Showing posts with label sociopathy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sociopathy. Show all posts

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Are libertarians sociopaths or vice versa?

First let me out myself as being libertarian, but with a little bit of a Burkean twist. for the uninitiated, libertarians are essentially socially and fiscally liberal -- kind of a "don't tread on me, laissez-faire" attitude regarding government interference. I'm a libertarian because my main fears are mob mentality and idiots having power. I think my fear of mob mentality is directly linked to my perception that i am an "other," i.e. sociopath, and a very unpopular one at that. I think a lot of non sociopaths could be afraid of idiots in power and naturally want to decrease the power of government in general, but I don't know.

There has been a lot of rubbish written about libertarians all being sociopaths, but fewer people suggest that all sociopaths are libertarians. I find the first suggestion ridiculous -- there are many reasons to be a libertarian without necessarily being a sociopath. Although if you want to read an infuriating discussion about this, look here. Just a snippet:

Libertarians to make moral judgements, they error on the side of freedom. THAT IS A MORAL JUDGEMENT.

Nonsense. Liking freedom is NOT a moral judgment. This illustrates the point of the study exactly. Sociopaths want to be free to do whatever they want, regardless of the harm they do to other people. All Libertarians are sociopaths, but NOT ALL sociopaths are Libertarians.
The commenters go on to indicate that many other political parties seem to appeal more to sociopaths than libertarianism, e.g. socialism, fascism, communism, and other forms of totalitarianism. Thoughts? Are sociopaths represented in every political belief system? Are they only at the extremes?

Saturday, January 10, 2009

Sociopath quote of the day

I've done the vilest things, the foulest things, but I've done them superbly.

-- June Miller, from Henry and June

Friday, January 9, 2009

How to fight a sociopath -- and win!

A book like that would be an instant bestseller. If you figure there are 50 million sociopaths in the world and every one of them knows about 200 people, that's ... that's a lot of people who would be buying the book. It seems like most empaths can't tell how to spot a sociopath, so you go reading all these books and looking at all these websites purporting to tell you how. The problem with those sources is that they may be have some valid information, but they're about as useful as a book about becoming a millionaire. Maybe some of those methods would work with some empaths looking for some sociopaths some of the time, but there is no surefire method. That's why you have all those books and websites.

Still, I sympathize with your position, empaths. You're creeped out that there are these otherworldy beings wandering around making your life miserable for their own sport.

The truth is that sociopaths are largely harmless. Just ask Andrew Bird. Sure, we may play with your minds a bit, but with me it's more like teasing than anything else. Let's say you had a younger sibling who you liked to give a hard time. Or when you're out and about and you see a little girl dressed up like a princess or a little boy dressed up like a pirate, what do you do? You say, "Wow a princess!" or "Oh no, a scary pirate!" You play along with the kid because you can. It's sort of fun and you get to feel like you are being superior and nice at the same time -- so superior that you can afford to condescend to their ridiculous level and play along with their little fantasies for a while. Empaths are for the most part harmless too, so why not go along with their make-believe? Meet an empath who thinks he's beautiful or smart or talented? Feed that belief. That's pretty much all the sociopath interactions you'll see in your lives. All we do is tell you the equivalent of "Santa is real." Is that really so bad? Those of you who are smart probably realize it's just for your own good.

But with that said, I can predict situations in which you might want to beat a sociopath at his own game. What next? Well, as mentioned in earlier posts, one of the sociopath's main tools is mimicking human emotions. How do they know what to mimic? By watching you. How do you trick them? By feeding them false information. A sociopath's ability to act normal is only as good as the information he has available to him about what you expect. When you feed him false information, it ends up like one of those dry British farces where misunderstandings and confusions abound. But you're not confused because you know what's going on. And then you've beat him. That's all there is to it.

Congratulations, you fought a sociopath -- and won! Was it worth the effort? How about a nominal charge for a bestselling book of the same name?

Wednesday, January 7, 2009

Sociopaths, mimicry, and blank slates

"I pick up on accents." That's what I always tell people when they ask where I get my accent from. When I hear someone speaking with a distinctive accent, I adopt it for my own, at least for that moment while I'm with them. It can get particularly offensive or dicey when I adopt the accent of someone of a different race or class from me and they think I'm making fun of them. I do it very naturally and the result, like that of many aspects of having a personality disorder, is that I don't really have the accent of my nationality or place of birth -- the default. What I have instead is a hodgepodge where people assume that I'm foreign, but no one can quite put a finger on where I might be from.

