Showing posts with label treatment. Show all posts
Showing posts with label treatment. Show all posts

Saturday, March 29, 2014

Memento

A lot of socios have been asking me recently about how they can get themselves to do things or stop doing things. Today I'll address doing things. I'll address how to stop doing things in another post.

First, acknowledge your strengths in this area. Sociopaths are natural doers. More than most people we are able to act without thinking. This decisiveness can mean good things, like efficient execution of what needs to get done in a professional setting, but it can also mean bad things like food poisoning or a black eye from an ill-considered risk.

What are your weaknesses? We're naturally worse at planning ahead than other people. We may want to do great things like climb the corporate ladder, become a crime lord, or otherwise acquire a position of power and influence, but when it comes down to it, a lot of times we just can't be bothered. We'd rather keep sleeping on our parent's couch, bumming off our friends, or otherwise staying under the radar.

How do we do things that are actually worth doing? I think the key is playing to our strengths. In AA they say you can't think of sobriety in terms of never taking a drink again, you have to think of it in terms of, "I'm not going to have a drink today." If you break up whatever it is that you are trying to accomplish in little tasks and rely on your decisiveness to actually execute those tasks, you can trick yourself into accomplishing long term goals.

A good example for me is saving for my retirement. I have always loved money, and it seemed like a good idea to have money to retire with, just in case everyone hates me by the time I'm old, or I've been fired multiple times from multiple different jobs, or I end up becoming disabled somehow and I don't feel like becoming a ward of the state. Most people would think that a sociopath would never be able to accomplish the amount of deferred gratification necessary to save for retirement, but I did. I fully funded my retirement by the time I was 30 because every time I even thought of retirement, I would transfer as much money as I had in my checking account into a retirement account, an account that I set up so that I can't withdraw money without going through a lengthy process. Losing that money feels bad, but like everything else, it only hurts for a moment and then I quickly move on to other things. And of course I never have the patience to try to withdraw the money. It's like my own socio financial version of Chinese fingercuffs.

The process is similar to what happens in the movie Memento. In Memento, the protagonist suffers from acute amnesia, where every 10 minutes or so his short term memory is lost. He doesn't remember anything from after the brain injury that he suffered when his wife was murdered, but he is determined to find her killer despite his condition. His workaround is to write himself notes, even tattooing certain pieces of information on his body. If he reads a note in his own handwriting telling himself to do something, he does it without question. Spoiler alert, but as we continue to watch him in the movie, we realize that he is not always honest with his future forgetful self. He will intentionally mislead himself, knowing that his future self will unquestionably follow orders, and he does all of this for one purpose -- not to find his wife's killer, it turns out, but just to be happy, to give his otherwise empty life meaning. It's a movie and it's not an exact analogy, but it's the same idea -- use your foreshortened vision to force yourself to do things that you otherwise would not, to do things that other people cannot.

Monday, March 24, 2014

Child sociopath: Early intervention as treatment

Sociopathic children represent a unique quandary for people who love children and hate sociopaths. They are also the most impressionable, which some see as an invitation to target them with attempts at early intervention. From Fox News:
Criminologist Nathalie Fontaine of Indiana University studies the tendency toward being callous and unemotional (CU) in children between 7 and 12 years old. Children with these traits have been shown to have a higher risk of becoming psychopaths as adults.

"We're not suggesting that some children are psychopaths, but CU traits can be used to identify a subgroup of children who are at risk," Fontaine said.

Yet her research showed that these traits aren't fixed, and can change in children as they grow. So if psychologists identify children with these risk factors early on, it may not be too late.

"We can still help them," Fontaine said. "We can implement intervention to support and help children and their families, and we should."

Neuroscientists' understanding of the plasticity, or flexibility, of the brain called neurogenesis supports the idea that many of these brain differences are not fixed.

"Brain research is showing us that neurogenesis can occur even into adulthood," said psychologist Patricia Brennan of Emory University in Atlanta. "Biology isn’t destiny. There are many, many places you can intervene along that developmental pathway to change what's happening in these children."
How do you accomplish this early intervention?
"You don’t have to do direct brain surgery to change the way the brain functions," Brennan said. "You can do social interventions to change that."

Fontaine's studies, for example, suggest that kids who display callous and unemotional traits don't respond as well to traditional parenting and punishment methods such as time-outs. Instead of punishing bad behavior, programs that emphasize rewarding good behavior with positive reinforcement seem to work better.

Raine and his colleagues are also testing whether children who take supplemental pills of omega-3 fatty acids — also known as fish oil — can show improvement. Because this nutrient is thought to be used in cell growth, neuroscientists suspect it can help brain cells grow larger, increase the size of axons (the part of neurons that conducts electrical impulses), and regulate brain cell function.

"We are brain scanning children before and after treatment with omega-3," Raine said. "We are studying kids to see if it can reduce aggressive behavior and improve impaired brain areas. It's a biological treatment, but it's a relatively benign treatment that most people would accept."
I'm conflicted about this news. On the one hand I am reminded of very well-meaning attempts at early intervention for children of first generation immigrants, Romani children, aboriginal children, native children, and other efforts at forced integration and assimilation into the "norm." On the other hand some sociopaths really do suffer immensely. To the extent that these efforts demonstrate society's increasing awareness of sociopaths and desire to cater more carefully to sociopathic needs, e.g. using very consistent incentive schemes instead of punishment to achieve desired behavior, I see it as a step in the right direction.

Friday, March 21, 2014

The traumatized child

A few people in response to the book or blog have accused me of narcissistically wishing that the world would accommodate me and other sociopaths, rather than us adapting to the way the world already works. The funny thing about that suggestion is that adapting to a hostile environment is how I got here in the first place. I was raised in a home with parents who were always self-involved, often neglectful, and sometimes violent. Ever since I can remember, it was always me adapting to them and my environment (or more like me rolling with the punches) rather than experiencing any special accommodations for me and the person I was growing to become. I often think that my lack of attachment to any sense of self derives from these childhood losses. To my child mind, there was no point to becoming attached to something or care about it in an emotional way if it could disappear, be destroyed, or be taken from me the next day. Of course this is not the way that every child responds to those sorts of environmental triggers, nor was my childhood even remotely close to what I consider real trauma and abuse. But I feel like I experienced enough (obviously) to not only trigger whatever genetic propensities I had for personality disorders or other mental health issues, but also to understand how influential one's childhood experiences are in shaping the person that one eventually becomes.

