Borderline personality disorder vs. sociopathy

This was an interesting article from the Psychology Today blog relating an experiment done examining the brain activity of sociopaths and comparing it to that of people with borderline personality disorder. Why these two disorders? Apparently, sociopathic and borderline traits occur with equal frequency among violent offenders, but they reach their antisocial behavior in different ways:

Typically, antisocial offenders with borderline personality disorder are emotionally reactive, unable to regulate emotions, bereft of cognitive empathy (knowing how another person feels), rageful, and reactively aggressive. By contrast, antisocial offenders with high psychopathic traits can be characterized as emotionally detached, cognitively empathic, morally problematic, exploitative, and proactively and reactively aggressive.

The experiment:

The investigators took MRI scans of the two groups of antisocial offenders, with the aim of exploring differences in the cerebral structure of their brains. All offenders had been convicted for capital, violent crimes (including severe bodily injury such as murder, manslaughter, robbery, or rape) from high-security forensic facilities and penal institutions and were formally diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder. There was also a comparison group of healthy men.

The results:

The antisocial offenders with borderline personality disorder had alterations in the orbitofrontal and ventromedial prefrontal cortex regions, which are involved in emotion regulation and reactive aggression; there were also differences in the temporal pole, which is involved in the interpretation of other peoples’ motives. By contrast, the antisocial offenders with high psychopathic traits showed reduced volume mostly in midline cortical areas, which are involved in the processing of self-referential information and self reflection (i.e., dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, posterior cingulate/precuneus) and recognizing emotions of others (postcentral gyrus). 

I thought this was interesting. I wrote previously about the connection between sociopathy and alexithymia, or the decreased ability to identify, understand, and describe one's own emotions. This trait has been linked to a lack of empathy, the idea being that if you are unable to understand your own emotions, you don't stand much of a chance of understanding the emotional worlds of others. I feel like I don't understand my emotions, that they feel out of context to me, like I'm getting only snippets of a movie played backwards. This feeling probably contributes to my weak sense of self. This brain scan study seems to comport with this theory -- that sociopaths suffer from an ability to process self-referential information and to self-reflect, and that consequently sociopaths have flexible understandings of not only morality, but basically every human trait.

Free won't

In doing some research on the sociopath's supposed lack of impulse control, I stumbled upon this article from Scientific American (found in full here), which questions the popular conception that we make a conscious choice then act on that choice (i.e. free will). The abstract:

Most of us have a sense that our everyday actions are controlled by an intention that precedes the action: I decide to turn on the light, then flip the switch. But experiments don't consistently support this notion. Some psychologists believe that our sense of intention and purpose is constructed by the brain after the action takes place. Others disagree. The authors discuss ingenious experiments that probe this question, along with bizarre phenomena, such as "alien-hand syndrome," where brain damage leaves patients struggling with actions they cannot control.

The experiments:



Another experiment suggests even more strongly that our sensation of control is largely imaginary:

In one such experiment . . . two participants worked together to move a cursor over objects on a computer screen. One of the participants served as a confederate of the experimenter, but the experimental subject never knew this. The genuine subject heard words over a set of headphones that related to particular objects on the screen. For example, a subject might hear the word "swan" while moving the cursor over a picture of a swan. Unbeknownst to the subject, all of the movement of the cursor came from the confederate. The results showed that, when the relevant word was presented 1 to 5 seconds prior to the action, subjects reported feeling that they had acted intentionally to make the movement. In other words, they had experienced will. When the word was presented 30 seconds prior to the action or 1 second after it, however, there was no false feeling of willing the action. The authors argued that this experiment provided clear evidence that the human brain constructs feelings of causal agency after an action has taken place. It could be that a proper temporal order between intentions, actions and consequences triggers the brain—after the fact—to feel a sense of control.

This type of self deception is perhaps seen best in sufferers of alien hand syndrome, who often rationalize the behavior after the fact, "fool[ing] themselves that the actions they performed were indeed intentional" although "patients are not aware of what they are going to do until after the action has been made." Interestingly, schizophrenics, who frequently "describe an external agent as causing their actions, thoughts, speech or emotions," may largely suffer from an inability to delude themselves into believing that they are acting on their own intentions like "normal" people do.

We are not slaves to impulse, however. The literature suggests that rather than experience free will, we instead experience "free won't," or the ability to avoid acting on the impulse, possibly with the aid of the dorsal fronto-medial cortex, as explained in this article.

The idea of decisions being unconscious impulses that we either reject or make our own raises interesting issues for sociopaths with alleged impulse control problems, but raises even more issues for neurotypicals and the role that a sense of control plays in how they define themselves:

More than a matter of simply turning on a switch, this feeling of control over actions might even contribute to a conscious sense of self. In other words, I am because I control my actions. The question is: How do we go from mundane, everyday actions—like turning on a light—to developing a sense of self as a causal agent?

Psychopath treatment: a success story

This was an interesting email sent to Jon Ronson, author of The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry, from a diagnosed psychopath who sought treatment (relatively successfully). Here are selections, links are mine and my comments in brackets:

Four years later, with sessions no less frequent than once or twice a week, I came out of therapy unrecognizable from when I went into it. 

