disposed to look with compassion on perishing souls. We feel we should want to take them upon our shoulders and cast their sins behind our backs.”

“Nothing is so much calculated to lead a people to forsake sin as to take them by the hand, and watch over them with tenderness. When persons manifest the least kindness and love to me, O What power it has over my mind, while the opposite course has a tendency to harrow up all the harsh feelings and depress the human mind.”


“Our Heavenly Father is more liberal in His views, and [more] boundless in His mercies and blessings, than we are ready to believe or receive.”
***
The entire burden of Christ’s message is that we should be slow to judge and quick to forgive, that we should consider all people as ourselves, and that we should love one another without regard to our differences. The Golden Rule applies especially to all those whom we consider strange, queer, abnormal—all those whom we might see as different from or less than we are.

The truth is that despite all being special snowflakes, we have much more in common with each other than we would ever have separating us and we are interconnected in ways that we cannot comprehend.

Coming out to your family

With the holidays upon us, a story about being out with your family. From a reader:

You're going to love this. Dad's a US Army chaplain (former civilian pastor), Mum's in seminary getting her M.Div, and younger sister's, well, she's still an innocent high school student. That would make me a sociopath pastor's kid. Once everyone got over the initial shock of my nature, we had a good laugh about the irony. Parents are empaths by occupational hazard, whilst my kid sister is an empath by nature. They all know about it, and they don't necessarily dislike talking about it. I'll ask for their perspective on certain things, and they respond with wholehearted earnest. They just dislike hearing about my exploits and modus operandi, haha. Perhaps it's less dislike and more morbid curiosity due to our brains being wired so radically differently, because they always ask about the outcome. I guess you could say that they're my greatest cheerleaders. Just not when I'm lying to lie, manipulating others for my benefit, or pursuing sexual relationships since I'm not married, etc. That's why it's kind of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, haha. And I do things for them, like putting up a believably genuine front for Dad's congregation, people I have to impress at university, etc. The thing that bothers them most is the characteristic lack of conscience. No surprise there.

My own family is equal parts disbelief and acceptance about who I am. I guess that way they get the best of both worlds -- deniability, but also an easy excuse for my ill behavior that doesn't necessarily reflect poorly on them. My parents are religious too. Sometimes my mother asks me about the blog, says do I ever have the chance to share my religious beliefs with others. I tell her yes. They think I'm helping others, and I don't think that is wrong, necessarily. The older they get, the funnier they get. Like at a recent family reunion, they were talking about my cousin having a viral youtube clip. My mother started telling them about my blog and about how crazy "technology" is these days. I didn't realize what was going on until she yelled over to me, "What's the name of your blog again? Psycho something?" in front of my entire extended family.

I'm really grateful for my family. I think they have helped me more than anything else to feel like I am an integral part of the human race and that my choices define me more than anything else. Whether or not those things are actually true, I think it makes my life better to believe them (even compartmentalize-believe them) and act on them (for the most part).

The Empath's Cheat-Sheet for What a Sociopath Really Means

I love this, from an anonymous reader:

The Empath's Cheat-Sheet for What a Sociopath Really Means

1. I love you: I am fond of your companionship and put you above most, but never above me. Consider it an honor.

2. I'm sorry, forgive me: I really do not enjoy the fact that your mood has altered. Please revert back to normal.

3. I'd do anything for you: I'd do plenty to keep you right where I want you to be

4. My condolences for your loss: *crickets* ... It's just a body. See you later when you aren't being an emotional train-wreck.

5. S/he fills my heart with joy: I haven't had this much fun playing in a long time, and the sex is more than acceptable.

6. I love my family: They're mine.

7. That's simply shocking: You've touched my morbid bone. No need to stop now...

8. Deep down, I feel I'm a good person: I'm not in prison and I stopped abusing animals, mostly. What more can you possibly demand of me?

9. I'm not a monster, I'm a human too: I'm trying to seem human, give me a break. It's not like this is particularly natural for me.

Does anyone have a number 10?

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Fleeting emotions

My sister and sister-in-law have several children that are the same ages as each other. Children all have different personalities, but I have also seen some trends in how these particular children act based on their mothers' parenting styles. My sister is a little emotionally detached herself and is not an overly emotional parent. Her parenting style fosters independence. Her children go places by themselves before they are in the double digits of age. The children have a lot of autonomy, responsibilities, and experience real consequences for their actions. My sister-in-law is more the typical, doting mother. She is anxious and her children live in a safe bubble of love and protection. When her children speak, we stop and listen. They get choices about certain things like what to eat for dinner, but most of the time they are being told what to do from hour to hour. It's easy to see that there is not a one-style-fits-all approach to parenting. Both approaches have their plusses and minuses.

