Contradictions

An interesting reaction to the book is that it has contradictions. The most popular one is that I say that I was not the victim of abuse but then describe a less than idyllic childhood. Perhaps a close second is that I say that I have average looks yet consider my own breasts to be remarkably beautiful. Or maybe another is that I say I don't necessarily think anybody is better than anybody else, but I happen to be smarter than most people.

To me these things aren't contradictions. I never felt like the victim of abuse. Although I have sometimes played the role of victim (provoking my father, trying to get teachers fired or get better educational/job opportunities, etc.), perhaps due to my self-delusion/megalomania about being powerful and being someone who acts rather than be acted upon, or perhaps due to an inability to really feel bad about bad consequences that happen to me, I have never been able to actually identify with victimhood. I love my breasts, but I know that objectively I am average looking (I feel like men should understand this concept well, I feel like I have almost never known a man who wasn't infatuated with his genitalia). And I just happen to be smarter than most people -- that is exactly what it means to score in the 99th percentile on tests measuring intelligence (at least speaking of the type(s) of intelligence that these tests are meant to measure, and I acknowledge even in the book that there are a variety of different ways to be intelligent). Being smarter than most people is a fact about me the same way that my height and weight are facts. If I were exceptionally tall or fat, I would acknowledge those things about myself too without making any normative judgment that being tall makes me better or being fat makes me worse. I know people tend to think that smarter = better, but I have seen enough incompetent geniuses to not hold this opinion myself.

But I think people's negative reactions to seeming contradictions suggests something about people's discomfort with ambiguity. From Joss Whedon's recent graduation address to Wesleyan University:

[Our culture] is not long on contradiction or ambiguity. … It likes things to be simple, it likes things to be pigeonholed—good or bad, black or white, blue or red. And we’re not that. We’re more interesting than that. And the way that we go into the world understanding is to have these contradictions in ourselves and see them in other people and not judge them for it. To know that, in a world where debate has kind of fallen away and given way to shouting and bullying, that the best thing is not just the idea of honest debate, the best thing is losing the debate, because it means that you learn something and you changed your position. The only way really to understand your position and its worth is to understand the opposite.

That doesn’t mean the crazy guy on the radio who is spewing hate, it means the decent human truths of all the people who feel the need to listen to that guy. You are connected to those people. They’re connected to him. You can’t get away from it. This connection is part of contradiction. It is the tension I was talking about. This tension isn’t about two opposite points, it’s about the line in between them, and it’s being stretched by them. We need to acknowledge and honor that tension, and the connection that that tension is a part of. Our connection not just to the people we love, but to everybody, including people we can’t stand and wish weren’t around. The connection we have is part of what defines us on such a basic level.

I liked this a lot. Some of the most black and white thinkers use sources that are anything but, e.g. the ultra-religious using scriptural texts that portray a God of seeming contradictions (both kind and vengeful, both forgiving and damning) to justify making their own black and white assessments of certain things as being pure evil and others being unassailable good. A little like the junk science you see in sociopath research. The Joss Whedon quote also reminded me of one of my favorite twitter quotes:

"What is this "good" versus "evil" bullshit? There are no such animals in the real world. We do not live in a comic book for Christ's sake."
— M.E. (@sociopathworld) July 28, 2013

UPDATE: I think this article about being gay and Catholic is very interesting and relevant to any discussion of seeming contradictions and how there are many ways to live a life consistent with what you believe, despite what everyone else might think.

Medicated sociopath

A sociopathic reader recently wrote to me telling me about how he spent the past year being heavily medicated. First he was given stimulants and amphetamines, including Ritalin, which made him hallucinate as well as making him more callous. After he stopped those he was left taking antidepressants and tranquilizers, which dulled his experience, but he said that the drugs helped him reset his mind towards a more pro-social way of viewing the world. He asked me my thoughts on the possibility of sociopaths benefiting from medication:

I have never really been on any medication.  I’m curious what tranquilizers you have been taking.  Do you think some of the mellowing out is also just due to age and/or acquiring enough in your personal life that you are a little more hesitant to risk it on risk-seeking impulses?

To answer your questions, my impulse has traditionally been that it would be that it is better to be a loose cannon then to be a dumbed down version of myself, although if I were faced with ultimatums from loved ones or started to feel a little out of control, I wouldn’t hesitate to mellow out through the use of drugs.  I don't know if it is necessarily a self image issue, but depending on what I'm doing, I feel like I am barely smart enough to keep one step ahead in my exploits.  I already don’t do a lot of things I would like to do (boxing, other violent activities that involve possible head injuries) because of that, and I would have a similar reluctance to take meds because it might make me lose that part of my personality that helps me fulfill the role that I often choose in my life.  Plus I guess I am comfortable being me and it would be weird to feel like something else besides me is my puppetmaster.  So I guess the feeling of a loss of control would bother me a bit.

On the other hand, sometimes I feel like being a lot more passive, taking a break. I am sort of feeling like that right now, actually. And I go through cycles of being this way, on and off. Maybe several years on, one year off? It's sort of like sleep to me, and I like to take meds to sleep that deep restorative sleep. So maybe when I'm off I should be on meds too, just to give my mind a break. And I really like trying new things, so maybe I will try this.

I understand what you mean about the medication "resetting" your brain. The mind gets in habits of thinking and it's hard to break those habits, but I can see how being on meds would by their very nature be a disruptive force in your mental patterns. Once a pattern is disrupted, I think it is much easier to start a different pattern. That's why it's hard for me to get too sad about my life falling apart.

