Desensitized

Sometimes I hear people say that they were "born this way," whatever way that happens to be. To say you are born a sociopath or born gay is like saying you were born smart or born tall. Yes, you may have the genetic predisposition to be smart or tall, but the existence of feral children is an important reminder that no one is born any of those ways, that we rely on the most basic daily interactions, nutrition, culture, education, experiences, and myriad other influences in our development to become who we become. I realize that "born this way" is just shorthand and I've used it too, but I think it is sloppy and often masks some of these other important influences.

Was I born to charm? Born to harm? I wasn't necessarily even born to speak or wield a weapon. So how do we get there? What makes some of us different from others. Obviously it has a lot to do with genetics, but it also has so much to do not just with our our experiences, but in what particular order and when in life we experienced them. It's through our experiences that normal gened people can be desensitized to things like killing, and sociopathic gened people can be sensitized to things like being aware of the needs of others.

I intentionally sensitize myself to things all the time. When I studied music, I sensitized myself to minute changes in pitch because I played a fretless string instrument and needed to be keenly aware of pitch to play in tune. Now it drives me crazy to hear musicians playing out of tune. It's not just that I have a more discriminating taste than I used to, I actually have a very visceral reaction to pitch problems to the point that I can feel nauseated.

Things that used to shock me no longer do through repeat exposure, and vice versa. I know that my genes might predispose me to the way I think and interact with the world, but I also take full responsibility for the amount of control over the rest. Every day I am in motion, sensitizing myself or desensitizing myself, constantly reshaping my brain, making and breaking habits, making myself more less inclined to act or think a certain way.

I am careful what I do and say, what I allow myself to think and daydream about. It's not always because I am worried about external consequences (would I do these things if I were sure to not be caught?), but rather internal consequences. How would doing or thinking that thing change me and is that someone I want to become? I'm all too aware that we are what we eat.

On a related note, I don't expect to look or act exactly like other sociopaths because I haven't made the same trillion decisions in the same order that they have, even if we might share a particular gene sequence. Via my exposure to the myriad variety of sociopaths and other personality types that I've run into on the blog and in real life, I have eliminated many misconceptions I had about sociopathy (criminals are low-functioning, etc.). Keeping an open-mind is one of the habits I hope to keep by challenging my own beliefs as vigorously as I challenge those of others.

The self-violence of conscience

This ("Against Self-Criticism") was an interesting Adam Phillips piece in the London Review of Books about the harm that conscience often causes in the bearer due to self-judgment. Excerpts:

Lacan said that there was surely something ironic about Christ’s injunction to love thy neighbour as thyself – because actually, of course, people hate themselves. Or you could say that, given the way people treat one another, perhaps they had always loved their neighbours in the way they loved themselves: that is, with a good deal of cruelty and disregard. 
***
‘The loathing which should drive [Hamlet] on to revenge,’ Freud writes, ‘is replaced in him by self-reproaches, by scruples of conscience, which remind him that he himself is literally no better than the sinner whom he is to punish.’ Hamlet, in Freud’s view, turns the murderous aggression he feels towards Claudius against himself: conscience is the consequence of uncompleted revenge. Originally there were other people we wanted to murder but this was too dangerous, so we murder ourselves through self-reproach, and we murder ourselves to punish ourselves for having such murderous thoughts. Freud uses Hamlet to say that conscience is a form of character assassination, the character assassination of everyday life, whereby we continually, if unconsciously, mutilate and deform our own character. So unrelenting is this internal violence that we have no idea what we’d be like without it. We know almost nothing about ourselves because we judge ourselves before we have a chance to see ourselves.

Freud is showing us how conscience obscures self-knowledge, intimating indeed that this may be its primary function: when we judge the self it can’t be known; guilt hides it in the guise of exposing it. This allows us to think that it is complicitous not to stand up to the internal tyranny of what is only one part – a small but loud part – of the self. So frightened are we by the super-ego that we identify with it: we speak on its behalf to avoid antagonising it (complicity is delegated bullying). 

Like a malign parent it harms in the guise of protecting; it exploits in the guise of providing good guidance. In the name of health and safety it creates a life of terror and self-estrangement. There is a great difference between not doing something out of fear of punishment, and not doing something because one believes it is wrong. Guilt isn’t necessarily a good clue as to what one values; it is only a good clue about what (or whom) one fears. Not doing something because one will feel guilty if one does it is not necessarily a good reason not to do it. Morality born of intimidation is immoral. 
***
Just as the overprotected child believes that the world must be very dangerous and he must be very weak if he requires so much protection (and the parents must be very strong if they are able to protect him from all this), so we have been terrorised by all this censorship and judgment into believing that we are radically dangerous to ourselves and others.
***
The first quarto of Hamlet has, ‘Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,’ while the second quarto has, ‘Thus conscience does make cowards.’ If conscience makes cowards of us all, then we’re all in the same boat; this is just the way it is. If conscience makes cowards we can more easily wonder what else it might be able to make. Either way, and they’re clearly different, conscience makes something of us: it is a maker, if not of selves, then of something about selves; it is an internal artist, of a kind. Freud says that the super-ego is something we make; it in turn makes something of us, turns us into a certain kind of person (just as, say, Frankenstein’s monster turns Frankenstein into something that he wasn’t before he made the monster). The super-ego casts us as certain kinds of character; it, as it were, tells us who we really are; it is an essentialist; it claims to know us in a way that no one else, including ourselves, can ever do. And, like a mad god, it is omniscient: it behaves as if it can predict the future by claiming to know the consequences of our actions – when we know, in a more imaginative part of ourselves, that most actions are morally equivocal, and change over time in our estimation. (No apparently self-destructive act is ever only self-destructive, no good is purely and simply that.) Self-criticism is an unforbidden pleasure: we seem to relish the way it makes us suffer. Unforbidden pleasures are the pleasures we don’t particularly want to think about: we just implicitly take it for granted that each day will bring its necessary quotient of self-disappointment, that every day we will fail to be as good as we should be; but without our being given the resources, the language, to wonder who or what is setting the pace, or where these rather punishing standards come from. How can we find out what we think of all this when conscience never lets go?

I know plenty of people who have this relationship with their consciences. It's kind of sad but more disturbing.

And finally a fascinating support of different forms of expression and the interpretations thereof:

After interpreting Hamlet’s apparent procrastinations with the new-found authority of the new psychoanalyst, Freud feels the need to add something by way of qualification that is at once a loophole and a limit. ‘But just as all neurotic symptoms,’ he writes, ‘and, for that matter, dreams, are capable of being “over-interpreted”, and indeed need to be, if they are to be fully understood, so all genuinely creative writings are the product of more than a single impulse in the poet’s mind, and are open to more than a single interpretation.’ It is as though Freud’s guilt about his own aggression in asserting his interpretation of what he calls the ‘deepest layers’ in Hamlet – his claim to sovereignty over the text and the character of Hamlet – leads him to open up the play having closed it down. You can only understand anything that matters – dreams, neurotic symptoms, people, literature – by over-interpreting it; by seeing it, from different aspects, as the product of multiple impulses. Over-interpretation, here, means not settling for a single interpretation, however apparently compelling. The implication – which hints at Freud’s ongoing suspicion, i.e. ambivalence, about psychoanalysis – is that the more persuasive, the more authoritative the interpretation the less credible it is, or should be. If one interpretation explained Hamlet we wouldn’t need Hamlet anymore: Hamlet as a play would have been murdered. Over-interpretation means not being stopped in your tracks by what you are most persuaded by; to believe in a single interpretation is radically to misunderstand the object one is interpreting, and interpretation itself.