I am grateful for the way I was raised. Some people have called it borderline (or just plain) abusive, but to me it was mainly characterized by freedom and creativity. Even the unpredictable outbursts from my parents had a use, they helped bond me and my siblings together in a way that is still remarkably tight into adulthood. We got along not just because we had to, but because we wanted to -- everyone recognized that it was better that way. We would play music together, play games together, play sports together, and do projects together -- all of which we recognized would have been impossible to do alone. Together we were better, stronger, and happier than we were as individuals. Consequently, my family does certain things very well. We're very good at subjugating our will to the utilitarian needs of the whole. We joke that we're a little like the Borg from Star Trek -- assimilation for the needs of the hive. That might sound like a nightmare for some, but it's really efficient and no one ever feels like they're held hostage to the potential drama and demands of divas and tyrants. Each member of the family has their role and expertise, and the rest of us defer to them on those points when we're together. Because this state is completely voluntary, we're also careful to make sure that no one gets overly disgruntled and opts out completely. If someone is feeling put upon, we address the issue openly and efficiently. People who cheat get informal social sanctions, typically in the form of my sister's wrath. But to make things work this way, no one is really allowed to take things personally or have "unreasonable" emotional reactions and expect to have those feelings validated. Someone can be upset and cry and no one will give him a hard time about it, but unless he can verbalize his problem and propose a solution, no one is really invested in anyone's fleeting emotions.

My sister's family is the only one that approximates this approach with her own children. The results are interesting. Her children are definitely more ruthless, calculating, and calloused than most of their peers (more than they should be?). But they're also really easy to reason with. They understand better than a lot of adults that just because they are feeling an emotion does not mean that it was caused by any particular thing or person -- that they can't control what happens to them, but they actually do have a lot of control over how they feel about things or how they interpret those feelings. They learn this from their parents. When my sister is in a bad mood, she tells her children that she's just "grumpy," so they shouldn't take her reactions personally. My niece picked up on this phrase when she was just a toddler. If you asked her why she was sad, she would frequently say "I'm not sad, I'm just grumpy." She meant that there was nothing in particular that she wanted solved, she was just not feeling happy and to leave her alone about it. My sister's family even plays at emotions, taking "grumpy" family photos the same way that some families take silly photos. They understand that their emotions are labile and often fleeting. The children are not as offended when people don't take their emotions "seriously" because they understand the difference between raw emotional reactions and actual problems that can be verbalized.

I'm sure this isn't the only way to teach children this particular skill and maybe this approach would be impossible for most parents to pull off or would harm most children more than it would help. But I thought that it was an interesting approach, and would be helpful to serve as common ground for parents of sociopaths (particularly if the sociopathic child had normal siblings). 

Sociopaths and children

A reader asked what I would do if I had a child. My response:

I think sociopaths tend to like children more than they like adults. I do. You can be relatively honest, even authentically nice to children. Children don't have the same expectations of you. Children aren't secretly judging you for being "off." You don't have to wear a mask around children. You can be yourself and, if anything, they will think that you are funnier and a better playmate than most adults. Although, speaking of playmates, children of a certain age sometimes have difficulty telling whether I am considered an adult or a child by society's standards because I don't fit the typical adult behavior patterns.

Even though I like kids generally, I find certain children to be completely intolerable. It can be very difficult dealing with these children because they behave so selfishly and unreasonably. If it were just up to me, no problem, I could just ignore or terrorize them to get them to stop. But a lot of the time other adults (typically their parents) will placate them in ways that tend to put you out. It's ridiculous to watch how easily these adults are manipulated. These parents are just feeding the behavior. Children, like sociopaths, need well established boundaries to feel safe. Parents are doing children a disservice through their exaggerated efforts to appease. But these type of parents don't really care about the kid's welfare, not enough anyway. They're just doing whatever it takes to get the kid to shut up and get off their backs.

Another tricky thing about children is that adults expect you to be nice around them, to not tell them crazy things, to behave in certain socially acceptable ways, i.e. to behave how they would behave with a child. That's fine and I understand there are certain things that are considered off-limits for children. For instance, I recently acquired this impulse to choke people, including children. They're crying, or they're hitting me with something, or screaming at me and I just want it to stop so I reach out with both hands at their throats with these crazy eyes full of intent, like the cartoon character Homer Simpson. It is completely impulsive. I did that with a little relative recently. It was hilarious looking up and seeing his mother's anxious (slightly horrified?) expression wondering whether she should intervene or whether I was going to stop myself (I'm very open with who I am around my family).

So overall, I like children, but I like them best when I am given significant leeway with which to interact with them, or otherwise don't have judgmental, interfering adults around to distort my very natural interactions with them. I would imagine that I would have that in spades with my own children, so there's that. On the other hand, I wouldn't have the patience to deal with the everyday bustle that comes along with children. I would need to hire full-time help. A really interesting question is, if I did have a child, would I want it to be a sociopath or not? I'll have to think about that one...

Another thing, almost everything I said here about sociopaths and children would seem to apply equally to aspies and children.

Sociopathic altruism?