Your question “Is it weaker to latch on to one's emotions as a source of identity and meaning, or to accept them as a liability and turn them off?” is a really interesting one.  I have a shadow of a memory of choosing the latter and I don't really think it’s reversible, but I don’t really have opinions anymore about which is better.  I guess the answer is that it is better for the world to have some of each.  And for each individual, it probably depends on your circumstances, like choosing which airport security line you think is going to be best for your particular needs. The default for sociopaths is to not identify with their emotions as a source of identity and meaning, and the default for empaths is to see their emotions as a reflection of the truth about themselves and the world around them. Both of them are incomplete approaches to discerning reality, probably. Both would do well to learn something from the other.

Has anyone else had good experience with meds? It would actually be great if there was a medication that worked with sociopaths. Then we could be like schizophrenics -- as long as we were thought to be taking medication, people would likely not discriminate against us. It's sad, really, because I think a lot of sociopaths have found non-medicated ways to achieve the same ends (e.g. resetting out mindsets towards more pro-social ends through mindfulness, meditation, found spirituality, etc.). And we know that this can also change brain chemistry -- as my friend's doctor told her regarding postpartum depression, you can treat it either with medication or with therapy and both work to the same goal. But would people trust that a sociopath had made this sort of internal change sans meds? Would the sociopath eventually be able to be given the same benefit of that doubt, that although he remained a sociopath, he had it "managed"? The problem with figuring out a non-medicated way of resetting your mindset or controlling your thoughts/behavior is that people put way more trust in the power of medications than they do the power of the mind to change. Or am I wrong? 

Practical empathy

This was an interesting video about the relevance (possibly revolutionizing effect?) of empathy in our society. The video discusses the difference between affective empathy where you feel what another person is feeling, and cognitive empathy, which is about perspective taking or "stepping into somebody else's world."

An interesting assertion was "We make assumptions about people. We have prejudices about people which block us from seeing their uniqueness, their individuality. We make we use labels and highly empathic people get beyond those labels by nurturing their curiosity about others." Do people make assumptions about sociopaths? Do empathic people choose to go beyond those labels by nurturing their curiosity about sociopaths? And if so, is this a net good or net bad?



The video tells the story of how George Orwell tried to nurture his curiosity about the under privileged classes by going on an "empathy adventure", "tramping" about London in disguise, to understand what it felt like to be in the lower classes -- literally putting himself in the shoes of another.

The narrator also discusses the possibility of having empathy not just on a personal level, but on a grander scale -- political, national, religious, etc. As an example, he tells the story of the English abolitionists who got former slaves to share their experiences as slaves, which movement eventually led to the illegalization of slavery.

The narrator talks about how traditionally people try to empathize with the downtrodden, but argues that we should be more adventurous in who we try to empathize with and to focus on more practical and strategic purposes of empathy, e.g. empathizing those in power because "only then are we going to be able to adopt effective strategies" for social transformation. Similarly, he thinks the gap between what we know about climate change and what we do about climate change is also due to a lack of empathy, particularly individuals failing to empathize with people on the other side of the world and people who have yet to be born.

The thing I found interesting about this video was that (1) it was very practically and not morally based analysis of empathy and (2) although the narrator only made the distinction once, he basically was only talking about the practical usefulness of cognitive empathy. I don't think that means that affective empathy is never useful, but it has its limitations in time and space. For instance, it's difficult to say that you are feeling the emotions of people you have never met and know nothing about. Similarly, it should be impossible to say that you are feeling the emotions of people who have yet to be even born. And yet we can feel cognitive empathy for these people by trying to imagine what it might be like to be them. If we exercise our cognitive empathy by putting ourselves in their shoes like George Orwell did, our perspective will broaden and we will get greater insight into not only the institutions of the world that we live in, but also perhaps some insight into our own selves. The good news is that anyone with theory of mind can practice cognitive empathy, including sociopaths, who actually do it perhaps better than most.

More on trying to gain more awareness of our own minds:

Fictional sociopaths: Iago

From Verdi's Otello:

I believe in a cruel God
who created me like himself
in anger of whom that I name.
From the cowardice of a seed
or of a vile atom I was born.
I am a son evil because I am a man;
and I feel the primitive mud in me.
Yes! This is my faith!
I believe with a firm heart,
so does the widow in the temple,
the evil I think
and proceeds from me,
fulfills my destiny.
I think the honest man
is a mockery,
in face and heart,
that everything is in him is a lie:
tears, kisses, looks,
sacrifices and honor.
And I think the man plays a game
of unjust fate
the seed of the cradle
the worm of the grave.
After all this foolishness comes death.
And then what? And then?
Death is Nothingness.
Heaven is an old wives' tale!

Parent to a sociopath (part 2)

While I was watching We Need to Talk About Kevin, I thought several times about Andrew Solomon's book Far From the Tree, in which he writes about outlier children (i.e. children who are quite different from their parents, e.g. deafness, dwarfism, disability, genius, criminality, etc.). He discusses the difficulties that such children present to their parents, who have hoped to see their own unfulfilled promise attained vicariously through the lives of their children, and the great disappointment that can accompany the realization that their child is not who they imagined he would be (via Brain Pickings):

In the subconscious fantasies that make conception look so alluring, it is often ourselves that we would like to see live forever, not someone with a personality of his own. Having anticipated the onward march of our selfish genes, many of us are unprepared for children who present unfamiliar needs. Parenthood abruptly catapults us into a permanent relationship with a stranger, and the more alien the stranger, the stronger the whiff of negativity. We depend on the guarantee in our children’s faces that we will not die. Children whose defining quality annihilates that fantasy of immortality are a particular insult; we must love them for themselves, and not for the best of ourselves in them, and that is a great deal harder to do. Loving our own children is an exercise for the imagination. … [But] our children are not us: they carry throwback genes and recessive traits and are subject right from the start to environmental stimuli beyond our control. 