I don't think you're a sociopath

Says a reader:

I don't think sociopathy is inherently some kind of evil thing upon humanity. They are useful people for tasks that most can't do. But I don't think you fit the bill of sociopathy. You fit the bill for a type of antisocial personality disorder that a normal person can obtain, but with the disorder can perform the tasks of a sociopath, but I don't think you're a sociopath.

Well, perhaps you are if you take sociopath as learned and psychopath as inherent... but if you don't do such a thing like modern diagnosis does, and you simple let all the learned APDs take their form in the various other names, you definitely are not a sociopath. 

I think you're just among one of the more common "express pathological capable", and you're much more similar to an empath than you care to admit (because empathic personality is achievable by every person not sociopathic). Sociopathy is born, or irreversibly instilled by damage or early 'wiring'. 


A sociopath can not actually love, because love means to value the person and stay by them even though you found something you think might be a better time. Sociopaths don't do such a thing. You seem to be able to do such a thing. I think you just have one of those very intense APDs that isn't sociopathy that is just self indulging and maintaining child-like behavior.

I don't mean any offense, it's just what I'm noticing compared to what I've researched.

M.E.: No offense taken. If sociopaths can't love at all, then I must not be a sociopath because I feel like I feel love.

Reader:

So the brain varies in many different ways and people just fall along it, of course you know this based on what I've read. The way your describe stuff puts you very analytical. I think that's just the way a person should strive to be. I feel like everyone has it in them to want to hate, cause harm, dislike, "see what if". 

Also, there's this way of thinking that basically anyone can accomplish, where one puts oneself as an observer of life like a show to watch, or one actively participates. I feel like a lot of people just observe, do "what if" and really see no one as important.

Once one immerses one's self into life as something that is important to survival, and so on, and realizes cooperation with a healthy sense of caution is important, it is all better, in my opinion. What with the possibility of life spans somehow miraculouly growing exponentially if some kind of technological singularity breaks lose, however unlikely it is to happen. I'm just saying, it's the way most people just act without realizing why they act that way. I really had to analyze this myself and understand how being good is important.

M.E.: I think I understand a little what you're saying. You're saying that this mindset, that you also share or admire, is normal (or at least natural) and probably better (or more logical?) then the other way of being. But the fact that there is another way of being that most people are that leads to completely different ways of relating to the world and others is sort of what I mean. I understand that people can be sociopathic without being sociopaths. I also believe the current trend in conceptualizing sociopathy is to see it as a spectrum, with people expressing certain traits more than others but all sharing the same basic thought processes. And I also understand sociopathy to be quite common, at least 1% and as much as 4% of the population. So I'm not really one of these people that think that sociopathy is a rare thing and that there is a bright line separating sociopath from normal (and particularly not sociopathic from normal). And yes, of course thinking sociopathically has advantages (for both the individual and society) -- otherwise it wouldn't have arisen as an evolutionary adaptive trait shared by a significant portion of the population.

Reader:

I also just want to point out that the more I try to figure out the reason people do things different, the more they're just similar but raised different. The reason someone gives me for a particularly striking social deviation has always been because this is my experience (or come to find lack of an experience that is common). So of everyone is so different in some analytical way, most people seem to be powerful computers that are simply capable of preferring anything, really.

And I just read one of your latest articles about caring. Tying into what I said last time, and remembering how most people describe children as sociopaths of the worst kind. I really believe people's default level of caring originates from upbringing. Its usually useful. Work together, get more done. Don't feel passive aggressive or be hurtful just for fun, feel more relaxed and ready for tasks. But one should take the power in themselves to not only re-evaluate if they should care less, because some of it is burdensome and pointless... Because what if there are other things to care about?

Intellectually, one may not care about strangers, but if one can train oneself to identifying within strangers the altruistic good behavior (that remains cautious, mind you) then one can safely indulge themselves in on that behavior, only ever going too far to help strangers when identifying such demeanor.

The Cycle

Excerpt from book proposal for the second book I'd like to get people thoughts on:

There are four stages or steps to what I will call the Cycle. The first stage is seeing things as they currently are. Step 1 is an observing, perceiving, or discerning step in which we learn to see and acknowledge reality as it is, not as we wish or fear it to be. The second stage is one of action, either we are the ones acting or we are being acted upon. Step 2 encompasses most of human experience because most of the time something is happening, moving or developing. Third is a self-reflection and re-evaluation step. It’s noticing the difference between how we experienced ourself and the world in Step 2 versus what we thought they were in Step 1. Fourth, there is a turning outwards to re-enter the world as a different person or in a different way. Step 4 is outwards facing. We engage with the world in a deeper or more nuanced way because we are different or our understanding of the world is different. Step 4 is where we feel the sensation of flourishing: having achieved success or improvement at something, we operate on a higher level than we did before. We have leveled up. 

You can see the Cycle in the macro structure of our lives: (1) we are born with our genetics and into a particular environment that makes certain things easier or less easy for us (“things as they are”); (2) we become an actor in our own environment but are also acted upon, getting psychologically and physically bumped and bruised along the way; (3) we reflect on how through our choices and experiences we have become different or our beliefs about the nature of reality are different/more expansive; and (4) turning outwards with our changed perspectives and self-conception, we re-enter the world a changed person or in a different way. 

The Cycle is how we learn from experience

The Cycle is how we learn anything. The scientific method is the Cycle: we start with a collection of prior beliefs, test those beliefs, assess the results of testing and how those results reflect on our prior beliefs, and finally update our prior beliefs (and ourselves) and re-enter the world with an increased understanding of ourselves and the nature of our reality. The Cycle is also how we grow and develop; it’s how we change to become a better, more informed or clear-thinking and clear-seeing person. The Cycle is how we learn from experience if we actually do learn from experience. 

One of my favorite examples of the Cycle being the way we learn from experience and become a new person or re-enter the world in a new way is the Christmas Carol progression of Ebenezer Scrooge. Charles Dickens starts out with a clear statement of reality as it is: “Marley was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that.” And after many adventures and learning to see things with new eyes it ends with Scrooge announcing, “I am not the man I was.” The Cycle is how we get from here to there, wherever here and there are. 

Getting stuck = we’ve skipped a step

If the Cycle is how we learn and grow as humans, then if we feel like we’re no longer learning and growing like we’d like to, it stands to reason that we’re skipping at least one step in the Cycle. When we skip a step we don’t level up. Think of the Cycle as the threads on a screw. As long as those threads are intact, turning the screw (like turning the Cycle) will result in advancing the screw forward. But sometimes the threads are not intact. If the threads are damaged enough, you can turn and turn a screw but it will not go forward. Similarly, if you skip a step in the Cycle, you won’t level up on this issue; you will not move forward. At least for that issue, you will be the living embodiment of the Sisyphus legend rolling the ball up the mountain only to have it roll back down, repeat ad infinitum. That’s what it means to be stuck: to do the same thing but fail to learn from experience or move forward. 

