Book responses (part 2)

From a reader:

I just finished reading your book and I wanted to say that I found it utterly fascinating. I am not a sociopath but I definitely displayed antisocial traits as a child. Perhaps if my childhood had been different I would have ended up different. I enjoyed reading your points of view on nature and nurture for antisocial children. But more than anything I appreciate the perspective you brought on the issue of sociopaths in society.  Before reading your book I never truly recognized  the unfair bias and often outright double standards (I have multiple aspies in my family) society places upon sociopaths. Being a member of the gay community I am well aware that it was not so long ago that I would have been considered a "monster" or "deviant". Maybe one day more people will see that there are good, highly functioning sociopaths out there just like there are violent and dangerous ones--as is the case for any variant of humans. 

I remember I took a psychology class in college, just for the hell of it, and on a test we were asked to write several paragraphs about what we believed to be the worst of the personality disorders. I thought it was silly because there is no unbendable mold for psychological disorders; they can be good, bad, or both. Most people in my class wrote that sociopaths were the worst kinds of people and I wrote that if I had to choose, I would list BPD as the worst. My teacher actually pulled me aside and asked me to further explain why I felt that way. I guess many others listed socios because of the link to violence and people with BPD are not typically known to be violent. The only reason I had was personal experience; I've known several sociopaths and remain friends with some of them, but everyone I've known that had BPD was just awful. Awful in a sense of massively annoying and using extreme emotions to manipulate--often resulting in hysterics and acts of self-harm. All of which I found extremely time-consuming and obnoxious. I'm sure there are BPDs out there that aren't bad--I just haven't met any yet. 

I've never talked at length with my socio friends about how they think or process things--I just know they are different and leave it at that. Thank you for providing insight I might otherwise have never been exposed to.

Manifesto of a non-monster

This is from a self-identified sociopath reader wanting to correct some of the misconceptions of sociopaths:


I am a sociopath.
I am drawn to power, yes, because it fills the void.
I do not inwardly comply with society's social rules, laws or ideas of right and wrong. I do not live by any other human being's moral code, I have created my own that suits me to perfection. I comply with society outwardly only when it is useful; my 'mask'.
I believe that all sociopaths cannot be thrown into a simple category, each sociopath is an individual. I believe there are different levels of sociopathy, and that it can be cultivated and developed to help or hinder both other people in the sociopath's life and the sociopath. The right recipe is excellent, the wrong recipe is a disaster. 
That said, I believe many 'normal' people label every vagrant that displeases or harms them a sociopath. Is sociopathy more common than we thought in the past? Yes. Is it that common? No. 
This gives the average person the impression that every sociopath is a ruthless monster with no good intention or remotely safe and healthy motive whatsoever.
Am I selfish? Yes. I want what I want, and will not deny myself what I want unless it goes against the code I have created for myself.
Am I dishonest? If I feel that I must lie--that it is necessary--then I will. I lie to keep up the mask for my own survival and enjoyment. 
Do I have dark impulses, thoughts and desires? Absolutely. Do I give in to them? Only when it doesn't go against the code I've created.
Do I have the desire to 'destroy' an innocent person just for the fun of it? I love to destroy someone, it is a fun game to play and I love games, but I would never seek to destroy or harm someone unless they were an enemy of mine or someone I did not respect.
Am I addicted to drugs, alcohol or promiscuous sex? I do not respect an addict because I view addiction as weakness, which I detest. I have no addiction.
Am I cold or frigid in bed? I enjoy sex. It is an expression of freedom, where I can enjoy my body and get closer to someone I respect. I am open and responsive in the bedroom. However, I am incredibly picky until I have chosen the one I wish to sleep with, which is the reason I have been in the same relationship for 5 years now. I have chosen.
Do I cheat on my significant other? I have been entirely faithful, from the first day to now. I do not lie to him or steal from him either because I respect him. He knows that I am a sociopath. 
Do I steal? Absolutely not. Unless I was hurting badly for money, I would not steal because if I were caught the reputation I have worked to create and uphold would be obliterated or tarnished.
And I have never harmed an animal, I'm vegetarian in fact. I despise anyone who harms an innocent and defenseless animal. It is the humans that disgust me; animals are driven by instinct.  Man has reason, and still continues in his repugnant ways. 

Not every monster is a sociopath, not every sociopath is a monster.

Raising genius

I really enjoyed this article by Andrew Solomon in the NY Times Magazine, "How do you Raise a Prodigy?" I thought the parallels between raising a prodigy and raising a sociopath were compelling. He first talks about his recent research in parents that raise children with special issues:

Prodigies are able to function at an advanced adult level in some domain before age 12. “Prodigy” derives from the Latin “prodigium,” a monster that violates the natural order. These children have differences so evident as to resemble a birth defect, and it was in that context that I came to investigate them. Having spent 10 years researching a book about children whose experiences differ radically from those of their parents and the world around them, I found that stigmatized differences — having Down syndrome, autism or deafness; being a dwarf or being transgender — are often clouds with silver linings. Families grappling with these apparent problems may find profound meaning, even beauty, in them. Prodigiousness, conversely, looks from a distance like silver, but it comes with banks of clouds; genius can be as bewildering and hazardous as a disability.

He then goes on to express some of the particular difficulties in raising any child who is different than the norm, particular a child who is different from the parents themselves, and how there are no easy rules:


Children who are pushed toward success and succeed have a very different trajectory from that of children who are pushed toward success and fail. I once told Lang Lang, a prodigy par excellence and now perhaps the most famous pianist in the world, that by American standards, his father’s brutal methods — which included telling him to commit suicide, refusing any praise, browbeating him into abject submission — would count as child abuse. “If my father had pressured me like this and I had not done well, it would have been child abuse, and I would be traumatized, maybe destroyed,” Lang responded. “He could have been less extreme, and we probably would have made it to the same place; you don’t have to sacrifice everything to be a musician. But we had the same goal. So since all the pressure helped me become a world-famous star musician, which I love being, I would say that, for me, it was in the end a wonderful way to grow up.”

While it is true that some parents push their kids too hard and give them breakdowns, others fail to support a child’s passion for his own gift and deprive him of the only life that he would have enjoyed. You can err in either direction. Given that there is no consensus about how to raise ordinary children, it is not surprising that there is none about how to raise remarkable children. Like parents of children who are severely challenged, parents of exceptionally talented children are custodians of young people beyond their comprehension.

I love the Lang Lang quote. It is such a great acknowledgment that different folks require different strokes. If there is anything that I hope to achieve with the blog and getting people to think about the presence and role of sociopaths in society, it is probably to preach this gospel that we're all really different from each other in ways that we too often either ignore or pretend don't exist. There's nothing wrong with heterogeneity, in fact it is probably what keeps us so viable as the dominant species on this planet. Monster babies are born into all types of family every day. But the word monster need not mean B movie horror matinees, it could also be someone more like Lang Lang.