From the NY Times under the headline "Teaching Children to Calm Themselves":

Children . . . who experience neglect, severe stress or sudden separation at a young age can be traumatized. Without appropriate adult support, trauma can interfere with healthy brain development, inhibiting children’s ability to make good decisions, use memory or use sequential thought processes to work through problems.

Do these children expect the world to accommodate them?

The education system responds bluntly to kids with these challenges. The standard arsenal of disciplinary measures — from yelling and “timeouts” to detentions and suspensions — are not just ineffective for children who have experienced traumatic stress; they make things worse. By some estimates, preschool expulsions are 13 times more common than K-12 expulsions — a finding that, given the bleak future it portends for these children (and the associated costs for society), should send alarm bells ringing across the nation.

I don't actually think these children expect anything, much less to be accommodated. But is it a good idea to accommodate them? Probably, at least as long as it is cheaper to accommodate them and provide them with adequate coping mechanisms while they are young rather than leaving them to continue their behavioral issues into adulthood, and all of the accompanying social costs that would entail. At least that is the economic rationale for whether it is a good idea. Is there a moral one? And if so, does the moral one say that we should help them? Or maybe that we shouldn't accommodate bad behavior (the classic parental excuse, "he just wants _____, so don't give it to him)? Maybe our moral beliefs cause us to believe that people should bear all responsibility for controlling any behavior that is even remotely volitional? Or do we only start saying those sorts of things about people once they've turned 18 and become an adult who still has behavioral problems (i.e. after society has already failed them)?

One of the most interesting parts of the article to me was what sort of "special accommodations" were advocated for these children:

Luke is receiving individual therapy. But he is also surrounded by caregivers who understand his needs and know how to respond when he needs help. Through the Head Start Trauma Smart model, teachers, parents and even the bus drivers and cafeteria workers who interact with children receive training in trauma.

This allows them to respond more skillfully, rather than reacting out of anger, frustration or resentment. Indeed, one of the biggest lessons for teachers and parents who undergo this training is that the very first step is learning how to calm, and care for, themselves, especially when they are overstressed.

In other words, one of the primary goals of the training is to try to minimize the caregivers' own emotional reactions to the child's behavior -- to focus on calming their own selves down first. Does that suggest any plan of action to empaths who deal with sociopaths on a regular basis?

One bus driver who underwent the training explained how it changed the way she sees the world:

“I used to be the kind of person who said, ‘The way it looks is the way it is.’ But I don’t look at it that way anymore,” McIntosh said. “There are things that happen to people that we don’t know about.”

And as a director of a similar program argued:

“We’re built to succeed as human beings. If that normal process gets disrupted, we need to do anything we can do to put it back on track.”

Could it be that sociopath children who have experienced trauma have already come up with a way(s) to put their lives on track to overcome their chaotic environments? But in a way that is both more efficient, powerful and more objectionable than people would like to see in their child victims of trauma?

Sunday, March 16, 2014

Right brained (part 2)

A lot of right-minded people don't believe me when I tell them that the people talk very seriously about sociopath internment, sterilization, forced brain surgery, extermination, etc. I don't know why, I think they are obvious. It's true that most of the time you see things in passing, a quick comment like "let's round up all the sociopaths onto an island." Because it seems like every time someone makes a new discovery about differences in the socio brain as revealed by brain scans, people start talking about early detection and eradication. But I thought that this was a succinct list of everything that people think about sociopaths, with or without actually saying them:
When it comes possible to diagnose psychopaths should they be placed under greater sustained law enforcement scrutiny? The better adapted psychopaths who feel a great deal of fear of getting caught are currently getting away with many crimes. If we can identify who they are should they be treated differently?

Also, if a psychopath can be diagnosed in advance as extremely dangerous should it be permitted to lock such a person up in an institution before they rape or kill or do other harm to people? What if a person could be identified as a psychopath at the age of 14? Should such a person be removed from normal society?

Suppose it became possible to treat the brains of psychopaths to cause them to have greater empathy, greater remorse, and less impulsiveness. Should the government have the power to compel psychopaths to accept treatment that will change the wiring of their brains?

Also, if there is a genetic basis for psychopathy and it becomes possible to test for it then should people who have the genetic variations for psychopathic brain wiring be allowed to reproduce? Should they be allowed to reproduce if only they submit to genetic engineering of their developing offspring?

I predict that most of these hypothetical questions will become real questions that will be debated in many countries around the world. I also predict that most populations will support either preemptive restraint of psychopaths or forced treatment to change the brains of psychopaths to make them less dangerous.

Saturday, March 8, 2014

James Fallon's Life as a Nonviolent Psychopath

I've been meaning to do a post on the Atlantic's interview with James Fallon (Life as a Nonviolent Psychopath) about his new book, "The Psychopath Inside: A Neuroscientist's Personal Journey into the Dark Side of the Brain." Both the book and the article are worth reading in their entirety.

My favorite part in the article was Professor Fallon describing his relationship with his close associates, wife and sister:

I started with simple things of how I interact with my wife, my sister, and my mother. Even though they’ve always been close to me, I don't treat them all that well. I treat strangers pretty well—really well, and people tend to like me when they meet me—but I treat my family the same way, like they're just somebody at a bar. I treat them well, but I don't treat them in a special way. That’s the big problem.

I asked them this—it's not something a person will tell you spontaneously—but they said, "I give you everything. I give you all this love and you really don’t give it back." They all said it, and that sure bothered me. So I wanted to see if I could change. I don't believe it, but I'm going to try.

In order to do that, every time I started to do something, I had to think about it, look at it, and go: No. Don’t do the selfish thing or the self-serving thing. Step-by-step, that's what I’ve been doing for about a year and a half and they all like it. Their basic response is: We know you don’t really mean it, but we still like it.

I told them, "You’ve got to be kidding me. You accept this? It’s phony!" And they said, "No, it’s okay. If you treat people better it means you care enough to try." It blew me away then and still blows me away now. 

My second favorite part was on the possibility of change:

I think people can change if they devote their whole life to the one thing and stop all the other parts of their life, but that's what people can't do. You can have behavioral plasticity and maybe change behavior with parallel brain circuitry, but the number of times this happens is really rare.

Interestingly, I've felt like with my life being somewhat ruined by publishing the book, I have plenty of time now to do this very thing. I'm curious where it will take me.

Other topics include how sociopaths have a Zen Buddhist perspective, the difference between someone who becomes a violent sociopath and someone who does not, how and why treatment of infants and small children is critical to their development, and why sociopathic traits might not really "mature" until the adult brain has matured.

Friday, March 7, 2014

Sociopathy as treatment?