Skipping Step 3 by failing to acknowledge shortcomings

The most common step for normal people and certainly psychopaths to skip is Step 3. Step 3 is internalizing what we learned from Step 2. Step 3 can be a positive thing, like learning some new truth or skill. But it often comes from having believed or done something not quite right and the self-reflection and re-calibration of our beliefs necessary to re-orient ourselves with reality. (“Not right” in this context doesn’t mean morally wrong, it just means out of sync with reality, like taking a wrong turn while driving.) Sometimes Step 3 is just recognizing that something has changed, for instancing reconciling ourselves to a loss. In her book The Grieving Brain, clinical psychologist Mary-Frances O'Connor argues that grieving is a form of learning. Grieving is Step 3 because it is the process of reconciling ourselves to the ramifications of what it means to live in the world without someone we love in it. 

A lot of people don’t like Step 3 because it can hard to acknowledge we’ve made a mistake, or didn’t know everything about everything, or didn’t act or perform perfectly at some task, or have lost something that can never be righted again. I’ve noticed people skipping this step particularly in online or public debates, but I also see it regularly in my interpersonal relationships. People often have a hard time conceding that they’re wrong or saying they’re sorry. If caught red-handed in an error, they often posture in the hope that everyone will just move on and forget the error with the 24-hour news cycle. Maybe they are concerned that they’ll lose face or some sense of authority, but what they don’t realize is that skipping Step 3’s reconciliation and re-calibration undermines their moral or logical authority with others. And at least for me, one of the most disturbing things to watch is somebody or some group memory-holing an unpleasant fact or event out of existence rather than take the trouble to process it through Step 3. 

But the worst part of skipping the third step is that it prevents the proper operation of the fourth step, the flourishing part: they fail to become a different person so they’re never able to re-enter life in a new way. We’re probably all familiar with the phrase if you don’t learn from history, you’re destined to repeat it. Skipping Step 3 of the Cycle is the underlying mechanics of why this phrase is true. National Geographic photographer Diana Markosian said something similar in an interview about being reunited with her Russian birth father after decades of living apart and how learning that her father had never stopped looking for her felt: “It’s this feeling of this ability to go back in time, to understand something for yourself and bring it back to the present. I think that has been the biggest gift photography has given me, is a second chance to really understand my place in the world and how I relate to it—and how I can do that for those that I photograph as well.” 

You don’t just automatically learn and grow from your experiences. A good example of this are psychopaths, who are known for a poor ability to learn from their own experiences. Like people who have short term memory issues, they will make the same mistakes over and over again. My own working theory, as we’ll keep exploring throughout this book, is that psychopaths can’t properly go through Step 3 for anything but knowledge or skill acquisition because they have such a weak sense of self. As one psychopath told me about his life pre-therapy: “I did not see life as a journey because I did not really change over time.” Because a healthy sense of self is necessary for Step 3, this book will devote many chapters to establishing and/or strengthening our sense of self. 

Psychopaths aren’t the only ones who make the same mistake over and over again, though. Can you think of someone you know who is like this? Maybe it’s you? The truth is, it can be all of us if we if we fail to properly process our experiences and feelings in Step 3.  

Skipping Step 2 by playing it safe

Some of us are skipping Step 2 by not taking enough chances. Remember Step 2 is about movement and direction. It often comes in the form of us trying to do something in the world. For instance, Joan Didion advised the UC Riverside graduating class of 1975 that they should truly live in the world, not just endure it: “To take chances. To make your own work and take pride in it. To seize the moment.” But if you are daily living below your potential (perhaps even far below your potential), if you regularly shirk from challenge or potential difficulties, or if you spend most of your energy burying your talents and ambition instead of acting on them, you are likely skipping Step 2. 

My own personal theory is many people shirk Step 2 for fear of confronting their missteps and personal insufficiencies in Step 3. We’ll address this type of perfectionism and fear of being wrong or making mistakes later in the book. 

I’ve also seen people do a half-assed Step 2 for fear of its implications about Step 1. Remember Step 1 is about where you are now, including who you are now. Let’s take the example of music, since this is where I personally see it most. People who play music often want to think of themselves as being a competent musician (i.e. their Step 1 includes a competence at performing music). Because they’re so afraid of acting in a way that is inconsistent with this self belief, they will intentionally sabotage their Step 2, most frequently by not practicing adequately for a performance. Then they can tell themselves “pretty good for not practicing!” Because they never gave a true Step 2 effort, they skip Steps 3 and 4 and stay bouncing back and forth between Step 1 and a half-assed Step 2, at least as it pertains to their musicianship. 

Skipping Step 1 by ignoring reality

A few of us are struggling seeing things as they really are in Step 1. I regularly see people experience this in their relationships. Red flags are missed or people start fearing that what is there is not enough. In fact, I think much of how we relate to people comes from a fear of reality. We may fear that someone will change, or we may fear that someone will not change. We feel like we need things to be a particular way. We may fear that we’ll never be happy with the way things are, so feel a need to try to push someone or something towards what we think will make us happy. But we can be comfortable no matter what our situation. We can find balance in our connections commensurate with our needs and learn to love and accept the people around us without needing them to be anything but what they are.  

Step 1 would apply to people with mental health disorders, anxiety, depression, etc. that distort our perception of reality. It also includes any insecurities we may feel about ourselves, our background, our level of education, our natural preferences, etc. Finally, it includes our biases, our prejudices, our hasty ill-informed judgments, our seeing through a glass darkly.

Flourishing comes from giving all steps in the Cycle their due

We all want to flourish in life. But when we get stuck on something, we languish. Our lives turn boring because we are doing the same thing over and over again without the personal growth and renewal we crave. 

 

The worth of souls

I've been thinking recently about the different ways that people value human life. From LDS President Dieter Uchtdorf on how God values human life:

Think of the purest, most all-consuming love you can imagine. Now multiply that love by an infinite amount—that is the measure of God’s love for you.

God does not look on the outward appearance. I believe that He doesn’t care one bit if we live in a castle or a cottage, if we are handsome or homely, if we are famous or forgotten. Though we are incomplete, God loves us completely. Though we are imperfect, He loves us perfectly. Though we may feel lost and without compass, God’s love encompasses us completely.

He loves us because He is filled with an infinite measure of holy, pure, and indescribable love. We are important to God not because of our résumé but because we are His children. He loves every one of us, even those who are flawed, rejected, awkward, sorrowful, or broken. God’s love is so great that He loves even the proud, the selfish, the arrogant, and the wicked.

What this means is that, regardless of our current state, there is hope for us. No matter our distress, no matter our sorrow, no matter our mistakes, our infinitely compassionate Heavenly Father desires that we draw near to Him so that He can draw near to us.



Apart from being a reminder of the impossibly high standard that many religious people are meant to hold themselves to when tasked with loving their fellow man as God loves them (and the great chasm from that expectation to their actual performance), I think this represents an interesting alternative to valuing human life than what has become the fad of late: prestigious job, fancy house, and attractive significant other being the baseline indicators for success, with additional money, celebrity, talent, or power being the true distinguishing characteristics to lift one above the masses of mediocrity. I have been in all sorts of cultures, from where Porsches are considered wannabe striver cars to where owning a bike is the envy of the village, but no matter where you are or what criteria you are using people always manage to find some way to think that they're better than other people.

