Psychologists who study personality disorders frequently make unwarranted and unnecessary value judgments and other normative statements. In this article, Psychologist and "autism expert" Simon Baron-Cohen promotes his new book on empathy and makes what I believe are some unsupportable statements that betray a bias that is wholly inappropriate in a man professing to give an accurate, objective opinion on the role empathy plays in human interactions. Here are some illustrative quotes:
As a scientist I want to understand the factors causing people to treat others as if they are mere objects. So let's substitute the term "evil" with the term "empathy erosion".
Zero degrees of empathy means you have no awareness of how you come across to others, how to interact with others, or how to anticipate their feelings or reactions. It leaves you feeling mystified by why relationships don't work out, and it creates a deep-seated self-centredness.
People said to be "evil" or cruel are simply at one extreme of the empathy spectrum.
Zero degrees of empathy does not strike at random in the population. There are at least three well-defined routes to getting to this end-point: borderline, psychopathic, and borderline personality disorders. I group these as zero-negative because they have nothing positive to recommend them. They are unequivocally bad for the sufferer and for those around them.
Empathy itself is the most valuable resource in our world.
Empathy is like a universal solvent. Any problem immersed in empathy becomes soluble. It is effective as a way of anticipating and resolving interpersonal problems, whether this is a marital conflict, an international conflict, a problem at work, difficulties in a friendship, political deadlocks, a family dispute, or a problem with the neighbour. Unlike the arms industry that costs trillions of dollars to maintain, or the prison service and legal system that cost millions of dollars to keep oiled, empathy is free. And, unlike religion, empathy cannot, by definition, oppress anyone.
Mixed amongst these statements, he cites two extreme examples to justify his conclusions: a BPD wantonly screaming at her kids and an ASPD who bottles a hapless barfly to death for looking at him funny. The odd thing is that although Baron-Cohen acknowledges that there is a spectrum of empathy, he firmly places both the BPD and the ASPD at absolute zero. Interestingly although he is an autism expert he does not mention the relative position of autistics on the scale, presumably because any stories of auties being violent would destroy the symmetry between his zero empathy = evil parallelism. Frankly, this type of hackjob excuse for science sickens me, particularly since I know that the natural consequence of something like this is the masses blindly following it as "truth," self-congratulating themselves while they embark on a modern inquisition ratting out the heretics that dare differ from them in any way. And this guy is worried about religion oppressing people? Doesn't he realize that his pseudo-science is its own religion with zealous adherents ready and waiting to oppress? The hubris of it all is simply astounding.
One of the families I grew up with had a younger daughter who was somewhat troubled. She was the youngest and the family had started having troubles by the time the child was about 7 years old, which is shortly after I met them. The girl was really awkward and annoying in sort of a spoiled seeming way. She seemed oblivious to just about anything going on around her and she would do these really bizarre things or throw fits and scream like she was possessed. I hated being around her and I (along with almost everyone else who knew the family) blamed the mother, who seemed to baby her and not set any limits. Recently I spoke with the aunt of this child. The aunt said that the now 20-something-year-old girl is an engineer and is your basic Asperger's type, which to me explained a lot of what I considered unacceptably obtuse and annoying affectations when I was younger. The aunt opined that the child's mother turned out to be wiser than we all knew -- that the mother understood the child was exceptional, which is what prompted the hands-off parenting style. The theory sounded right to me and it was a relatively small thing, but in that moment I experienced a distinct paradigm shift, not just about this family but about parenting and how well we think we understand people and the world around us, compared to how little we actually know. It made me think of this NY Times op ed, "The Dangers of Certainty" (worth reading in its entirety). The article discusses the author's experience of watching The Ascent of Man as a child, and one episode in particular:
For most of the series, Dr. Bronowski’s account of human development was a relentlessly optimistic one. Then, in the 11th episode, called “Knowledge or Certainty,” the mood changed to something more somber. Let me try and recount what has stuck in my memory for all these years. He began the show with the words, “One aim of the physical sciences has been to give an actual picture of the material world. One achievement of physics in the 20th century has been to show that such an aim is unattainable.” For Dr. Bronowski, there was no absolute knowledge and anyone who claims it — whether a scientist, a politician or a religious believer — opens the door to tragedy. All scientific information is imperfect and we have to treat it with humility. Such, for him, was the human condition.
*** There is no God’s eye view, Dr. Bronowski insisted, and the people who claim that there is and that they possess it are not just wrong, they are morally pernicious. Errors are inextricably bound up with pursuit of human knowledge, which requires not just mathematical calculation but insight, interpretation and a personal act of judgment for which we are responsible.