A female reader who relates to the sociopathic mentality writes about a lot of things that I relate to -- being a disruptive force in my family and provoking people emotionally to manipulate them until I grew older, then started using my people reading and manipulation skills to smooth things over. And now I am the peacemaker/powerbroker in the family:

I've been reading through your blog, and feel a lot of familiarity in your posts and fact section.

I lie constantly and can't control it, I have a grandiose opinion of myself, many admirers both male and female, a chameleon personality, and in the past have been prone to a quick temper--saying intentionally and specifically hurtful words to the people closest to me. As a defense mechanism usually, but I always knew how to hurt someone the most, how to put the ball in my court; how to manipulate and control. It was the worst with my family when I was younger. I've since learned this is rather unacceptable behavior among other people.

I often think to my childhood. My father was an angry man, his own father suffered from PTSD and my father inherited some violent tendencies and anger management problems. The thing is, I'm much smarter than he is--much smarter than most people, and when I was a young powerless little girl and into adolescence...well it grew to be a very dramatic power struggle. Shouting matches, crying, drama, anything to break him out of his rages--sometimes outrageous displays of emotion(though, intentional).

At the current age of 22, I now have the most influence on every member of my family. Thing is, I had to, in order to repair what was so broken and dysfunctional. Get into everybody's head, maybe control them, manipulate a bit sure--but I fixed things, eventually. Seemingly altruistic, but when it comes down to it, isn't altruism also selfishness?

I remember when I was 7 or 8, my grandma died. I'd met her many times, she'd given me plenty as a child. We were at her funeral and my mom was crying, leaning on a church pew. I had no real tears, but I forced myself to bawl that day. I remember thinking simultaneously, while crying and exaggerating my shoulders, that this is what she wanted from me though I had no inner emotional response. I knew instinctively that this would also benefit me. Turns out I've been painting the picture of myself as a very loving, innocent, and caring person for a very long time...

I'm wondering if sociopaths ever use their abilities to altruistic extremes, in which the end result benefits them, as well as everyone else? I also feel like I have the capacity to feel strong feelings, but it's more of an intensity. Romantic relationships can be very intensely positive, and intensely negative. When sleeping with people I either have absolutely no attachment to the person, or an unhealthy obsession.

Found your website and was engrossed. I've always known I was different. When my roommate found out she was pregnant, and told me and my friend--she was crying hysterically and my friend was visibly distressed. I didn't react at all. I had to think first how I was going to react to this, what was appropriate, because I had no immediate response. It didn't affect me at all.

I have consciously on several occasions admitted to myself that my personality can very dramatically change depending on my location, situation, and who I'm surrounded by. I somehow easily win people's trust, respect, and admiration--I seem to cater my approach to each specific individual, and it doesn't take me much time. I always chalked it up to being charismatic and understanding, and I'm not entirely sure if I'm a sociopath who's grown up and figured out how to truly blend in and still get everything I want--or something else.

I've been viewing life from this perspective lately and have realized that I am different, but have been lucky enough to be surrounded by certain influences and experiences growing up which have developed into a great and generous moral code I can abide by. 


There has been much growth and change since my teenage years especially, and even now and this past summer, such constant change. Seriously, thank you for all the work you've put into your site, it's contributed a lot to my growth and helped me navigate my own relationships and the way I am. Understanding. I didn't understand why I am the way I am for so long. 

Can sociopaths be altruistic? I don't know, but they certainly can be very effective at relating and interacting with people. I was listening to a talk from LDS primary children President Rosemary Wixom in which she discusses trying to think like a child in order to better relate and deal with children. It's such an easy concept but so hard for a lot of people to put into practice. Sociopaths very naturally understand and adapt to the needs of the people around them, though, whether people of different ages, cultures, genders, ethnicities, etc. That's obviously going to be a very useful and welcome trait in almost any situation. It's funny, though, what the reader said about not understanding herself -- I think especially younger sociopaths find it easier to understand other people than they understand themselves.

Sociopaths = team players

So says the Psychology Today blog ("Despite Popular Opinion, Psychopaths Can Show They Care"):

The quintessential psychopath shows callous disregard for others, a complete lack of empathy, a glibness and superficial charm, and an impulsive and antisocial lifestyle. We would never, given this set of qualities, expect such individuals to make decisions that would benefit anyone but themselves. Their lack of empathy should make it nearly impossible for them to understand how other people are feeling. Yet, when you think about it, the ability of psychopaths to con and smooth talk their way into situations that allow them to take advantage of people requires some pretty sensitive people-reading skills. Perhaps behaving in psychopathic ways isn’t a matter of lack of ability to empathize, but is instead due to lack of proper incentive. If that’s the case, it should be possible to put the psychopath’s people-reading skills to good use.