Yes thearapy was transformative, though it is possible to overstate its impacts. I will always see the world through different lenses to much of the rest of the world. My emotional reactions are different, my endowments are impressive in some respects, not so in others, much like other people. 

It is also the case that, being ‘normal’ takes a degree of energy and conscious thought that is instinctive for most, but to me is a significant expenditure of energy. I think it analogous to speaking a second language. That is not to say I am being false or obfuscating, merely that I will always expose some eccentric traits. [I also find it to be taxing to interact with people legitimately because it's a very deliberate choice, a performance of sorts rather than a way of interacting that comes naturally to me.] 

So why am I writing all this to you?

Well, from someone who is both psychopathic and treated, there are many fallacies about psychopaths with which I am deeply cynical. Unfortunately psychopaths themselves do themselves no favors, as the label given to them plays into their ego over generously - ‘If we are born that way’ psychopaths reason, ‘then it is not wrong for us to be as we are, indeed we are the pinnacle of the human condition, something other people demonize merely to explain their fitful fears’. [It's so easy to think this way. It's so hard to acknowledge that the world might be a lot more complicated than you think it is, and people (everybody, really) a lot less stupid and a lot more valuable than you think they are. I had to be trained to see the world differently (by Ann, for those that have read the book).]

We are neither the cartoon evil serial killers, nor the ‘its your boss’ CEO’s always chasing profit at the expense of everyone else. While we are both of those things, it is a sad caricature of itself. 

We continue be to characterized that way, by media, by literature, and by ourselves, yet the whole thing is a sham. 

The truth is much, much more complex, and in my view, interesting.

Psychopaths are just people. You are right to say that psychopaths hate weakness, they will attempt to conceal anything that might present as a vulnerability. The test of their self-superiority is their ability to rapidly find weaknesses in others, and to exploit it to its fullest potential.  

But that is not to say that this aspect of a psychopaths world view cannot be modified. These days I see weaknesses and vulnerabilities as simple facts - a facet of the human condition and the frailties and imperfections inheritent in being human. [I've talked about this here.]

At the same time it is true that my feelings and reactions to those around me are different - not necessarily retarded - just different. It is the image of psychopaths as something not quite human, along with espersions as to their natures, that prevent this from being identified. 

So how to explain these ‘different’ feelings?

Well, lets look at what (bright) psychopaths are naturally quite exceptional at… We are good at identifying, very rapidly, extreme traits of those around us which allows us to discern vulnerabilities, frailties, and mental conditions. It also makes psychopaths supreme manipulators, for they can mimick human emotions they do not feel, play on these emotions and extract concessions. 

But what are these traits really? - Stripped of its pejorative adjectives and mean application, it is a highly trained perception, ability to adapt, and a lack of judgment borne of pragmatic and flexible moral reasoning. 

What I’m saying here is that although those traits can very easily (even instinctively) lead to dangerous levels of manipulation, they do not have to. 

These days I enjoy a reputation of being someone of intense understanding and observation with a keen strategic instinct. I know where those traits come from, yet I have made the conscious choice to use them for the betterment of friends, aquaintences, and society. People confide in me extraordinary things because they know, no matter what, I will not be judging them. [I particularly relate with this paragraph.]

I do so because I know I have that choice. After years of therapy I am well equipped to act on it, and my keen perception is now directed equally towards myself. 

Its true that I do not ‘feel’ guilt or remorse, except to the extent that it affects me directly, but I do feel other emotions, which do not have adequate words of description, but nevertheless cause me to derive satisfacton in developing interpersonal relationships, contributing to society, and being gentle as well as assertive. 

Such as statement might tempt you to say ‘well obviously you’re not a real psychopath then’. As if the definition of a psychopath is someone who exploits others for their personal power, satisfaction or gain. 
***
In the end, psychopaths need to be given that very thing everyone believes they lack for others, empathy; a willingness to understand the person, their drives, hopes, strengths and fears, along with knowledge of their own personal sadnesses and sense of inferiority…As it is, such cartoon, unchangeable, inhuman characterizations offers nothing but perpetuation of those stereotypes. 

Serial Killers & Ruthless CEOs exist - Voldemort does not. 

Overall I found his experience to be very similar to my own. He sought help at the beginning of his adulthood because he felt like he didn't have control over some of the things he thought and did. He was led through a paradigm shift by a trusted and wise individual (his therapist, my close friend) who first saw and understood him, then met him halfway and spoke his language rather than preaching at him in the foreign language of emotional morality. I don't think this is an easy process. His process took four years. Mine took about two, but of intense focus. I also know of a handful of people who have even gotten there on their own, though, so it definitely is possible. I actually hope that the book is really helpful that way, in terms of helping undiagnosed sociopaths to recognize themselves and also give them a message of hope. It's possible for sociopaths to train themselves to think and act in different ways. We will never be completely fluent or automatic in our empathy or moral reasoning, but with some accommodation we can be not only fully functioning in society, but successful and contributing members of society. 