The most directly applicable We Need to Talk About Kevin quote:

Having exceptional children exaggerates parental tendencies; those who would be bad parents become awful parents, but those who would be good parents often become extraordinary.

Solomon also looks at the unique struggles of children who are born to parents that do not share the same defining traits. He first identifies the distinction between vertical identities, those we inherit from our parents like ethnicity or religion, and horizontal identities:

Often, however, someone has an inherent or acquired trait that is foreign to his or her parents and must therefore acquire identity from a peer group. This is a horizontal identity. Such horizontal identities may reflect recessive genes, random mutations, prenatal influences, or values and preferences that a child does not share with his progenitors. Being gay is a horizontal identity; most gay kids are born to straight parents, and while their sexuality is not determined by their peers, they learn gay identity by observing and participating in a subculture outside the family. Physical disability tends to be horizontal, as does genius. Psychopathy, too, is often horizontal; most criminals are not raised by mobsters and must invent their own treachery. So are conditions such as autism and intellectual disability.

(A quick note, I think the reference to psychopaths is hilariously demonizing, especially given Solomon's great care to withhold normative judgments of "bad" or "good" for the other outlier characteristics he discusses. To illustrate, imagine if he had used a similar negatively slanted statement for gay horizontal identity "most kids are born to straight parents, so must invent their own perversion.")

Solomon, who actually is gay with straight parents (but apparently feels that he did not invent his own perversion, unlike sociopaths), came up with his theory on vertical and horizontal identity when he noticed that he shared common identity issues with deaf children of hearing parents:

I had been startled to note my common ground with the Deaf, and now I was identifying with a dwarf; I wondered who else was out there waiting to join our gladsome throng. I thought that if gayness, an identity, could grow out of homosexuality, an illness, and Deafness, an identity, could grow out of deafness, an illness, and if dwarfism as an identity could emerge from an apparent disability, then there must be many other categories in this awkward interstitial territory. It was a radicalizing insight. Having always imagined myself in a fairly slim minority, I suddenly saw that I was in a vast company. Difference unites us. While each of these experiences can isolate those who are affected, together they compose an aggregate of millions whose struggles connect them profoundly. The exceptional is ubiquitous; to be entirely typical is the rare and lonely state.

I have noticed (and mention in the book) that there has been a lot of push back on labeling people, particularly the pathologizing of more than half the population. How could it possibly be that fewer people in the population are normal than abnormal?! But which seems more plausible -- that we are all cookie cutter neurologically the same? Or that we are all on a bell curve of myriad different human traits, our particular blend making us both completely unique (we actually are neurologically all special snowflakes, it turns out) and yet share identifiable traits in common across the entire swath of humanity. And that's a good thing. Charles Darwin remarked on the great variety of the human species:

As the great botanist Bichat long ago said, if everyone were cast in the same mould, there would be no such thing as beauty. If all our women were to become as beautiful as the Venus de’ Medici, we should for a time be charmed; but we should soon wish for variety; and as soon as we had obtained variety, we should wish to see certain characteristics in our women a little exaggerated beyond the then existing common standard.

Despite the many advantages of diversity, many families (and society) tend to treat horizontal identities as disorders that we would hope to eventually eliminate from the species:

In modern America, it is sometimes hard to be Asian or Jewish or female, yet no one suggests that Asians, Jews, or women would be foolish not to become white Christian men if they could. Many vertical identities make people uncomfortable, and yet we do not attempt to homogenize them. The disadvantages of being gay are arguably no greater than those of such vertical identities, but most parents have long sought to turn their gay children straight. … Labeling a child’s mind as diseased — whether with autism, intellectual disabilities, or transgenderism — may reflect the discomfort that mind gives parents more than any discomfort it causes their child.

(Is Solomon correct here? I think there are actually a lot of people who think that white Christian men are superior to other races/genders/religions, gay people are an abomination, autistic and disabled people are a drain to scarce social resources (same for sociopaths), etc. And perhaps their beliefs are not wrong, or at least it would depend on what measuring stick and set of values you use to judge.)

But I don't think it's the labels that are harmful, necessarily. Indeed, labels can be a boon to all outsiders forming their own horizontal identities. Rather, the problem seems to be the xenophobic system of enforcing social norms that encourages expressions of repulsion and shaming at what is too foreign to be relatable, whether it is feelings of disgust regarding gay people (especially gay people who do not feel the need to hide or tone down their "gayness"), the practices of other cultures (especially things that our own western culture has outgrown, like arranged marriages and modest clothing for women), or the backwards beliefs of religious "cults" (whereas our own religious beliefs are seen as perfectly plausible and normal).

Finally, Solomon describes what eventually happens to the mother in We Need to Talk About Kevin (and a hopeful statement for all parents of sociopathic children):

To look deep into your child’s eyes and see in him both yourself and something utterly strange, and then to develop a zealous attachment to every aspect of him, is to achieve parenthood’s self-regarding, yet unselfish, abandon. It is astonishing how often such mutuality has been realized — how frequently parents who had supposed that they couldn’t care for an exceptional child discover that they can. The parental predisposition to love prevails in the most harrowing of circumstances. There is more imagination in the world than one might think.