*** Dr. Bronowski insisted that [physic's] principle of uncertainty was a misnomer, because it gives the impression that in science (and outside of it) we are always uncertain. But this is wrong. Knowledge is precise, but that precision is confined within a certain toleration of uncertainty . . . no physical events can ultimately be described with absolute certainty or with “zero tolerance,” as it were. The more we know, the less certain we are. In the everyday world, we do not just accept a lack of ultimate exactitude with a melancholic shrug, but we constantly employ such inexactitude in our relations with other people. Our relations with others also require a principle of tolerance. We encounter other people across a gray area of negotiation and approximation. Such is the business of listening and the back and forth of conversation and social interaction. For Dr. Bronowski, the moral consequence of knowledge is that we must never judge others on the basis of some absolute, God-like conception of certainty. All knowledge, all information that passes between human beings, can be exchanged only within what we might call “a play of tolerance,” whether in science, literature, politics or religion. As he eloquently put it, “Human knowledge is personal and responsible, an unending adventure at the edge of uncertainty.” The relationship between humans and nature and humans and other humans can take place only within a certain play of tolerance. Insisting on certainty, by contrast, leads ineluctably to arrogance and dogma based on ignorance. At this point, in the final minutes of the show, the scene suddenly shifts to Auschwitz, where many members of Bronowski’s family were murdered. Then this happened. Please stay with it. This short video from the show lasts only four minutes or so.
It is, I am sure you agree, an extraordinary and moving moment. Bronowski dips his hand into the muddy water of a pond which contained the remains of his family members and the members of countless other families. All victims of the same hatred: the hatred of the other human being. *** When we think we have certainty, when we aspire to the knowledge of the gods, then Auschwitz can happen and can repeat itself. Arguably, it has repeated itself in the genocidal certainties of past decades. . . . We always have to acknowledge that we might be mistaken. When we forget that, then we forget ourselves and the worst can happen.
Understanding social meanings and values (as objective facts) in a situation, and understanding the relevance of social meanings and values (as emotional facts) in a situation, is according to my experience what differentiates aspergers, borderline/bipolar/narcissists and sociopaths, although their actual behavior in many situations might appear similar. But I have to give them each of them different kinds of communicative feedback, depending on if it is their perceptive understanding of the actual situation/interaction, or their emotional understanding of the relevance of the actual situation/interaction, that is the problem in our interaction. What they all share in common, is that there is no use in pointing out eventual lapses and mistakes as something like personality characteristics or intrinsic qualities to these persons. It is much better to only focus on the specific behavior, like, “what you just said could be interpreted as mean and humiliating from my point of view”, “this thing that you want or expect is not reasonable within the deal of our date, and it is not anything I deem as enjoyable”. I do of course have a certain unusual power position as an escort here, since my situation as a sexworker (in my niche regarding level of education and good looks) in the egalitarian welfare states of Scandinavia is one where demand is much greater than supply. And I still have a price level where I can pick and choose among clients, and deny anyone I don’t like, and the clients kind of know that. So even if some of the people that might be labeled sociopaths in other situations might not care that much about whether an escort girl likes them or not (for its own sake), they usually find my intellect and our oftentimes unique conversations fascinating enough, that they are willing to modify their behavior so I stay with them and they can see me again. (I’m actually like a Scheherazade of sorts, to many of my clients.) And that interaction with me can then function as something of a learning platform, so they can better modify and be attentive to their behavior in regular life, and so they can better manage relationships with friends, family and co-workers. Because the same mechanisms apply on a date as they do everywhere (the deviant is ultimately excluded as punishment), it is just that it is delayed (people put up with small things over time, and then punish by withdrawal or by getting other people to participate in mobbing of the deviant). And that mechanism of delay is what kind of makes a trap for otherwise very smart individuals; like that of a boiling frog, they don’t adjust their behavior in good time enough to avoid the social punishment that is heating up for them. Out on a professional date however, everything is much more simplified, transparent and outspoken, and the feedback is more direct. Because there are no common social ties, there's no use in keeping up facades for potential future pay-offs; there is no common nor competitive agenda reaching further than that of talking, dining and having sex together. The relation is kind of distinctly suspended from normal life and all normal implications, and so the communication is much more clear and direct, which can be very useful and informative for people that have problems with normal relations. It's a sort of platform for training social skills. I actually keep on getting Merry-Christmas emails from several old-time clients (mostly from aspies though) that now are in functioning relationships, who thank me for teaching them better social skills and better ways to understand women. (Which kind of is funny, as I myself have had a long road to go to improve my own social skills, and partly feel ambiguous about my own gender identity as female in the emotional and psychological sense.) So obviously my theory and methodological approach do not only help me out as an escort, but do actually help some of my clients to improve their lives. So I have been thinking that this little theory about perceptive and emotional attention, and what it implies, maybe should be of use to people in more legitimate therapeutic professions. I’ve been thinking that both me and my clients may be getting a better practical understanding of their actual interaction abilities, and what problems they might have than “real” therapists get. Because I actually do practical activities with my clients (usually dining and sex, and discussing all kinds of subjects), instead of only sitting and talking introspectively with them about themselves. And humans learn better if they “learn by doing” than if they just sit and try to analyze what they have done (there they both miss out other people’s perspectives on them, and might not remember exactly the very things they did not understand already).