Following this logic, psychologists Nathan Arbuckle and William Cunningham (2012) explored the possibility that, under the right circumstances, people high in psychopathy would willingly behave in ways that would benefit someone other than themselves. The people in this study were not hardened criminals, but were drawn from the somewhat ordinary psychology study population of college undergraduates. However, based on the notion that psychopathy isn’t an all-or-nothing kind of trait, Arbuckle and Cunningham reasoned that even college students can have at least some of the remorseless selfishness and glibness shown in clinical populations. In fact, the questionnaire measure they used to measure psychopathy seems capable of sniffing out the “everyday” psychopaths who stroll through college campuses.

They set up a game where "participants would either benefit themselves alone, or benefit themselves and the person for whom they were playing (team member vs. stranger)."

In the first study, the findings supported the hypothesis that people high in psychopathy would be more likely to take bets that would benefit their team rather than a group of strangers. However, the findings could suggest that the people high in psychopathy were simply trying to improve their own situation, and not necessarily that of the group’s. Therefore, in the second study, the setup was slightly different. Now the bets would benefit only the team, not oneself alone. With this slight tweaking of the experimental condition, the people high in psychopathy continued to make decisions that would benefit their team even when they, personally, didn't stand to benefit from their bets.

Along that same vein, my sister emailed my family this recent NY Times op-ed, "The Gift of Siblings." My brother said he cried at this paragraph:

My siblings have certainly seen me at my worst, and I’ve seen them at theirs. No one has bolted. It’s as if we signed some contract long ago, before we were even aware of what we were getting into, and over time gained the wisdom to see that we hadn’t been duped. We’d been graced: with a center of gravity; with an audience that never averts its gaze and doesn’t stint on applause. For each of us, a new home, a new relationship or a newborn was never quite real until the rest of us had been ushered in to the front row.

The upside of candor

There have been a lot of interesting consequences from writing the book. I'll try to schedule an AMA on reddit or a Q&A on this blog soon to talk about them. One of the more positive ones is the support I have gotten from most of my friends and family.

I was talking to my sister, who has just started reading my book. She and I have never been close. She is by far the most emotional member of my family and we never shared much in common. We talk on the phone maybe once or twice a year. She wanted to call to tell me that she felt like she was understanding some of our interactions and my past history better than she ever had before. It felt really good to be better understood by someone that I've known for most of my life but from whom I have always felt distanced. She did admit that she felt a little badly for the death of the baby opossum, but she also told me that she loved me and was proud of me. And perhaps the first time in our lives it meant something to me because I knew that it wasn't because I had tricked her into thinking I was something that I'm really not. She was actually seeing me and still seeing things she liked.

Along these same lines, my other sister sent me a link to this interview with memoirist and former alcoholic Mary Karr:

When you surrender, you get used to a certain level of candor—you know, the old thing, you’re only as sick as your secrets. You develop a confidence in truth-telling. Part of my drinking was so much about trying not to feel things, to not feel how I actually felt, and the terrible thing about being so hidden is if people tell you they love you. . . it kinda doesn’t sink in. You always think, if you’re hiding things, How could you know who I am? You don’t know who I am, so how could you love me? Saying who I am, and trying to be as candid as possible as part of practicing the principles, has permitted me to actually connect with people for the first time in my life. It’s ended lifelong exile.

They always say God is in the truth, and I’ve ended loneliness and been able to feel connected by saying who I am and how I feel. I’m sort of comfortable to the degree to which I’m an asshole. It’s not like I’m not an asshole—people know the ways I’m an asshole and it’s within the realm of acceptable asshole-ocity. 

I don't know if being more honest and open will improve my relationships in the long run, but that's the hope. It's probably a very ironic thing for me to say, but I don't really have any desire to let my disorder define me or my life. That doesn't mean that I don't acknowledge that I have issues and struggle with things that to a large extent have prevented me from having lasting stable relationships and work situations, but I've always been really open to trying new things.

Book appendix (part 4)

From an interview with my mother:


It was hard for me when you were born.  Baby number three is always hard because when there’s two there’s one for each parent, but when there are three it’s hard.  And you came so close to Jim.  And Jim was taking his sweet time getting potty trained, so I had both of you in diapers for like a year.  And that was before the disposable diapers were popular and they were expensive so we had cloth diapers and I had to wash them and hang them out on the line because we didn’t have a dryer.  So it seemed like that was my whole life was taking care of babies, changing diapers, washing them, hanging them out.  I think that was the time I went a little nutso.  I remember I just started freaking out sometime and dad had to call grandpa and have him come over and talk me out of it.  I don’t know, just the stress and everything probably piled up.  In those days I wasn’t very good about keeping on an even keel.  I’d let thing build up and build up and then just start flipping out.  