Book responses (part 5)

From a "sympathetic neurotypical" reader:


Reading your book "Confessions of a Sociopath" has been a watershed experience for me. It confirms my hopeful suspicion that far from being evil, sociopaths are just different.  

Because you don't know me and likely don't get fired up because a self identified empath spews some version of "You're good enough, smart enough, and people like you" I will cut to the chase. 

I would like to meet you and converse with you at length, and not just for kicks. I am a writer who is fascinated by this topic and how the so called "dark triad" traits interact within the context of conservative/fundamentalist variations of religion.   

I have a theory: Sociopaths may well be society's salvation because they are the ultimate bullshit detectors. I am the granddaughter of a prominent evangelical leader who was the ultimate "cult of personality" figure. He was a supreme narcissist and all of us struggle someone with the sort of "drama of the gifted child" legacy that comes with being a "prop" in the grand myth surrounding the demigod of a Christian patriarchal family. Though I've ben divorced since 2008, I "escaped" this upbringing by marrying the scion of another Christian patriarchy at the age of 20. Suffice it to say I have learned quite a bit about the "complicated" morality of neurotypicals who consider themselves to be morally above reproach.

My entire life has been steeped in the judgments of good and evil that a family culture like this perpetuate, and I have known since I was about 10 that there was something "off" in a different way (different than sociopathic, I mean) about my clan. Specifically - the tendency to scapegoat anyone that questions the moral authority of the system." Questions from observers produce an annihilating rage and motivation to exterminate the one asking the questions after the veneers of patronizing "compassion for the unsaved" get stripped off. 

Why do I think you might want to talk to me? Because I have an intimate knowledge of the sort of individuals who want to exterminate "you and your kind." 

I am including a link to a column I wrote last year about the importance of not stigmatizing children who are put in the antisocial category (via MRI or by clinical diagnosis) to help you understand that I think our thinking on this topic is very compatible. 

But perhaps the most significant reason I want to advocate for the better understanding of sociopathic traits is the fact I am pretty sure someone dear to me is one. And I'll be damned if I let anyone scapegoat her. 

While the callous/unemotional side of your described experience does not ring a bell for me, I very much identify with your sensation seeking personality and your Machiavellian way of operating. It's interesting that you link the stronger connection between the right and left hemispheres with both sociopathy and ADD because I have a screaming case of the latter, which I consider to be an asset, not a disability, which is probably why I have no problem with your dispassionate way of viewing the world. 

The virtues (?) of victimhood

For a lot of spiritual/religious people there is the interesting issue of theodicy, the problem of evil: “how we justify the existence of suffering with belief in a God who created us, who loves us, and who providentially manages the world.” I've noticed that people (here in the comments and in my real life) seem to want to give meaning to bad things, typically in one of a few ways: (1) that God is testing them (and so presumably as long as they hang in there, the bad thing gave them a chance to prove themselves and is at worst neutral), (2) that they suffer to make them stronger (so the bad thing is really a blessing in disguise), or (3) they suffer as a testament to the evil of other men (and those men are going to be condemned or punished, so a net negative). This last reason is the most troubling to me. A lot of people come to the comment section with judgment on their tongue and calls for blood for the sociopaths that have wrecked their lives and so deserve untold horrors.. For some of these people, this one experience has come to define their existence.

When religious people think of someone who really had it rough, they frequently will think of Job. Job not only lost everything, all of his wealth, family, friends, he suffered immense physical pain. Job basically had it about as bad as you can get it. But there was no one for Job to hate except God, which he declined to do. As his reward, God gives him double what he had before. Dostoevsky writes in the Brothers Karamazov:

God raises Job again, gives him wealth again. Many years pass by, and he has other children and loves them. But how could he love those new ones when those first children are no more, when he has lost them? Remembering them, how could he be fully happy with those new ones, however dear the new ones might be? But he could, he could. It's the great mystery of human life that old grief passes gradually into quiet, tender joy.

But I have a feeling that for a lot of the victims that come here, having their lives restored wouldn't be nearly enough for them to relinquish their claims to victimhood. In their mind, giving up their hurt would also mean giving up the meaning and sense of purpose they've assigned to that hurt. Giving up their pain would mean giving up their hopes for justice -- that the wrongdoers will eventually suffer commensurate to their misdeeds. These people would rather live a life of eternal victimhood than they would a world in which things eventually get better.

The Brothers Karamazov is one of my favorite books. One of the characters Ivan struggles with this desire for justice:

I must have justice, or I will destroy myself. And not justice in some remote infinite time and space, but here on earth, and that I could see myself. I have believed in it. I want to see it, and if I am dead by then, let me rise again, for if it all happens without me, it will be too unfair. I want to see with my own eyes the hind lie down with the lion and the victim rise up and embrace his murderer. I want to be there when everyone suddenly understands what it has all been for. All the religions of the world are built on this longing, and I am a believer.

Apart from the established health benefits of forgiving and letting go of past hurts, Ivan's position is simply inconsistent with reality. There is no perfect justice. To keep clamoring for it suggests a significant break with reality. This is particularly true of justice against people like me, who don't really believe in “right.” Everything just is. If bad things happen to me, I wouldn't recognize them as any sort of retribution for past wrongs. I do not believe life is "fair" that way. I wouldn't actually feel like I was being punished, so what's the point? 