The positives are that aspies and sociopaths are often less prone to xenophobia, prejudice, home-blind self-righteousness, hatemongering drives and such. For aspies, this is due to their inability to perform the first step of socially appropriate perceptive attention. For sociopaths, this is due to their inability to perform the second step of socially appropriate emotional attention.
And the borderline/bipolar/narcissists are like wild cards that can be extremely tolerant and compassionate in some issues, and extremely intolerant and hatemongering in other issues, depending on how their perceptive and emotional attention randomly work, or from how chaotic and interfering their wound-up emotions are with regard to both their perceptive and emotional attention.
Anyway, an input I have on your blog, based on my theory, is that your focus of inquiry, that of “empathy” could changed to “ability to intuitively trigger and experience socially appropriate emotions in oneself” (the “displaying” part is more relevant for aspies, I believe). Whereas “empathy” merely would be one emotion of many.
Because as I see it, the empathy issue is just what so called empaths kind of react on, from their subjective and practical view (which really is not very empathically done by these so called empaths). But the issue goes much deeper than that, and even though the empathy issue might be the manifested symptom that is most noticeable in human interaction, it is not the root to the problem, nor the cause of the problem, or even what the problem “is about” as such.
As said, I believe that aspies, borderline/bipolar/narcissists and sociopaths all have different causes to their problems, - and yet I find that they often seem to share the same kind of problems in their personal lives.
Their family, co-workers and friends often accuse them of being insensitive, egoistic, uncaring or even emotionally abusive. They often end up with being excluded or discarded by people that have been close to them. (And usually compensate with working hard in their professional lives, thus making money, and striving for power positions – the latter, I believe, not so much because of an actual hunger for power as such, but as a protective strategy for the kind of personal and relational exclusion they fear to experience again.)
As an escort (with certain aspie traits myself) I’ve learned good ways to communicate with these various types of persons. (Although, my selection methods as an escort narrow my clientele down to individuals that are both intellectual and apt at displaying a cooperative attitude to me, or I don’t accept them initially, nor do I accept to go through a full date with them if they aren’t trying to be cooperative).
But approached with the right communication, these persons are not so difficult in regard of being insensitive, egoistic, emotionally abusive and so on. – I just need to verbalize a lot of things and bluntly tell them about my experience of specific things said or done, and how they appear from my point of view, rather than expect them to just know it (as an objective fact) or know the relevance of it (as an emotional fact).
- Again, I would like to say that the distinction in the last sentence is important: Discerning between “objective state of facts” and “emotional facts”, as “knowing something” versus “knowing the relevance” of it.
I thought this was an interesting, relatively unbiased perspective from a Swedish female escort comparing her sociopathic, narcissistic, borderline, and autistic clientele:
Plenty of my clients that become regulars, and/or have the tendency to become very personal and go for dates with social time, have 2 traits in common: They earn a lot of money (or else they couldn’t afford me as a steady date) and they have problems with establishing or keeping normal relationships, including sociopaths. I have a nice little circle of nerdy guys, which could be pretty easily categorized as high functioning aspies (and I believe myself to have some autistic traits as well). But I have come to realize that borderline/bipolar/narcissistic and sociopaths share a lot of the same issues with the aspies, including the issue about cognitive attention in regard of experiencing empathy. and I think you have found an important key there, which intersects all of the three categories of people mentioned above. From my observations, I have made following theory about how two types of attention affect the ability to perform socially appropriate emotional responses: 1) First, external and perceptive attention, which is the ability to a) perceive, b) interpret and c) assess objective “states of facts”, according the socially desired standards of normalcy. It’s about appropriately perceiving, interpreting and assessing the social reality of complex values and meanings in specific situations.