From a reader:

As a 'neurotypical', I found your book both fascinating and inspiring. In fact, it may have been life-saving, if that description does not sound too melodramatic. 

I was diagnosed with an eating disorder (EDNOS) about three years ago, and the disordered habits in turn triggered a very self-destructive form of depression. That depression came with its own score of disordered behaviors, steadily growing into masochism. I was, essentially, drowning myself in emotion. I lost sight of what was important for me and my life, and instead spent my energies either helping others or antagonizing them until they used me as an emotional punching bag.

And then I came across your blog, and the perspective you presented captured my attention. It was the opposite of where I was mentally, and thus intrigued me as I struggled to imagine what it would be like to be a sociopath. Several weeks later, I hit rock-bottom in all aspects of my life. I was either half starved or full to bursting, suffered frequent panic attacks, and couldn't find the strength or motivation to complete my classwork. For a period of about two weeks I was incapable of anything that wasn't self-destructive, and I was in a constant emotional state of pain and guilt.

When your book came out I purchased it immediately. I latched on to the personal perspective and tried to imitate it, just to see if I could get relief from my own situation long enough to recover my grades. It slid on like a second skin, and I couldn't shake it. I did not magically become a sociopath, of course; but I do think something in my subconscious clung to the behaviors I had tried to imitate. For a period of about a month I lost all of my programed emotional responses. I no longer felt pangs of empathy, nor could I consciously recreate those feelings. All my self-destruction evaporated as I was suddenly able to see how completely idiotic such behaviors were, even as coping mechanisms or addictions. I no longer had intense emotional reactions to food, and I no longer cared empathetically for my friends or family. In essence I became a creature of complete selfishness. Boredom was my arch-enemy, for I had no emotional issues to occupy my thoughts (except anger; interestingly, I felt anger with a bright passion I hadn't ever felt before), so I launched myself into projects of my own creation. I wanted to see what I could do. I found I had huge influence over the emotional states of the people around me, and I convinced my teachers to extend due dates and give me opportunities to gain back the points I'd missed with very little effort. I enjoyed pushing people and watching their reactions with a fascinated sort of distance. Of course, I also lost the love of a few friends, simply because I didn't have the motivation to sustain a relationship if it wasn't giving me anything. But the gains I made were outstanding. I could eat normally and was able to lose weight healthily. I participated in sports without having fainting spells. 

After my exams were over, I slowly fell out of that state and returned to a pre-eating disorder, pre-depression mentality, with a much healthier body and mind. And I began to wonder if sociopathy is not a programmed survival mechanism. Perhaps we all have the capacity to abandon empathy and embrace an a-moralistic and self-centered world view. Perhaps it is an adaptation which allows those who do not have the luxury of being pro-social to survive. Of course, I do not pretend to have become sociopathic. But I was able to step into a similar pattern of thinking and behavior which likely saved my life. It certainly improved it. Maybe the sociopathic mind is designed to surmount obstacles the empathetic mind cannot. 

Either way, you have given me a new perspective and a very good book, and I thank you!

This was a particularly interesting email for me to receive because one of my friends also has an eating disorder and found it to be very empowering, which is not the typical response that most people have to the book. I wonder if there are other disorders or issues that people have that would benefit from trying to put themselves more in the sociopathic mindset, at least temporarily?

Saturday, March 1, 2014

Mental illness for children: Disney's Frozen

I have nieces that are obsessed with the Disney movie Frozen. I haven't actually seen it yet, but they have explained to me the entire plot and I have probably heard them belting out the Let it Go song a couple dozen times. The song is sung by Elsa, the older sister of Anna. Elsa was born different, had special powers that she didn't understand or know how to control. A primary plot point of the movie is watching how Elsa learns to how to become her best self.


Since I am Mormon, I've been also been exposed to the "controversy" of how this movie promotes the "gay agenda" by encouraging children to identify as being gay, which has been hilarious. But, as my sister said "I think it's actually about sociopaths," tongue in cheek. Not surprisingly, however, many people have made serious parallels to mental illness, particularly bipolar disorder:

Disney released a new movie called “Frozen” last month, and in doing so, has provided us all the chance to begin cultivating awareness. The movie showcases two main characters — sisters, Anna and Elsa. Anna is a warm, charismatic social butterfly; her sister Elsa, bourn of a darker nature, and though wildly charismatic too, grows up to be more cold and emotionally withdrawn. These two characters symbolize the conflicting dual-nature of my manic/depressive personality — manifesting the ongoing struggle always, to overcome the great force of inner darkness so that my inner warmth and goodness can shine on through.

Why is this such a big deal for children to have this sort of role model for mental health awareness?

For me, Elsa is an important character not just because she needs to learn to accept herself the way she is, but because the writers show through her just how devastating and terrifying it is to fear your own soul. There is no terror and sadness like that of thinking you are bad and you do not want to be. It leads to a type of self-sacrifice that actually makes you unable to heal. On accident, Elsa's parents taught her to be afraid of herself and the only way to protect others was to sacrifice herself. So she shut herself off from the world, becomes filled with fear, and she never knows love and belonging.

Many people can relate to this archetype, especially people who have been physically or emotionally abused who were told they deserved the abuse because they were "bad" and that if they were just a good person then they would not get hurt. I am glad we finally have a character in mainstream media that shows how trauma can effect you and that bad behavior does not mean you are a bad person. (Which is why I love Elphaba from Wicked and the Beast from Beauty and the Beast.) My son says the most important line in the movie is in the song "Fixer Upper" that the trolls sing where they say: "People make bad choices if they're mad or scared or stressed." For some people if they are scared enough, even their ability to make a choice is taken away from them. I feel like this scene from the movie best shows Elsa's fear and how much she wants to never hurt anyone.

And these types of stories are one of the best ways to introduce children to these sorts of concepts, to teach them that there is nothing evil or insurmountable about mental illness, in themselves or in others. From G. K. Chesterton:

Fairy tales, then, are not responsible for producing in children fear, or any of the shapes of fear; fairy tales do not give the child the idea of the evil or the ugly; that is in the child already, because it is in the world already. Fairy tales do not give the child his first idea of bogey. What fairy tales give the child is his first clear idea of the possible defeat of bogey. The baby has known the dragon intimately ever since he had an imagination. What the fairy tale provides for him is a St. George to kill the dragon. Exactly what the fairy tale does is this: it accustoms him for a series of clear pictures to the idea that these limitless terrors had a limit, that these shapeless enemies have enemies in the knights of God, that there is something in the universe more mystical than darkness, and stronger than strong fear.