Beliefs (and Mormonism)

A blog reader recently asked me if I really believe "that ridiculous story that came with the Book of Mormon." Here's what I replied:


Someone else was asking me recently about my beliefs. I thought of an analogy that might help explain. I was in New York and wanted to meet up with an old school friend. We were trying to figure out a good activity given the weather constraints -- 40% chance of rain. She explained to me that in that part of the country, 40% chance of rain doesn't really mean that there is a 40% chance of any precipitation, rather it refers more accurately to the amount of rain you could expect that day -- 40% of what would be considered a good downpour (100%).

My beliefs are very similar to this. I don't expect to have absolute certainty about anything in my life, in fact I don't think I do have absolute certainty about anything in my life (including my own existence, despite Descartes' brave assertions). So I assess all "facts" in my life in terms of not just likelihood that they are true, but also the amount of what they are that is true. And then there is the uncertainty in the assessment itself. I may guess that there is a 40% chance of rain (or 40% of "rain"), but what if I am only 40% certain of it? Or maybe I only feel like I understand 40% of it, so what does that mean in terms of how much or whether I believe? Add that to the fact that I have never really felt the need to define myself, not by my beliefs, not by my what I "like" on facebook, not by my profession, or my religion, or my gender, or my race -- and that even if I were to try to define myself I am constantly changing, more like smoke and mirrors even to my own eyes than anything more tangible -- and I really don't spend hardly any time thinking about what exactly I believe.

Despite all of this uncertainty about what I may or may not believe, there are patterns in my behavior that suggest that certain things are more important to me than others. I keep showing up to church Sunday after Sunday. I pay 10% of my money to my church. Every time someone asks me for something church related I say yes. Does that mean that I have some underlying belief about things? It must, or maybe I just like doing those things for whatever reason. Or am afraid to not do them. And how tied up are those feelings of like and fear with whatever my beliefs are? I don't know.

It's not like I think my beliefs are any more or less ridiculous than others. And if I had been raised with a different set of beliefs and shared that different set of beliefs with my family and a support system, maybe I would "believe" those things instead. Although the Mormon religion is sort of uniquely suited to my mindset -- we're all gods in embryo and will continue to progress until we have unimaginable power? Yeah, that appeals to me. I like that combined with the Mormon story of Moses, who is shown a vision of just a fraction of time and expanse of the universe and faints. Upon waking Moses says about his experience: "Now, for this cause I know that man is nothing, which thing I never had supposed." So I like that too, this idea that we all have a universe of potential but that we don't come even close to expressing a fraction of that potential yet. It makes me feel like there is a lot to look forward to still.

Q&As (part 2)

(cont.)


Do you think that sociopaths are born or created? 

Most researchers think that there is both a genetic and environmental component to sociopathy. I think I received my genetic component from my father’s birth father, who abandoned his  family, lost the family fortune on a vanity project, and had prominent facial scarring from all of the risky behavior he engaged in over the years. The environmental component was my unstable childhood home with an unpredictable and often-violent father and a sometimes hysterical mother.

You were raised Mormon, graduated from Brigham Young University, and teach Sunday school. How do you reconcile that with being a sociopath?

Being raised Mormon is probably the reason why I am not in prison. More than anything else, the church taught me that actions have consequences. I learned certain choices might look like they would make me happy but ultimately would leave me worse off. The Mormon church and its members were also a stabilizing force in my family life. When my parents weren’t around, we had our teachers, leaders, and friends’ parents to pick up the slack. I can honestly say my life has been better for being a church member, and so I remain.

You believe that sociopaths have a natural competitive advantage. Why?

Sociopaths have several skills that lend themselves to success in areas such as politics and business: charm, an ability to see and exploit weaknesses/flaws (which in politics is called “power-broking,” and in business, “arbitrage”), confidence, unflagging optimism, an ability to think outside the box and come up with original ideas, and a lack of squeamishness about doing what it takes to get ahead.

If you don’t have a sense of morality, or feel the emotions that most people do, how are you able to operate in the world without being detected?

I think everyone learns to lie about his or her emotions to a certain extent; I just take it a step farther. People ask, “How are you?” and you respond, “fine,” even though you had a fight with your spouse that morning, have a sick child, or any multitude of things that make it hard for you to feel fine about almost anything in your life. You could honestly answer the question, but you don’t because overt displays of strong emotion in ordinary social interactions are not accepted. Most of the time I don’t need to show any emotion at all, and I try to limit the times that I do by begging off attending funerals, weddings, etc. When I do show up to these functions, I try to mimic the other attendees. If I’m dealing with a person one-on-one, I just try to reflect their emotions; usually they’re distracted enough by their own overflowing emotions not to notice my lack of them.

What is truth?

I think one of the biggest distinctions between different sociopaths is if they believe in truth or not. Freud said, "A man who doubts his own love may, or rather, must doubt every lesser thing." I feel like this has been true in my life. I grew up watching my narcissist father give overblown displays of emotion. Consequently, it was not only hard for me to take any displays of emotion seriously, it was hard for me to credit the very existence of those emotions in other people. It took me a long time to recognize the inner emotional worlds of others -- it was hard for me to even think certain emotions outside of my personal experience were legitimate and existed in the world. And once you doubt something as big as that, I think it is easy to, as Freud says it, doubt every lesser thing.