I'm not suggesting that people stop judging others -- that's for them to reconcile with their own personal beliefs. I just think it's telling to see the different standards the people use to judge themselves and others. I thought the video below was an interesting perspective that happens to be very counter the majoritarian view -- so much so that I imagine many people assume she feels this way just because she does not rate high on attractiveness herself (sour games?). Her view: "I never want to get into this place where I feel like what I look like is more important than what I do . . . . Being beautiful is not an accomplishment." I especially liked the part where she compared humans to how other animals look: "It's absurd when you waste too much time on it, when you look at the perspective of being part of this kind of silly looking species on this planet in this solar system in this universe that is huge and contains life forms we haven't even encountered yet and that are completely foreign to us."


But what is the sociopathic angle to all of this? Maybe that sociopaths also sometimes get judged according to standards that they feel are arbitrary or silly? And if you can see some absurdity to the way that many people value human life, maybe you can better understand how sociopaths feel about adhering to seemingly silly and arbitrary things like social norms? Maybe to let the people know who write to me to tell me, "get your life together and establish a legitimate career" or opining that what I have done with my life is "wholly insignificant" that my value system for the worth of a life is probably a little different from there's? And that's ok. I'm glad some people love their middle class lifestyles because they stabilize society and pay into the welfare coffers for the rest of us bottom feeders. Or maybe I am setting up a pity play -- trying to trigger an emotional response in people who read this in order to promote more tolerance as part of a desperate ploy to prevent further legally sanctioned prejudicial treatment of sociopaths?

Or maybe I've just been thinking about this because it seems like our transition from consumer culture to information culture has made us all connoisseurs and critics of "content," including the people that populate our lives. But I'm not sure that most people enjoy being the subject of other people's scrutiny. Nor could you really say that everybody is fair game, if fair is something you believe in. Because I don't remember asking to be born, much less born the way I am and I can't imagine that most people do/did either. And yet there is such a temptation to become an amateur critic of the humans we encounter. But what a dim view of humanity to believe that there is any morally sound and unbiased basis for sorting people out according to value, ranking something so unknowable as the human soul according to such superficial criteria as "our 'riches' and our 'chances for learning.'" Because out of all of the wonders of this world, humans are the most amazing to me. I guess that's why I like the Mormon doctrine on this point: "Remember the worth of souls is great in the sight of God".

Sociopath as entrepreneur

One of my mentors just asked me, "What made you who you are." It was meant to be complimentary. The implication was that I am better than a lot of my peers. Particularly my mentor is impressed with how I seem to understand many more aspects of the dilemmas we are working with than some of my colleagues.

I guess you could call it an ability to think abstractly, or an increased awareness of the mechanics--a more intimate knowledge of the behind the scenes action that is motivating so much of what we look at. It allows me to Bayesian update like mad, like an excel spreadsheet with hundreds of inter-working, interdependent formula, but capable of adjusting in an instant based on new information.

My mentor actually calls it "alien." Again, he means it to be complimentary. He subscribes to the theory that great thinkers and entrepreneurs tend to be "aliens," people who are not really part of their culture. Aliens live parallel lives with different mindsets than the majority. They're readily able to think critically about the world around them because it already seems foreign to them. There's no effort in trying to maintain distance or perspective regarding the problem. The distance has always been there. The distance will always be there because that is the way the alien interacts with everything in the world.

My mentor thinks I must be an alien because my smart ideas are not just smart, they're groundbreaking. Even the way I explain my ideas to others is alien. It's like I am trying to translate my ideas into a language that others will be able to understand. The effort I am making to communicate is apparent, like figuring out how to instruct someone to hike from point A to point B when I had just teleported there instantly. My mentor thinks that you simply cannot teach people to think this way. You can open their mind and teach them some tricks, but they will never think fluently this way the same way that an "alien" would. I laughed off his comments, saying that I have plenty of stupid ideas too. "Well I do too," he responded, "we all do. That's part and parcel of risky thinking."

Here's an example of "alien" entrepreneurship, Tony Hseih, head of Zappos. From the NY Times:

At times, Mr. Hsieh comes across as an alien who has studied human beings in order to live among them. That can intimidate those who are not accustomed to his watchful style. “I have been in job interviews with him where you are expecting more, and it can be awkward silences,” said Ned Farra, who manages relationships with other Web sites for Zappos. “He is not afraid of it. It is almost like he is testing you.”

Mr. Hsieh said that he surrounds himself with people who are more outgoing than he is, in part to draw himself out. “My view is that I am more of a mirror of who I am around,” he said. “So if I am around an introverted person that is really awkward. But if I am around an extroverted person I will be whoever they are times point-5.”

***

Outwitting the system is something Mr. Hsieh has honed from a young age. In addition to describing his youthful business ventures (worm farms failed, personalized photo buttons succeeded), “Delivering Happiness” recounts a history of scam artistry. To fool his Taiwanese-born parents into thinking he was practicing piano and violin, he recorded practice sessions and played them back on weekend mornings.

***

Jason Levesque, another Harvard friend who worked at LinkExchange, recalled Mr. Hsieh’s self-effacement. When inviting friends to play a video game, “he was obviously the best at the game, but he would sort of hide that in order to get everyone to play,” Mr. Levesque said.

Like Mr. Zuckerberg’s, Mr. Hsieh’s success has been built in part on his ability to anatomize the way people crave connections with others, and turn those insights into a business plan.

***

Mr. Hsieh, who professes fascination with dating guides like Neil Strauss’s “The Game” and pontificated on his theory of the evolutionary futility of sexual jealousy, said he does not date. “I don’t usually define dating or not dating, together or not together,” said Mr. Hsieh, nursing another tall shaker of wine at the Downtown Cocktail Room. “I prefer to use the term ‘hang out.’ And I hang out with a lot of people, guys and girls. I don’t really have this one person I am dating right now. I am hanging out with multiple people, and some people I hang out with more than others.”

***

“I think of everyone I know in my life, he’s the best at not feeling jealousy,” she added. “But I think he’s human, whether anyone believes that or not.”

This is not the first time I have been called an alien. It is not even the first time that I have been called that with a positive or value neutral connotation. I never know what to say in these situations. I agree with them, obviously, but in terms of explaining to them why I might have grown up with the mentality of an "alien" in a foreign world...? "It's a mystery," I tell them. But it's not. It hasn't been a mystery since I became self-aware, or maybe since I learned of the term "sociopath".

Hyperrational or sociopath?

I've met a couple people now where I half wonder if they're not so much sociopathic as hyperrational. A lot of them will sense the difference themselves, i.e. they're the ones telling me that maybe they're a little on the sociopathic spectrum or have similarities, but it's primarily on the hyperrational side. I got a recent email from a reader along those same lines, maybe we can get other people's thoughts?

First thing first, I'm sorry it's a long read, and since English is not my first language there could be some unclear passages, but I tried my best.

I admire your introspection, M. E. I found your book casually surfing the internet, while I was seeking info about personality disorders. I read it in a night, with my admiration of you growing page after page. I share some personality traits with you (sociopath traits), but at the same time, we have some big differences, which are leading me to question myself, and I am writing to you for this reason. Only recently, despite my young age, I came to realize that there’s something not quite right about the way I look at the world. I don’t have empathy, at all. There are really a few people I have feelings for, almost all of them close family members. After recent events, I realized that whereas other people suffer seeing someone else feeling pain, I don’t. I am incapable of feeling any negative emotion about someone else. I am glad to be this way. I look down on empaths, so emotionally unstable, feeling miserable just because of others feeling that way.