For sociopaths, mimicry is their metier, their bread and butter.
Hare once illustrated this for Nicole Kidman, who had invited him to Hollywood to help her prepare for a role as a psychopath in Malice. How, she wondered, could she show the audience there was something fundamentally wrong with her character?

"I said, 'Here's a scene that you can use,' " Hare says. " 'You're walking down a street and there's an accident. A car has hit a child in the crosswalk. A crowd of people gather round. You walk up, the child's lying on the ground and there's blood running all over the place. You get a little blood on your shoes and you look down and say, "Oh shit." You look over at the child, kind of interested, but you're not repelled or horrified. You're just interested. Then you look at the mother, and you're really fascinated by the mother, who's emoting, crying out, doing all these different things. After a few minutes you turn away and go back to your house. You go into the bathroom and practice mimicking the facial expressions of the mother.' " He then pauses and says, "That's the psychopath: somebody who doesn't understand what's going on emotionally, but understands that something important has happened."
I think mimicry is interesting, and I think a lot of empaths think it's freaky. What I find more freaky is what constant mimicry suggests -- that you have no baseline "you," that you are always just reactions to outside stimuli.

I have a good friend who was initially very frustrated that I didn't seem to have defaults: no default understanding of right and wrong, no default beliefs, no default personality even. Everything had to be reasoned, everything had to be constructed anew. It can be frustrating for me too. It's time consuming. And sometimes it disturbs me how impressionable I am. Being a blank slate, sometimes I can surprise even myself with non sequiturs or unpredictable behavior. It's sort of scary.

Tuesday, January 6, 2009

Interviewing tips from a sociopath

I had an interview today for something I want. Sociopath skills are never so useful as they are during an interview, but I imagine uber-empaths can be very good at them as well.

Interviews are interesting in general because the interviewee is clearly looking for the "right" answer. When they keep looking at you expectantly, you keep talking. If it is a double interview you keep talking until the two interviewers make that knowing eye contact with each other. Sometimes you'll get a real amateur who is checking things off his list. Most of the time, though, you have to do what sociopaths do best -- tell people what they want to hear.

Do they know I am pandering to them? Do they know that I am essentially recreating that scene from Being John Malkovich where you just say anything and everything until you get some sort of response:

CRAIG
How about this, if I can guess your
first name within three tries, you
have to come out for a drink with me
tonight.

MAXINE
Why not?

CRAIG
Great.
(watches her face as he guesses)
Buuuhhppaahhhhnnn. . . . .
Muhhhahhhhh. . . . . ahhhnnnaaa. .
nollltuuukkkaaaaralllll. . .
tashabararassssssuuuuusaaaaaaa. . .
nnnnnnnaaaaaannnnnnnnncccccceeeeeee
Mwaaaaaa. . . . .Mahhhhhkkkkk. . .
sssseeeeeen. Maxine?

MAXINE
Who told you?

CRAIG
I'm right?

MAXINE
Who told you?

CRAIG
That's incredible! Nobody told me!
I swear! It's kismet. Maxine!
It's a beautiful name. There's a
psychic connection. Don't you see?
It was meant to be! Maxine! Maxine!
Maxine! I will shout it from the
rooftops!

MAXINE
Somebody told you.

CRAIG
Oh, Maxine, nobody told me. Maxine,
Maxine. It just came out of me like
a song, Maxine. A beautiful crazy,
song, Maxine. Maxine. Maxine!

Harmless sociopaths

I don't know what it means, but I like the good publicity of Andrew Bird's song "Oh No":
in the salsify mains of what was thought but unsaid
all the calcified arhythmitists were doing the math
it would take a calculated blow to the head
to light the eyes of all the harmless sociopaths
oh arm and arm we are the harmless sociopaths
oh arm and arm with all the harmless sociopaths
calcium mines were buried deep in your chest
oh calcim mines you buried deep in your chest
oh no we're deep in a mine
oh no a calcium mine
so let's get out of here
past the atmosphere
squint your eyes and no one dies
or goes to jail
past the silver bridge, oh the silver bridge
wearing nothing but a one-sie and a veil
oh oh deep in a mine,
oh oh a calcium mine
arm and arm we are the harmless sociopaths
arm and arm with all the harmless sociopaths
in the calcium mines buried deep in your chest
oh the calcium mines buried deep in your chest
oh oh deep in a mine
oh no-- calcium mines oh no

Sunday, January 4, 2009

Why Sociopathworld?