2) Second,internal and emotional attention, which is the ability to intuitively and immediately a) trigger, b) experience and c) display emotional responses, and do so in an appropriate correspondence to the state of facts we objectively perceive. This is also about to within ourselves experience the “right”, or the socially desirable, emotional responses for the specific situation, in accordance to what is defined as normal by culture and society. Aspies have trouble with the first, performing external perceptive attention (and to make socially appropriate interpretations and assessments of objective states of facts), which is what hampers their attentive ability to perceive complex social meanings and values in specific situations. This leads to an incapacity to perform the second ability of emotional attention, regarding triggering, experiencing and displaying the appropriate emotional responses. In other words, since their first perception of “what is going on” often is insufficient or faulty, their emotional responses also goes astray from what is socially considered as appropriate. While sociopaths manage the first ability of performing external perceptive attention (and make objectively appropriate interpretations and assessments) they have lapses and gaps in the second ability of internal emotional attention, regarding triggering, experiencing and displaying the socially appropriate emotional responses. (Otherwise, I really don't believe that so called sociopaths "lack" emotions, are incapable of love or such, I just think that they have a problem to trigger and experience these emotions in appropriate correspondence to the situations of when it is socially expected of them.) Which I think in turn interacts with how they actually perform the first ability of perceptive attention, as their emotional experiences get uniquely different, and so give them a different pre-understanding for how to continuously perceive, interpret and assess their social reality. This might not show immediately, since they still can make a “good enough” interpretation and assessment of complex social values and meaning, and so pretty much function anyway, if they just learn to act and fake a bit at displaying the “appropriate” emotions, which they did not manage to trigger or experience in themselves. The borderline/bipolar/narcissistic, I believe, have problems both with having a good external perceptive attention in situations - because their cognitive focus on the outside world gets distracted by their inner emotional turmoil. And they have problems performing internal emotional attention - because their emotions are like a malfunctioning gas-pedal, so they easily under-react or over-react, and so have difficulty appropriately tuning and regulating their emotional responses according to social standards. That is why you find callous narcissists and self-sacrificing martyrs at the same time here, or people that appear pretty much as hypocritical enigmas, like fighting for human rights on one hand (and believing in it) while neglecting their own children on the other hand (and not noticing it). This is how I, as an escort, have theorized how these different types of persons seem to largely end up with about the same problems, regarding being alienated and (in the practical sense of social interaction) not being fully emotionally functional. Because the problematic consequence of not being able to trigger and experience the appropriate emotional responses in accordance with social expectations, is that emotion is what motivates us to think and act intuitively. As I think a social researcher named Arlie Hochschild said “emotion is proto-state both to cognition and action” (although I’m not 100% sure that quite is exactly correct). But what people most notice, is that empathy seem to be lacking in people with this kind of attentive disabilities. Even though the issue of empathy merely is one symptom (among many) of an underlying cause – which actually is about malfunctioning ability for external perceptive attention and internal emotional attention.
I think it's important to remember that most people think that sociopathic traits fall on a spectrum. There's nothing so totally different about a sociopath, it's more the suite of particular traits and the intensity of them that distinguishes them from the typical person. A reader tries to find his own place on the sociopathic spectrum:
I've just finished reading your book, and
wanted to thank you for writing it. True honesty, combined with acute
self-knowledge, is so rare in any autobiographical work that it's truly a
gift when I come across a gem like this. I suppose I should preface by saying that I'm not exactly sure
if I'm a sociopath. I lack some of the characteristics you describe,
such as sensation-seeking tendencies and fluid sexuality. That being said, as I read your book I couldn't help but identify with
so many parts of your story. You are basically me, cranked up to eleven.
That is, I do seem to possess many of the traits you mention, just to a
somewhat lesser degree than you do. Power is the dominant lens through which I view social relations. I
am sometimes scarily confident in my ideas, to the extent that people
absorb the philosophies and biases I project almost by osmosis. Then I
get sick of them because they've become intellectual carbon copies of
"me". I have trouble believing in the concept of love or fixed identity
since I have not had the experience of feeling them before - at least
not in the sense most people seem to mean them. Recently I had a dispute with a friend which ultimately ended
the relationship. Typically enough, I held all the cards while she
engaged in emotional outbursts, but despite the fact that I "won" in the
end, I still felt disturbed because this was a relationship I wanted to
keep, yet I could not see anything I would have done differently to
salvage it. Somehow, my friend had expected her emotional threats to have
an impact on me that was different from what rationality and the balance
of power would have suggested. This wasn't the first time something
like this had happened, and it made me feel uncomfortable to realise I
saw things in a way that was fundamentally different from other people,
and that I could not seem to bridge that gap despite my best efforts to
consider other strategic paths.
That's when I discovered your book.
I
don't know if you realise what a gift you've given to people like me
(us?). Reading it was like discovering an oasis in an alien desert.