I feel no guilt, no remorse. I am ruthless, I have no moral code. To me, there doesn’t exist anything good or bad per se. It all depends on the point of view. One big difference with you though is that I usually don’t engage in behaviours risky for my life. Being dead is not a great way to succeed. I learnt to control my impulses and to be cold, especially if I sense some great danger. Usually, if I’m about to do something that others consider bad, I think twice about the pros and cons, and the likeliness of getting caught. I am cold and callous, and I don’t really care about other’s emotions and needs. The only person I truly care about is me. I dislike strong emotions. I get annoyed when someone around me is crying or yelling or complaining.

I consider others chess pawns in my hands, I maintain a relationship only if I can profit from it. If the bads outweigh the goods, I shut the door. I believe that everyone is completely replaceable. “friends” are no more than people I use, and I enjoy putting one against another. In fact, I plot in the dark and I instil doubt in people, unaware of my deep feelings. The best situation for me to act is war, conflict, enmity. When everyone is against each other my manipulation is more effective. I seek this situation, I try to create it trough suspicion and lies.

I don’t really like talking, communicating, if there isn’t a clear purpose. Most of the times I find people talking do me annoying.

I get easily bored of what I do, what I study. I have a boring life, and anything different than usual thrills me.  For example, a friend of mine has been recently diagnosed with BD, and although everyone else is sad about it, I find it extremely exciting. It’s out of the ordinary, it’s a new thing. I am interested in mental illnesses and psychiatric drugs, so I find an extremely positive thing for me. This is one of the facts that led me to this period of introspection: I am happy for a thing considered bad by everyone.

Until this point, I believe I met a sufficient number of criteria to be diagnosed as a sociopath. I don’t want to be officially diagnosed, that’s why I’m asking your insights. Anyway, the truth is, I often don’t succeed in manipulation this way. I am not the classic sociopath who can manipulate others and bend their will in any situation, but I was. Now I am the perfect sociopath just in my mind. Fantasies about controlling others are sweet as honey, they give me pleasure. Plotting itself is so satisfying. I am not so charming anymore, unfortunately.

The first experiences about manipulations were in kindergarten. Back then I was really good. Kids were really easily bent, especially if younger than me, and adults too, even if to a minor extent. Elementary school was also quite a proficient period. And here we come to the main reason I am questioning my sociopathy. After elementary school, I was not the same anymore. I started being inhibited, I wasn’t popular, I wasn’t charming, I was kinda shy. I became no one. I never had a good physical shape or strength, and given how was the “social value” of someone measured in middle school (and generally by teen population), this could be a reason I lost my charm. Now, more than half a decade later, I am trying to restore my social power. Even during those years, I kept not having feelings for others. But due to my lack of social prestige, I was down psychologically, maybe depressed, I don't know. This is really a thing I regret about my past. So I’m not immune to depression if it involves being socially powerless. Is this a relevant feature? I am not immune to anxiety either.

According to your book, you kept that charm and those manipulative skills throughout the whole childhood and adolescence. I wish I was like you in that sense.

I blend very well with society now, and in the past too, maybe because in the past years I wouldn’t even seem a sociopath. Maybe I wasn’t. Maybe I’m not. But my dark and cold heart Is difficult to ignore. I rarely disclose what I really think, who I really am. No one really knows me, maybe because there is nothing to know: I’m unsure about my identity, I don’t feel having one. People build a world around me starting from the chunks of information they have. I am well used to then become who the other person imagined. No one got the bigger picture yet, even if my lack of empathy was noticed sometimes. I try to conceal under layers of lies my real thoughts and what drives me.

I don’t get upset easily, I am quite detached. There are a few people who can make me lose my temper. In that case, I can harm them verbally and psychologically – but not physically, I already said I am not at my best in that sense. There are many emotions I can fake, but I have a hard time crying fakely.

I think a lot about killing. I never even attempted, obviously. I have no intention in going to jail. But my enemies' destruction is a sweet fantasy. I wouldn’t mind sacrificing someone innocent to obtain the destruction of my enemies.

I am very intelligent, more than literally anyone I know. Probably more than you too. I was extremely precocious, my early infancy is totally relatable to yours. While other kids wondered about princesses and superheroes (kindergarten) I was already deeply aware of myself and my surroundings, and I was experimenting with every kind of scientific thing. At 4 I discovered that joining the two poles of a battery with a wire and touching the poles I would get a mild shock that made me drop the battery. Silly thing, but I was very curious. I learnt reading at 5, by myself. By the time I was 6 or 7, I would know more about science in general that someone entering high school. I used to read any sort of things, and I still do. I like knowledge. Knowledge is power. I learn just for the sake of knowing things. Of knowing more than others. I feel joy when I am the best, in every field. I had the habit of talking to myself too.

I am interested in people, in the relationship between them. In elementary school I wrote secret papers that contained strengths and (especially) weaknesses of everyone I knew, addressing ways to bend them and secret information I could use if my plans failed. I get a thrill about it just remembering. I have a good memory about people’s secret. I crave them.

I am not in university yet. Over the years I often had confused ideas about what I wanted to be. Right mow I want to be a surgeon. I completely relate with the trauma surgeon you wrote about in your blog. I don’t want to be a surgeon to do something good for patients. I just want to operate for the sake of operating, to interact with flesh and organs, to have power over someone. And to excel in what I do, be groundbreaking. Emergency surgery is what I like the most. I like the rush, the speed you have to make challenging decisions.

I will have success. It’s not sort of a megalomaniac and narcissistic delusion. I am born to be the best, to shine. I already had some personal successes, but I will not talk about it here.

I am sexually fluid, and I experience sexual love or lust. But they’re just superficial feelings, I believe, even if they are strong.

Generally, I understand what people want, even if others made me notice that I sometimes don’t recognise if someone is sad. One of the things I am so bad at is comforting people in grief. I am clueless, even if I know that is socially required to comfort sad people. If it was up to me, I wouldn’t even wanna know people’s problem unless I can use them to manipulate. I learnt to know people, but I still don’t understand them completely. I don’t understand how they can have such strict moral codes that they are unable to live their life freely but I suppose it’s better for us this way. It would be impossible if everyone was ruthless and cold-blooded. There can’t be only lions. There must be sheep too.

Concluding, this is the first time of real introspection in my life. I had a hard time getting to know myself, and I feel like I’m unable to grasp the majority of things anyway. And I don’t know what I am. I struggle in defining myself, I would seem sociopath if not for the negative emotions, I could be a malignant narcissist maybe? Or am I just a sociopath with some narcissist features? I need your opinion Ms Thomas, and I am thankful I found your book.
Thanks in advance 

My response:

I guess you are still a bit young, which makes me hesitate to say anything definitive, but I would say that you appear to be on the sociopathic spectrum. One thing that has surprised me as I've gone around meeting people is that I have met people that are less charming -- only like 2 out of 15 or something, but it is interesting to meet them, and yet still know that they are like me in a lot of other ways. It makes me think that there are sort of 12 traits of sociopathy and people sometimes have more of one and less of another. For instance, you seem to be high on conscientiousness to the point where you almost seem to be just hyperrational. And maybe you are, maybe as you continue to age and develop, that will be the more pronounced thing about you. But I feel like even hyperrational people are able to recognize the emotions of others (e.g. recognize when someone is sad), even if they don't have a ton of empathy. This suggests to me that there's something more going on then just hyperrationality. But should we post what you wrote on the blog and see what people say?