Some have wondered where the title "SociopathWorld" comes from. It comes indirectly from a book by Dr. Robert Hare, recognized expert on psychopaths and psychopathy: Without Conscience: The Disturbing World of the Psychopaths Among Us. Even though I doubt Dr. Hare added the subtitle, I thought it was an interesting visual image. What if there really was a world of the sociopaths, like some sort of planet of the apes. Would it be at all like a Disney theme park?

The reason I doubt Dr. Hare chose that subtitle (or possibly even the main title) is that he doesn't seem to make any normative judgments regarding sociopaths in his book. If anything, as I mentioned in another post, he seems to be pro sociopath:
I don't feel comfortable calling it a disease. Much of their behaviour, even the neurobiological patterns we observe, could be because they're using different strategies to get around the world. These strategies don't have to involve faulty wiring, just different wiring.
What do you all think? Is it a disease? Is it disturbing? Now that you have accessed a window into the soul of a sociopath, is your heart troubled? If not, what do you think would be a better or more accurate subtitle for Dr. Hare's book about the world of the psychopath?

Saturday, January 3, 2009

Israelis are sociopaths

Not all. But most. So says a blog citing the 52% israeli support of continuing the bombing in Gaza. Under the headline "52 percent of Israelis are sociopaths," the blog also cites a 2003 film, Gaza the killing zone, which asserts that "Gaza is an open air concentration camp where snipers take pot shots at children, aircraft shoot missiles into crowds, and bulldozers randomly destroy homes with impunity."

Now i haven't been following the current situation closely enough to opine on whether the current military operations betray the masterminding of a sociopath or not. All I can say is that I have been to Israel and it is a nation of sociopaths. Not all. But definitely more sociopaths than nonsociopaths. And not just Israelis. The numbers from the Palestinian population appear to have a similar proportion of sociopaths as the Israeli population.

Israeli sociopaths aren't nice either. Definitely not the nice, fun loving, efficiency obsessed sociopaths that inhabit the Netherlands. Instead they are the bullied "made-to-be sociopaths by a horrific history of blood and carnage" type. I don't want to say they're a nation of serial killers, but if there ever was a recipe for making a serial killer, the Israelis have cooked it up.

The holocaust was over 60 years ago, but Israelis are still feeling the effects. First of all, you have the poor, weak victims of the Holocaust who were subjected to untold horrors. That can mess anyone up. Then you have the fact that the Holocaust naturally selected sociopaths to survive in greater numbers than nonsociopaths. Who do you think did okay in concentration camps? Someone who was kind and shared food and other resources with strangers? If we have learned anything from shows like Survivor and Kid Nation, it is that sociopaths will not only survive, but thrive in situations that involve strategic, competitive positioning for very scarce resources by currying the favor of captors and turning on their own. Next you have a nation that from its infancy was led by people who were aggressive enough not to move to America or Argentina to blend in with the local population, but to invade someone else's country and forcibly take it over. Add to that the children of these people, children that that were not only genetically predisposed to be sociopaths from their parents, but were also subjected to near constant violence, including decades of terrorist violence and hatred, and have been trained to be icy cold killers and assassins. Voila, you have yourself a nation of serial killer-esque sociopaths.

Not like there is anything wrong with that. Unless you are Palestinian.

Wednesday, December 24, 2008

More aspie feedback

More aspie feedback re this blog:
The really severe sociopaths have a creepy emptiness inside. The eerie emptiness of sociopaths is what people were referring when they say things like "looking into the eyes of a soulless killer". There's nothing there. Their lack of insight comes from this empty place inside, not disorientation with the outside world, like an Asperger's lack of insight.

He has a point, tho, about how badly sociopaths are viewed. In a sense, it is a natural disorder that is beyond their control, just as AS is beyond control. People just hate them more because AS people seem innocuous and naive. But on the other hand, some NTs tend to treat sociopaths better than autistics, respecting and fearing bullies whereas some NTs feel more comfortable dumping on AS people. So I don't think that sociopaths are as brutalized and marginalized as AS people are. So his whining rings pretty hollow.
and another:
On the Sociopath blog. Very interesting. Glad he's done it. However, given that one of the major symptoms (and a clear give away once you've known one long enough to see the full cycle of their operations) is the way they continually try and evoke pity in you. And that is the aim of that blog. See the way he says "he would join the Aspie party if he could because the Aspies get ALL the sympathy". What utter rubbish!!! We're the ones who are good people at heart, yet get treated like monsters. They're the ones who are destructive heartless manipulators, yet they manage to charm the pants of everyone the meet...for a while. And then they blame their victims for being 'weak'.