Not as good as you think you are

To be filed in our ever expanding good-people-aren't-as-good-as-they-think-they-are file, Adam Alter, author of the book "Drunk Tank Pink: And Other Unexpected Forces That Shape How We Think, Feel, and Behave" writes for the NY Times about how people's behavior often depends on context, "Where We Are Shapes Who We Are". First he explains research from the 1970s about whether people would go out of their way to post an already stamped and addressed envelope that they had found on the ground. Even though only 6 out of 10 students in crowded dorms posted the letter, "when the researchers asked a different collection of students to imagine how they might have responded had they come across a lost letter, 95 percent of them said they would have posted it regardless of where they were living." Alter continues:

Most people, in fact, think of themselves as generous. In self-assessment studies, people generally see themselves as kind, friendly and honest, too. We imagine that these traits are a set of enduring attributes that sum up who we really are. But in truth, we’re more like chameleons who instinctively and unintentionally change how we behave based on our surroundings.
***
For example, people behave more honestly in locations that give them the sense they’re being watched. A group of psychologists at Newcastle University in northeast England found that university workers were far more likely to pay for tea and coffee in a small kitchen when the honor-system collection box sat directly below a price list featuring an image of a pair of eyes, versus one with flowers. The researchers alternated the pictures of eyes and flowers each week during their 10-week experiment, using eyes from both men and women, to make sure that no single image affected the outcome. In every week featuring the eyes, the “honesty box” ended up with more money.
***
Other environmental cues shape our actions because they subtly license us to behave badly. According to the heavily debated broken windows theory, people who are otherwise well behaved are more likely to commit crimes in neighborhoods with broken windows, which suggests that the area’s residents don’t care enough to maintain their property.

What does this mean in terms of whether people are inherently good or evil?

These studies tell us something profound, and perhaps a bit disturbing, about what makes us who we are: there isn’t a single version of “you” and “me.” Though we’re all anchored to our own distinct personalities, contextual cues sometimes drag us so far from those anchors that it’s difficult to know who we really are — or at least what we’re likely to do in a given circumstance.

It’s comforting to believe that there’s an essential version of each of us — that good people behave well, bad people behave badly, and those tendencies reside within us.

But the growing evidence suggests that, on some level, who we are — litterbug or good citizen, for example — changes from moment to moment, depending on where we happen to be.

These environmental cues can shape and reshape us as quickly as we walk from one part of the city to another.

These studies are not unusual and they are not isolated. There are myriad examples of incredibly bad behavior from people who never would have predicted (or later admit) they would act that way, both experimental and historical (see also here and here and here and here, and for the limitations of good behavior here and here, and why despite all of this evidence, people still think that they are good people who could never do any real wrong, and that their definition of good is an expression of objective truth). Maybe the best common example of normal people behaving badly is what happens during a riot. Riots are not populated entirely of sociopaths, not hardly. They are ordinary people who either have let their emotions get the best of them or are using a breakdown in the social fabric to act reprehensibly. Taking advantage of a devastating national disaster and the ensuing chaos to rape 7 and 2 year-old children? Football fans killing each other? Riots to me are a good indication that ordinary people absolutely love to act out when everyone else is doing it or when they think they won't get caught.

Empaths like to pretend that they are immune to any bad thoughts or impulses, and sometimes I almost find myself believing them, so adamant and unyielding are their assertions. But the data doesn't support their self-assessments. Not only that, but they must be either lying on the self-assessments to make themselves look better than they are or they are lying to themselves to make themselves feel like they're better than they are. So... they're also hypocrites.

This is probably what I'm most worried about when people talk about rounding up all of the sociopaths and putting them on an island somewhere. Will we even make it there safely if the boat is being run by hypocritical and situationally exploitative empaths who are prone to emotional outbursts that may lead to murder? Empaths sound pretty dangerous to me.

Gentleman sociopath?

If not morals, why might a sociopath choose to do something "good" or help people? A reader recently wrote about how his sense of aesthetics keeps him from doing anything base, such as brute strength violence.

Similarly, from another sociopathic reader regarding the existence of the "gentleman sociopath":

I have read as many materials about sociopathy. It seems that the clinical model tend towards the violent and lack of self-awareness of the afflicted. I'm confused by that. I have over forty years and have done phenomenally well but there is a certain dichotomy to my nature that challenges what I read. Self-awareness is something I have in spades. It comes in waves but the overall tenets of my meticulous adaptation and mimicry have served me well. I am reasonably successful perhaps even quite successful. I am a charismatic individual that can engender such passionate responses but I don't quite get their ultimate utilitarian value. I am fully capable of expressing emotion though it typically is self-serving. I find people useful and fascinating and in my job I am an outgoing and rather likable chap. I know what to say to make the ends meet. But the act itself is mechanical. You are the first I have read that seems to be broadening the understanding of the bonds that bind us together and yet I wonder, what of the gentleman sociopath. The one who realizes that the flashes of violence and utter revulsion at humanity leaves the efforts to connect empty and like a well played out theatrical piece. One of which I am always the star; even if I sit back and do nothing of great significance I manage to impact other positively. But I fail to see the reward. Is this all there is? A chance encounter, fleeting, where love is extricated for my benefit and validation of my greatness. Psychotherapy and psychology seem only to capture the seen and make formulaic profiles of those who manage to fall into the system. I have absolutely no desire to be anything else. There is an elegance in the primal connection to my stripped bone need to see the tethers that bind us to this false sense of social propriety.