Monday, February 24, 2014

The adaptable brain

If you believe that there is at least some genetic component to sociopathy, is it possible to find a workaround? This recent Oliver Sacks article from the New York Times discusses the incredible adaptability of the brain:
While some areas of the brain are hard-wired from birth or early childhood, other areas — especially in the cerebral cortex, which is central to higher cognitive powers like language and thought, as well as sensory and motor functions — can be, to a remarkable extent, rewired as we grow older. In fact, the brain has an astonishing ability to rebound from damage — even from something as devastating as the loss of sight or hearing. As a physician who treats patients with neurological conditions, I see this happen all the time.

For example, one patient of mine who had been deafened by scarlet fever at the age of 9, was so adept at lip-reading that it was easy to forget she was deaf. Once, without thinking, I turned away from her as I was speaking. “I can no longer hear you,” she said sharply.

“You mean you can no longer see me,” I said.

“You may call it seeing,” she answered, “but I experience it as hearing.”

Lip-reading, seeing mouth movements, was immediately transformed for this patient into “hearing” the sounds of speech in her mind. Her brain was converting one mode of sensation into another.

In a similar way, blind people often find ways of “seeing.” Some areas of the brain, if not stimulated, will atrophy and die. (“Use it or lose it,” neurologists often say.) But the visual areas of the brain, even in someone born blind, do not entirely disappear; instead, they are redeployed for other senses. We have all heard of blind people with unusually acute hearing, but other senses may be heightened, too.
***
The writer Ved Mehta, also blind since early childhood, navigates in large part by using “facial vision” — the ability to sense objects by the way they reflect sounds, or subtly shift the air currents that reach his face. Ben Underwood, a remarkable boy who lost his sight at 3 and died at 16 in 2009, developed an effective, dolphin-like strategy of emitting regular clicks with his mouth and reading the resulting echoes from nearby objects. He was so skilled at this that he could ride a bike and play sports and even video games.

People like Ben Underwood and Ved Mehta, who had some early visual experience but then lost their sight, seem to instantly convert the information they receive from touch or sound into a visual image — “seeing” the dots, for instance, as they read Braille with a finger. Researchers using functional brain imagery have confirmed that in such situations the blind person activates not only the parts of the cortex devoted to touch, but parts of the visual cortex as well.

One does not have to be blind or deaf to tap into the brain’s mysterious and extraordinary power to learn, adapt and grow. I have seen hundreds of patients with various deficits — strokes, Parkinson’s and even dementia — learn to do things in new ways, whether consciously or unconsciously, to work around those deficits.

That the brain is capable of such radical adaptation raises deep questions. To what extent are we shaped by, and to what degree do we shape, our own brains? And can the brain’s ability to change be harnessed to give us greater cognitive powers? The experiences of many people suggest that it can.
Can my brain adapt too?

Friday, February 21, 2014

The truth, the whole truth, and maybe some other stuff

An IM conversation with a friend about the nature of the blog.
Friend: [after many questions about the blog] Does it disturb you that I am reading your blog now? And commenting in real time? If so, I will stop.

M.E.: No it’s fine, if you’re interested, I’m interested.

Friend: All this stuff is very self-aggrandizing, but it seems consistent with your analysis of sociopaths, which I think you should address somewhere because I bet it is a major critique of clinicians.

M.E.: What do you mean?

Friend: The generalizations, the pronouncements about tendencies, reasons, etc., they are dubious, and so clinicians must be like, ugh, I dont think so. But the point is that sociopaths are nuts.

M.E.: Yeah, I can see that. I write so self-assuredly, answering people’s questions as if I have all of the answers and the clinicians must be thinking that I’m deluded or just plain wrong. But you’re right, that’s part of the portrayal, I think. Everything is just my point of view. This is how I see things, and if my opinions are deluded, they are deluded in an interesting way, I hope.

Friend: Right.

M.E.: I'm not trying to go for balanced info, I'm just talking out of my ass basically.

Friend: Yeah, I think that is the best rebuttal. You never really sell yourself as a scientist or whatever. Honestly this makes me question psychological diagnoses in general.

M.E.: Why? By the way, I am too, they seem sketchy. But then they are better than thinking we are all the same.

Friend: I don’t know, they seem like a random collection of symptoms.

M.E.: Right, it's not clear to me what being a sociopath really means, e.g. whether it's just a personality type, or caused by low fear response or shallow emotions or whatever, what the boundaries are, the outer limits, the root causes. That's why it would be impossible for me to give a whole and accurate account of what a sociopath is. I can just write about what it feels like to me.

Friend: Yeah.

Wednesday, February 19, 2014

Sociopath and autistics go together like...

There have been a lot of responses form yesterday's hypothetical and the responses keep coming, so I thought I would continue it another day (not everyone reads this blog every day?) until I post the responses.

In the meantime, here is another audience participation invitation from a journalist looking to investigate, among other things, the sociopathy and autism communities:

I recently graduated from journalism school and am, for now, a freelance journalist. I write mainly about social issues and behavior. Here’s a story of mine from January on sex trafficking.

After hearing an interview with M.E. on NPR, I spent some time reading up on ASPD and digging around Sociopath World. I’d like to write a narrative feature about  ASPD and want to speak with someone who’s been diagnosed with an antisocial disorder, or someone whose family member (or significant other, close friend, etc.) has. I’m in a fairly early stage of reporting, and haven’t yet determined the angle, but I’m most interested (I think) in two issues:

  1. The relationship between the ASD and ASPD communities.
  2. Innovative and/or progressive methods of treating ASPD. I realize not everyone treats personality disorders, but, obviously, some people do. Treatment could mean medication, therapy, or even personal philosophies for living with/among empaths (and other non-empaths, too, possibly).

Please let me know if you're interested in talking. You can email me at tfjourno@gmail.com. Thanks very much.

Friday, February 7, 2014

How do you cope?

From a reader:

A little bit of background on me; I'm 27, male and I've been trying to figure out what is wrong with me since middle school. At first I thought it was my upbringing - and I'm still curious if that played a role in how I've turned out. I had a tough childhood, and I was forced to become defensive at home and at school. More recently I'm noticing that; as far as I can tell I don't connect with people or have the same emotions or thought processes they do.

It has worked out for me fairly well in my professional life, I tend to advance quickly in the things that I do, because I have an innate understanding of what people want. In my personal life, it's just about destroyed it. It's not so much that I attack people, I do subtly manipulate relationships in my personal life - and much more in my professional life. The problem is I can't relate to people, I can't relate to their emotions at all. There are times I feel like I should be sad, because I can tell everyone else is sad, but I'm not. The emotions I generally feel strongest are anger and frustration, or irritation.