After months of searching for answers in literature, philosophy and even
random internet forums and blogs, all of which seemed completely
irrelevant to what I was going through, I found your Confessions to be a
rare source of solace.
It's incredibly inspiring to read about someone
older and more experienced than me, who seems to share the very traits I
have, and who has nonetheless managed to create and (even more
importantly) maintain a successful life and career.
I used to feel guilty about manipulating people, but more
and more, I'm coming to understand its absolute necessity if I am to
make my way in this world and achieve my goals. Your book has given me
further assurance that this is not only necessary, but could in fact be
seen as an ethical, charitable thing to do. If it makes empaths happy to
be deceived in certain situations, where's the harm in that? Perhaps my
real sin has been in being half-hearted about my schemes, instead of
going full bore ahead and ensuring that I get away with them fully. Not
just doing the minimum to get by (clumsily), but doing whatever is
necessary for a graceful, virtuoso performance.
Thank you for casting light on an alternative system of
ethics, a way of living life that works for people like me. I felt like I
was reading a version of Seneca's "Letters" that was personally
addressed to me.
I've never written to an author before, but you struck a
chord with me.
One of my friends told me I needed to start watching NBC's Hannibal. He was right. It's great and it's very topical. The main character, Will Graham, is played by the same guy who played a raging aspie in in the movie "Adam" and he says in the pilot episode that he is closer to the "autism and asperger's" side of "the spectrum" than the "sociopaths and narcissists" side. He is also apparently what we would call here an "uber-empath," one who is so empathetic that he can even feel for the killers that he helps the FBI to track. He gets inside the killer's heads in order to predict who they are or their next movement. Unfortunately (spoiler alert!), after having to kill a man in the field who was trying to harm someone else, he acknowledges that he felt a certain thrill in ending a man's life.
The adequately creepy but fortunately not over-the-top Hannibal is played by a Dane (wearing 1970s suits and sports coats even though the setting is contemporary), not surprising casting choice for anyone who has seen Riget or is otherwise a fan of Lars von Trier. Hannibal is also an FBI consultant and quickly becomes something of a sounding board for the protagonist.
Hannibal and will have a conversation his feelings about killing.
Hannibal: It wasn't the act of killing Hobb's that got you down, was it? Did you really feel so bad because killing felt so good? Will: I liked killing Hobbs. Hannibal: Killing must feel good to God too. He does it all the time. And are we not created in his image? Will: It depends on who you ask. Hannibal: God's terrific. He dropped a church roof on 34 of his worshippers last wednesday in Texas while they sang a hymn. Will: Did God feel good about that? Hannibal: He felt powerful.
Overall the show is not too overblown. Not all of the murderers are just flatly labeled sociopaths (as if that alone should explain their evil impulses), although so far all of the sociopaths are murderers (actually, this is not clear yet, there are a couple of characters that could turn out to be more sociopathic than they initially appear). This show has a lot of potential, particularly if they introduce a character who is a sociopath and not a murderer -- there's a lot of ripe ground there and a great chance to really explore the mindsets of different personality types.
On a side note, watching the show makes me wonder what would have happened if I had pursued working for the FBI. I had applied once. I took the tests and passed, even the personality/psychological test (and people fail this one all of the time, I knew a guy who failed this particular portion). All I had to do was schedule a physical fitness exam to move on (no problem since I actually can do pull-ups, thank you swimming for my upper body strength). I never did, though. One of my friends insisted that I should never work for the government, that the things I get away with in my current field might risk a prison sentence in the government sector. I didn't know if that was really a reasonable concern, but the logic was compelling enough for me to move on to something else.