But these tethers that bind us all demand to be plucked so that I can rest assured my genius is not wasted. I am not adverse to violence and my sexual appetites are gruesome at best. But I have control of them despite a few slip ups. I appreciate greatly the time you took to read my letter.  What Answer I receive from you will be welcome.

I have lived long enough to grow tired of the clinical definitions and confines of sociopathy. There are many of us who have formed quite mutually beneficial bonds with one another and find success in a tedious world a far better path than the wanton rebellion. I suppose, while I will be frank in admitting I haven't the foggiest idea of what drew me to your writings, you must have seemed to at least be less rigid in your understanding of this particular detachment. Except with those like me, I have never before felt an interest to express this. You also are likely aware that I would be remiss if I didn't say that any questions you have for me would be welcomed.

Self-reference

Via exp.lore.com:

"In the end… We are self-perceiving, self-creating, locked-in mirages. We are miracles of self-reference."



Based on the ideas in Douglas Hofstadter’s 1979 classic Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid.

Seeing what you want to see

I studied economics for a time. I was introduced to behavioral economics and how the heuristics that help us deal with day to day problems can also frequently lead us astray. I had understood for a long time that people often self-deceived, but even I was surprised by the depth and breadth of the way we misperceive the world (me included). I learned the lessons of decisionmaking and rationality and tried to become more rational myself. I have since noticed that many of my friends who did fine understanding the concepts but lacked the humility or insight to see an application in their own lives.

My friend I mentioned earlier is a good example. He is so afraid of making a bad decision that he avoids making them until they are made for him. That or he waits until his fear and panic of making the decision cause him to take action, any action at all, but all in a fog of willful ignorance -- pretending that certain facts don't exist or (intentionally?) misrepresenting probabilistic outcomes in his mind. All of this is done in an attempt to shield himself from self-hatred or acknowledging certain basic truths about the world that he would rather ignore. I see this sort of ex post self-justification happen in the comments section of this blog from people who are doomed to repeat past mistakes because they refuse a sense of responsibility about their own destiny.

It's a good example of seeing what you want to see and the harm that can come from it. I actually advise people to not even form a belief if they can -- the temptation to anchor their future assessments or see all new information through the distorted lens of whether or not it confirms that belief is just simply too high.

Even if people get the probability correctly, they often don't understand what that means. It's one thing to say there's a 1% of getting caught stealing a mobile phone, but many people have trouble understanding that means if you steal 100 phones you will statistically get caught once. Instead they act as if anything less than 5% means never going to happen no matter how repeatedly they engage in it. Which is why I liked this recent article in the NY Times about understanding low probability risks. It's worth reading in its entirety, here's a teaser story:


I first became aware of the New Guineans’ attitude toward risk on a trip into a forest when I proposed pitching our tents under a tall and beautiful tree. To my surprise, my New Guinea friends absolutely refused. They explained that the tree was dead and might fall on us.

Yes, I had to agree, it was indeed dead. But I objected that it was so solid that it would be standing for many years. The New Guineans were unswayed, opting instead to sleep in the open without a tent.

I thought that their fears were greatly exaggerated, verging on paranoia. In the following years, though, I came to realize that every night that I camped in a New Guinea forest, I heard a tree falling. And when I did a frequency/risk calculation, I understood their point of view.

Consider: If you’re a New Guinean living in the forest, and if you adopt the bad habit of sleeping under dead trees whose odds of falling on you that particular night are only 1 in 1,000, you’ll be dead within a few years. In fact, my wife was nearly killed by a falling tree last year, and I’ve survived numerous nearly fatal situations in New Guinea.

Lifetime learner

I sometimes post favorite comments (sometimes not, if it is hard to reduce it to a quotable quote), but there were two in particular that I have been thinking about recently. One was from a reader who said that he observes his own behavior in order to interpret his emotions. I found that to be very interesting, and very true of my life too. When I was in secondary school I got very/acutely sick for a while. To me life felt normal, apart from dealing with pain and other physical symptoms of being sick, but after about two weeks my friends all stopped talking to me. I got better, but they still stayed away. I didn't know what to make of it. Since then I have realized that when I am sick or otherwise not feeling well, I can be very mean, short-tempered, even irrational without knowing I am doing it. Now when people start acting offended around me or I otherwise struggle to maintain healthy interpersonal relationships, I often (correctly) assume that I am sick. The same applies for a lot of my other "feelings," particularly negative ones. Frequently I am unaware of them until I find myself engaging in some irrational behavior or another (always my red flag). Only then do I stop what I am doing and take time to reassess what's really going on in my world.

Another commenter (aspie?) remarked on the definition of love, saying that he believed love is basically gratitude. Coming from an aspie, I thought this was hilarious because I don't think any neurotypical would describe love that way. It is, however, exactly the sort of thing that someone would say who has never experienced love the way a neurotypical would. Yes, little aspie, to the sociopath as well love feels a lot like gratitude and loyalty.