The thing we have in common is that we are both see weaknesses in NT behaviour. However, in general we suffer as a result of those weaknesses, the sociopaths benefit from them through their ability to exploit them.
And lastly:
Je le doute.

There is little to none of the glibness/superficial charm alternating with hostility and contempt that define the psychopath's relation to the world. Obviously I haven't read it all, but I don't even think psychopaths have the patience to write blogs. They're more likely to break a computer for not doing what they want it to do.
Ah really? Not charming enough. Sigh.

Tuesday, December 23, 2008

More feedback

Some more feedback regarding this site left on other sites:
I found the perfect site for him, its a pro-sociopathy blog (found by googling chay's 'sociopath for dummies' on a whim! luvs) where the author goes on about sociopathy being a normal human variant and stuff about how superior he is and shit. Should appeal to this person's narcissism. He's be wearing the disorder like a badge of pride after this and after all, don't we all want our madmen out of the closet? Win!
Aspies are particularly interested:
Psychopathy and other personality disorders is one of my special interests. I've been reading about the psychopath mind online from time to time and this website http://www.sociopathworld.com/ the guy is asking the same thing we're asking and that is for his mindset to be acceptable in society. I totally agree with Neurodiversity to the core but I had a feeling this would present itself as an issue and a problem. More and more of them are going to ask to be in the ND movement and will even try to pretend to be an aspie. This man is using our logic against us and logically and technically he is correct and again I was afraid of this would happen.

I think what will have to happen is we're going to have to develop some kind of code of ethics for the ND movement and for any different mind configuration. If we have one already as I am just beginning to get into this than it will need to be developed in more detail.

We also have to be able to develop a way to root these types out and out them when they do inflitrate our movement.
I don't know. Aspies are always talking about how they can tell who are the sociopaths and who aren't, but they have always seemed to me as clueless regarding sociopaths as they are regarding neurotypicals. In fact, I'm pretty sure sociopaths have already infiltrated the aspie/autie movements and do their business with those groups undetected. The good news, though, is that maybe this means that socios and aspies can live symbiotically, especially if the aforementioned infiltration hasn't caused any problems already.

Monday, December 22, 2008

Feedback on the site

Here is some feedback I've received on this blog, both from comments left on posts and commentary regarding the blog on other sites:
Sociopathworld * Warrning!* This site is dangerous ! But it is also a view into a mind of evil !

Don’t post ! Just read and Leave

If you back this serpent into a corner it can only invenomate you ( poision )

Love Jere
(Ah man, people are on to our invenomation [sic].)
I do not know what to make of the guy who owns that blog. I think he must be really off his nut. I mean, who would be proud of having no empathy for other people?
Coming from an aspie who regularly posts on aspie discussion boards, I feel like this is a little bit of the pot calling the kettle black.

Wednesday, December 17, 2008

Sociopath friends = end to a chain of forwards

There are some admittedly bad things about having sociopaths as friends, but the good thing about them is that they will never send you an email forward like this:
'Gold Wrapping Paper'

I received this from a friend who had a choice to make. I had a choice to make too.

I've chosen. Now it's your turn to choose.

The story goes that some time ago a mother punished her five year old daughter for wasting a roll of expensive gold wrapping paper. Money was tight and she became even more upset when the child used the gold paper to decorate a box to put under the Christmas
tree.

Nevertheless, the little girl brought the gift box to her mother the next morning and then said,
'This is for you, Mummy.'

The mother was embarrassed by her earlier over reaction, but her anger flared again when she opened the box and found it was empty. She spoke to her daughter in a harsh manner

'Don't you know, young lady, when you give someone a present there's supposed to be something inside the package?'

She had tears in her eyes and said, 'Oh, Mummy, it's not empty! I blew kisses into it until it was full.'

The mother was crushed. She fell on her knees and put her arms around her little girl, and she begged her forgiveness for her thoughtless anger.

An accident took the life of the child only a short time later, and it is told that the mother kept that gold box by her bed for all the years of her life.

Whenever she was discouraged or faced difficult problems she would open the box and take out an imaginary kiss and remember the love of the child who had put it there.

In a very real sense, each of us, as human beings, have been given a Golden box filled with unconditional love and kisses from our children, family, friends and GOD. There is no more precious possession anyone could hold.

You now have two choices:
1. Pass this on to your friends, or
2. Delete it and act like it didn't touch your heart.