Psychopath treatment: a success story

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

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

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

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

So why am I writing all this to you?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So how to explain these ‘different’ feelings?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Serial Killers & Ruthless CEOs exist - Voldemort does not. 

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

Portrait of a sociopath

I stumbled across this "self portrait" of a sociopath here, and thought it was one of the most accurate depictions of an everyday sociopath I've seen, and by that I mean it is the description of a sociopath that is the most similar to how I view myself:

I've often suspected I have sociopathic tendencies, but I don't fit all the criteria on your list.

I've lied and stolen from a very young age despite being brought up in a normal, loving, two-parent home. I had never been particularly loving until I learned consciously what the display of this behavior could do for me. In arguments with my sibling I was always labeled cold and unfeeling because I would turn off the outward expression of emotion to the point that I'm not sure I felt anything at all.

Despite this, I have forged some stable long-term relationships, married, and now have a daughter. I have learned to blend in with the status quo so much that I highly doubt if anyone suspects my inward nature. Once I learned consequence I stopped stealing and now only lie when it benefits me in some tangible manner and the risk of being outed is low. Despite this outward appearance of normalcy, I lack any sort of depth or substance. Emotions are often faked, and I have to work at performing regular friendship and relationship maintenance to keep these relationships going when there is no emotion behind the act whatsoever-(for instance, buying and providing a nice birthday card and gift for a long time friend with loving sentiments).

I struggle often with behaving appropriately and in a manner acceptable to society. I am still tempted to steal and have to slowly walk myself through the consequences of doing so. I don't avoid stealing by arguing the morality of it, but rather what would happen to me if I was caught. In my teen years I was promiscuous and to this day still struggle with my urges, though I have never cheated on my husband for fear of being caught. Sex and lust for me is more of a function of manipulation that it is a physical urge, though I can and have enjoyed sex.

I often fantasize about soulful, deep, searing love relationships but don't think I could ever truly experience this. I've used my looks and sexuality in the past to draw men in and after they fell I was through. I finally married after pressure from family, and conceived after 10 years due to pressure from my husband. I love my husband to the extent of what he can provide for me, financially and sexually, but I don't know what it means to have an aching heart for anybody real.

Nearly everything I do, even today, is calculated for personal gain. I am constantly weighing energy output VS gain VS acceptable behavior.

The only unfettered love I've experienced so far is for my daughter. She is the only one who I have *ever* given more to that I expected to receive in return, without calculating what my contribution will get for me.

I wish I wasn't like this, that I could feel a normal depth and range of emotion and not constantly be tempted by my urges. I really don't think anybody could help me, I think that my constant self-checking and chameleon lifestyle is really the best I can ever expect, I don't think a head shrink could provide me with any better "therapy". I some ways I think my disorder is a gift, because I am a consummate logician, being unfettered by normal depth of emotion.

I think there are probably many *many* people out there just like me, who live in a cloak of normalcy. I could be your neighbor, or even your wife. I firmly believe I was born this way and it is just how I am wired. I don't expect anyone to feel sorry for me but I wanted to give my own perspective on my APD.

I think I am more normal that anyone would care to admit, even to themselves.

Sociopaths in the news: Julian Assange

In celebration of Valentine's Day, this is a hilarious story of friend-seduction starring Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. From the Daily News:

This is a love story - an unrequited love story, but a love story nonetheless. 'My first thought upon seeing him was: cool guy.' This is how Daniel Domscheit-Berg describes his first meeting with Julian Assange at a conference of computer activists. . . . Daniel is smitten, and will remain smitten until, a year or two later, it all ends in tears.

'We used to be best friends, Julian and I - or at least, something like friends. Today, I'm not sure whether he even knows the concept. I'm not sure of anything any more.'
***
From the start, their relationship is that of servant to master, or disciple to guru. Daniel, dull and solid, is mustardkeen to do Julian's bidding, even to the extent of carrying his bags. Meanwhile, the vain and monomaniacal Julian barely notices him.
Before long, Daniel is tying himself up in knots about Julian.

'On the one hand, I found Julian unbearable, and, on the other, unbelievably special and lovable.' But between the lines, it is clear Julian finds Daniel a bit of a bore, worth tolerating only for as long as he kow-tows.

Julian gives little sign of noticing anything about Daniel but, for his part, Daniel takes an obsessive interest in Julian and his little quirks: the way he says 'hoi' instead of hello, and asks 'how goes?', the way he slides down banisters, the way he dances by galloping across the floor 'almost like a tribesman performing some ritual', the way he alters his name on his business cards to the more mysterious and glamorous 'Julian D'Assange'.
***
[W]henever Assange enters, we are all ears. Like most heroes and villains in literature, he is entirely self-centred and extremely peculiar. . . . He is a fantasist, and has what Daniel describes as 'a very free and easy relationship with the truth'. At one point, he tells Daniel that his hair went white from gamma radiation when, at the age of 14, he had built a reactor in the basement and reversed the poles.

The first cracks in the master-servant relationship appear early on. When they visit Switzerland to install a computer server, Daniel spends the rest of his money on supplies of Ovaltine to take home with him.

'I love the Swiss chocolate drink and for the rest of our tour I couldn't wait to get back home and make myself a huge cup of cocoa. But when we arrived back in Wiesbaden, the cocoa powder would be all gone. Julian had at some point torn open the packages and poured the contents straight into his mouth.'

Julian is forever taking more than his fair share of everything. 'If there were four slices of Spam, he would eat three and leave one for me.' Daniel often thinks: 'You could at least ask,' but doesn't like to say anything.
***
Julian is also something of a skinflint, always letting other people pay for things. He claims it's so his whereabouts can't be traced via a transaction with a cash machine, but when he uses this excuse straight after appearing at a televised Press conference, Daniel begins to smell a rat.

Before long, infatuation turns to irritation. Julian picks up women and brings them back to their shared hotel room. 'One night I really needed to sleep. I was dead tired, and I asked him to let me crash in peace for once. A short time later, I heard Julian talking to a woman on the phone...Julian insisted she come to the hotel. My problem was that we shared not only a room but a large double bed. I buried my head in my pillow and tried to sleep, or at least give that impression.'
***
[The] social isolation [of the Wikileaks team] fosters their self-regard, their notion that the world should be made to dance to their tune.

This turned, as Daniel says, 'two pale-faced computer freaks, whose intelligence would have otherwise gone unnoticed, into public figures who put fear into the hearts of the politicians, business leaders and military commanders of this world. They probably had nightmares about us. A lot of them probably wished that we had never been born. That felt good.'

In passages such as this, it becomes clear that the megalomania-they affect to despise in world leaders is as nothing compared to their own.

The sociopath's 'due north'

It is often said that sociopaths have no moral compass. But what if there is no such thing as a moral compass? What if instead, there are multiple ‘due norths’?

That seems to be the unspoken implication of an article i read recently about morality. The article features Jonathan Haidt’s ‘Moral Foundations’ theory, which purports to explain why morality varies among different cultures on the one hand while still showing some striking similarities on the other hand. The theory suggests that there are five universal foundations. Each culture in turn 'selects' a few of those foundations and builds traditions, norms and rituals upon them to construct a commonly shared morality. The five foundations in brief are:

1) Harm/care, related to our long evolution as mammals with attachment systems and an ability to feel (and dislike) the pain of others. This foundation underlies virtues of kindness, gentleness, and nurturing.