Addiction

A reader writes:

I'm a recovering addict, clean from drugs for 8 years. I notice a higher concentration of ASPD (Anti-Social Personality Disorder) addicts in 12-step fellowships and was wondering if there is a connection between addiction and ASPD. I displayed sociopathic traits as well as addictive behaviors long before I picked up drugs. I've found those of us with ASPD have a harder time fully addressing the various aspects of our addiction than those without. Just curious if you're a recovering addict as well.

My response:

I'm not a recovering addict but I know that I am very prone to addiction so I have actually tried to avoid addictive substances. I always want to try everything at least once, but I can usually tell when something is too good to be good for me, if you know what I mean.

Sociopaths allegedly don't learn well from experience/mistakes. I think that is because we have a higher tolerance for pain, discomfort, etc. This can be a huge advantage in situations where pain is paralyzing or otherwise not constructive. It also makes us dangerous to ourselves, though. We're like those people who can't feel physical pain. I have had way more near death experiences than anyone else I know of in my peer group or family. I'm also reckless emotionally and mentally. I have taken on emotional or mental burdens before that have led to the brink of a breakdown. We have to be extra careful about what we do to ourselves because we don't have the risk-averseness and emotional/psychic pain to signal to us to stop doing something because it is hurting us. I can see how this would make us especially prone to acquiring addictions.

Truly smart?

A reader who identifies as sociopath sent me this passage from a teenage journal:

What makes someone smart, truly smart, in my opinion is someone who is self-aware. Someone who recognizes their place in the world and who recognizes the place of others. They see things as they are. A smart person realizes they're smart but can fool the rest of the world into believing that they are just like them. By doing so, they can feed off and learn from these people. They do not need to harm them but merely take in as much as they can in order to survive in the best, most logical, and beneficial way. I guess it's like using resources, but a different kind of resources, not tangible ones that anybody can see or use, and they are able to do so without a soul figuring out what they are doing. That is being smart.

Know Thyself

Sometimes you can be your own worst enemy. I'm sure you've heard that before. As a sociopath we are met with a choice: Being aware of who we are or ignoring it and becoming a destructive force. Destruction is fun, but in the end we end up destroying ourselves along with anyone else who makes the mistake of helping us.

Many people out there have the opinion that sociopaths have no hope. Therapy doesn't work. Drugs don't work. Why is that? The fact is only you can help yourself. Throughout your life you have relied on yourself, so why would that change when it comes to personal growth.

I'm not here to tell people that they need to be 'good' sociopaths. What is good anyway? Rules and laws are meant to protect people too foolish to see why they are there. Sheep flock to obey them no matter what the cost. We have to develop our own individual principles that we hold ourselves accountable to. This is how you take yourself to a new level.

Several traits of a sociopath can be turned around and used for you or used against you. Ultimately it's up to you.

The fact that you are emotionally shallow can be used to excel you in taking emotions out of the equation and attacking problems at hand with logic. The fact that you are a narcissist can help you stay positive and never accept anything less than number one in any competitive environment. You can use the fact that you are impulsive to take action while others can't pull the trigger. I'm sure you can take this idea from here.

The doors are open for sociopaths. We either succeed highly or we fail dismally. It's up to you to decide where you want to be.

Famous narcissist? Mary Roach

A friend sent me this. Obviously it's hilarious, but it's also a really good example of what if feels like watching a narcissist at work (to all of your narcissist readers that this blog apparently attracts?). There's something so blatantly ridiculous about the way they act and how disconnected they are from reality.




Mary is absolutely immune to criticism and when confronted with the truth about her singing, she immediately assumes that her critic has a personal issue with her that is driving the criticism as opposed to merely stating the obvious truth. One of the more obvious narcissist qualities is that when the judges start playing with her, she doesn't fight it or immediately defend herself but plays along. She wants it to seem like she is in on any joke that they might be having and even if the joke is at her expense she would rather have the attention (even negative) than cede the spotlight. When they give her the goodbye, she keeps the conversation going, although it means rehashing their worst criticism of her. She also feels compelled to turn the tables and judge them for their appearances, as being smaller, thinner, prettier, and "hot." She doesn't need to criticize them necessarily -- it is enough that they seem interested in her assessment of them. Of course they did not ask her for her opinions on them, but she manages to misunderstand a direct question and act as if she has some unique vision that warrants sharing.

It's so funny to watch this because I know someone who acts exactly this way, even down to the little awkward mannerisms, especially the shrug at 4:50. The world is just not ready enough to appreciate their talents, but ain't no thing. These people can't be kept down for long by haters.

The ugly duckling

I liked this recent comment for how well it expressed the difference between self-knowledge and self-diagnosing:

A few months ago what seemed to be a perfect storm of stress moved through my life. As the storm began to dissipate, I noticed trends of how I have conducted myself in order to get to where I am in life. I haven’t been the nicest of people (to put it mildly). I have lied, cheated, stole, manipulated, and worse to some of the people who were supposed to be the closest to me; all without guilt or shame.