A reader studying psychology/criminology wrote a research paper about why we need psychopaths and wants our thoughts/feedback before she finalizes it:
Antisocial Personality Disorder is one of the most frightening, controversial and misunderstood terms in the realm of social sciences. This paper intends to dispel myths, explain alternative perspectives, offer insight into a characteristic impersonal section of society, and promote the sustenance of humanity using a combination of psychological and sociological theories to encourage a purposeful alliance between disparate groups: the empathic and those without a conscience. *** Psychopaths are a subset of the population that, due to drastically different personality constructs, have the ability to perform unique societal functions. *** Where a person falls on the spectrum of ASPD depends on a variety of factors. The Freudian framework describes this structure of psyche as being determined within the first five years of life. While Freud's reasoning of why this impairment occurs is questionable, his stance that it is broadly due to early childhood trauma rings true with most mental health professionals (Bowlby 1951). Regarding Freud’s research it is said that the defense mechanisms used to protect a psychopath are usually the cause of their downfall. Immature defenses include denial, acting out, projection, displacement and repression, which all tend to have immediate rewards but long term negative consequences. This would further illustrate a spectrum of behavior segmented within the context of ASPD. More mature and high functioning sociopaths would use corresponding mature defense mechanisms that would be more socially acceptable and consistent with maintaining a normally functioning personality. That also means that the traits of ASPD that require delayed gratification would also be more pronounced, such as excellent self-control, higher intelligence, manipulative and calculating behavior, as well as the ability to maintain a normal outwardly appearance. It appears as though ASPD runs on this spectrum with highly intelligent, patient manipulators on one end and impulsive, violent criminals on the other. Because the tendency toward crime worsens with more severe forms of psychopathy, this spectrum serves as a “self-cleaning” mechanism for society. The dangerous psychopaths more often than not end up in prison fairly soon upon reaching adulthood which reduces the risk for substantial danger to others. As more of these criminally inclined are incarcerated, what remains is the other half of the spectrum. While it will always be difficult to obtain accurate statistics on mental health diagnosis because many are undiagnosed, untreated, or have several overlapping conditions, enough information has been gathered to provide an estimate. Harvard psychologist Martha Stout reveals that 4 percent of ordinary people—one in twenty-five— do not possess a conscience. Since approximately 75% of the prison population meets the criteria for ASPD (Hare 1999), most of the remaining psychopaths operating in society are high-functioning, highly intelligent and appears to be ordinary people.
I think she's much closer to the mark, ironically by not really trying too hard to pin down exactly what psychopathy is. As I recall her main line of attack is focused on the current conception, the Hare model. The two areas that I think are weakest with the current model are where she focuses, namely the idea that psychopathy is totally untreatable, as well as including criminality as central to the disorder. Both of these assumptions are based on faulty data. For a laugh, check out the methodology of the first study that concluded psychopaths weren't helped by therapy. They put a bunch of violent convicts together naked in a room and gave them a ton of LSD. What a shocker that didn't turn out well. Skeem's revised model is more like the lack of a model. Rather than claiming to have an objective definition she argues that psychopathy should be understood as a nebulous constellation of personality traits. I think this is a much more realistic approach because people are always going to be more complicated than a checklist. The more I read about the subject the more I question if psychopathy truly exists. "Psychopath" is something that you call an other person. Anyone who claims that title for themselves without any reservations probably wants to see themselves that way, for whatever reason. There's another really interesting section you may want to check out that probably would be better as another post than an addendum to the first. The section is called "Does Secondary Psychopathy Exist?" and I think poses an important question. I don't think that high anxiety, highly emotionally reactive people are psychopaths, even if they may exhibit similar behavior.
For what it is worth, I completely agree with that last part. These people who feel overwhelmed by their emotions -- their emotions are the root of their impulsivity -- that just sounds like something too different to include in our general conception of what is a psychopath, even if the outward manifestations of it are similar.
I thought this was an interesting and straightforward explanation of what it means for something to be a spectrum disorder, particularly when we're talking about psychopathy, and the difficulties it introduces in terms of understanding and diagnosing individuals with that particular disorder. From a Wall Street Journal book review of the Wisdom of Psychopaths:
In one of her stand-up comedy routines, Ellen Degeneres riffs on those commercials for depression medications that begin: "Do you ever feel sad?" Ms. Degeneres's sardonic response: "Yes, I'm alive!" Everyone occasionally feels down, so mild depression might indeed be considered part and parcel of living. Recent research suggests that, like pain, it may be a way of coping with a bad situation by making a change. One problem with most psychological diagnostic tools, in fact, is that they attempt to squeeze into a well-defined box behaviors that are, on some level, not all that unusual. So the criteria lists grow and the diagnostic labels broaden into what psychologists call "spectrums."
"Psychopathy" is a spectrum personality disorder characterized by callousness, antisocial behavior, superficial charm, narcissism, grandiosity, a sense of entitlement, poor impulse control, and a lack of empathy or remorse. Popular culture invariably associates psychopathy with serial killers like Ted Bundy, who, after raping and murdering numerous women in the 1970s, boasted that "I'm the most cold-hearted son of a bitch you'll ever meet." Yet a slate of publications on psychopathy over the past two decades—from Robert Hare's path-breaking 1993 book "Without Conscience" to Simon Baron Cohen's 2011 "The Science of Evil"—reveals that about 1% to 3% of men in the general population could be classified as psychopaths. That is more than four million people in the United States alone, and they aren't all potential Ted Bundys.