We thought you were perfectly healthy, but you had thrush at birth and the thrush got worse, which made you not want to nurse.  I would try to calm you down by nursing you.  You would just be upset and there was nothing we could do to get you to stop crying.  You would cry until you were exhausted and then sleep for a while.  So that was a very trying time.  Finally, I don’t remember how old you were until we finally took you into the doctor, and they checked you out and said you had thrush.  You had a herniated navel too, probably because you were crying so violently.  That was sad, my poor baby.  I just remember the family get together at the beach when you were crying and everyone was trying to be the one to hold you and calm you down but nobody could do it so I just took you and went away with you walking around the whole park.  I would sometimes just leave you in a room to cry.  There was nothing else to do.  I put you on your stomach on the water bed because you seemed to like it.  So you would cry and fuss, the waterbed would rock you and you would finally go to sleep.  In some ways I think that made us bond more because I was very emotionally involved with you and protective of you, wanting to fix what was wrong and wanting you to be better, happier and healthy.  So I think I was maybe a little extra attached to you.  Dad would be the one who would say, “Just put her in a room and shut the door.”  Because we lived in that little dinky house, so there wasn’t anywhere where you could escape the noise.  I wonder what Jim and Scott thought of that.  I don’t remember focusing on them at all, I was just so wrapped up in you.  Poor Jim, because he was just a little guy.  He probably got ignored a lot when this screaming baby came along and kicked him out of mama’s world.  

I can’t remember hardly anything about your childhood. I remember you drowning as a child.  I can’t remember who noticed you back there but then when I saw you, it seemed like you had let go of the boat.  But I just remembered feeling totally frantic and I remembered just having this sick feeling and praying that you would be ok.  It seems like we had to go down the river a little to be able to pull over to the side of the river.  I can’t remember how they called to get people to come help.  I ran up the beach, sick with worry.  I guess you just kind of came to and started breathing.  You seemed to be pretty much ok.  I mean kind of out of it a little, but I was just happy you were conscious and breathing and back with us.  

I remember when you had your appendix problem.  I always thought that I was pretty good at reading my kids, knowing what was wrong with them, but you were super hard to read.  And we had never had anything serious happen with the kids before, so this was a first for us. I didn’t really know or think there was something that was seriously wrong because you weren’t even acting serious until you developed a fever.  But when we went in there and it had ruptured and you were so sick, I was mad at myself for not having taken you in sooner.  But you were really good at being closed off, showing a brave front and going off and doing your thing and you didn’t really care if you were sick or let little pains get in the way.  You were just off doing yourself.  So I guess your common sense with your health wasn’t that great.  Because I remember you went and even played in a tournament with your appendix either ruptured or about to rupture.  So that was crazy.  I can’t even comprehend someone being able to do that.  

I remember you hated the hospital and always tried to get dad to eat your food, which wasn’t very hard.  And I remember he had to finish your breakfast that morning so you would get out of there and wanted to get out so bad.  And then you had to be in a wheelchair for like 5 days after.  And I remember you being at school and seeing how the kids were fawning over you and I realized that you had a lot of friends and people that cared about you.  And you seemed to be in pretty good spirits about the whole thing.  It’s not like you were like, “I’m in a wheelchair and this sucks.”  I think you were kind of enjoying a new experience.  But I think you were happy to get better—get back to your fast paced life.  You wouldn’t have lasted in a wheelchair that long for sure.

Self-medication

I've been thinking recently about things that have helped me without me intending or even realizing it. I'll give you an example of what I mean. I used to watch the television show House. He would always ask the person if there was anything about their life that changed. Sometimes the change was a healthier change, like stop drinking so much. But a frequent plot point of the show was that the patient had been unwittingly self-medicating an underlying condition, so when there was a lifestyle change (even to a seemingly more healthy habit), that triggered a flare up of the underlying condition.

There are a lot of things that, albeit indirectly, have helped me immensely in terms of maintaining decent mental health and behavior control:

• I'm a musician. I didn't choose to be a musician. Music did not initially appeal to me, nor did I have a natural talent for it. At one point I wanted to stop music studies to focus on other things that I was better at. My parents refused. I went through the motions for a couple more years until I finally achieved a level of fluency that allowed me to understand and later communicate musically, connecting with people in an unmediated way that I had never experienced in normal social interactions. I have since studied music seriously, which was probably the first hard thing I made myself do. I learned a lot then about my limitations and how to incentivize myself or trick myself into doing things I normally would not. I still play. The abstract logic of music is very good for my mental health and the social aspect of music makes me be nicer to people. Music, to me, is humanity's most redeeming feature and has made me interested in the stability of the human race because a destabilized society means no more music generation. 
• I have a low sugar diet. A lot of food makes me sick, so I mainly eat the same things over and over again, mostly protein and fiber. This also happens to be the most stable diet for mental health -- no sugar spikes, no twinkie-defense, no need.
• Being a woman. I've never really had my megalomaniac fantasies indulged that much because I'm a woman. Men do not consider women a viable threat and women often look down on other women. So even though I felt like I could do absolutely anything, I never had anyone echoing that sentiment, which has forced me to be a little more realistic than I otherwise may have been. Also experiencing hormal swings has taught me that I can feel things that aren't real (emotional hallucinations). And girls are sort of evil with each other, so I could get my kicks through emotional manipulation and not through other riskier behavior.
• Being Mormon. Yes, there is the moral code, but I think some of the more important things about growing up Mormon for me were the endless primary lessons trying to get us to understand our emotions, the emotions of other people (e.g. he hit me, which made me mad, so I hit him back, and now he's sad). and that we can control our emotions ("turn your frown upside down"). I got the sort of "this is a happy face, this other one is a frowny face" explicit emotional instruction that I feel is largely lacking in a lot of formal education nowadays, with our focus on mathematics and reading. And I had to learn to interact with all ages, races, and backgrounds of people.
• Writing in a journal. My religion encouraged it and my narcissism wanted to document the early life of a genius (actual entries in my childhood journal). The side benefit was that it forced me to contemplate who I was and to realize some of the consequences of my behavior.
• Being smart. There are an infinite number of ways this has affected my life, but for now let me just say that being perceived as being smart allowed me to get away with all sorts of things I otherwise would not have. Teachers gave me the benefit of the doubt, even when I was caught redhanded. I was given all of the social goodwill of a "good kid" simply because I scored so well on tests. 