Now, if my whole life I wore Amish clothes, conducted myself like Amish, and though like an Amish but had never really known what an Amish was; you can image my surprise to wake up one day and see someone dressed as I do, acts as I do, and thinks along the lines I do. Does it mean I’m Amish? I don’t know.

I woke up and saw that I indeed have sociopathic tendencies, traits, and actions. I don’t know if I’m Amish… but here in my 40s I now KNOW what I do and how I do it, and how do or don’t feel. Looks like a duck, walks like a duck, quacks like a duck… what is it? 

Of course how can we reconcile this with the recent post about wannabe sociopaths? Hard to say.

Are sociopaths psychologically dumb and blind?

It has been said repeatedly that by definition it is impossible for a sociopath to be introspective and insightful. Why is that so impossible? Very few people bother to answer that question, so I thought I’d share my own ideas about it.

First let’s look at the definitions. The operational definition of introspect is to examine and comprehend one’s own thoughts, emotions and actions. I’m broadly defining sociopaths as people who have little to no conscience, who have flexible personality structures and who are emotionally indifferent to social norms. And I’m defining insight as clear and deep perception. I think these definitions, taken separately, would be generally agreed upon by most people. What I don’t see is why any of them, taken together, must also mean that people without conscience have to, by definition, be incapable of introspection and insight. The very people who say that immediately contradict themselves when they go on to say, for instance, that sociopaths disdain those with consciences and are themselves master manipulators. How would a sociopath know that she doesn’t have a conscience without examining her own thoughts and emotions? And how else would a sociopath be able to so effortlessly manipulate people around him unless he had clear and in-depth perception of other people’s psyches? Also, if one needs to be an empath to be introspective and insightful, how do we explain the prevalence of denial, delusional thinking, neuroticism and self destructive behavior in the ‘normal’ population? It doesn’t take a scientific study to see that knowing one’s self isn’t on most empaths' to-do list.

There’s something rotten in the state of Denmark and it isn’t the herring. It’s the stereotype of the psychologically dumb and blind sociopath. It's spread by professionals and laymen alike and it is based on what they think a 'typical' sociopath says and does and not on how a sociopath sees and feels. The uninformed empath believes this stereotype because they can’t imagine that a sociopath could possibly examine his own thoughts and emotions, with depth and clarity, and not condemn himself. It is quite literally unthinkable for them.

The cure: self-awareness

I was reading through some old blog material and stumbled upon this comment by Peter Pan that I thought was unusually insightful and helpful, regarding the antidote to a sociopath's machinations:

Honesty with yourself is indeed the cure, and that includes realizing that you were a victim, and that although your ex was an ass, you must ultimately take responsibility for what happens in your own life. You have to be willing to face and accept the truth, no matter how painful it might be, so you can use it to make rational decisions about your future and what kind of life you want to live. Then you'll be equipped to handle encounters with sociopaths without getting burned quite so badly, if at all. All a sociopath has to do to enslave you is find out what you refuse to accept, and screw with your head and heart so that you see a connection between what you refuse to believe and what he wants to hide from you. Sounds like a lot of mumbo jumbo, I'm sure, but I assure you it's very real. Think back to how you were manipulated, and I think you'll find that at the heart of every lie you should have caught, there was a link to something about yourself, or life in general, that you couldn't allow yourself to accept. 

Dialects and self-awareness

The other day I get in an almost fight with a Palestinian about my accent. He happens to be in my country for work and we met during a poker game with some mutual friends of ours. He asked about my accent and I said that it does not originate from my country of origin. He thought I was lying. More than that, I think he thought my refusal to own up to also being a foreigner was somehow a way to insult his own pronounced accent. When he started to get belligerent I figured I would just lie and gave him a fake backstory about a thickly accented grandmother that raised me with absentee parents, which seemed to satisfy him.

With that in mind, I found this Slate article to pretty entertaining, perhaps even a parable. It discusses the rise and spread of an American English dialect called the Northern Cities Shift, "NCS" and had this to say about the acquisition of regional dialects:

Children acquire language from face-to-face interaction with their parents and peers, and this learning is shaped profoundly by our desire to fit in. People wring their hands about the supposed disappearance of dialectic diversity for the same reason that such diversity is not, in fact, going anywhere: We cling to our specific identities and peer groups, and we defend our individual and regional idiosyncrasies when and where we can. Our dialects are often the weapon readiest to hand in that fight.

Did I not acquire my own regional dialect because I was not necessarily motivated by a desire to fit in, at least not as a very young child? Or because I never really identified with my peer group? The most unusual aspect of the NCS dialect spread, according to researchers, is how unaware the "shifters" are of their own speech patterns:


If news of this radical linguistic shift hasn’t made it to you yet, you are not alone. Even people who speak this way remain mostly unaware of it. Dennis Preston, a professor of perceptual linguistics at Oklahoma State University—he doesn’t merely study how people speak, he studies how people perceive both their own speech and the speech of others—discovered something peculiar about NCS speakers when he was teaching at Michigan State University. “They don’t perceive their dialect at all,” he says. “The awareness of the NCS in NCS territory is zero.” (Well, almost zero. The high point for NCS awareness may have come 20 years ago, when “Bill Swerski’s Super Fans” was a popular recurring sketch on Saturday Night Live.)