And it's easy to live that way. It's easy to assume that the world and society is just one big collective delusion and nothing you do matters. But it's also hard to live that way. Why would I want to live in that world? Oh, for sure there is freedom. And that must seem like it would be great to people -- to be able to live in a world in which you absolutely couldn't care less? But what is the point of freedom -- freedom to do what? Why choose between one action and another if nothing I do matters? Once you get past the initial evolutionary pleasures of dopamine responses in the brain, or you get accustomed to them, what more is there? I'm sure it's great and I don't mean to be too down on it. It's just not my personal preference, given the choice.

And believing in meaning and truth constrains my behavior in a way. I can't believe there is truth and then act in total disregard for it all of the time -- there would be too much cognitive dissonance. Or it would devalue truth to me -- how important is truth if I could ignore it so easily and often? But I can imagine that if you were sociopathic and did not believe in an objective truth or any sort of grander meaning to life, then your behavior wouldn't be constrained in those sorts of ways. Maybe you wouldn't be as conscientious because there would be nothing to measure your behavior against.

Pontius Pilate asks Jesus Christ, "Art thou a king then?" Christ replies, "Thou sayest that I am a King. To this end was I borne, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth: every one that is of the truth heareth my voice," to which Pilate retorts, "What is truth?" Christians, including Francis Bacon in his On Truth, criticize Pilate for his lack of faith -- Pilate, not believing any particular thing, was able to order the crucification of a man based solely on the whims of the crowd. Nietzsche, on the other hand, praises him for his uncommon wisdom and that the statement is "the only saying that has any value" in the New Testament.

I feel like there are some sociopaths who would respect Pilate -- choose that path -- and others who would rather not. I don't think there is anything about sociopathy that compels or exalts one position over the other. But if you do think like Pilate, you're probably more likely to act like him, which is why I think that sociopaths who question the existence of objective truth behave differently than those who believe in truth.

Scientology: L. Ron Hubbard

From Medusa (a reader):

Not sure if you have ever covered Scientology, but now's a good time as any.

I found this 1983 Penthouse interview with L. Ron Hubbard's son to be extremely fitting to the blog.

Here's a little taste:

"Hubbard: Well, he didn't really want people killed, because how could you really destroy them if you just killed them? What he wanted to do was to destroy their lives, their families, their reputations, their jobs, their money, everything. My father was the type of person who, when it came to destruction, wanted to keep you alive for as long as possible, to torture you, punish you. If he chose to destroy you, he would love to see you lying in the gutter, strung out on booze and drugs, rolling in your own vomit, with your wife and children gone forever: no job, no money. He'd enjoy walking by and kicking you and saying to other people, "Look what I did to this man!" He's the kind of man who would pull the wings off flies and watch them stumble around. You see, this fits in with his Scientology beliefs, also. He felt that if you just died, your spirit would go out and get another body to live in. By destroying an enemy that way, you'd be doing him a favor. You were letting him out from under the thumb of L. Ron. Hubbard, you see?"

Many other quotes just as good, worth the read.

Moral codes, boundaries and food allergies

I think empaths' brains work differently than mine. There are certain things that they consider sacrosanct that I just think are normal, or even silly. Luckily I was brought up in a religious household, so I learned that some invisible things actually mean a lot to other people: love, patriotism, god, goodness, etc. I learned that the general rule to avoid unwanted conflict is to respect those beliefs in others, even though they do not mean anything to me. This is sort of a hallmark of a modern, civilized society. When we walk into holy buildings, we remove our shoes if that is the custom even though the god of that temple may not be our own.

That is what we are socialized to do, but there is some debate regarding how much respect we should give other people's beliefs. For instance, if you believe cows are sacred, I'm fine with your boycotting beef, but your beliefs won't stop me from eating a cheeseburger in front of you. If the average person is willing to take off his shoes in your temple but eat a cheeseburger in front of you, what will he do about your belief that abortion is murder or your beliefs that the female labia is dirty and needs to be cut off or the vagina stitched up to ensure the purity of the woman? What is legitimate?

To me it seems like random line drawing: sodomy between two consenting adults is legitimate, sodomy between an adult and a child not legitimate. Public nudity is wrong, but so is a woman covering up from head to foot. There are reasons, sure. I have heard reasons. But many empaths will criticize dolphin slaughter while eating animals raised in deplorable conditions. (By the way, stop eating octupus. They are very smart, precocious creatures.) How do they reconcile this? What makes them freak about one thing and be so permissive about another?

I am a very tolerant person. I attribute this to my sociopathy. Unlike empaths, who are so hard-wired to believe whatever their culture has programmed them to think, I can look at something from a blank slate point of view. I guess this is also why I'm a libertarian -- I don't believe that my ideas are so right that they should be imposed on others, even if those other people disagree. In other words, I am as skeptical about the beliefs I hold as I am about the beliefs of others. And I don't play favorites like empaths who say, "Imposing my beliefs on others is fine because mine are supported by (fill in the blank pet reasons: science, religion, logic, tradition, etc.), but you can't do the same because your beliefs are only supported by (fill in the blank hated reasons: science, religion, logic, tradition, etc.)." So I trend away from imposing my beliefs on others, and I don't necessarily think that one basis for beliefs is better than another. That doesn't mean I don't respect people's beliefs, though. To keep the peace and as a courtesy to others that I expect to be reciprocated, i will almost always take off my shoes when walking on someone's sacred ground.