As you can see, I took choice No.1.
Friends are like angels who lift us to our feet, when our wings have trouble remembering how to fly.
Luckily sociopaths can't be guilted into forwarding emails like these. We don't care if it makes us seem inhuman. We'd rather be inhuman than morons.

Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Autism and serial killers

More media suggesting that sociopaths aren't the problem. I'll give you three guesses about who is.

Sunday, December 14, 2008

You must be a gemini

Some people are just asking for trouble. And by trouble I mean sociopaths. As further proof that those who seek after and date sociopaths are asking for it, here's a response to this email after my original personal ad:
Okay, actually, I should have added a few more things to my list: sinister, promiscuous, flexible definition of the truth, emotionally unavailable, able to rationalize almost anything to myself, manipulative, prone to boredom, weak sense of empathy. Still very Jimmy Stewart-esque, right?
"Marty" responds:
you sound like a Gemini!! I am a Taurus....Marty
Marty, you sound like you're asking for it. I hope you get what's coming to you.

You can kind of see why Marty would guess Gemini because they are two-faced monsters. But sociopaths are not two-faced so much as one-faced with a mask. Maybe that seems like a distinction without a difference, but I have the sense that not many sociopaths are geminis. I've often wondered if certain astrological signs had more sociopaths than others. I think cancers may be prone to sociopathy, but I am biased being a cancerian myself. I also think that even though Geminis might not be great sociopaths, they can easily be narcissists. But I don't really have anything besides anecdotal evidence to base these assertions on. Thoughts on the astrological connection?

Thursday, December 11, 2008

Life = futility punctuated with tragedy

While driving to work today I saw a school-aged child walking a bike with a flat tire down a busy street in inclement weather. It made me remember how horrible and awkward childhood was. Then I started trying to remember when things got better. I kept thinking, moving more and more recently in time, and I couldn't really pinpoint a specific time when I stopped feeling like that kid with the flat tire. Then i started wondering, did things ever get better? Am I still that same kid?
How is one to live a moral and compassionate existence when one is fully aware of the blood, the horror inherent in life, when one finds darkness not only in one's culture but within oneself? If there is a stage at which an individual life becomes truly adult, it must be when one grasps the irony in its unfolding and accepts responsibility for a life lived in the midst of such paradox.
-- Barry Lopez

Wednesday, December 10, 2008

Sociopaths = next Holocaust target

I posted earlier this month about a new television show exploiting criminals by giving them the best day ever right before arresting them. The TV executive responsible for the show rationalized the exploitation: “If it were a regular person you’d feel bad for them, but they are all wanted by the law.” This sort of rationale is used frequently to justify persecuting sociopaths or other unpopular sub-populations. Take for instance the justifications for the horrible medical experiments practiced by the Nazis on their Jewish captives:

What underpinned this behaviour was a widespread belief that some people were less than human, relegated to a lower plane of existence by their inherited degeneracy - or their race. For German doctors, a camp inmate was either a racially inferior subhuman, a vicious criminal, a traitor to the German cause, or more than one of the above. Such beings had no right to life or wellbeing - indeed, it was logical that they should be sacrificed in the interests of the survival and triumph of the German race, just as that race had to be strengthened by the elimination of the inferior, degenerate elements within it. After all, German medical science had uncovered the causes of several major diseases and contributed massively to improving the health of the population over the previous decades. Surely, therefore, it was justified in eliminating negative influences as well?

These days, it is obvious that racial hygiene is pseudoscience, but in the 1920s and 1930s it was considered a perfectly reputable science, and indeed many universities had academic departments devoted to it, not just in Germany. Against this backdrop, with their nation engaged in total war and steeped in propaganda and ideology that proclaimed the Jews to be a "cancer" or an "infection" threatening the health of the volk, physicians and scientists really did come to believe that the enemies of the Nazi state were subhuman.
Does the term subhuman sound familiar?

Sunday, December 7, 2008

Sociopath TV execs exploit their sociopath criminal brothers

Fox Television is planning a new television program tentatively titled, Smile, You’re Under Arrest. The show features law officers setting up elaborate sting operations to lure criminals with warrants:
“It is a reverse Punk’d,” says Fox President of Alternative Entertainment Mike Darnell. “Instead of the worst day of your life and then a joke at the end, this is the reverse. This is the best day of your life, and then we arrest you.”

One of three set-ups just shot in Arizona features the cops luring a criminal to a movie set with the promise of making him an extra and paying him a couple hundred dollars. An elaborate film set is staged and filming begins on a faux movie. The set-up continues as the director then gets mad at the lead actor, fires him and replaces him with the law-breaking extra.