There are other things that I feel lucky for -- a middle class upbringing with its de-emphasis on material goods, self-interested neglectful parents who largely left me alone, a superficial but straightforward culture which largely prized surface attributes and accomplishments that made it easy for me to mimic, and being a middle child who benefited from watching the failures of older siblings and was in a prime position to be a powerbroker, both between siblings and between parents and children.  

So when people ask me things like how do I maintain my life like I do, I don't know. The answer is complicated. I don't really expect people to learn a musical instrument or convert to Mormonism. But I don't know what else to say besides, it couldn't hurt?

Different children

Selections from a NY Times book review about children with unique issues:

Andrew Solomon’s enormous new book, “Far From the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity,” is about children who are born or who grow up in ways their parents never expected.

Mr. Solomon explained that “Far from the Tree” took 11 years. It stemmed from a 1994 article about deafness he wrote for The New York Times Magazine. In the course of reporting it, he said, he realized that many issues confronting the deaf are not unlike those he faced as someone who was gay. 

A few years later, watching a documentary about dwarfism, he saw the same pattern again. Eventually the book grew to also include chapters on Down syndrome, autism, schizophrenia, disability, prodigies, transgender identity, children who are conceived during a rape and those who become criminals.

Mr. Solomon said he included criminal children after deciding that society’s thinking on the subject hadn’t really advanced very much, even while it has on autism and schizophrenia. “We still think it’s the parents’ fault if a child becomes a criminal or that something creepy must have gone on in that household,” he said. He included the children of rape because he discovered that their mothers shared a lot with all the other mothers in the book. “They feel alienated, disaffected, angry — a lot of the things a mother feels about a child with a disability.”

This kind of commonality, he went on, was something he discovered only while writing. “Each of the conditions I describe is very isolating,” he said. “There aren’t that many dwarfs, there aren’t that many schizophrenics. There aren’t that many families dealing with a criminal kid — not so few but not so many. But if you recognize that there is a lot in common in all these experiences, they imply a world in which not only is your condition not so isolating but the fact of your difference unites you with other people.”

“Forewarned is forearmed,” he said. “Some things, on some scale, go wrong in everyone’s life. I think I have perfectionist tendencies, but I know you can’t go into parenthood thinking, ‘I’m going to love my child as long as he’s perfect.’ Rather, it should be, ‘I’m going to love my child whoever he is, and let’s see how he turns out.’ ”

I wonder how many parents can say that about criminal or sociopathic children -- that they appreciate the experience of raising a child with those unique difficulties and that they love their child no matter what. Still, it is a nice, aspirational thought.

Socios: all in the family

This is one of my favorite songs. I love the lyrics: "One child grows up to be somebody that just loves to learn and another child grows up to be somebody you'd just love to burn. Mom loves the both of them, you see it's in the blood. Both kids are good to mom -- blood's thicker than mud." Of course when I first heard the song I thought I heard "Somebody that just loves to burn," which was obviously more applicable, but the rest is true -- my family loves me just as much as my empath siblings. But with the holidays upon us, I have been thinking about socio family members. Some think that as many as 1 in 25 people are sociopaths, and if that's the case you'd imagine that even more people have a sociopath in the family. Or maybe you turn out to be the sociopath in the family, like the man in this article:

Jim Fallon recently made a disquieting discovery: A member of his family has some of the biological traits of a psychopathic killer.
* * *
Three years ago, as part of a personal project to assess his family's risk of developing Alzheimer's disease, Dr. Fallon collected brain scans and DNA samples from himself and seven relatives. At a barbecue soon thereafter, Dr. Fallon's mother casually mentioned something he had been unaware of: His late father's lineage was drenched in blood.

An early ancestor, Thomas Cornell, was hanged in 1673 for murdering his mother. That was one of the first recorded acts of matricide in the Colonies. Seven other possible killers later emerged in the family tree. The most notorious was distant cousin Lizzie Borden of Fall River, Mass. In 1892, she was accused and then controversially acquitted of killing her father and stepmother with an ax.