According to Preston, most American dialect regions are oblivious to their quirks, but NCS speakers show a particularly striking lack of self-awareness. In one experiment, shifters were asked to write down a series of words, some affected by the NCS, some not, but all dictated by someone with an NCS accent. The expectation is obvious: Shifters should ace this test. But, amazingly, NCS speakers frequently did not understand their own speech. When they hear the word cat in isolation, for example, they seem to flip a mental coin to decide whether the speaker is talking about a common pet or a folding bed.

In a separate experiment, Nancy Niedzielski, an associate professor of linguistics at Rice University, told 50 NCS speakers that she was going to play a recording of a speaker from Michigan saying the word B-A-G, which she spelled out for them. She then asked the test subjects to identify whether the signal they heard sounded like byag (the NCS pronunciation), bag (the “standard” pronunciation), or baahg (a vaguely British pronunciation). Not one of the 50 subjects said that they heard the NCS pronunciation. “There’s just an incredible deafness to the local pronunciation,” Preston says—adding that the reason, in his opinion, is clear. “They believe that they are standard, normal, ordinary speakers, and when they’re confronted with evidence to the contrary, they reject it. They reject it in their daily lives, and they reject it even experimentally. They don’t even understand themselves.”

For me it's hard not to see parallels between these NCS speakers and your typical empath: oblivious to their own behavior, unable to see parallels in their behavior and those of others, unable to even understand the fact that they are failing to understand something that is relatively obvious to others. When people talk about sociopaths being able to see right through them I usually think, yes, but a lot of this stuff is obvious if you're not caught up in that particular flavor of self-deception.

But I'm glad that people think I speak with an accent to the point that they won't even believe the truth about me. It just makes it that much more easier to obfuscate. I guess people will just believe what they want to believe, right?

Wisdom of Psychopathy

Another book recommendation, this time with audio clip:


I was reading an article on Scientific American’s website today, when I noticed an advert for an upcoming book entitled The Wisdom of Psychopathy, Kevin Dutton author. This one isn't coming out till October.

I looked the book up on Amazon just because and I also came across another upcoming book called Almost a Psychopath. This one is being released at the end of the month. As always, I thought you might be interested. 

I Googled the title of the book and came across this audio program ("The Psychopath in Us All"). I believe it's about 25 or 30 minutes. The first part is standard fare, all the stuff you’ve read about before. The second part, which starts at about 10:20, features Dutton. I was gratified to hear him voice something I’ve said on your blog numerous times over the last few years: it makes sense to think of all personality traits as existing along a spectrum, from extreme to moderate to barely there. Psychopathic personality traits are no exception. Then there’s the little chestnut I used in the subject line. Very self-helpy. Unleashing the inner psychopath is a universal dream of mankind.

A personal SW journey

From a reader:


With the retro posts I've been looking back at some of my old posts and comments in the sociopathworld archives.  I've been baffled by some of my posts, and many have brought me to the point of laughing out  loud. Ah, so young, so naive. I can't help but muse to how my mind worked when I first came to sociopathworld and the stubbornness with which I persisted. And today I realized, I remind myself of so many people who come in here now. Misguided, misinformed, or holding onto presumptions. I was younger, admittedly, which I use as an excuse to myself for what silly ideas I held, but it made me think of the benefits of staying at sociopathworld.

When I arrived at this place, like many people on here I was questing for my identity, sifting among labels, and identifying with every ailment. I'd call myself a sociopath. Then I deviated from that and just sort of accepted I wasn't sure what I was, and I didn't care. I was battered around like so many mice in a cat's paws, but I was delusional and resilient, and able to see the value in the many perspectives in this place. I'm still wandering around in search of answers, feeling something like a lost child, as if I never grow. And yet when I see the progress I have made in my understandings and my beliefs, I feel I have grown more than I would've imagined possible on first coming to sociopathworld.  I look back and see how much I have changed in what I know and understand by the damage I have taken and persisted through. It's as if I've gotten to the top of a path and looked down at the hill I've climbed, and I feel suddenly shocked I've made it so high and far. The coldness of this place has helped me to move past so many silly ideals I was clinging to. "Good triumphs over evil, in all things! The system works for you, and is there to protect you... and mainly, it works! God will protect you! Martyrs are good people! Drug dealers are bad!" It's like a dream the rest of the world lives in that one day you just wake up from.  So many beliefs have been shattered, not just by this place, admittedly, but this place has really helped me to understand and move past these beliefs. I've come to see the world more realistically, and grown past the childish values instilled in me by an idealistic world. I can see so clearly my faults, and the things I must move past. Ideas I would never have dreamed were a hindrance I now see as a weight, tainting my perspective, and blinding my actions. 

Though it seems daunting, and extremely harsh upon first entering sociopathworld, the value of the honesty you will receive at this place is something you will not be able to get from anywhere else in the world. The lies you will here in response to the questions you ask will weigh your decisions, and though you will be blissful, you will be ignorant. And if that is a price you are willing to pay, than leave when the people here tell you what you don't want to hear. "He's cheating on you", or "he doesn't care about you" or "you're not a sociopath" or any other number of typical answers to typical questions. Wanting to believe the fairy tales you've been told your whole life doesn't make them any truer. But lingering among the wolves will show you how to use your talons in the harsh world outside. 