I feel like I can only juggle a handful of relationships, otherwise it's too much to keep up with and process. I guess what I'm getting at is this; if I told people how I really felt, or what I thought about life, and how they go about their lives, they would be horrified. If I acted as I feel I should, and I were really how I am, they would not want to know me. It's not that I'm aggressive, or violent, but I don't understand how they think. Everything seems to go through some sort of filter and come out dirtier than when it went in. Personally, I think in terms of A+B=X, about almost everything - including relationships.

So I guess my question is, how do you cope with this? Was there a time where you just decided to accept who and what you are? I don't know if I'm a sociopath, I don't really understand any of it, mostly because I don't have anything to compare it to. It would be helpful to understand where you're coming from, and possibly other sociopaths as I might actually relate to it.

My response:

This sounds very close to my own experience, although I couldn't say for sure whether that makes you a sociopath. I don't know if anyone really accepts himself completely. The problem with the idea of finding yourself (perhaps particularly if you're a sociopath) is that you're aiming for a moving target. But I think you'll be surprised that many people will be able to understand you or at least accept the bulk of you if you are honest with them -- particularly those who are most empathetic, oddly enough. Many of the people you tell may disappoint you, but you at least have the option. Should we see what other people think?

Thursday, February 6, 2014

Television: American Horror Story, Coven

American Horror Story Coven is about a group of witches who had long been the target of... well, witch-hunts. Eventually (small spoiler), they come out via television interview:

MAN: Since your extraordinary public statement last month, there has been quite a bit of fanfare.

This frank revelation about your cult-- that's sparked quite a brouhaha in the media, and...

WITCH-LEADER: Let me clarify that, Bill.

We are not a cult.

We-we don't proselytize.

We have no agenda, we're not recruiting.

Women who identify as witches are born as such, and their abilities-- which we call powers-- are part of who they are, part of their DNA, if you will.

MAN: Oh, I see. So, in fact, you're saying that it's not a choice, being a witch.

WITCH-LEADER: That's exactly what I'm saying.

There are so many young witches who have resisted their calling because they're afraid... of how they may be perceived,
or what's expected of them.

But there are still hate crimes.

That is true, but, you know, when you hide in the shadows, you are less visible, you have less protection.

We'll always be targets for the ignorant.

It is what it is.

But we are strong women, Bill.

So, what would you like to say to all those girls watching and wondering if they might be witches?

Hmm?

Call us, e-mail us or just come to New Orleans.

There is a home and a family waiting for you.

Parallels to sociopaths? Particularly the idea about hiding in the shadows versus coming out into the open?

Some viewers criticized the scene as a too blatant allusion to gay rights. Others criticized the plausibility of accepting witches into society:

In the final episode, the [Witch-leader] goes on TV and gives an interview. The scene equals witches to gay people, but like True Blood before it, this show didn't get that while people are stupid to fear LGBTQ people, they are most certainly NOT to fear witches, as we've been repeatedly shown this season that they are really likely to abuse their powers. 

See even more parallels to sociopaths now? But it's interesting how this commenter has misinterpreted what the Witch-leader is really saying. No one said anything about not fearing witches. In fact, she explicitly says, "It it what it is." Similarly, no one has said that there is no reason to fear sociopaths (or vampires, to tie in True Blood). Rather, she seems to merely clarifying misconceptions -- that witches don't choose to be witches, but rather are born with it.

But maybe if there isn't a clear parallel to gay rights, there is a legitimate parallel to rights of the mentally ill? Maybe, like with the witches, there are some reasons to fear the mentally ill, or at least take a certain level of care with them. But what next? Even if it is understandable or even right for people to fear the mentally ill, what should we do about that? Permit hate crimes against them? Weed these disorders out of the gene pool through forced sterilization? Assuming the worst (e.g, these people might hurt you or a loved one), what would you do to ensure that never happens?

And what, then, would be your criterion for doing the same to all other people you don't like, but would still manage to exempt all the people you do like. I'm honestly curious. What are people's proposals?

Monday, January 13, 2014

Creating boundaries, finding outlets


A few of my socio readers have asked how to get to be higher functioning, particularly about controlling some impulses and knowing when it's ok to indulge others. Here is what another reader said:
For me it is a little different. I have a natural talent for art and I use this as a way to explore my impulses and desires without acting on them. My boundaries, sadly, are not that current. As long as I don't get caught, nothing truly stops me. There is a voice in my head that constantly reminds me of what I should not be doing, due to my possible loss in freedom, but most of the time this voice goes ignored. I can say that having a hobby, something that satisfies even for a brief moment, can aide in a form of control. My need to kill and destroy is kept in tact by an obsession I have of collecting objects that have to do with death. I study criminals, watch violent educational programming, and read as (well as collect) reading material on past crimes, violent fiction, and the like. Instead of killing animals I collect the road kill, and macerate the parts to keep the bones. I buy taxidermied creatures, and have photos of x-rays. I keep my urges under wraps by indulging what I want through Internet, books, art, and programming, everything, and I mean everything, besides the actual murder. The criminal television is the most helpful because more than half of the time at the end of the program the criminal is caught. Shows like "Law and Order: SVU" touch nearly every form of sexual perversion you can think of, so seeing it gives me plenty of joy for that moment. In "reality based" programming I hear the thoughts of the detectives, and learn that they are pretty clever and instinctive when it comes to what to look for. Regardless of what they are personally, they still get the job of capture and punish complete, and I get the point, and a tinge of hesitation.

I won't lie and say this hasn't made my temptations worse at times. Other than entertainment, I watch this form of programming to figure out what they did wrong, and how I would have done things differently to get away with it. Once I come up with a list of what they did wrong, I replay the act in my mind, committing the crime myself. In a fantasy it is always easy to assume I can get away with it, but one never knows until they try. The key is to never let it get to that point, repeating the words told to me by some associates of mine. Their words made sense.

Another thing I do, if the decision to go through with any impulse is still rampant, is to go through a mental list of pros and cons. I only get through this if I catch the impulse, which is something I am currently working on. On the rare occasions where I do catch them, I get irritated and anxious if I don't act. I can either do what I need to to calm this feeling, or walk away from it, and calm myself down. My laziness usually causes me to go through with the more damaging approach.