The spectrum of psychopaths includes CEOs, surgeons, lawyers, salesmen, police officers and journalists. According to Kevin Dutton, the rest of us could learn a thing or two from many of them. In "The Wisdom of Psychopaths," the Cambridge University research psychologist notes that in many circumstances, such as in business, sports and other competitive enterprises, it is beneficial to be a little charming, tough-minded, impulsive, risk taking, courageous and even a bit socially manipulative. We have the makings of a dangerous psychopath only when that little bit of charm becomes devious manipulation; when self-confidence escalates to grandiosity; when occasional exaggeration morphs into pathological lying; when tough-mindedness devolves into cruelty; and when courageous risk taking slides into foolish impulsiveness.
It's this sort of fuzziness that has led me to sometimes question whether I think that psychopathy is even a real thing. The difficulty is the heterogeneity in the psychopath population and fuzzy dividing lines between normal behavior (if perhaps a little extreme or rare), and disordered behavior. Of course there is evidence that psychopath brains look different, although the research is still very young. Still, I often have wondered what my brain would look like in one of these fMRI tests that some psychopath researchers perform, would it look normal or abnormal and in the same ways that psychopaths brains appear? I have often thought that my brain has to look abnormal, that there is no way I could have such a different way of thinking than everyone else without my brain reflecting that difference. But people say that is a common fallacy -- believing that you are different from everyone else. Then again, I probably prefer that error than to erroneously assume that everyone thinks exactly like me.
This NY Magazine article, "Is everyone on the autism spectrum?" has some pretty funny moments, but this is probably the most relevant. In regard to the difficulty of making psychiatric diagnoses, particularly amateur ones:
Men have caught on and, in a kind of inverted gaslighting, begun to describe themselves as having Asperger’s as a way of controlling their spouses. “Having Asperger’s-like syndrome does not give you Asperger’s,” says David Schnarch, a Colorado-based couples therapist. “Having a big belly does not make you pregnant. I’ve not seen a single case of what I would consider to be diagnosable Asperger’s. But I have seen any number of cases of wives accusing husbands of it, any number of cases of husbands claiming to have it.” It’s the new ADHD, he says. “The wife doesn’t want to accept that the husband knows what he’s doing when he’s doing something she doesn’t like.” Schnarch recalls a man who phoned him the day before a scheduled initial couples session and announced that he’d just been diagnosed with Asperger’s. “As soon as this happened,” Schnarch says, “I knew I had difficulty.” He contacted the referring therapist, who said he’d suspected the man had Asperger’s because he said things to his girlfriend that were so cruel he couldn’t possibly understand their impact. As far as Schnarch was concerned, it was an all-too-familiar instance of sadism masquerading as disability. “If you’re going to perp, the best place to perp from is the victim position.”
I like the part about big belly not making you pregnant -- PCL-R, anybody? And the flipside of the coin are the self diagnosers who need a diagnosis to give them a sense of ... antisocial belonging?
This is a very insightful question. I think this is one of the issues that comes from basing the diagnosis of sociopathy primarily on behavior. First of all, I agree. I am not sure that sociopathy is even a "real thing". I do think it's interesting that there seem to be people that are very similar to each other, but I think that is bound to happen in the spectrum of human personalities and behavior -- that you would be able to find people clumped together in any part of the spectrum. Sociopathy may just be a particularly intriguing segment of personality traits because of the disparately large effect they seem to have on the lives of others and the unique motivations that drive their behavior. Yes, I think that sociopaths brains may look different, but our brains are constantly adapting and are constantly being impacted by our experiences, thoughts, and decisions (caveat, there is some evidence that aspects of the brain you wouldn't expect to see changing in a lifetime are also statistically different in sociopaths than the general population). There's just so much we don't know about sociopathy that I am hesitant to actually come to any conclusions myself about its nature.
Even assuming that sociopathy is a "real thing" (as much as anything can be real), I think that it is difficult to study and understand. There's a chicken and the egg problem in terms of coming up with a diagnosis -- you need to identify sociopaths before you can make a list of their traits and you need a list of their traits to identify them. To the extent that there is somewhat of a history of what constitutes a "sociopath," that helps, but there really is so much variation between even modern researchers in terms of their conception of the defining characteristic(s) of a sociopath. On top of that, everyone seems to agree that environment plays a big role in any gene expression, and particularly a tendency to become a sociopath, with some researchers believing that certain subtypes are born while other types are made.
I personally don't feel like most of my behavior is all of that shocking or antisocial, particularly when compared to certain populations like the prison population. It's interesting that you say that [Eastern Europe] has a calloused population. I've visited other places that have an overall low baseline level of empathy and prosocial behavior (the Netherlands, Israel, Egypt, Vietnam, among others). I don't know what sociopaths would look like in those cultures. My guess is not necessarily any worse than the general population, just like uranium pollution may be difficult to detect in an environment with a high baseline level of radioactivity.