2) Fairness/reciprocity, related to the evolutionary process of reciprocal altruism. This foundation generates ideas of justice, rights, and autonomy.

3) Ingroup/loyalty, related to our long history as tribal creatures able to form shifting coalitions. This foundation underlies virtues of patriotism and self-sacrifice for the group. It is active anytime people feel that it's "one for all, and all for one."

4) Authority/respect, shaped by our long primate history of hierarchical social interactions. This foundation underlies virtues of leadership and followership, including deference to legitimate authority and respect for traditions.

5) Purity/sanctity, shaped by the psychology of disgust and contamination. This foundation underlies religious notions of striving to live in an elevated, less carnal, more noble way. It underlies the widespread idea that the body is a temple which can be desecrated by immoral activities and contaminants (an idea not unique to religious traditions).

Using the American political spectrum as a kind of case study, Haidt suggests that liberals tend to value harm/care and fairness above all else, while conservatives emphasize ingroup loyalty, authority and purity. He takes pains to suggest neither value grouping is objectively better than the other, merely different. I agree with him since there's no good evidence to suggest otherwise. What’s more, not only are values and moral biases at least in part, genetically heritable, the particular society a person is born into very often also plays an decisive role. What those two facts make clear is that conscious choice is not a relevant factor when it comes to generating most people’s sense of ‘right’ and ‘wrong.’ As one author puts it, since most people cannot see what comes before (genetics, history and culture), they assume what comes after (their beliefs, biases and morality) are freely chosen. It’s obvious they are not. Moreover, not only are the moral biases that many empaths swear, live and die by not freely chosen, they are not even rational. The evidence coming in from research on morality indicates that emotions, gut reactions, play a leading role in moral judgments and that rationalization of those judgments follow. The human brain is a belief factory, and part of its job is to rationally justify moral feelings.Iif people want to reach a conclusion, they usually find a way to do so that has little to do with anything resembling sound theory or evidence; in short, it has little to do with reality. This partly explains why sociopaths can see the hypocrisy and absurdity that often passes for moral debate.

Which brings us back to the subject. The sociopath is born with much less in the way of moral biases. We don’t need to justify our actions to ourselves, although we may go through the motions of justification with others because we know that’s what they expect and doing so is sometimes useful. More importantly, it’s clear to us in a way that it might not be for most empaths that when it comes to morality, there are as many ‘due norths’ as there are people. Until convincing evidence to the contrary comes in, there’s no reason to fix our so called broken moral compasses. We don’t need no stinkin' moral compass. Reality based thinking works just fine.

PNSE as treatment/experience

From a reader regarding something he found helpful in terms of relating to himself and the world as a personality disordered individual (ASPD/NPD) -- something called PNSE:

You might want to check out this guy's work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQ7nynHcnDE

Here is a writeup: http://nonsymbolic.org/PNSE-Article.pdf

So my own experience, having done the practices and had a PNSE, is that it doesn't solve the morality and impulse-control stuff. The experience has made me happier and more functional, but if you're hoping to find a cure for the "my life blows up every 3 years", this won't be it.

There's a bunch of interesting stuff - one thing that's clear is that mainstream psychology is quite parochial. Eg you've mentioned stuff that sounds a lot like "depersonalization" in the way you relate to your body. It partly explains you who (and I) - if we have a good reason - can get naked and do things that normal people would find terribly shameful. Anyway, depersonalization is a common aspect of PNSE, but it is also the sort of thing that mainstream psychologists (or even garden-variety spiritual teachers) would frown upon - unless they've had that experience for an extended time.

Here is a summary of Jeffery Martin's work - in an interview:

http://realitysandwich.com/229496/demystifying-enlightenment-jeffrey-a-martin-explains-the-finders-course/

He mentions neurofeedback, which I remember you mentioning.

And then his description, which I asked for:

Jeffery Martin studied something he labeled PNSE - "religious experience", "mystical experience" across various faiths/communities and practices. It included Christians, Buddhist meditators, etc. What is PNSE - persistent nonsymbolic experience.

Most people aren't that happy. They're always thinking about things, typically in a self-referential way, and those thoughts color the rest of your experience. By the time you've reached this sentence, you've probably thought something like, "I'm happy, this doesn't apply to ME", "why should I continue reading this? I'm bored." "What was that noise?", etc.

Most peoples' lives is dominated by thinking. They don't notice it. Thinking is symbolic (words) and typically self-referential and negative. E.g. "I'm fat", "I'm bored", "I'm not doing this well", "I got a smaller piece than him." Thinking gets them to do stuff. It also colors how they relate to information - you tell me anything and I'll be thinking "do I really need to pay attention to this?" and "is this going to make things better for me?"

The typical person has some story about himself or herself. Nobody can see the story - it just exists in peoples' minds. As a social nicety, we "go along" with peoples' stories. The typical person takes his story very seriously, despite the fact that the story usually makes them unhappy. Rather than feeling joyful and grateful to have the life that we have, we typically nurse grudges, fear the inevitable, get sad about our personal failures, etc. None of those stories are real; there's just whatever is happening right now. And they happen automatically - when and what isn't up to the you that experiences them. If you are sitting around experiencing your unhappy thoughts about you and your life, that's what is going on now for you, but that doesn't make the stories real, true, etc.

When people have a PNSE, they have, for an extended period of time, a different way of relating to their thoughts, especially their thoughts about themselves. They might have fewer thoughts or they might not seem important. The experience is like an extended "flow" experience. There are several different types (locations) of PNSE, they aren't all the same. Some people might report a constant sense of divine presence (or connection to nature). Others might not. Pretty much all of them report that they are less neurotic; well-being is high. People typically make sense of their experience in the context of their religion (if any). E.g. Buddhists would make sense of it in terms of Buddhism, Christians in terms of Christianity.

Regular flow experiences are profound - e.g. people get addicted to sex, rock climbing, shoplifting, etc because when they do those things, they have to focus and they temporarily get relief from their thinking (symbolic experience). Drugs and alcohol can also provide relief from thinking.

The typical "mystical experience" is like a flow experience, but on steroids. Christians talk about the holy spirit entering in them (e.g. "God ran my life, not me"). Here's a Scientologist (at 12 minutes in) talking about his experience: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHb0BZyF5Ok  In addition to feeling joy there might be a noeitic sense -- "THIS IS IMPORTANT". It is the sort of experience that gets people to give their money to a cult - as Jason Beghe did after he had that experience. These sorts of experiences often lead to people diving in, trusting other people, giving them money, etc.

Why is it is important? Imagine your whole life you've been obsessed with your career, competing with your peers and so on. You're unhappy because nothing is ever enough. If suddenly you stopped thinking about that and you had an extended period of time where thoughts about your personal story (you deserved more, they betrayed you, you got ignored) didn't cross your mind, you'd be a lot less miserable. If it kept on happening, you might realize that all along you'd thought you were one thing (a person competing with others) but that story wasn't true - it didn't define you - just because it kept crossing your mind. If also you don't feel connected to your body in the same way, it would seem profound.