Example. There is a girl at my school right now that I am more than close to taking out violently. She is obnoxious, mentally deficient, cowardly, and her constant rhetorical questioning, instead of shutting her trap and listening, leaves me more than livid. Her existence does not contribute anything worthy to this planet. Even her look boils my blood, and there will be a point where my smart ass remarks towards her will not suffice. She used to sit near me, but I know she senses my distaste for her, so she has moved, which has helped. I spend half of the class daydreaming on ways to take her out instead of listening to the teacher. At first my fantasies seem more than pleasant, heavenly in fact, and in moments like this I forcibly question myself.

What will I really get out of this? Will this joy I may experience last long enough? What if this only makes my urges worse? Will I keep having to kill in order to get this euphoric feeling? Will I become a slave to my impulses to destroy? How long until I get complacent? What if I get caught? Where is my future if I do this?

My answers: Pleasure, possibly joy, who knows, find out. Who knows, find out. Deal with it when it happens. Possibly, is this a bad thing? Yes. Not that long. I may get caught, I may not. Prison, but once at the end of the road, who cares what the future outcome is.

Sadly, even after a list of logical reasoning and questions, most go ignored, but the main thing that always sticks out with me is the slave issue. I do not want to be a slave to anything or anyone, and if I fail to control my urges, I will, ultimately, become a slave to my desires. I will be living a paranoid life of never ending dissatisfaction because I'm being controlled by my need to destroy. Not fun.

Sexually my intentions are cruel. I indulge in them for the most part, but I make sure the people involved are, to some extent, willing. I frequent S&M conventions where you have people who want to be humiliated and punished, and though a little more controlled, this has helped. The fact that there is an audience helps a lot too. Being a secretive person, having an audience ruins my chances of completely acting out. Prostitutes are too dangerous to even bother with, as they are nobodies that can easily go missing, if not already, and make the temptation worse. They allow anything to be done to them, and because I don't value much of human life as it is, they would only make it easier for me to disrespect them. The people I have hurt and humiliated through sex wanted it, and what kept me from crossing that line was to constantly remind myself that I don't want to become a slave to this.

The boredom? Something I will just have to suck up and deal with, like everyone else. I don't have any successful methods for this as of yet. I still use art, but lately the drive to fulfill a finished piece isn't happening. I have some assignments that are time consuming, but after a certain amount of time, usually two and a half hours, I need to do something else. I go on spontaneous shopping sprees buying things I don't need just to do something, but being around people acting so foolish only causes my mind to race all over again with violent thoughts. I have medication that I am not taking because it leaves me awake for days even though it is supposed to make me drowsy. Not much aide in this category, tee-hee, sorry.

Is this a reverse psychological way of teaching me how to control myself, by having me write down my methods?
You sly devil ;)

If you were, in fact, clueless as to what went on here, and this wasn't a positive manipulation of yours, then I take back the credit I gave you. Have a grand day, M.E.

Thursday, January 9, 2014

An escort's unbiased perspective of the spectrums (part 3)

The Swedish escort's final thoughts:

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).

Saturday, January 4, 2014

Mental illness explained for children: Lilo & Stitch, Stitch Has a Glitch

"Lilo & Stitch: Stitch Has a Glitch" is probably the best children's film I've seen that deals with mental illness. The first Lilo & Stitch introduces the character Stitch is an alien who was originally built to destroy:

"626 was designed to be a monster, but now he has nothing to destroy. You see, I never gave him a greater purpose. What must it be like to have nothing, not even memories to look back on in the middle of the night?"

But Stitch does find a greater purpose in becoming part of the family of a little Hawaiian girl named Lilo who tries and largely succeeds in taming his aggression.

Still, Stitch's bad past sometimes haunts him, and "Stitch Has a Glitch" opens up with Stitch having nightmares about his past. Lilo decides to help: "We need to test your goodness level. For example, someone bad would let this Elvis Blue Hawaii lamp . . . smash to pieces against that wall. Or let my favourite book, Plastic Surgeries Gone Wrong, drop out this window to be lost forever. Or let his family member fall to her painful, crushing death. No! See? Look at all the good things you did."

But there is something wrong with Stitch. When his eyes turn green, he starts misbehaving. No one knows what is wrong. But then they figure it out, during Stitch's creation, he wasn't fully charged, which caused the "glitch". "Now his circuits are going haywire. He can't control it."

Lilo's approach to Stitch's problems is to get him to act more like her hero, Elvis Presley, but the plan backfires as Stitch continues to behave poorly and anger many people in their community. Stitch tries to do good things to fill up his goodness level, but it doesn't compensate for the bad he has done in the eyes of his friends.

"You ruin everything."

"It's not my fault."

"Then whose fault is it?!"

Lilo decides to give Stitch one more chance, but only if he promises to do good. Unfortunately he has another bad episode and Lilo snaps at him, "I don't know why I ever believed you."

"Something wrong with Stitch," Stitch tries to explain.

"I know what's wrong with you. You're bad. And you'll always be bad."

The scientist tries to fix Stitch using science, but he can't. Stitch keeps getting worse until he decides to leave because he is too bad and too dangerous to be around the people he loves -- a subtle allusion to suicide that is done in a tasteful way that is still appropriate for small children by having Stitch try and fail to leave the planet on his spaceship. When Lilo finally catches up with him, she fears that it is too late:

"I'm so sorry. I kept saying how I needed you. But you needed me more. You're my ohana, Stitch. And I'll always love you."

In this case there is a happy ending, but there is often not a happy ending when people, family and friends struggle to deal with mental illness. But this film provides an excellent example of these struggles that all ages can relate to. 

Friday, December 20, 2013

Sociopath treatment

There is no "cure" for sociopathy, but it can be managed well or it can be managed poorly. Sociopaths don't respond very well to punishment, but they do respond to incentives. As discussed in this little blurb, referencing the successful treatment of teenage sociopaths:
Psychopaths aren’t murderers and criminals by their nature, they’re simply people without compunction. Naturally this can make them callous and cold, but it doesn’t automatically make them dangerous. In fact, in cases where it has been demonstrated and proven to psychopaths that they will personally benefit from abiding by rules, then it is possible they can become relatively well assimilated into society. Let me explain, where traditional treatment is used, (like psychotherapy or counseling), the sessions merely act as a kind of unintentional specialized training to help psychopaths more effectively mimic healthy emotional behavior. They are not treated or helped by traditional therapy as any insane (or sane) person might be. But Dr. Robert Hare developed a system whereby by accepting that the psychopath may never be anything but rational and uncaring, and used logical process to demonstrate that it is in their own interest to behave appropriately. Apparently there are criminal rehabilitation systems which are testing out this process, offering instant rewards for psychopathic subjects who follow the rules, appealing to their need for instant gratification and it is shown to be relatively effective. This is the first treatment in the history of psychopathy that has been been effective at all.
What is the difference between a successful sociopath and a less successful one? Sometimes I wonder if it's a matter of chancing upon a good thing first and sticking with it rather than a bad one -- like we're monkeys in an experiment, and if you press one button you get heroin, if you press another you get food, and if you press another you somehow get sexual pleasure. Once you find a good thing, you'll probably just stick with it, right? I always got good results being legit, ever since I was little, but if I didn't, or if my first good results came from being less legit, I'm sure I would have gone that way.