The scene escalates with the fake director introducing the mark to a supposed studio mogul and continuing to create this dream-comes-true sequence. Finally, all the participants are revealed as officers of the law, and the criminal is apprehended (before signing waivers to let the footage be used in the show).

Other scenarios include a fake fashion shoot where the subject thinks he is about to become a supermodel and another in which the mark becomes an auto racer, a set-up which ends when a police car comes up behind him on a race track to pull him over.

“If it were a regular person you’d feel bad for them, but they are all wanted by the law,” Darnell says.
This is why people feel fine persecuting sociopaths. You can just hear someone justifying sociopath abuse: "If it were a regular person, you'd feel bad for them."

Thursday, December 4, 2008

Sociopath quote of the day: evil

All that is necessary for evil to succeed is that good men do nothing.

Edmund Burke.

Sociopath = into S&M?

Most of the responses from my empaths-who-date-sociopaths-are-asking-for-it experiment were from the women seeking men ad. Maybe that means that straight men are more into sociopaths than straight women, gay men, or gay women. But I think the more likely explanation is that straight men looking on craigslist for women are looking for a dominatrix. Guys looking for nice girls go to church social functions, guys looking for easy girls go to bars, and guys looking for dangerous girls go online. True? How about this as a case in point:
Just a Great ad .... and straight to the point .. so well done you .... pity half the people who worked for me arnt like that ... save me so much time ... but thats life i guess... and i like jimmy Stewart also ....
You will also no doubt be deluged with replies .... and some very strange i bet ... however if no suitable white knights on horseback ( in full shinning armour of course ) happen to appear just let me know...... and i will feed my steed and drinks ( the Sanderson is good fun ) and dinner would be my pleasure ....
Me .... 6'2 200lbs (slim ) 54 considered attractive ( well a frog needs a kiss now and then )..... my home is in Liverpool and i keep a flat in London as my business is down here ....as I am every week for 2/3 days (for all my sins I am in the fashion industry ... we supply clothing to most high street strores River Wallis Oasis etc etc etc ... ... ) we have an office in Hong Kong were i go for around 8/9 days every 8 weeks or so .... I also keep a home in Majorca and try to get out there most weekends during the summer...

If i hear from you when it would be nice .... and if not i wish you luck on your quest....

Peter
Peter, like many others, was not dissuaded by my addendum to my personal ad:
Almost .... no stutter ..... and of course he was very nice to all in " a wonderful life " ... and most of the other listed things are .... well " cool "
.. sinister ( hmmmmm ) promiscuous ( more HMMMMM .. capital letters ) .. flexible and able to rationalise ... ( dont we all ) manipulative ( most women are ... its actauly a gift )
.... so you sound quite the lady .....
Now if i was a couch doctor i would probably find many things wrong with you .... however as i am not and of course my services are free ... and include the bottle of good wine and dinner ..... it may be well seen as " sinister " ..... " promiscuous " and " manipulative " .... but you decide.
I will of course promise not to bore you.....
Oh, I know you won't bore me, Peter. I won't let you.

Wednesday, December 3, 2008

Personality disorders

A reader asked me to address other personality disorders associated with sociopathy besides narcissism. Narcissism and sociopathy are on the same cluster with the other "emotional" disorders -- Borderline Personality Disorder and Histrionic Personality Disorder. According to wikipedia, the cluster breaks down as follows:

Antisocial personality disorder: "pervasive disregard for the law and the rights of others."

Borderline personality disorder: extreme "black and white" thinking, instability in relationships, self-image, identity and behavior

Histrionic personality disorder: "pervasive attention-seeking behavior including inappropriate sexual seductiveness and shallow or exaggerated emotions

Narcissistic personality disorder: "a pervasive pattern of grandiosity, need for admiration, and a lack of empathy"
I don't necessarily agree with these one-sentence descriptions. In fact, I don't believe that sociopathy is necessarily the same thing as APD. Like Dr. Robert Hare, I think APD isn't specific enough to give a good picture of sociopathy, and that the two do not necessarily share all of the same characteristics. Consequently, although I consider myself a high functioning sociopath because of my weak sense of empathy, failure to conform to social norms, manipulativeness, etc., I do not necessarily believe that i have APD. Nor do I think I have any of the other personality disorders with the possible exception of very mild Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, which helps me fight my impulsiveness.

What about everyone else? Are there connections between sociopathy and other personality disorders that I am not aware of?
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