One thing is for certain, sociopaths do not have a monopoly on calloused behavior.
Last night I was reading through one of your old blog posts about love. You had an exchange with an empath which began with her raising a valid question on the nature of sociopathy. She asked if perhaps a sociopath's inability to make human connections was like an aquired defense mechanism stemming from rejection and social isolation in his youth. From the moment I became aware that I was a sociopath several months ago this is exactly what I believed. I was always shy in grade school and high school, although around my close friends and adults I was very charming. Adults often commented on the fact that I carried myself very well for someone my age. However, I could never translate that persona when talking to girls and failed miserably at every connection I tried to make. I thus spent all of my youth in the fantasy world instead of the real one when it came to dating.
I've had minor mental health problems my whole life such as severe anxiety and poor impulse control. I used to have panic attacks when I was 17. I also had a bad habit of talking to myself. Sometimes I would spend what seemed like hours talking to myself in the middle of the night. Whenever I would take a minute to reflect on the reality of what I was doing it would make me feel insane but I'd still keep doing it because it made me feel better. The point is that I was always lonely. In a nutshell, I think the emotions I had were hurting me more than they were helping me. Afterall, what good is it have love inside you if the feeling is never reciprocated by those to whom it's directed at? It created too much negative emotional baggage which prevented me from pursuing certain activities with the proper amount of confidence.
During the winter of this year I could tell my mental health was deteriorating exponentially. After suffering post traumatic stress earlier this year over something which shall remain nameless, I realized I was no longer feeling emotion. At first it was a very liberating feeling, all my past regrets and emotional worries weren't bothering me at all. I felt so good it was like I had gone through some sort of spiritual transformation. I immediately became fearless and after a couple days approached a pretty woman with confidence and had a nice conversation with her. However, after a few weeks I noticed little things here and there that began to disturb me...All of which led me to a psychiatrist and ultimately, your site. My psychiatrist didn't label me sociopathic even though I tried to hint at it in as many ways as possible. I couldn't bring myself to simply come out and tell him that I no longer had feelings for anyone. I was afraid of the ramifications that might ensue.
Which brings me back to my original point. I see sociopathy in my case serving as a self defense mechanism, shielding me from the emotional traps that caused me so much pain in the past. When I analyze the evolution of myself over the course of the years it seems that nature found a way to make me stronger therefore allowing me to accomplish more than would otherwise be possible. I'm going to do some research but I'm curious if there are books on evolutionary psychology which support this idea. It certainly seems plausible.
M.E.: I think the readers will tend to think that you're not a sociopath, just sociopathic. Certain psychologists think that there is a spectrum of sociopathic traits and that normal people can express high levels of sociopathic traits, particularly at certain times in their lives.
Apart from that, though, I wonder if there is a functional difference between people like you who are very sociopathic (at least for now), and people who are sociopaths. I'm sure there are, at least in the same way that a second language will never be the same to you as your first language, even if you choose never to speak your first again. I'm curious to see if you ever snap out of it, though.
I sort of self-diagnosed myself five years ago. It seemed to fit. Not everything, of course. I believe that there is a spectrum of the emotionally impaired like there is a spectrum of the blind or the deaf. You are legally blind without your glasses, right? But that doesn't mean that you consider yourself in the same category as completely blind people. Similarly, I may be emotionally impaired without necessarily being handicapped. I think there is a big difference in terms of how people can function in the world depending on where they fall on the spectrum. But I do think that emotional language is like a second language to me. I have to go through several different deductions before I can "empathize" with people, and not just sometimes but most of the time. I do think that I use different strategies to navigate the world than most people--that I have different wiring.
I definitely have sociopathic impulses. I find myself ignoring urges to kill or do great bodily harm to ignoring a temptation to ruin somebody, to even just ignoring the invitation to view the world in a way that would push me to engage in excessively risky behavior. These urges cloud my judgment and take me away from the person I want to be, so I try not to indulge them. I treat them like hallucinations instead. They feel very real, everything feels so real, but I have experienced them frequently enough to know that they are wrong--that I will regret acting on them. So I try to ignore them, just like I would try to ignore the image of a monster breathing fire in my peripheral vision.
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Psychologists who study personality disorders frequently make unwarranted and unnecessary value judgments and other normative statements. In this article, Psychologist and "autism expert" Simon Baron-Cohen promotes his new book on empathy and makes what I believe are some unsupportable statements that betray a bias that is wholly inappropriate in a man professing to give an accurate, objective opinion on the role empathy plays in human interactions. Here are some illustrative quotes:
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