But if you want to "manage" yourself or someone else, I do think the key is incentives and immediate gratification. The caveats are that the incentive cannot be discretionary (because sociopaths will see it as arbitrary and not actually associate it with their own behavior) and the reward can't seem too good or the task too hard, otherwise he will spend all of his time trying to figure out how to trick you into giving him the reward without actually completing the task.

Thursday, December 12, 2013

Loving unloveable people

My sister told me that I should listen to the most recent episode of This American Life.



It's really interesting, particularly for people who often hear that they are unloveable, because the show really questions what it really means to love. The first half of the show is about a family who adopts a Romanian orphan. The mother believed strongly that people should do things that they're capable of, and she felt capable of adopting a child, even one with special needs. The son, Daniel, was ok for the first 6 months, then rapidly deteriorated when it finally became clear to him that his birth parents had abandoned him to spend his first 7 years living in a crib, and he misdirected his hatred to his adoptive parents.

Daniel was diagnosed with attachment disorder, characterized by a lack of empathy and lack of conscience. Daniel threatened his parents several times, including holding a knife to his mother's throat. His mom stopped teaching him how to read because, in an era of Columbine, she worried that he would independently research ways to hurt her or others. When asked how she could love someone who is homicidal, she responded "Because he was my son! I mean you have to love him or else there's no way out of it. . . . I don't think I ever questioned my love." His mom stayed with him even after the dad had to hire a bodyguard to protect the mom from the son's outbursts, even when an acquaintance of hers and a friend and mentor of Daniel's, also diagnosed with attachment disorder, committed cold-blooded murder.

Daniel started attachment therapy, including a period of 8 weeks in which he could not be more than three feet away from his mother. After that, he ceased to be violent but still stole. He then began "holding therapy", where for 20 minutes a night his parents would cradle their thirteen year old hulk of a son in their laps and feed him ice cream while looking in their eyes and trying to bond. Daniel began to transform, began to help around the house, made friends, and had his old furniture moved back into his room (previously removed as a throwing hazard). His parents raised him to be Jewish, hoping that the religious instruction would help him acquire something of a conscience. After years of being a very poor divinity student, to the extent that he would frequently be taken away from the temple in police cars, he was finally given an award for best student in his confirmation class. In his speech he thanks his parents, saying that he loved them very much. His mom says that it was the most spectacular moment of her life.

Despite all of this, his mother still thinks that it is not possible to teach love. "I don't think the goal was ever love, the goal was attachment . . . I think you can work really hard to create an environment where you can form attachment. You want to create these situations where it's more advantageous for them to attach than to keep doing things their own way and being in their own world, isolated." When asked if she feels loved by Daniel, "Yeah, I feel love . . . I don't think he wants to hurt me, I don't worry about that at all." Although this is not the type of "love" that most people think of as love, the narrator imagines that the mother's pragmatism is exactly what has made her so successful:

"If you're the kind of person who actually needs love, really needs love, chances are you're not the kind of person that's going to have the wherewithal to create it. Creating love is not for the soft and sentimental among us. Love is a tough business."

I liked the idea that a practical approach can really be effective in instilling a sense of attachment (love?) in someone who otherwise seemed incapable of attachment. You can't force someone to love you, but you can indirectly influence them, incentivize them to want to attach. I feel like there are a lot of interesting pieces of advice for parents of a sociopath.

Other interesting parts include the first 5-10 minute discussion about how it used to be a Truth in psychology that parental love was unnecessary and even unhealthy for children. It makes you realize how young and flawed a "science" psychology is.

Friday, December 6, 2013

Oxytocin as treatment for autism?

I didn't realize that some parents were already treating their autistic children with oxytocin. The NY Times reports that this practice has been recently supported by the results of a recent study:

[T]he small study, published Monday in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that the hormone, given as an inhalant, generated increased activity in parts of the brain involved in social connection. This suggests not only that oxytocin can stimulate social brain areas, but also that in children with autism these brain regions are not irrevocably damaged but are plastic enough to be influenced.
***
“What this shows is that the brains of people with autism aren’t incapable of responding in a more typical social way.”

In the new study, conducted by the Yale Child Study Center, 17 children, ages 8 to 16, all with mild autism, got a spray of oxytocin or a placebo (researchers did not know which, and in another session each child received the other substance). The children were placed in a functional magnetic resonance imaging machine, an f.M.R.I., and given a well-established test of social-emotional perception: matching emotions to photographs of people’s eyes. They took a similar test involving objects, choosing if photos of fragments of vehicles corresponded to cars, trucks, and so on.

During the “eyes” test, brain areas involved in social functions like empathy and reward — less active in children with autism — showed more activity after taking oxytocin than after placebo. Also, during the “vehicles” tests, oxytocin decreased activity in those brain areas more than the placebo, a result that especially excited some experts.

“If you can decrease their attention to a shape or object so you can get them to pay attention to a social stimulus, that’s a big thing,” said Deborah A. Fein, a psychology professor at the University of Connecticut.

With oxytocin, the children did not do better on the social-emotional test, unlike in some other studies. But experts said that was not surprising, given the difficulty of answering challenging questions while staying still in an f.M.R.I.

“What I would look for is more evidence of looking in the eyes of parents, more attention to what parents are saying, less tendency to lecture parents on their National Geographic collection,” Dr. Fein said.

But before ya'll go running out to buy over the counter oxytocin, beware these warnings:

A study of healthy men found that oxytocin made them more biased against outsiders. And when people with borderline personality disorder took oxytocin, they became more distrustful, possibly because they were already socially hypersensitive.

I wonder what the neurodiversity thinks about the idea of curing autism by making them ore interested in people and less interested in cars, trucks, and National Geographic. Are people objectively more interesting than vehicles and well-respected science/culture magazines? Is that what we mean by autism "disorder"? And if that's true, does that mean that we should all be medicating ourselves, since some people think that we're all somewhere on the autism spectrum? And where is the sweet spot on the spectrum that we should all be trying to achieve?