As a lark intended to enliven family get-togethers, Dr. Fallon decided to analyze the data from the Alzheimer's project to see whether anyone in his family matched the profiles of killers he had studied. His initial subjects included himself, his three brothers, his wife, and the couple's two daughters and son.
* * *
To his surprise, Dr. Fallon found that the analysis of his own brain showed he had inherited certain high-risk forms of MAOA and other various aggression-and violence-related genes.

"I'm the one who looks most like a serial killer," he says. "It's disturbing."
* * *
"I'm still in balance, but I seem to have low emotional engagement," says Dr. Fallon, noting that the brains of many cold-blooded murderers reveal a similar picture.

Dr. Fallon thinks that one vital factor may have prevented him from becoming a killer. "I had a charmed childhood," he says. "But if I'd been mistreated as a child, who knows what might have happened?"

The moral of this story to me is be careful how much you preach about genetic testing and forced imprisonment of sociopaths because you may turn out to be one of us.

Questions from readers

Here are some questions from a reader and my responses in regards to this post:

i'm curious why you didn't say 'I love you too' to your sister. I for one have always had trouble saying it to my family, but not to anyone else. The only conclusion I've come to is that I know my family knows who I really am, they see past the superficial, and know that I don't really get what it even means to love someone. With girlfriends it's easier, they start out as strangers so it's easy for me to create that role since they will take it as truth.

Is there a reason you left it out?

Ha, I'm glad you picked up on that. I purposefully didn't say "I love you too" because I didn't want to be disingenuous with my sister. I lie or pretend with strangers much more than with family. I guess part of it is because I know they won't believe certain false emotions. But more than that, I don't want to have to put on a show for them. It's exhausting to always pretend to be someone you're not. And I don't think being a sociopath should mean you have to live in the shadows. I mean, fine for those who want to live in the shadows all their lives and be what a friend termed "shadow players," but we should at least have a choice. I think sociopaths should have the same legitimacy that other empathy-challenged people enjoy: aspies, ADHD, etc. I don't want to have to pretend around my family because I don't want to feel like I always have to pretend. I actually want some people to know and like me for who I really am. And that is what family is there for -- unconditional love and/or acceptance. Or at least that is the bargain that my own family has worked out amongst ourselves.

Similarly, this question:

How do you categorize sociopaths who are willing to be open about it? Does that willingness mean they're not fully sociopathic? Maybe its the inherent narcissism (everyone has at least some) coming out, wanting others to fear and respect? I know my goal was to purposefully create fear when I was open about it. What's your purpose?

Like I said in response to the last question, I'm open about being a sociopath sometimes because I don't want to feel like I can never be open about it. I don't see how that would make someone not sociopathic. I mean, I don't shout it form the rooftops or anything, of course. but if I always have to pretend, then I am the powerless one -- I am the sheep subject to other people's whims, not the empaths.

I think it is shortsighted for sociopaths to believe that they will gain more for remaining hidden than they ever would through selective exposure. first of all, i think that sociopaths will not always be able to remain hidden. scientists, geneticists, psychologists are all looking for ways to tag sociopaths. sociopaths are subjected to tests that are then used to legally persecute them based on their sociopathy, either in enhancing jail sentences as an "aggravating factor," keeping them from parole, or keeping them from seeing their children. in addition to the legally sanctioned discrimination, there is a lot of informal hate for sociopaths. people crazy hate sociopaths, and sociopaths are easy to hate because we're faceless. if we banded together like the aspie's and other empathy-challenged, we could see some political/social gain and/or acceptance for our kind that would be greater than the sum all of the shadow playing from individual sociopaths. or let's have our cake and eat it too. at least i think that those scenarios are enough of a possiblity that it is smart to start laying the groundwork now for a worldwide sociopath PR campaign.

also i like to brag about certain conquests. what's the worth of skillful power plays if you can't ever share your successes?

In-group altruism

I happened upon two articles about the emergence and explanation of altruism within groups.  There was this New Yorker article by Jonah Lehrer (sorry, not fully available to non-subcribers), which discussed the origin and development of the inclusive fitness theory.  Inclusive fitness basically holds that you are willing to be altruistic to another person in proportion to the advantage it will give your own genes in survival.  In other words, you share half of your genes with your siblings so you should be more willing to help them then, say, your cousin or even your nephew.  Here are some selections:


Charles Darwin regarded the problem of altruism—the act of helping someone else, even if it comes at a steep personal cost—as a potentially fatal challenge to his theory of natural selection. After all, if life was such a cruel “struggle for existence,” then how could a selfless individual ever live long enough to reproduce? Why would natural selection favor a behavior that made us less likely to survive? In “The Descent of Man,” Darwin wrote, “He who was ready to sacrifice his life, as many a savage has been, rather than betray his comrades, would often leave no offspring to inherit his noble nature.” And yet, as Darwin knew, altruism is everywhere, a stubborn anomaly of nature. Bats feed hungry brethren; honeybees defend the hive by committing suicide with a sting; birds raise offspring that aren’t their own; humans leap onto subway tracks to save strangers. The sheer ubiquity of such behavior suggests that kindness is not a losing life strategy.