So when they look at the brains of psychopaths and meditators, they sometimes find similarities -- the psychopaths, when they are doing tasks are focused. There's not a lot of thinking unrelated to the task. Perhaps this is why psychopaths don't get bothered about wrecking their lives, or those of people around them - they don't ruminate. They keep busy. When I read your piece here - http://www.sociopathworld.com/2015/12/the-cruise-ship-story.html - recently it occurred to me that that might have happened; your thinking (about yourself) might have increased. I remarked that maybe you've got more of a sense of self, and hence more problems - which fits Martin's research: when people do practices that fit them, they get results quickly - e.g. a week. When they do practices that don't fit, they typically get more neurotic/unhappy. That "sense of self" (the thinking) can wax and wane, along with it the happiness/unhappiness.

People have a lot of beliefs about PNSE. Eg Many Buddhists seem to think a person post-PNSE wouldn't be immoral or unkind. Martin didn't find evidence of that - if you are a dishonest person, you'll probably be dishonest after your PNSE.  I've had a PNSE and I'm still amoral and selfishly impulsive.

Christians (and other religions) tend to emphasize what Martin calls location 3. There's a sense of divine presence and high joy. If people move from location 3 into location 4 (which can happen randomly), the joy goes away along with the sense of divine presence, and they can get freaked out -- because their subjective experience isn't aligned with what their religion says is supposed to happen. E.g. it looks like something like that happened to mother Theresa: http://www.foxnews.com/story/2007/08/24/mother-teresa-did-not-feel-christ-presence-for-last-half-her-life-letters.html That can be really confusing; say you believe Galatians 5:22, and you did have a lot of love and joy (and a sense of divine presence - "walking with the Lord") - but one day it goes away completely. You might think you did something wrong.

There's a bunch of other stuff Martin found - e.g. arousal (excitement) fades, even if people are still experiencing PNSE. Some methods work better than others. Some religions only incorporate some of the 6 practices they found that worked; be born in the wrong tradition and you probably won't have a PNSE.

My own experience - I've had a PNSE. I suspect Martin would classify mine as location 4 (although I guess I experienced some other locations). Location 4 fit with the practices I'd done (meditation & self-inquiry) and my subjective experience: noticing over and over again that I don't control my thoughts, feelings, etc -- they just happen, moment-by-moment. It isn't clear how I get my body to do anything, say anything, etc - I might think about it and it does it. Or more typically I just notice my body doing stuff after it has started. I definitely don't feel identical with my body. There's a sense of not being contained within a body - similar to what Jason Beghe describes in that video above. I've noticed that my unhappiness always seems related to thinking about "me" and the world or other people - and these thoughts are automatic. Even if I do something well and experience the feeling of pride, it feels mechanical -- there's the noticing I did something well and then perhaps a warm feeling washes through my head, along with the thought that I should try to avoid letting it show. I've seen psychologists use the word "depersonalization" to talk about this stuff. I suspect I'm less narcissistic and more sociopathic; I don't believe my story. I hold my opinions lightly. I don't care as much about my accomplishments (or failures) - they aren't me, nor up to me. And to the extent I do or don't care, that's not up to me either.

After having had my PNSE I wanted to make sense of it. I really liked Martin's evidence-based approach. A lot of what he discusses fits my personal experience, so I give it more weight. One thing he talks about it is that someone might have a PNSE in location 4 and then not have anyone to talk to about it -- not even your spiritual teachers, who might be in location 2. They might be freaked out if you talk to them about your experience; they might think things have gone way off track. This is like being a psychopath; if you are honest with people about how you experience reality, they can get bothered, blame you, etc. because what you're saying sounds so inhuman.

Any of your readers doing meditation, prayer, etc might want to look and see what can happen if they happen to hit upon a practice that works for them, or if they just happen to experience a shift of consciousness. When it happens to people randomly (which it does), people tend to think they are going crazy. If they go to psychologists they likely won't be understood - which reminds me of my own experience telling psychologists about my impulsiveness, amorality, habitual manipulation, lack of empathy, etc.

Context is everything

A little related to the last post, Mormon small children around the world were given this interesting pseudo ethical (but mostly practical) dilemma recently:

Ask the children to imagine that they are alone on a raft in the middle of the ocean. They discover that they must lighten their load because the raft is riding low in the water. They must throw overboard all but two items of their supplies. From the following list, ask them to choose the two items they will keep:

Life jacket

First aid kit

Chest filled with gold

Fishing pole, fishing tackle, and bait

Case of one dozen bottles of fresh water

Two-way radio

Box of emergency flares

Large can of shark repellent

At this point you may be wondering what the moral punchline is going to be. For me, I thought for sure it was going to be about getting rid of the chest filled with gold (by the way, the relative weights of a chest of gold and life jacket do not seem equivalent)? Or maybe something more of a stretch, like the importance of having a two way radio to God or something?

For some reason the answer was unexpected to me.

List the choices on the chalkboard, and ask the children to explain the reasons for their choices. The choices in this activity should pose a dilemma. Point out that choosing would be difficult because they would not know what would happen in the future: they might sink and need the life jacket, become thirsty and need the water to drink, become hungry and need the fishing pole, encounter sharks and need the repellent, need the radio to seek help, get hurt and need the first-aid kit, need the flares for a nighttime rescue, or get rescued in the next few hours and wish they had kept the treasure.

I thought it was an interesting illustration about how the value of things depends on context, and how I was sort of ignorant to assume that there would just be a set hierarchy of usefulness to nonusefulness based on the limited information given. Maybe you were like me and your brain raced to figure out what the "right" answer would be too, given what you think you know about survival. Like many of you likely prioritized water over food (fishing pole), because you can survive longer without food than water. But I've read Unbroken, so I know that there's actually a decent chance of getting fresh water from the rain, which would naturally collect in the bottom of a typical raft. And if the two way radio was in range of help, it makes most sense to keep that. Who cares if you get a little thirsty or hungry in the few hours that it might take to be rescued. Also, who cares if you're hungry or thirsty if sharks come right away, so in some ways shark repellant is most necessary. But if the whole idea is either to facilitate speedy rescue or to survive until rescue comes or you've drifted to safety, it's really not clear what would be more valuable without more context. But still my mind had an impulse to think that there was a "right" answer, or at least "righter". I was surprised that the punchline was -- it depends.

But I think I also can understand a little better now the perspective of people who think that there's really no use for sociopaths in the world, such that we can and should just eradicate them all. Those people must feel the same way about sociopaths as the way I almost instinctively felt about the chest of gold in the raft. Because the gold seems to me to be so obviously useless to that situation, I would have probably thrown out the gold without a second thought. But the lesson makes a good point -- what if you were rescued in a few hours. You'd wish you hadn't.

I think it's similar with sociopaths. Some people might see the world in a particular way that would make sociopaths seem an obvious detriment with no countervailing benefit and almost just automatically think it would be best to get rid of them. But sociopaths can be extremely useful in certain contexts, e.g. life or death situations where something dangerous or morally questionable needs to get done quickly and effectively -- war, espionage, natural or man made disaster, but even smaller things like car accidents, impending street violence, taking risks in business, having the mental fortitude to try something and not be afraid of failure. Sociopaths are like the gold, or maybe more like the flares, in the sense that they don't seem as immediately useful as we've been conditioned to see the other items, but sociopaths would truly be your tool of choice in certain situations.

And unlike this survival hypothetical, there's no reason to want to go around killing sociopaths (or even preventing them from being born through genetic screening or whatever). Because unlike the survival hypo, we can keep everyone in the boat. And you know the old saying, better to have something and not want it than to want something and not have it.