Self-awareness

People say they want to hear more about me, but very little of my life is interesting, and not everything I do is straight out of the pages of a sociopath handbook. So it's hard to know sometimes what to write about myself. I have some people who say that I am not even a sociopath at all. This may be true. Certainly not everything I do is sociopathic. And I find it interesting that so many of my readers who are wondering if they are sociopaths will bring up little examples of normalcy, like crying at a sad movie, as proof that they are normal. I have moments like these too. Back when I was self-deceived, I would fixate on these moments and ignore any seemingly contradictory moments, e.g. moments of unfeeling rage. I would say to myself, how could I be a sociopath? I love my family. I am a helpful friend. My heart has been broken (how could my heart break if there was no heart to break?). Consequently, I am not a sociopath.

When I started embracing my true identity a little more, I wanted to be as honest with myself as possible. I knew that through unflinching honesty about reality and hard work, I could inch myself to happiness or whatever else it was I wanted in life, like a prisoner carving his way out of a concrete wall with a makeshift pick. Honesty is the key here, because without knowing what the world truly looks like, without knowing who I really am, anything I do, any project I undertake would be nothing more than a gamble -- a guess. I didn't want to be playing roulette with my life and my happiness -- I at least wanted to be playing poker. One result of this dedication to honesty was that I tended to more readily accept the explanation that painted me as an inhuman sociopath, a cold-calculating monster. I just wanted to make sure I wasn't trying to fool myself in thinking I am better than I am, more in control than I am. But that presumption can be just as damaging. Let's say I am very disappointed by a change in plans, a shift in a relationship, someone's rejection of me. Instead of acknowledging and really feeling my disappointment, my brain tries to come up with a nefarious reason that I might feel this way -- maybe it is because they have disrupted one of my schemes, maybe it is because now my future predictions will be wrong or there is wasted effort, maybe I'm just selfish. It is very difficult for me to acknowledge that i am just disappointed, that I have had an emotional reaction to something that has happened in my life. Acknowledging emotions can be scary for me (I don't really understand them and i think they cloud my judgment), but worse is to not acknowledge them and just assume I am being rational all the time.

So self-awareness is hard. There's not really an option of erring on the side of safety when making assumptions about who we are and what our motives are. We just have to be constantly vigilant about what information, from both external and internal sources, we accept as truth and choose to rely upon in our decision-making. Because if knowledge is power, then what is misinformation?

Shame and justification (part 2)

For the sociopath's part, I don't think we're motivated by feelings of shame or embarrassment, although I hesitate to make a completely categorical statement.

This is not to say that sociopaths do not come up with stories to explain their behavior, sometimes seemingly outrageous stories like "I killed him because he looked at me funny."  They can and they do.  But everyone wants to explain their behavior. It helps give them a sense of purpose, of self-knowledge, and more importantly of control. If you don't know why you do things, then how do you know that it is even you who is choosing to do them?

The sociopath killer who says he killed someone because of a funny look is not attempting to justify his behavior so much as explain it to himself.  And it is an explanation.  Maybe the killing was an impulsive act, but it was prompted by something, in this case the look the victim gave him.  Perhaps a sociopath might take it one or two steps further and add "I don't allow people to disrespect me," or some general opinion about the small value of human life, but the sociopath is just reflecting on the "why" of the action, not the "what does the fact that I have performed this action say about me and my own concept of self?"  So unlike narcissists, sociopaths don't need to justify their behavior, but they'll still seek to explain it.

Another question the narcissist had was how sociopaths view the bad things we do to other people.  He gave this example of how narcissists view this sort of situation:

E.g. take lions that eat wildebeests. The narcissist lion has to convince himself that the wildebeest has it coming to it, or that the lion is doing the wildebeest a favor by eating it. I'm wondering if the sociopath lion has to engage in that sort of self-deception, or if it can just eat the wildebeest and not give a shit.

I don't think sociopaths really blame people so much as attribute their failings back to them. Using the lion example, the lion doesn't think the wildebeest is a bad person "so it had it coming."  For the sociopath, life is a survival of the fittest.  It's enough for the lion that the wildebeest is unable to defend itself. Why did the wildebeest die? In the sociopath's mind the answer is not "because the lion killed it," but "because the wildebeest couldn't run away or defend itself adequately." That's what is really happening when it seems like a sociopath is blaming someone else for the sociopath's own actions. It's more an assigning of responsibility on the victim for not being more vigilant than it is a justification of self according to some rigid construct of being a "good person," like narcissists do

Sociopaths do not view the entire world through the lens of self as much as narcissists do (not surprisingly).  Narcissists tend to think that everything that happens in their world is some sort of direct reflection of them (good person, bad person, whatever).  Sociopaths understand that they are just a cog in a machine.  While they don't completely give up on that idea of cause/effect and personal accountability, sociopaths are much more inclined to believe that what they do is perhaps meaningless.  As arms dealer Viktor Bout said, “If I didn’t do it, someone else would.”