Speaking of messing with people's brains to achieve random subjective results, this article on recent research suggesting that brains stimulated in a particular way appreciate art more (at least representational art).

Thursday, November 7, 2013

How a psychopath is made

As a follow-up to its stories on Colonel Russell Williams, The Globe and Mail investigates "How a Psychopath is Made." There are the usual suspects trotted out to give their two cents, and these interesting insights into how sociopaths grow from child to adult.
The theory is that neglect, abuse and early trauma somehow desensitize children to the feelings of others, says Dr. Kiehl, but it still has not been proven. Not all psychopaths had horrible childhoods. Some come from stable families. Millions of children are abused he says, but don't become psychopaths.

In one of her studies, Dr. Gao found that children who lived apart from their parents in the first three years of life were more likely to have psychopathic personalities. This suggests that failure to bond may play a role, she says. She also found that adults who reported they were neglected by their mothers when they were children were also more likely to have difficulty with empathy, and other psychopathic traits.

But every child showing signs of callousness and fearlessness isn't a psychopath in the making – although it certainly increases the odds. It is rare for people to become callous and unfeeling as adults if they began life as caring, empathetic children, says Paul Frick, a psychologist at the University of New Orleans, who studies anti-social behaviour and develops therapies for anti-social children. These troubled kids learn to conform quickly, often even fooling researchers by posing as model citizens until the end of the day, when, denied a reward, they become nasty intimidators even with adults.

But one study that followed 12-year-olds with these traits into adulthood found that only about 20 per cent met the measurement for psychopathy. Genes may lay the foundation, but environment builds upon it. A fearless child with callous traits who lives in a stable, supportive home with a parents that can afford to send him skiing as an outlet for his risk-taking has better outcomes than one raised in a poor family where the parents have few resources.

In the past, it was argued that psychopaths could not be treated – therapy sessions appeared to have no impact on their recidivism rates, and they often emerged having learned new skills about human nature that made them better manipulators. Some new research, however, has shown progress in teaching empathy to young children, as well as the benefits of very intense therapy for adult criminals.
It's interesting thinking what might trigger sociopath genes in an otherwise relatively normal child. Yes, abuse or severe neglect, but they are neither necessary nor sufficient. I've already talked about some of the banal details of my childhood that may have triggered a predisposition to sociopathic traits, including possibly a particularly serious case of colic. Perhaps the colic interfered with normal maternal bonding, perhaps I sensed a more urgent need to compete for resources than normal people, but I understand how these explanations might fail to be convincing.

People always think there are going to be graphic, horror stories from my childhood, but there just aren't. I can imagine how frustrating that might be to those looking for an easy explanation, but disturbed or disordered people often have surprisingly normal backgrounds. For instance, when asked to discuss his own past, Col. Williams, perhaps anticipating the disappointment that his answers might elicit, responded almost apologetically, “it will be very boring.”


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Sunday, October 6, 2013

Mormons ok with mental illness

For something that is as shockingly common (this foundation cites 1 in 4 Americans with a diagnosable mental disorder in any given year), very little has been said about mental illness in the LDS/Mormon church. This weekend is the 183rd Semiannual General Conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints where church leaders speak to the church members and the world (watch the final two sessions today via internet or BYUtv). Member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles Jeffrey R. Holland addressed his remarks on Saturday to "those who suffer from some form of mental illness or emotional disorder, whether those afflictions be slight or severe, of brief duration or persistent over a lifetime." Among other things, Elder Holland asserted that "[t]here should be no shame in acknowledging [mental illness]" and that mental illness is much like any other physical affliction that can be treated and eventually healed, whether in this life or the life to come. From the Deseret News:

While those dealing with a mental illness or an emotional disorder may feel like a “broken vessel,” they must remember the “vessel is in the hands of the divine potter,” said Elder Jeffrey R. Holland of the Quorum of the Twelve.

“Broken minds can be healed just the way broken bones and broken hearts are healed,” he said.
***
These afflictions, he said, are some of the realities of mortal life.

"In striving for some peace and understanding in these difficult matters, it is crucial to remember that we are living — and chose to live — in a fallen world where for divine purposes our pursuit of Godliness will be tested and tried again and again.

“Of greatest assurance in such a plan is that a Savior was promised, a Redeemer, who through our faith in Him would lift us triumphantly over those tests and trials, even though the cost to do so would be unfathomable for both the Father who sent Him and the Son who came. It is only an appreciation of this divine love that will make our own lesser suffering first bearable, then understandable, and finally redemptive.”
***
“So how do you respond when mental or emotional challenges confront you or those you love? Above all never lose faith in your Father in Heaven who loves you more than you can comprehend. …. Faithfully pursue the time-tested devotional practices that bring the Spirit of the Lord into your life. Seek the counsel of those who hold keys for your spiritual well being. Ask for and cherish priesthood blessings. Take the sacrament every week and hold fast to the perfecting promises of the Atonement of Jesus Christ. Believe in miracles.”

If things continue to be debilitating, seek the advice of reputable people with certified training, professional skills and good values, Elder Holland counseled. “Our Father in Heaven expects us to use all of the marvelous gifts He has provided in this glorious dispensation.”

Although the stigma of mental illness encompasses most if not all mental disorders, sociopathy is often the hardest for people to understand or sympathize with. Oddly, I think that people who believe in souls have a harder time with sociopaths than those who don't. For the atheists, it makes all the evolutionary sense in the world to have a segment of the population who is particularly ruthless and predatory. For the religious, it suggests that mankind is more animalistic than they're comfortable believing. But so do a lot of things, like the evidence against free will, the debunking the idea that our thoughts come from us (the way we typically think of that happening), or that we can control our thoughts. Where is the soul there? Where is the soul with my two Down Syndrome relatives? A lot of my Mormon family members believe that their souls are "in there somewhere," but the physical limitations of their brains do not allow their souls to manifest themselves as they otherwise would. I read an op-ed recently where the parent of a child on the autism spectrum felt that their child was locked away inside his mind, never able to fully express himself or be understood. Let's say I started acting like a completely different person and it turned out that I had a brain tumor, the removal of which caused me to return to my normal self -- which one is the true expression of my soul, and how could you prove it? Do religious people with dyslexia feel like their soul is dyslexic? But a lot of religious people assume that I must be soulless, or my soul is damned, or that I'm a demon, or that I must be possessed by demons. It's sort of a weird thing for religious people to believe for a lot of reasons. Like what is the point of God creating things that are eternally damned because they happen to have particular brain wiring/ genetics?
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