For more than a century after Darwin, altruism remained a paradox. The first glimmers of a solution arrived in a Bloomsbury pub in the early nineteen-fifties. According to legend, the biologist J. B. S. Haldane was several pints into the afternoon when he was asked how far he would go to save the life of another person. Haldane thought for a moment, and then started scribbling numbers on the back of a napkin. “I would jump into a river to save two brothers, but not one,” Haldane said. “Or to save eight cousins but not seven.” His drunken answer summarized a powerful scientific idea. Because individuals share much of their genome with close relatives, a trait will also persist if it leads to the survival of their kin. According to Haldane’s moral arithmetic, sacrificing for a family member is just a different way of promoting our own DNA.

The idea of group altruism is interesting to me.  My father grew up in a large family and he has always prized a certain submission to the will of the group.  I quickly learned to speak in terms of "maximizing utility" for everyone concerned, in a very Bentham/Utilitarianism type of way, and my family would follow my plan over others.

Of course, as a sociopath I'm supposed to be a "cheater" -- someone who pretends to work for the good of the group while secretly not pulling my weight or siphoning off a disproportional amount of community output.

But I don't, or not always.  I guess it's because unlike bats or bees I'm not surrounded by idiots half the time.  Especially when I'm with my family or close friends who know better, it would be very difficult to defraud them consistently.  Maybe because I'm human and not a bat or a bee I can make higher cognitive determinations like it is better for me to be part of a group in which I support them and they support me in turn.

Could there be another reason why I engage in this sort of in-group altruism?  Is it because I don't just need specific things from the people in my group but actually need to associate with people in general?  From this Psychology Today post:

The idea that humans have a need to belong to social groups is so fundamental in psychology that one of the seminal papers on this topic has been cited 2572 times since its publication in 1995. Belonging doesn't just feel good — it's often essential for our very survival, even in modern times.

Do I also have an evolutionary drive to "belong"?  I actually think that I do, or at least I can feel in-group loyalty.  How about others?

Types of love

A reader recently asked me about how I feel the different types of love (e.g. Éros, storge, philia and agápe). When I love someone like a close friend or family member, it is primarily a feeling of gratitude for who they are in my life.  I don't typically "need" anyone, so I do not identify with a desperate, needing sort of love.  To the extent that I feel passionate or intensely for another person, it is because I have become obsessed or fixated with them.  It does not always mean love, though, and love doesn't not always mean intensity, at least to me.

I can connect with people in various ways but I don't have vicarious feelings like empathy.  If I show interest in someone else's suffering or happiness, it is more like a very strong curiosity.  I have always felt like so much of the world is hidden.  There is always a special pleasure for me in hidden things becoming revealed.  It must be why empaths experience voyeurism and schadenfreude.  Actually, one of the main reasons I enjoy longer term relationships is that eventually I can reveal to them all of my machinations from the beginning -- what I did to them, how I engineered particular situations, my foresight and skill throughout the early stages of the relationships during which I was required to keep everything hidden.  There is a very pleasant tension and release aspect to that activity.  It's almost sexual.

The ubiquity of bullshit

I was talking to a teenage family member the other day about her anger issues. As is typical of teenagers, she is often melodramatic and self absorbed. She is also unusually perceptive. One of the things she’s having a hard time dealing with is the staggering amount of bullshit she sees all around her. She’s noticed the hypocrisy, inconsistency, and lack of insight that characterize the lives of her parents, grandparents, and the rest of the family in general. These same dullards who have made messes of their lives are now trying to make her ‘behave’ by rules they don’t hold themselves to, and she resents the hell out of it. She asked me why there’s so much lying in the family and I told her what I wish someone had told me at her age. I explained to her that most people lie to themselves. They sell themselves on their own bullshit and they need their family, friends and other ‘loved’ ones to play along, like extras in a poorly scripted B-movie. I told her that we tend to judge ourselves by our intentions and others by the consequences of their actions. I told her that one of the unspoken meanings of ‘family’ is to be considered part of the circle of delusion that those within use to exempt themselves. I told her they resent facts because facts are hard, cold and inhospitable to their ego-boosting fantasies. I told her that it isn’t just the family who swim in a sea of bullshit. I told her that what I am saying is true for almost everyone. And finally, I told her that should she ever find a way to control her anger, she would be able to use her perceptiveness to her advantage. I explained to her that her insight into the ubiquity of bullshit could equal power.

Like I said, she’s a teenager, so much of what I said didn’t really penetrate her endless self justifications. And I'm sure I bored the hell out of her. She's a smart girl though. When she’s older, she’ll remember my words and hopefully find them useful.