Does that make me not a sociopath? Ha. Well, the process of how I do it sounds at least Aspergian. How do I know when to take off my shoes? It's like discovering a food allergy. Maybe you eat something at a restaurant and get sick. Other people from your party ate the same thing and did not get sick. Maybe you just caught a flu bug, you think. A few months later you eat something else and get similar symptoms. The symptoms seem the same, but you don't know what could be the common ingredient. You keep collecting info, eliminating this, eliminating that, keeping a mental log of what you could possibly be allergic to. It is clear to you by now that even though you cannot see what is making you sick, can't even identify it, there is certainly something wrong because you keep getting bad reactions. Maybe your boss periodically gets angry at you in the same way. Maybe your spouse can't stand to be around you when you are like _____. I am in those types of situations all the time -- people are mad at me and I have no idea why. chances are, though, I am encroaching on someone's moral code and/or sense of personal boundaries. I have learned that either I keep doing the same thing and getting the same adverse reaction, or I figure something else out. otherwise I'm in for a world of hurt, because it's like a moral/personal boundary minefield out there. Right aspies?

Can sociopaths be religious?

The easy answer is yes. Look at all the crazy things people have done in the name of religion. Of course people have often used the pretense of religious belief to magnify their own power or influence, but I think that many sociopaths are actually capable of religious/spiritual beliefs independent of the motives of trying to fit in or manipulate others. At least many famous sociopaths have expressed such beliefs at one point or another.

I'm religious/spiritual. I guess that might seem surprising. I was grateful to be raised religiously because it provided me with a standard of morality that I could follow and use to fit in perfectly with my community. As much as people try to argue otherwise, legal systems and social norms are very closely linked with religious concepts of morality, so learning a religious code taught me a lot about what was expected of me in society. Being religious also gave me a built-in excuse for any eccentricities in behavior. I am still religious, I think, because I like the idea of there being a creator of all things, including sociopaths. I like having a check on my behavior, a reason for being a good sociopath. And I like the reward for good behavior -- the feeling of elation and other-worldness inherent in religious devotion.

But I do not allow my religious devotion to confuse me or to make me feel conflicted about who I am. Like one of the brothers Karamzov said:

I'm a Karamazov... when I fall into the abyss, I go straight into it, head down and heels up, and I'm even pleased that I'm falling in such a humiliating position, and for me I find it beautiful. And so in that very shame I suddenly begin a hymn. Let me be cursed, let me be base and vile, but let me also kiss the hem of that garment in which my God is clothed; let me be following the devil at the same time, but still I am also your son, Lord, and I love you, and I feel a joy without which the world cannot stand and be.

- Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

Mormon teen killer

A reader sent me this link to the recent sentencing of an 18 year old Mormon girl who as a 14 year old killed a nine year old neighbor.  At first I was a skeptic about her being a sociopath.  Maybe she is just a weird teenager who got caught up in the wrong crowd and started listening to Blood on the Dance Floor or something.  Ha.

But then I read the part about how she journaled about it:

During her two-day sentencing hearing, prosecutors referred repeatedly to an entry Bustamante wrote in her journal on Oct. 21, 2009 — the night of Elizabeth's death — in which she admitted to having just killed someone.

"I strangled them and slit their throat and stabbed them now they're dead," Bustamante wrote in her diary, which was read in court by a handwriting expert. "I don't know how to feel atm. It was ahmazing. As soon as you get over the 'ohmygawd I can't do this' feeling, it's pretty enjoyable. I'm kinda nervous and shaky though right now. Kay, I gotta go to church now...lol."

Bustamante then left for a youth dance at a Mormon church her family attended while hundreds of volunteers began a two-day hunt for the dead girl. Although she initially lied to authorities about Elizabeth's whereabouts, Bustamante eventually confessed to police and led them to Elizabeth's leaf-covered shallow grave.

"I gotta go to church now"?  Hm.  I'm so curious to hear her opinion on religion.  And she's female.  Such an interesting story.  

Happy sabbath Christians!

Faith

Religious people sometimes get on this site and tell us that we're all going to burn in hell. I don't know what religion these people belong to, but I imagine that they have some pretty common judeo christian beliefs that God created man. Even if you accept the belief that God does not actually create evil, he certainly creates the ingredients, possibly even sets the ball in motion. At least I think that is a relatively common belief among those religiously inclined in those ways. You may say that God doesn't want man to lie down with man as he would woman, but you can't deny that God seems to have made certain people especially prone to wanting to do just that. Similarly, the sociopath. Born different, although not necessarily to murder indiscriminately. To those religious people, were the sociopaths born to live a wretched life and burn in hell?

It's odd because I think some sociopaths are actually more inclined to religion than the general population. We're so used to taking things on "faith," e.g. the legitimacy of other people's personhood, the existence of an emotional palette different than our own, etc. It's sort of like the colorblind people who have to take our word for it that orange exists the way it does (or does it? who is to say that our perception of that particular segment of the electromagnetic spectrum is any more or less correct than theirs?). These things I take on faith not really as truths but as things that seem plausible enough that I cannot deny their existence (I cannot reject the null hypothesis for you statisticians out there). Because I am so used to accepting the existence of things that I can neither feel nor see myself, it's not at all a jump for me to indulge in religious beliefs. And I do indulge -- maybe because they are a form of hedging my bets, maybe because I was raised to be religious and many of my familiar and other relationship ties are based on religion, or maybe because these beliefs actually do help fill the void of meaning that I otherwise would feel in my life.

But accepting the possibility of a God as I do, why do I not agree with my religious brothers that I am destined to go to hell. How do I reconcile any religious beliefs with who I am? Honestly, although part of me feels dark, a big part of me thinks that I am more Godlike than most people, particularly the God of Abraham and Moses. It's easy for me to think that I was a ruler before this life and will be in the life to come, which is I guess the real reason that these religious types get on here saying I'm going to hell, because I'm pretty sure that's blasphemy in their eyes.

