From a reader re this post:
The reader says that he considers himself intelligent and lists a few things that supports his claim. He also describes himself as analytical and emotionally shallow. This reminds me of an article that I read once about the brain development in children who are beat during their childhood vs children that grow up under safe circumstances. It does not exactly describe what the reader is conveying to us, but there is a comparison. Before I start describing the comparison I am making, I would like to say that the article about children's brain development was written from the view of what I think was a brain surgeon if I remember correctly(or maybe it was a scientist with specialization in brain functioning). Either way, the article was not written from the view of a psychologist, which then most likely would have created a very different article.
The article gave information on how children who are beat regularly and grew up in a stressful aggressive environment develop larger areas in the brain for aggression and fear. This will eventually take up so much of the available mechanics of the child's brain that abilities like logic and analytical skills will suffer. These children grow up with behavioural problems, problems in school, conceptual problems and with the consequences that this follows. They are driven by their emotions, negative ones in this case. Again, a psychologist migh describe this differently, and there are probably many interpretations of problems like these, but this was from the view of that brain surgeon/scientist.
Children who grow up under good conditions develop larger areas in the brain for handling logic and analytical abilities. They have smaller areas in the brain for fear and aggression. They'r total amount of mental capability is probably the same as of the troubled children, but all their mental abilities go to other resources of the brain then their counterparts.
The article further described how the frontal lobe(I think it was the frontal lobe) continues to develop in humans up to the age of thirty, and stated how that was the prime factor why teenagers were more emotionally directed in their decision making then adults in their thirties and above. With a better developed frontal lobe, a person is more calculative, has better cognitive and decision making abilities and is less directed by emotion.
I spent some time following discussions on the guest forum for MENSA in the country where I live. From what I can see, they have a very analytical and factual approach to all kinds of discussions. You will never see them emotionally tantruming, or being in any unfactual or unlogical. These people score on the 2% top in all of society in their figure reasoning tests. Tests that for the main most part test processing speed of information, logical abilities and analytical abilities. I bet they are not sociopaths, but their behaviour could at first glance well fit into the readers description. To be factual myself, I do not personally know these people, I might offcourse be surprised. I am only speaking of impressions.
So MY question is; when is a sociopath a sociopath and not just any human with intelligente to override emotion and analyze facts? We all like to hurt the people we don't like, to nurture our ego, to feel that we affect the world around us and thus give ourselfes meaning, to nurture our own team for our own winning, to have good feelings for what benefits us and bad for what hurts us. We do not all feel empathy all the time, we are not all flowerbeings of endless love emotions(or something). I understand on the other hand that it is a far jump from this to alot of what M.E. describes in her book.
According to the information I have written here, it could be guessed that a person with a greatly developed brain for logic and analytics might have lesser development for emotions. Offcource, not every one is the same, but it is well known that they who score very high or very low on IQ tests(in the extreme ends) tend to have trouble relating to other people or to society in general. I have seen footage from MENSA members in the United States stating exactly this(youtube :). There are several articles about this on the internet as well(taken with whatever scepticism needed).
Lastly, I don't have any sources to support all this. It is all taken from the top of my head of what I can remember. These thoughts are all guesswork and pieces of information that I have put together. I am not saying that everything on the top of my head is all correct science, or in any way not debatable. I have known several various intelligent human beings. Thus my perception of great intelligence amounts is not narrow minded. With this text I do not accuse people with intelligence of being freaks or diversions of human nature.