Rex tremendae majestatis,
qui salvandos savas gratis,
salve me, fons pietatis.

King of tremendous majesty,
who freely saves those worthy ones,
save me, source of mercy.

Orthodox sociopathy (part 2)

(cont.)

I've never had a strong religious background growing up. I was baptized at the age of 13, however it wasn't my choice. I would like to think that the first thing I did after the baptism was jerk off to gay porn would kinda invalidate that. I've never liked how in Christianity how the masses pick and choose which portions of the Bible they'll follow. Take the gay issue for example. Most people conveniently forget that the laws of Leviticus are for the Jews to follow. Yet even though everyone eats lobster and shaves their facial hair, they go hating on the gays. And in my Orthodox community, everyone seems to follow the rabbi's opinion. Never mind the fact that he's just as prone to keeping up with community standards as everyone else. The verse "Thou shall not lay with a man as you would a woman. It is an abomination" is the most condemning arguement against homosexuality. Nevermind the fact that I take the "as you would a woman" part to mean that a) God allows us to sex up other men as long as I don't do him as a woman and b) everyone seems to forget that part. My rabbi has a different opinion on that. He thinks it's ok to lay down with another guy, so long as there is no sex. Nevermind the fact that to lay with is a biblical euphemism. I much prefer the Karaite movement, they rely more on their individual interpretation than a rabbi's. However, in order for my conversion to be universally accepted, I have to go the Orthodox route.

One thing I didn't really touch upon when I was being wordy though were my thoughts on the nature of God. I've never really believed in God until my stepfather's death, and as I mentioned, it was only because I felt cheated out of a victory. Before that, and after that, I always acknowledged the existence of forces outside of my control or influence. So when I told people I believed in God, what I wasn't telling them was what exactly I believed in.

One thing I do have problems with is when people ask me why I want to convert. I find that all I can do is give them a canned response. Something like my love of Judaism, I love the sense of community, I want my (future) kids to grow up with others who'll share their beliefs. I know that I don't have to convert in order to have my part in the world to come. I don't have to convert for my children to be Jewish or even to have a Jewish wife (though marrying outside the clan in frowned upon). Perhaps my goal is to successfully assimilate? I don't know, but I'm having fun doing it, touching the lives of others, and being the prosocial sociopath.

Orthodox sociopathy (part 1)

Being sociopathic is not necessarily inconsistent with being religious. An addictive spiritual high frequently accompanies the practice of religion. Like tantric sex, denying yourself certain things intensifies the pleasure of your indulgences. Religion is a good beard and a prosthetic moral compass. For some, it can also be a welcome respite from the sociopath's legendary feeling of emptiness, at least as much as any other opiate. Plus it's not that hard -- sociopaths are used to keeping up appearances. In short, the benefits of religion for a sociopath can and often do exceed its costs. I asked one of our sociopath readers to describe what role religion plays in his life:

In order to understand my religious upbringing better, you'll have to understand the back story of my life. I was born in a small town in Florida. My mother was an Adventist and my father Agnostic. Me and my mom would go to church every Saturday, and me being little at the time, I couldn't care less. When I was eight years old, my parents divorced, mostly because my mom hung out in these places on this new thing called the internet call chatrooms. She met a guy, divorced my dad, and we moved to Montreal. A few months later, she had enroled me in a Catholic school, and married my stepfather. She quit being religious at the time, but was more than glad to send me to a private school because of Quebec's language laws at the time- I could only go to a public french school.

When I was fourteen, my stepfather died. At that point in time my stepfather had become a heavy smoker and a total drunkard. One beautiful Friday morning, he broke into my room with a butcher's knife as I was getting dressed for school. He was drunk and therefore easy to subdue. A few well placed punched to the ribs and he was out. He had to be hospitalized for his injuries. He died that day. And my mom blamed me for his death. The police also thought I killed him, they escorted me out of class that day, and in my opinion, they could have shown more discretion. My mother decided to have him cremated, and under Quebec law, you need to have an autopsy before you do something so irreversible to a body. Luckily for me, it revealed that he had lung cancer, and that it had spread to his brain. That was my first major religious experience. I was not sure whether his death had been ordained by God, or if it was His way of laughing in my face.

A few months later me and my mom had moved back to Florida. At first we were living with my father. We arrived in time for me to finish the last week of school in the Florida calender. Summer had come and gone, and because of the moving process I had failed a grade because I missed so many days of school. On top of that, The States have one more year of high school compared to Quebec. So instead of graduating in 2006 as I had planned, it was 2008. To add insult to inconvenience, because I wasn't around for the FCAT testing, they put me in remedial classes.

It wasn't until I was 20 that I moved back to Montreal. When I first arrived here, I found myself in the middle of a Jewish neighborhood. I always wanted to have a sense of community. I did my research on Judaism vs Christianity, and found that I rather prefer the monolithic portrayal of God. I fabricated a little story about how my grandmother practiced Judaism, but never converted. My first time at the shul, and I didn't even have a yarmulke (head cap). I was quickly welcomed into the community, and after a while, I realized that they have resources I don't have, and that it would only be a matter of time before my parents quit supporting me. I made sure to attend the social functions, and mingle. At first I thought that I would have to manipulate them to get what I need, however I've learned since then that they are good people.